Christus Victor

I recently bought the Newday 2011 album "We Are Yours". I'm the kind of person who ends up listening to one song on loop and probably humming or singing that song on loop, much to the annoyance of my friends. Over the last few days, I've probably listened to the track "Christus Victor" by Simon Brading at least 20-30 times. Obviously the music is good, but it's the content of the song that stops me getting bored of it. The song highlights the triumphal aspect of the cross of Christ. The New Testament doesn't simply speak of the cross as the place where Jesus was crushed, it considers the cross to be the place where the greatest and most definite victory in the history of the universe took place. No other victory can compare! Andrew Wilson puts it far more eloquently that I could, so I'll leave you with his profound words on the matter:

There’s only ever been one victory. Literally. In all of history, there has only ever been one contest that you could look back to centuries later and agree it was won, permanently and definitively, by one side. Just one. In millions of attempts. Think about the contenders. The Assyrians beat all their rivals in the eighth century BC, but then lost to the Babylonians in the seventh, who lost to the Persians in the sixth, who got wiped out by the Greeks in the fourth, who crumbled in on themselves in the third, and so on. The Romans crushed all before them for four centuries, but they eventually lost too – just like the Vikings, the Mongols, the Spanish, the British, and everybody since. IBM were dominant for a generation, but then lost to Microsoft, who now look like they might well lose to Apple. England defeated all comers in the 2003 rugby World Cup, and then lost pretty much to everyone. True victory – conquering rivals completely and lastingly – is unheard of. With one exception. In AD 30, a three-day campaign was waged by God against all of his most powerful enemies, sometimes referred to as ‘rulers’, ‘authorities’, ‘principalities’ and ‘powers’. The main confrontation took place on a rubbish dump outside Jerusalem, where God, in his son Jesus, met Satan, sin and death head on. A mocking enemy, who since Eden had been used to humans capitulating to his taunts, was met by a defiant ‘Go ahead, make my day’ from the Son of God, and within six hours the one-sided battle was over, the victory was triumphantly announced with the words ‘It is finished.’ On the third day, the victory parade began, as the risen Champion came out of the tomb to the amazement of earth and the applause of heaven. As Paul describes it in Colossians 2:15, God obliterated his enemies in Jesus, took away their armour, and made a public spectacle of them by parading their corpses  through the streets. (Full text available here or in his book Godstories: Explorations in the Gospel of God)

"He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him" (Colossians 2:15)