The Meaning of the Cross
It all boils down to this: God gives his life for us and we're invited to give our life to God. It's like a marriage.
The first section here offers C.S. Lewis' deeper insights into the spiritual technology in the cross/resurrection.
But if that's too deep, just skip to the practical section following afterwards—for it's more important to have a good meal than understand theories of digestion!
The Cross Explained
Now what was the sort of "hole" man had gotten himself into? He
had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself.
In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who
needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying
down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you
have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again
from the ground floor—that is the only way out of a "hole." This
process of surrender—this movement full speed astern—is what
Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is
something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means
unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training
ourselves into for thousands of years. It means undergoing a kind of
death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here's the catch.
Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent
perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can
do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect
person—and he would not need it.
Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation
and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will
take you back and which He could let you off of if He chose: it is
simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God
to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go
back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go
through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us
unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we
mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit
of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers
and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that
is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold
its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters
because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and
reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen,
that would all be plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's
help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does
at all—to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's
nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for
which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own
nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing,
in His own nature, He has not.
But supposing God became a man—suppose our human nature which
can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person—then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer
and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was
God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us;
but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying
will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking
can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His
intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and he
cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays
our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.
Receiving Christ's Strength
Your human state is one of childlike weakness. Your strength comes from Me. Why delude yourself into believing you can be strong being going at it alone? What is often deemed strength is nothing less than standing on foundations of sand: temporary holds on this passing world, extant in the mind and as fleeting as the thoughts that come and go.
My strength is eternal. It brings peace, humility, and a deeper understanding that you are mine and I am yours. The devil will present to you "riches" of his inheritance that ultimately lead to destruction. ("Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain." Psalm 127:1)
Do not accept a weak earthly substitute for My grace. Over-reliance on worldly comforts will only lead you to patterns of addictions. My comfort so often first comes from the discomfort of the cross of letting go. False comfort must "be crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20). Once you let go of what it is that drives you down the wrong path, you will see Me right before you, closer than you could have imagined in your most dour, dark moment.
I am never far away, though at times, you may think Me distant. It is the distractions of the finite mind that hide Me. Surrender to the truth of My omniscient, all-present being and see the face of the Father who longs to love you and comfort you. Let "the joy of the Lord be your strength." (Nehemiah 8:10)