He Made a Cross his Throne

He made a cross his throne

Embracing agony

The Lord of life would choose to die

To prove his love for me,

He made a cross his throne

Raised high for all to see

And from that throne his dying breath

Secured my victory,

He made the thorns his crown

Where wound his sacred head

And from his brow the blood that flowed

Brought life back from the dead,

He made the thorns his crown

Oh, blessed diadem!

All hail the king who’s suffering

Draws nations back to him,

His stripes he made a robe

From lash upon his back

Tattered and torn, weathered and worn

His flesh from hell’s attack,

His stripes he made a robe

In humble royalty

And with those righteous stripes we’re healed

From all infirmity,

He took the nails as friends

Forsaken by his own

He brought them in like brothers, kin

And hung to die alone,

He took the nails as friends

That pierced his hands, his feet

The place those nails went through his frame

Where love and justice meet,

His grave he made a womb

Once silent, dark, and still

His beating heart unleashed a life

That death shall never kill,

His grave he made a womb

Reversing death’s decay

All nature shouts his vic’try cry

The stone was rolled away!

The Story Behind the Poem:

I love reading God’s Word. Not for information, for transformation. I love pressing through the small black (or red) letters that appear with a grid of numbers for chapter and verse reference to the deep Truth that lies underneath. It is the journey of discovering the nature of Ultimate Reality in God’s self-revelation. I love the approachability and humanity of the characters and the way God’s Divinity intervenes with each one giving us a glimpse of the true essence of His nature. What I love the most is reading about the mystery of God taking on flesh Himself to save his most prized creation, us. It’s timeless and breathtakingly beautiful, like a priceless treasure found in a common farmer’s field. I also love reading others who stoke the fire of that love for God and his Word in my heart to higher intensity. Eugene Peterson, Deitrich Bonhoeffer, C.S. Lewis, Dallas Willard, John Piper, to name a few. These have been some of the most influential figures in my journey into knowing God through his Living Word. I’m grateful for each one’s obedience and investment to think the thoughts they did and write them down so I could benefit.

This past year I discovered another name to add to that list, Hans Boersma. You can follow Hans on Substack here. I recently turned the last page of his most recent book Pierced by Love in which Boersma unpacks internalizing God’s Word through a process known as Lectio Divina in company with some of our earliest and most influential church fathers. (Augustine, Origen, Bernard de Clairvaux, Gregory of Nyssa, etc.). Boersma’s commanding knowledge of the patristic tradition and how it shaped the culture of the way the early church interacted with God’s word is inspiring. In the very first chapter of Pierced by Love, Boersma makes the following statement:

“The cross is God’s throne. Nothing on earth reaches quite as high as the cross of Christ, for nothing is as high or sublime as the love of God.” (Boersma, 14)

His words gave me the deepest pause. Could there be any mystery more profound than the intersection of God’s majesty with the cruelty of the cross? When I first read it, I recoiled. “This can’t be true,” I thought. Surely there is a dichotomy between Jesus’ current exaltation, enthroned at the Father’s right hand and that moment when he who knew no sin became sin (2 Cor. 5:21). Surely his nature was far less royal as his body hung from the nails in his wrists naked and exposed before the mocking crowd around him. I persuaded myself, “These two realities cannot coexist.” But the deeper I pushed into the thought, the more profound the power of Christ’s act of redemption became. I began to imagine the cross, the crown, the stripes, and the nails meeting the purity of his Divine sonship. Over the following 12 hours or so the words of the poem above poured out of my heart onto the page. An analogy popped into my head:

Air Force One. You’ve seen it. It’s the giant blue and white Boeing 747 jet with the Presidential seal located just off the door of entry for all the world to see. It is (and has been) the President’s preferred mode of transportation in visiting nobles and dignitaries around the globe. It is fully equipped with everything the President and his senior advisors could ever need to accomplish their duties while abroad. One could even argue that it has become a symbol of the Presidency itself. But should a situation arise where the President needs to vacate that plane, say for the sake of a security crisis, and board another that isn’t nearly as well equipped something interesting occurs. That new plane, however crude or ill equipped it might be, takes on the identity of Air Force 1 due to the recognition of the power of the one who carries the office of the Presidency aboard. In fact, the full might of the U.S. Air Force will shift to protect and defend that new plane at any cost. As this analogy played out in my imagination a Hollywood scene of a compromised Presidential mission played out as follows: Air Force 1 with the president aboard is disabled by a foreign threat while in flight. The blue and white 747 is forced to land somewhere in a corn field somewhere in central Nebraska. The President pops the door open, climbs out of the plane, and runs across the field for shelter in a barn on the other side. At the entrance to the barn, he meets a simple farmer who has been working that field. The farmer can’t believe the scene that has played out before him. He rushes the President into the dark barn to take cover. Now inside the dark barn, the President surveys his surroundings and sees what appears to be an old crop duster under a blue tarp. “Can you fly this?” he asks the farmer. “Yes sir,” the farmer replies. Moments later the small crop duster lifts off from the cornfield with the farmer manning the stick and the President sitting in the passenger seat just behind him. The small crop duster is soon flanked by a missile clad fleet of F-22s making a supersonic beeline for the newly dubbed Air Force 1. While in flight the farmer turns to the President and says, “she’s not much, but she’ll get you where you need to go.” The President smiles and gives a thumbs up.

What Hans Boersma is saying is this: The moment the sheer weight of Christ’s royal divinity was affixed to the cruelty of that roman cross, the purity of his love transformed it into a throne only fit for the power of his kingship. When we consider the reality that the son of God, clothed in immeasurable power, allowed himself to be found there we are confronted with the most glorious mystery the universe will ever know. It will confound us. At first it will be bothersome and repulsive. We will argue with it. We will want to hide from it, to shield the eyes of our hearts from the sight of him there. But inevitably the glory of his journey to that cross, and the reality that he chose to be there will transfix and disarm us. As Boersma puts it, we will be “pierced by love” and transformed. The Apostle Paul writes it this way.

“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.” (Colossians 2:15 NIV)

Last week I was in Dallas with someone who is simultaneously a great friend and one of my favorite worship leaders, Shane Barnard. Together we were transfixed and transformed by the thought of Christ’s cross as his throne. This poem became a song that we collaborated on. I would call it a modern hymn. We both look forward to sharing it with you and with the church at large in the days ahead.

Boersma, Hans. “Pierced By Love: Divine Reading with the Christian Tradition.” Lexham Press, 2023.