Our postmodern society is so focused on the self that the meaning of an act as distant in time as the cross of Jesus Christ has become difficult to understand. Traditional ways of addressing the issue no longer seem credible, and new approaches are being proposed, even within evangelical circles.
Jesus is much more than an example of love or a victim of violence. When God receives and approves the work of the cross, the result is a humanity capable of new relationships, forgiveness, and renewal in every respect.
This reconciliation points to the end of all opposition, alienation, and death. Henceforth, between God and human beings, as well as between humans themselves, a life of restoration, healing, recognition, and joy is possible.
The cross is a place where relationships of reconciliation and friendship are formed—something our contemporaries are searching for in all sorts of directions, affected as they are by an existential weariness in the face of the conflicting realities of daily life and suffering from the lack of a home in the deep and rich sense of the term.
The project of Paul Wells, professor of systematic theology at the Faculté libre de théologie réformée in Aix-en-Provence and editor of the Revue réformée, invites us to restore the full brilliance of the doctrine of the cross within the Christian message and through reconciled lives.