Paul declares that "sin reigned in death." [Romans 5:21] Sin is the human failure of vocation, with all that this entails. When we sin, we abuse our calling, our privileges, and our possibilities. Our thoughts, words, and actions have consequences. They were meant to. That is what being image-bearers is all about. Sin risks replacing good consequences with damaging ones. Turning away from the source of life, we invite death to fill the vacuum. Both these elements, sin and death, need to be dealt with on the cross. The whole New Testament and Paul in particular declare that this is what was achieved. That is why the cross launches the revolution.
Tom Wright, The Day the Revolution Began: Rethinking the Meaning of Jesus' Crucifixion, p.84
Sometimes people who are introduced to the Jesus Prayer in its usual form - Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner - are dismayed by the phrase "a sinner", associating the word with the placing of ticks against a long list of dreary transgressions, rather than an embracing of our own reality in the light of God's mercy.
When we pray for mercy in this way, we are in effect aligning ourselves with the cross. We pray to Jesus, the crucified saviour, for the mercy he has already given on the cross. As Brian Zahnd explains (The Wood Between the Worlds: A Poetic Theology of the Cross, pp.16-17)
But if the point is not appeasement, how do we associate Good Friday with forgiveness? Allow me to suggest that we think about it like this: On Good Friday the sin of the world coalesced into a hideous singularity that upon the cross it might be forgiven en masse...
Jesus was killed, not by God, but by the hands of wicked men. With great violence the principalities and powers sinned the sin of the world into the sinless body of Jesus. When the sins of the world became the sinful singularity of Good Friday, the one who knew no sin was made to be sin (2 Cor 5:21). The body of Jesus hanging upon the cross was made to be the repository for the sin of the world. What does sin look like? ... It looks like the innocent one nailed to a tree bearing in his hands and feet and side the entrance wounds of sin.
Not only does seeing the cross in this light explain the final words of the Jesus Prayer, it gives us a glimmer of insight into the mystery of the intercessory aspect of the Prayer: that it is not merely a prayer for mercy for the one praying, but for all creation in its agony of becoming (Romans 8:22).
