THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS

“The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God…..we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block and foolishness to non-Christians…For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 1:18,23; 2:2)

Why is the cross so central to St. Paul’s preaching? Because it is central to the Christian faith.

Why is it central to the Christian faith? Because it was the destiny of Jesus.

Why was it the destiny of Jesus? Because it was the only way God could obtain our salvation.

Why was it the only way he could obtain our salvation? Because out of love for us he took upon himself the penalty for our sins.

Why did he have to take upon himself the penalty for our sins? Because only the righteous Son of God could atone for the sins of the world. Only an infinite sacrifice could tone for infinite sin.

Why did the sins of the world need atonement? Because the world, and all its people, stands under judgment, and there is a cost to forgiveness and reconciliation, which God in his love paid for us..

Why is the world under judgment? Because we have sinned against God and our neighbor, rebelled against our Maker, rejected our Divine Lover. We have gone our own way, boasting in our own achievements, substituting our own selfish desires for God’s plan and purpose for our lives.

If you doubt the seriousness of sin and the human predicament look at man’s inhumanity to man on every continent and in the pages of history. Abuse, neglect, crime, envy, genocide, violence, cruelty, selfishness and greed is enough evidence of human culpability to return a guilty verdict on the human race. Existential shame and alienation witness to our need for forgiveness and reconciliation.

If you want to test a preacher’s faithfulness to the Gospel, ask him about his understanding of the cross. The cross is an offense to many. Islam does not believe that God allowed Jesus to die upon the cross. They think that Judas or someone else took his place. The only way to salvation in Islam is to tip the scales of justice in your favor by doing more good works than bad. You are, in effect, your own Savior.

Many churches do not believe that Jesus had to die upon the cross for our sins. A religion of self-help does not need forgiveness, or atonement. Christianity, for those who downplay the importance of the cross, is a matter of living a good life. They think that the God of love does not require a sacrifice to avert judgment. Forgiveness, for them, is cheap and easy. The wages of sin may be death, but God, they say, does not have to pay the wages. He can issue pardons without the cross.

A self-satisfied person, who is proud of his own achievements, and who is self-deceived about his own innate goodness, does not need a savior, or the cross.

Ask many people who claim to be Christians, and they will say that their salvation depends on them trying hard to live a good life. It is up to them, not up to God, to save themselves. They do not need a crucified Savior but just a good example. Richard Niebuhr described the message in many pulpits in 1930: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a world without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

“Grab all the glory now. No cross, no wrath, no judgment. Just be all you can be. We are constantly bombarded in our culture by appeals to our native narcissism. The religious version of this message make God a means to an end rather than the end for whom we exist. In all its varieties, this is the theology of glory. But it is not the glory that the gospel promises up ahead for those who in this life share in Christ’s suffering and humiliation. It is the glory that we demand here and now by our own efforts, denying the reality of sin and death.” (Michael Horton, Christless Christianity, 91)

The cross is the sign of humanity’s rejection of God. It is sin in all its ugliness and horror. It shows us what sin does to each of us, and what we do to one another. The cross is also the sign of the extent of God’s love of humanity. It shows to what length God will go to pay the price for our sin. It shows us the meaning of the ultimate sacrifice. Studdert Kennedy, who experienced the carnage of World War I as a padre, when millions were slaughtered, wrote:

“I bet my life on Beauty, Truth

And Love, not abstract but incarnate Truth,

Not Beauty’s passing shadow but its Self.

Its very self made flesh, Love realized.

I bet my life on Christ – Christ Crucified.

Behold your God! My soul cried out, He hangs,

Serenely patient in His agony,

And turns the soul of darkness into light.

I look upon that body, writhing, pierced

And torn with nails, and see the battlefields

Of time, the mangled dead, the gaping wounds,

The sweating, dazed survivors straggling back,

The widows worn and haggard, still dry-eyed,

Because their weight of sorrow will not lift

And let them weep; I see the ravished maid,

The honest mother in her shame; I see

All history pass by, and through it all

Still shines that face, the Christ Face, like a star

Which pierces drifting clouds, and tells the Truth.”

The cross is the battlefield in which the Son of God goes forth to war, to defeat evil, to pay the price for sin, to ransom us for God, and to show the extent of God’s love. The cross is how the Son of God experienced death so that he might drain it of its power, and identify with us in our final journey. Christ shared in our humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death – that is, the devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. By his death he made atonement for the sins of the people. (Hebrews 2:14-18)

The message of the cross tells us about the nature of God. God is not indifferent to us. God is not immune to our actions. God is not passive and unresponsive to our needs. It is God who takes action. It is God who suffers for us, in our place. It is God who settles the bill, who satisfies the creditor, who bails us out. That is why it is called ‘gospel’, good news.

As a child one of my favorite hymns was Cecil Frances Alexander’s, “There is a green hill far away”. It expresses simply why the message of the cross is so central to the Gospel.

“He died that we might be forgiv’n,

He died to make us good,

That we might go at last to heav’n,

Saved by his precious blood.

There was no other good enough

To pay the price of sin,

He only could unlock the gate

Of heav’n, and let us in.

O dearly, dearly had he loved!

And we must love him too.

And trust in his redeeming blood,

And try his works to do.”