(CFRA broadcast date: Sunday, April 1st, 2012)
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Broadcast Notes:
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‘The Challenge and Glory of the Cross’
The Bible says: “But God forbid that I should glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God. From now on let no one trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. Brethren, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen” (Galatians 6:14-18 ).
INTRODUCTION
The Cross has for centuries been the central symbol of the Christian church. The church has marched under the Cross. “Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war; with the cross of Jesus going on before.” The church has also suffered under the Cross. Wherever that symbol has appeared, tyrants have grown edgy and suspicious. Poland has been a case in point. Communism was challenged by the hanging of a cross in each classroom of that nation’s schools. Was the issue merely one of hanging a crucifix in each classroom of that nation’s schools? No, it went deeper, to what that crucifix represents. The authorities realize that the Cross demands ultimate allegiance to Christ alone. No authoritarian state can tolerate such subversion for very long. What the outcome will be for the church in any country remains to be seen. It is nevertheless significant that the Cross is the focal point of that modern struggle.
If the church has marched under the Cross, and suffered under it, the church has also been renewed under the Cross. Whenever the church has sought its own glory, whenever it has been more concerned about surviving than serving, whenever it has prided itself on its position in society rather than prayed for new life beginning with repentance at the foot of the Cross, the church has lost its rootage and grown unattractive and become, in many cases, useless. On the other hand, the preaching of the Cross with all its historic realism and all its healing power has always lifted the church out of its lethargy and indifference until the very rafters of our simplest meeting houses and the arches of our grandest cathedrals have rung with the very merry laughter of heaven and earth. The Cross and its message has always been effective in people’s lives, saint and sinner alike, to make new beginnings and breathe new life into the daily routine. One’s world-view remains ungrounded and ineffective until the Cross is seen to be at the centre of things. One’s faith remains general, imprecise and uncommitted until one comes to the foot of the Cross and experiences “that love, forever full, forever flowing free.”
It was Martin Luther who called the church back to the Cross from which it had strayed, 400 or 500 years ago. Not a ‘theologia gloriae’, cried Luther, but a ‘theologia crucis’. There is no glory for the church except in the Cross. In the Cross the church finds its motive, its message, and its means. Who can witness except by the inspiration of the Cross? What message have we except that of the holy and gracious love made available through Christ crucified? How can we minister effectively except we understand the servanthood exemplified in the Suffering Servant? It is true that without the Resurrection and without Pentecost the work of the Cross remains unfinished and unvindicated. It also is true that without the Cross there is nothing to finish and nothing to vindicate. Whatever else it is, our theology and our faith are and always must be centred on the Cross.
But the Cross may very well be for many what some have described as “a mystery wrapped in an enigma”. We build crosses upon the steeples of our churches so that they may be seen for miles around. We hang crosses at the front of our sanctuaries to focus our worship. Sometimes we make the sign of a cross at a baptism, and some do it before they pray. What does it mean? What difference does it make? A missionary to Ethiopia found crosses everywhere, cut into trees, scratched on rocks, erected on huts. He asked what they meant. One man said: “Our fathers made them, and we make them. What they mean, I don’t know.” What does the Cross mean to you and to me? What difference does it make for you and me?
I. THE CHALLENGE OF THE CROSS
For Paul, the Cross was central. “Far be it from me to boast, except in the Cross…”, he cried. ‘If there is anything I am going to boast about’, cries the great Apostle, ‘it won’t be race or ritual or any other factor by which people consider themselves priviledged before God. I will boast only in the Cross’, he said.
But there had been a time when Paul himself had not spoken of the Cross in such glowing terms. Until he met Christ that day on the Damascus Road, Paul had seen no redeeming feature in the whole sorry scene of Calvary. ‘I considered it necessary to do every thing I could to oppose the name of Jesus of Nazareth’, Paul testified before Agrippa (Acts 26:9). This was typical of first-century Judaism. And you could understand how to the pious Jew the crucifixion made Jesus’ claim to authority totally impossible. How could someone, who’s life ended abysmally upon a cross, possibly be God’s chosen and anointed One? The law of Moses surely made the whole thing perfectly clear: “He that is hanged upon a tree is accursed of God” (Deuteronomy 21:23). There was no way the crucifixion could recommend itself to a Jewish mind as evidence that Jesus was the Messiah, not even with the magnificent 53rd chapter of Isaiah before their eyes. The Cross has always been a barrier to Judaism. Many Jews have become Christians throughout history, including the first disciples, the earliest church, Felix Mendelesohn, Benjamin Disraeli, Gregory Baum and others. But for many others, the Cross has proved to be, in Paul’s terms, a ‘stumbling-block’. It was and is a sign of powerlessness and ignominy, until the Spirit enables the mind to see the wonder of God’s power through suffering love!
There was something else that made first-century Judaism sceptical about Jesus. The Jews wanted a clear sign that this was the Messaih. There is a tendency amongst us all to look for the dramatic. Religious people of every age have prefaced the coming of God with expectations of strange and eventful happenings. Portents, miracles, special visions- if God is about to act, then surely there will be evidence. There must be signs! Think of all the false Messiahs who have emerged, each one beguiling people into accepting them by the promise of wonders. The Jews were looking for signs and wonders. They were disappointed therefore in Jesus who, though he healed countless people and sis other miracles, nevertheless avoided the spectacular. His healings were mainly done in private. He maintained a certain secrecy about his Messiahship. This, together with his crucifixion, hardly made Jesus a plausible candidate as the chosen One of God, at least in Jewish eyes.
And the Greeks, for other reasons, found the church’s message no more credible. They were devotees of philosophy. They sought wisdom. What kind of credible philosophy could be found in the Cross? Where was the wisdom in suffering sacrificially for others? One might, in Stoic fashion, bear suffering nobly, but it was always one’s own suffering that was borne, never another’s. The idea of God loving sinners, dying for them, walking with them, suggested that God felt for his people. How can God be great and inscrutable if he can be so easily influenced by the needs of people? No, God must be impervious to external influence and unmoved by the needs of the world! A God who suffered and suffered for others was to the Greek mind a contradiction in terms, as was the idea of Incarnation itself. What was important, anyway, was not the acts of God but the wisdom of God. Rhetoric, debate, philosophy- these were the things that counted and it often mattered little what connection there was between their rhetoric and the truth behind the universe. What was significant was the process. Cleverness was more important than righteousness. To the Greeks, the Christian preacher was too blunt and uncultured. The apathy of God and the cultured rhetoric of men, were what mattered. ‘Don’t talk to us about a Cross’, they reacted.
What about the reaction of the modern world to the Cross? And this includes the reaction of many within the modern church. Some ignore the Cross, treating it simply as an unfortunate event in history. The worst that evil men could do to probably the best man who ever lived. Some substitute other things for the Cross, perhaps “law” pr psychology. ‘What matters is keeping the law, or at least doing the best you can’, some say. Others argue that dying to your old self and developing a new being is what the Cross and Resurrection really teaches, so long as one doesn’t have to relate it to something God does for us or something we have to believe. Others interpret the Cross in such a way as to reduce its offensiveness. For example, if it had to happen, what a wonderfully calm and resilient way Jesus met his end!
And so, the Cross was a burden and remains a burden, and an offense, for many.
II. THE GLORY OF THE CROSS
“Far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ… It was, for Paul, the combination of who Jesus was and what he did for the world that took the burden out of the Cross and made it a glory. The words and the work of Jesus are inseparable. They cannot be fully appreciated except as interrelated parts of a total ministry.
Consider the historical significance of the Cross. There is a good deal that can be known for sure about the historical Jesus. There is also a good deal in the Gospel records that has been questioned. Not all by critics of Christianity, either. Scholars within the church have in recent years, from whatever motives, been quick to challenge virtually every aspect of Jesus’ recorded life. Very few, however, whether within or outside the church, have called in question the historicity of Jesus’ crucifixion. Rudolf Bultmann, on of the most radical of critics, was prepared to allow the crucifixion as one of the facts of which we can be certain. That Jesus was put to death ’under Pontius Pilot’ is unquestionable, not merely as an article of the Creed but historically.
One of the real values of the Cross is that it provides us with the starting point for the historical reconstruction of the life of Jesus. From that one indisputable fact we are able to work back through the life of Jesus to the causes of his death and so develop a fairly full account of his ministry. For the average Christian, this may be unnecessary. But for the intelligent unbeliever who shows any interest, it can be the road to faith. There is glory in the historical impact of the Cross.
Consider the theological significance of the Cross. Jesus taught that there was a necessity in his death. “The Son of Man must suffer, and die” (Mark 8:31). Actually there was a double necessity. First, the world couldn’t tolerate him. He had to die because there is sin in the world. Sin always fights to survive. It had to kill him, for he was out to destroy sin. Yet the irony of sin’s destruction of Jesus is this: it caused sin to be shown up for what it is in all its diabolical madness! Second, there was in the Cross a divine necessity, Jesus did not come mearly to teach; He came also to die for us. The world will not be saved by teaching, even by the teaching of God. It must be saved by the great acts of God. In the Cross, we have the supreme declaration of God’s love, the supreme sacrifice for sin, and the ultimate victory over temptation and sin. What a glory!
Consider the triumph of grace in the Cross. Here in this one great act, someone has done for us what we could never do for ourselves. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Can we grasp so magnificent a love? A husband, soon after the wedding, discovered that his wife was not in control of her life. She engaged in one debauch after another. What should he do? His friends advised him to leave. He refused. The words “for better or for worse”, took on a new and poignant meaning. When someone thought to condemn his wife, he forbade it: “She is my wife; I loved her when she was a girl in our village, and I shall love her so long as there is breath in my body”. That is the kind of love the Cross reveals; love to the uttermost. A love that will not let go! What glry there is in God’s grace!
III. THE CHALLENGE OF THE CROSS
“…the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world is crucified to me…” This can mean so many different things. Whatever else it may mean, it must surely mean that we are to walk with the crucified Christ. Jesus said: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). To deny oneself is to put Christ first in our lives. To take up one’s cross daily and follow Christ means being ready, as William Barclay puts it, “to endure the worst that man can do to us for the sake of being true to him.” It is to be prepared to spend one’s life for the sake of the Kingdom of God. It means to be ready to be used and used up out of loyalty to Christ. ‘The world is crucified to us when we choose to ignore what is popular and what is self-serving in order to serve Christ who uses suffering in his servanthood, being prepared to give everything in that service.
The Cross challenges us to gain a burden for people. The chaplain to King George V, Studdert-Kenedy, wrote: “No man can believe in the brotherhood of man and be comfortable. It is a doctrine that takes away all our cushions and leaves us with a cross.” On the Cross God demonstrated his burden for the world. In that same Cross, we find ourselves challenged to do for others what they can’t do for themselves. The Cross must issue in mission and ministry. When the strong abuse the week, when the poor cry for bread, when the innocent languish in dungeons, when mothers cry for their children, when outcasts roam in the wilderness, when the wealthy are dissatisfied with life, when the guilty cry out for release, when the lonely search for even one friend, the Cross points us to the task. ‘Go, minister to a world in desperate need.
The Cross challenges us to live a new and righteous life.
The only lasting and revolutionary ethic comes from contemplating Christ. Davis Brainerd described his work among North American Indians; “I never got away from Jesus, and him crucified; and I found that when my people were gripped by this, I had no need to give them instructions about mortality. I found that one followed as the sure and inevitable fruit of the other.”
IV. THE INVITATION OF THE CROSS
“…and I to the world”. Andrew Murray wrote: “The Cross of Christ does not make God love us; it is the outcome and measure of his love for us.” There is a winsomeness to that love. Will we surrender ourselves to him who loved us so magnificently and thoroughly? “Come unto me… for my yoke is easy,” said Jesus (Matthew 11:28f).
And if we are crucified to the world, that surely means we are free and in that freedom responsible to proclaim that love to the world. In John Masefield’s “Good Friday”, a peddler of lilies says to Christ: “Friend, it is over now; the passion, the fears, the pains, only the truth remains.” The truth must be told.
And so we may agree with Sam Rutherford: “Christ’s cross is such a burden as sails are to a ship. Or wings to a bird.”
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Will you pray with me?
“Heavenly Father, we thank you for the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. We accept Him as our Saviour, who put himself out for us, and who died for us and rose again that we might have eternal life. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace, and access to the heavenly Father’s home on high. We thank you for your wonderful grace. For coming in due time to die for the ungodly. For demonstrating your love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Open up the avenues and corridors of love to all who are listening to us this morning. May all who are in need receive Christ as Saviour and Lord. Amen”
Dr. Allen Churchill
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