Following Judah's Lion

The Diminishing of the Cross

Gal.6:12-14 As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.
13 For neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh.
14 But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

I was born again in March of 1975 on top of Garret Mountain in Passaic, New Jersey at night. I had heard Billy Graham preach on television about the second coming of Christ, and for several weeks I could not release my mind from his words. I was a wicked drug user and sometimes seller, and I was a violent street fighter and drunk. Having been injured in a fight, I was recuperating at my aunt’s home.

Now on the night I was saved, I had climbed up the face of that mountain and jumped the fence of the park and sat and looked at the Manhattan skyline. I audibly spoke to God and said that if Jesus was who He said he was, then I want to know Him. Now those of you who know Christ know that the workings of the invisible Spirit of God can be somewhat explained to an unbeliever, but they can never know the depth and sacred mystery of His ministry. The Holy Spirit can speak to someone in ways that go beyond an audible voice, and that my brothers and sisters, is only understood when someone experiences it.

Well, as I sat on top of that mountain in that cold and crystal clear night, I became enlightened to the fact that Jesus was God in the flesh, and that He was the only way to eternal life. In that moment I was changed forever, and everything in my earthly life changed as well. Now I did not grieve at that time over my sin, and I did not know any systematic theology. When some claim that you must know this and that and that you must be convicted of your sin before you can be saved, I realize they are wrong. God can and does save people with very little knowledge of these things and then He begins to teach them afterward. It is spiritual hubris to have some kind of formula for the mystery that is salvation. There are many people who now are on the mission field whose salvation experience did not line up with my doctrinal parameters. I guess I must let the Spirit be the Spirit.

My salvation centered around the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, however soon after my conversion the Holy Spirit began to lead me more fully to the cross. I began to see the cross more deeply for what it was, and I began to embrace it in ways previously unknown to me. I had seen crucifixes and crosses in jewelry, and I saw crosses in cemeteries and on houses. But those things now seemed like trinkets compared to the reality of an event too deep to ever plumb and too glorious to ever fully comprehend. I now saw the cross as the pinnacle of all history and the centerpiece of every believer’s life.

I had never been to any other church but a liberal Lutheran church where my mother went, so for the first several weeks after my conversion I went to a Lutheran church. But almost immediately I knew something was wrong. And after a few weeks I began to search for another fellowship that had experienced what I had. Eventually I became a Southern Baptist while at Bible College in Florida. But as the years past I noticed something quite subtle but also quite arresting. Evangelical churches no longer preached the cross except at special times like Easter, and they never challenged their people to live the cross and sacrifice their own lives for the Crucified and Risen Christ. The cross became a theological aside and everyone understood its doctrinal significance but rarely spoke of it. I never heard two “lay people” speak of the cross in the church halls, and outside of a prepared sermon the preacher rarely mentioned it as well.

Fast forward to today and in a very few decades the church has placed the cross on the theological wall and defends it in doctrinal terms and confronts those false teachers and teachings who stray from the Biblical foundation concerning the cross. But they rarely speak of the cross outside doctrinal parameters, and extremely rare is the believer who can speak of the cross on a public street and become emotionally moved right there in public. It seems our lives have crowded out the reality of that cross as it pertains to experiencing it personally and often in our daily spiritual journey. The cross has become a doctrinal relic, stuffed and hung on a theological wall by many ordained taxidermists.

But it is time we begin a fresh pursuit of the cross of Christ and a fresh awakening to how the power and presence of that cross should infect and affect our very lives! The church spends most of its energies instructing us in basic behavior patterns and financial wisdom and marital strategies and even political persuasions, but where are the four month series that boldly and unequivocally preach the cross of Christ accompanied by Spirit empowered exhortations to “pick up your cross” and walk in His footsteps? There is a subtle but vast difference between learning the Scriptures and having them woven into the very fabric of your mind, body, and spirit.

The cross was an event. It isn’t just some historical account that holds no more significance that the Magna Carta or the Reformation or Pearl Harbor Day. The cross is still alive today and its power is still available today for all who will yield to its redemption and personal sacrifice. We are called to die in order to live and yet in many cases the church resembles an “how to” corner in the Home Depot. But in a breathtaking display of spiritual blindness the cross is fashioned in brass or wood, and given a prominent place in our systematic theology, but is rarely seen imprinted upon a human form. Jesus died upon the cross for our sins, but He calls His followers to willingly, yea joyfully, place themselves upon its redemptive planks and die to ourselves.

How pitiful we are when we are reduced to teaching that living the cross-life is not much more than allowing another car to go in front of you in a line. Living the cross- life is many times filled with personal pain as we are forced to endure injustices without retaliation. We are called to love our enemies and refrain our lips from gossip and self justification. The cross leads us to a life of moderation, and a humility that seems eccentric in a culture of self. And because our understanding of just how the cross should affect our lives in demonstrative ways is deficient in these modern times, we must seek Christ and His cross and implore the Spirit to embroider the essence of that cross in every area of our lives, regardless of the pain and self sacrifice.

In a glorious mystery, though, many times the pain of being crucified in this life is the very source of spiritual joy! I cannot tell you the formula, but I can tell you that dying to self and allowing the life of Jesus Himself to flow through you is both humbling and exhilarating. And I can also share with you by experience how painful it is when our lives take control and show forth the shame of a fallen, self centered power that diminishes the cause of Christ. One pain brings joy while the other pain brings shame. But if the cross-life was easy then everyone would live it.

The church has used all sorts of way to replace the unmistakable mark of a believer which is embracing the cross in such a way that it disfigures the flesh-life and brings forth the life of Him who is life. The cross-life always leads to the empty tomb and the freshness and power of the resurrection. Without the cross, there is no resurrection. Let us take but a moment and revisit the cross upon which we were forgiven and purchased forever.

The word “Jesus” rolls off our tongues as easily as saying Elmer. But this Jesus, this Joshua, this Yeshua, was no ordinary man. And when we approach the Incarnation we must remove our shoes since we have entered holy ground. How can God become a man while retaining His divine essence yet acquiring the form of a man? A mystery, you say? Much more than a mystery, for this was the sacred mystery which would change the course of mankind. Sinless, powerful, humble, selfless, determined, merciful, gracious, and with His face set like a flint toward the agony of the cross. God did not come down to be among man to take in the sights of His creation. God came to die, and that truth reveals the prophetic companion that traveled within the Savior’s bosom.

He heard the accolades of some and the scorn of others, yet He continued to see the cross. He saw people amazed as they ate fish that had not been caught on this earth, yet He continued to see the cross. He listened as people extolled His teachings that were with an authority not known by others, yet He continued to see the cross. He raised the dead and heard the praises, yet He continued to see the cross. He watched as His closest friends abandoned Him, yet He continued to see the cross. He received the whips and the thorns and the punches and the fallen spittle of wicked men, yet He continued to see the cross. What kind of love can this possibly be?

As He was led through Jerusalem, barely recognizable, He heard the mocking and He saw the face of His mother soaked in grief, yet he continued to see the cross. In the divine mind, he saw you and me, receiving His grace but many times falling short and disappointing Him and His gift daily, yet He continued to see the cross. He saw most of mankind rejecting His gift and mocking His name, yet He continued to see the cross. And in the end, God offered Himself freely upon the Roman beams and allowed Himself a public humiliation and torture, and the Giver of Life submitted Himself to death…for us.

Oh how wretched we are when we have so diminished that cross and hung it within the walls of the church building so we can look at it once a week and give a pitiful genuflect to that doctrine. Having a correct doctrine of the cross and personally embracing it daily are worlds apart. Our words, much less our thoughts, so often belie our professions of love for the cross and its dying Centerpiece. This world has diverted our eyes and called us away from the crimson spectacle, and even those of us who confront others as they change the meaning and essence of that cross, even we must look deeply in the mirror and admit a shallow stream of piety that runs a fresher course on Sunday mornings. We might be doctrinally sound, but are we fully surrendered to the realities of our cherished doctrines, notably that glorious cross?

And so the Apostle Paul desires to glory in nothing but in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. If Jesus tarries another fifty years, just where will the cross be in the church? It is difficult to see it having a poorer place than it now holds, but somehow it will. The cross was always the life blood and message of the church, but now the professing sheep seek earthly enhancements that glorify themselves. Who desires the cross and all its sacrifices today? Who takes upon themselves the mantle of Isaac and lays down upon that wooden altar to suffer and die to self? Self has become the demanding god within the church, and overpaid men defined as “shepherds” teach and exemplify the very opposite of Him who was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

I speak not as one who has arrived, but as one who knows he has not arrived. And I speak as one who desires to be free from the shackles, both visible and invisible, that bind us to this present life and in so doing strips away the glory that should be His life living through us. I desire to once again take a journey to Golgotha, not in the likeness of a trip to a museum, but to bow before the Crucified Christ and beg the Holy Spirit to do in me what I am incapable of doing in myself. Crucify me, Spirit of God, and allow me to resurrect in the power and glory of the Risen Christ. Help me to die daily by its power and in that to simultaneously walk in the power of the resurrection. There must be more, Lord Jesus, to following and experiencing You than the mundane and redundant exercises we now exhibit.

Beneath the cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand, the shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land; a home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way, from the burning of the noontide heat, and the burden of the day.

Upon that cross of Jesus mine eye at times can see the very dying form of One who suffered there for me; and from my stricken heart with tears two wonders I confess: the wonders of redeeming love and my unworthiness.

I take, O cross, thy shadow for my abiding place; I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of his face; content to let the world go by, to know no gain nor loss, my sinful self my only shame, my glory all the cross.

The cross. It's archaic, it's barbaric, it's unsophisticated, and it's not intellectual.

But it's the only way to eternal life.
Amen, and amen.