HOW THE CROSS
IMPACTS YOU TODAY
What does the cross mean for you?
We see
it on a building we call “the church.” We see it hanging from necklaces and
emblazoned as a tattoo on the skin. We see it as earrings or bumper stickers.
Sometimes we see the cross hanging from the ear of a heavy metal singer. I’m
not sure what the cross means in any of those places.
The pop
singer, Madonna, once said, “It’s sexy to wear a crucifix because there’s a
naked man on it.” Her statement reflects a sick movement in secular rock music
to empty the cross of its meaning. Unfortunately, the movement began in the
church. The cross used to stand for Jesus – the suffering of Jesus. Now it
adorns business cards and buildings for an institution that is often afraid to
speak of the cross.
What is
the cross? It is a horrid form of execution. Thousands have died on that rough
instrument. But one man died on his cross and forever changed its importance to
the world. Now it is the center of the universe, the nexus of history, the most
meaningful event that ever took place. Someone went so far as to say the
crucifixion of Jesus is the only thing that ever really happened.
The Son
of God died on a cross. No one dies that way anymore. Jesus did. What does this
mean for you?
The
crucifixion event was 2000 years ago, you say, what does it matter today? That
is a really good question. I am glad that Jesus died for me on that horrible
cross so that I could be forgiven. But that’s a past event. How does the
message of the cross impact my life today and every day? Does the cross of
Christ have a daily affect on my life?
To
answer this question we will turn to three passages in Galatians that will
bring the cross forward to 2017.
If you could choose one verse to sum up your life, what
would it be? If you could choose a verse for your tombstone, or if someone
wrote a biography of your life and put one verse at the top of the preface,
what verse would best summarize your experience as a Christian?
Out of
all the great verses in the Bible, I would like to suggest Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the
flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Memorization may have gone out of style but this is one we ought to know by
heart.
The
first phrase “I have been crucified with Christ,” answers the question posed by
Paul’s audience in Galatia: What do I need to do to maintain a relationship
with God? In verses 15-16 we get the impression that some people were pressing
for rules to be set up so that Christians would live the “right way.” You know
I am talking about the Jews and their law. But you also know that we as 21st
century Christians also like to set up rules to determine who is in and who is
out as far as authentic Christianity is concerned. I am guilty of this; we are
all guilty of this.
So
Paul’s answer to the need for a righteousness that comes through the law and
doing the right things is this: I have been crucified with Christ. But what
does that mean?
A young man approached AW Tozer and
asked, “What does it mean as far as this life is concerned to be ‘crucified
with Christ’?” Tozer replied, “It means three things: (1) a man on a cross is
facing in only one direction; (2) he is not going back(goodbye to the past and
past life) ; and (3) he has no further plans of his own.”
What Tozer identified in crucifixion
is the “death” aspect. When a man gets nailed to a cross he is going to die.
And when he is dead, his obligations and debts and expectations of the past
life are null and void. Dead is dead.
Paul writes that to put our trust in
Christ is to die with him. We join him in his death on the cross; we join him
in the tomb; and we join him in his resurrection. This is what baptism
symbolizes according to Romans 6:4-6 (read).
That’s fine, you might say, we are
figuratively dead, but you and I know I am very much alive. I haven’t actually
died. No, but by believing in Jesus and identifying with his death on the cross
in the past we receive the spiritual benefits of the cross as a present
reality. We are dead.
What does that mean? It means that
you are dead to the law and there is nothing you can do or need to do to make
God love you any more than he already does. You no longer live in frustration;
Christ who perfectly satisfies the Father lives in you. Now we live by faith in
the finished work of Christ and not in our feeble efforts.
I am daily
crucifying my sinful nature
Now that we
are united with Christ in his death, the old life is finished. You are a new
creation. As a new creation you do not want to continue living as you did
before. You have a new life through faith in Christ. With Christ living in us,
he gives us new desires for holiness, for God, and for God’s kingdom. It is not
that we cannot sin again – we certainly can and do. But we don’t want to.[i]
Our second verse from Galatians
explains the result of being crucified with Christ. “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its
passions and desires” (5:24).
Note the difference in actions. “I
have been crucified with Christ,” denotes a perfect tense where being crucified
is something that was done to us through faith. Here, we are the ones doing the
crucifying. We are crucifying the flesh, or the sinful nature, that inner
desire to do what we want when we want no matter who it hurts, God included. We
are killing that nature.
Paul is borrowing this imagery from
Luke 9:23 where Jesus said, “If anyone
would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and
follow me.” Jesus uses a vivid figure of speech to talk about self-denial. The
intention is that we will take up our cross and not only walk with it, but make
sure that the execution takes place. We are to take that sinful self and nail
it to the cross.
What attitude ought we to have in
the crucifixion of our flesh or sinful nature? There are three aspects of this
attitude:
1) A Christian’s rejection of the old
nature is to be pitiless.
This Roman form of execution is not nice and it was not administered to nice
people. It was reserved for the worst criminals. To crucify the old self means
to treat the old tendencies ruthlessly and deserving of crucifixion.
2) A Christian’s rejection of the old
nature will be painful.
Breaking away from the past and old habits that have become a part of your old
lifestyle or rituals will not be easy. Crucifixion is painful.
3) A Christian’s rejection of the old
nature is to be decisive.
Crucifixion was a lingering death, but it was a certain death. Criminals nailed
to a cross did not survive. We will not
succeed in destroying the old nature in this lifetime, but we have nailed it to
the cross. And if it slips off, we nail it back on.
The reason Jesus said that we need
to take up our cross daily is for this very purpose. We must renew every day
this attitude towards sin. Paul implored the believers in Rome to reject sinful
practices as those who have been crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:12-14).
Some sins we will defeat in this
life; others will entice us till we die. Our sins want to be justified. We
nailed them to the cross but they question our resolve, “Was it really a sin?”
Sin wants to be let loose because “it’s not that bad” and “there are worse things.”
But you know in your heart that it is sin and you must resolve to leave the
nails in its hide.
I am
crucified to the world
If the
effect of being crucified with Christ is that we want to crucify the old
nature, we are also essentially cutting ties with the world. By “the world” I
mean the spirit of the age that rules how people think and act.
Paul concludes his letter to the
Galatians with this very thought, “But
far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by
which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (6:14). That
means that as a person who has Christ living in me, I don’t have to live
according to the standard of the world. I don’t have to act like a person
driven by the ambitions and desires of the world.
To “boast,” as Paul puts it, has no
English equivalent. It means to “glory in,” “trust in,” “rejoice or revel in,”
or “live for.” The object of our boast fills our horizons, engrosses our
attention, and absorbs our time and energy. In short, our “glory” is our
obsession.[ii]
What are we obsessed with? Money?
Business? Does your work consume your schedule? Power? Do you want to be in
control? The false teachers in Galatia were obsessed with their number of
converts (6:13).
Ed Neufeld shocked his audience at
the SBC Leadership Conference last March when he declared that Paul never told
the churches in the NT to evangelize. Paul was never concerned with numbers.
But Ed did say that Paul was concerned about the believers being faithful.
Churches today are obsessed with numbers; Paul was concerned with faithfulness.
True church growth has to do with following Christ, not a program for retaining
newcomers.
A man once asked D.L. Moody, “Now
that I am converted, must I give up the world?” “No,” answered Moody, you need
not give up the world. If you give a ringing testimony for the Son of God, the
world will give you up pretty quick. They will not want you around.”
We don’t want to purposely turn
people off. But if crucify the values of the world and live by Kingdom values
there will be an obvious discrepancy in how they live and how we live, the
choices they make and the choices we make. If we live by the cross we will be
peculiar. Not to make peculiarity the goal of our faith, I do have to ask, does
the cross of Christ make us stand out from other people?
I am crucified to the world. Dead to
it. So I take on a different view of the meaning of life and the pleasures
therein. Consider John’s warning in 1 John 2:15-17. If we are dead to the world
and alive to Christ, this world has less of a hold on us.
What does
the cross mean to you?
I am embarrassed to tell you that I
wear a gold cross around my neck. I’m embarrassed because it really doesn’t
cross my mind (no pun intended). My cross hangs beside a symbol of my 2010 grad
and my 2016 grad. What does that symbolize? I don’t know. I think I wanted a
reminder of my faith poking me from time to time (when I played hockey, the
cross would sometimes turn sideways and stab me).
Perhaps we need to be stabbed now
and then. Wake up! We are driving the vehicle of faith in neutral. The violence
of the cross is jolting. It is not stainless steel symbol that we can swipe a
Clorox wipe over and clean it up. It is messy and bloody and costly and real.
Jesus died on the cross for our
sins. He wants us to come and join him in dying to this world. He wants us to
live the new and abundant life of the resurrected. Will you pick up your cross
and follow after Him?
AMEN
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