Perfect Nonsense Series

To the seekers of signs and wisdom Paul presents the ultimate divine contradiction: “We preach Christ crucified.” Instead of signs and wisdom they get weakness and folly. “Christ crucified” is like saying to them “fried ice.” Christ to the Jew meant splendor, power, majesty, not weakness, humiliation and defeat. Christ to the Greek sounded like superstition, total folly. To both, Christ crucified was a scandal. God cannot be killed on a Roman gibbet. And how in the name of Zeus is that supposed to save us?

People, this is how the world thinks today. And if the world is seeping into the church, I dare say we are thinking this way too. The wisdom of the world has clouded our minds so that we too cannot understand how Jesus dying on a cross can save us. As a result, the church is tempted to play down the meaning of the cross because it is too scandalous for our generation. Too gruesome, too gory, too bloody and too illogical. So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.

With what would you save the world?

Let’s return to one or two of our five issues that plague the world. If the cross is powerless to solve these issues, what would you do to save the world?

If we could cure all the diseases in the world, would we have a better life? If Aids were eradicated and bird flu a thing of the past, would our world be saved? Can humankind actually attain immortality? In its own wisdom it thinks it can.

In a magazine I was reading I was forced to do a double-take on an ad I glanced at. The ad featured a birthday card which read, “Happy 100th Birthday” followed by the haunting script, “love Mum and Dad.” Looking closer I discovered it was a pharmaceutical ad with a promise to improve our quality of life in the near future.

If we could eliminate war and bring world peace, would we have a better life? If we could disarm the belligerent nations like Iran and North Korea, could we save our future? Some intelligent UN people have a vision of what that would look like.

They say (they being faceless “experts”) that the one obstacle standing in the way of world peace is religion. If every people and tribe would harmonize their faiths there would less hostility in the world. So we are talking about peace without the cross. The Cross of Jesus is a sword that divides and so long as there is sin in the world, the cross will divide believer and unbeliever.

The truth of the scandalous cross is that the world cannot understand what Jesus did but they despise it anyways. It reminds us of our failure; it reveals our sinfulness in killing the world’s only known innocent man; it shows us how filthy we are as a race. It is an offense to us all.

But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.

This foolish plan of God’s is amazing. It is perfect that the scandalous cross should be His choice of tools to save the world. What did Jesus come to do? To feed the hungry; to heal the sick; to open the door to immortality; to care for his Father’s world; and to give humankind hope (hope is the beginning of development). And all of this is validated in the cross where Jesus died, and in his resurrection, the crowning of Jesus by God as the One, the only One who can save the world.