TITLE: THE CROSS, THE CENTER OF OUR THEOLOGY
SCRIPTURE: I CORINTHIANS 15:1-11
We are swiftly moving through the month of March and our walk towards Calvary. All roads lead to Calvary where we find an ole rugged cross. The cross of Christ is the center or ground zero of salvation. It is the crucial point, the place of convergence where everything about the Gospel comes together. If you interrogate Christian faith and ask, “in one word, how does god save sinners?” the response of a healthy faith will be instantly and confidently to pick out the CROSS.
Since the beginning, Christians have identified themselves with the Cross on which Jesus died. And whether it’s carved in wood or etched on our hearts, the Cross is the chief symbol and defining reality of the Christian faith.
Many love Christ as long as they encounter no hardship; many praise and bless him as long as they receive some comfort from him. But if Jesus hides himself, they either start complaining or become dejected. Those, on the contrary, who love him for his own sake and not for any comfort of their own, praise him both in trial and anguish of heart as well as in the bliss of consolation. Even if Jesus should never comfort them, they would continue to praise and thank him.
• What power there is in a pure love for Jesus
• Love that is free from all self-interest
• Love that is free from all self-love!
The resounding cry is -- take up your cross and follow Jesus, and you will inherit everlasting life. There is no other way to life and to true inward peace than the way and discipline of the Cross.
• Go where you will
• Seek what you want
• You will not find a higher way
• You will not find a less exalted but safer way, than the way of the Cross
• Arrange and order everything to suit your desires
• You will still have to bear some kind of suffering, willingly or unwillingly
The Cross, therefore, is unavoidable.
• It waits for you everywhere
• No matter where you may go, you cannot escape it
• For wherever you go you take yourself along
• Turn where you will – above – below - without - or with¬in – you will find the Cross
Whenever we say anything about the Cross, we are almost always using a figure of speech called METONYMY.
• A word functions as a Metonym when we use it to refer to something else
• Usually something larger to which it is closely related
When Paul says in GALATIONS 6:14 that he boasts only “IN THE CROSS OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, THROUGH WHICH THE WORLD HAS BEEN CRUCIFIED TO ME, AND I TO THE WORLD,” he is using one thing -- a large, wooden object used for executions - to refer to something else -- the death of Jesus and its effect in reconciling us to God. Similarly, when Christians sing songs about the wooden object itself, we are well aware that what we cherish is not just “The Old Rugged Cross” as such, but the Son of God who used that Cross in his work of seeking and saving.
• The Cross means, Christ crucified
• All of this flashes across the Christian mind in an instant whenever the Cross is mentioned
• It’s a ‘Metonymy’
The Apostle Paul understood this. When he said in I CORINTHIANS 2:2 that he “RESOLVED TO KNOW NOTHING ... EXCEPT JESUS CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED.” He meant he was focusing on the central point, not that he was ignoring the Resurrection or the Holy Spirit. But Paul leads with the cross.
• Paul started his world-changing message with the Cross
• Paul centered his life-transforming message on the Cross
• Paul knew how to indicate the total reality of God’s salvation, starting at the Cross
• But he also knew how to focus
The early church knew it. The Apostles’ Creed tells a very short version of the life of Jesus, jumping straight from –
• Born of the Virgin Mary
• He suffered under Pontius Pilate
• Was crucified, died, and was buried
For a short creed, that is a lot of emphasis to put in one place. Yet this focus on Jesus’ death falls right in the middle of a creed that teaches the full counsel of the Trinity and of God’s work from --
• Creation
• To the resurrection of the body
• To life everlasting
• The creed has the Cross at its center of all things at its circumference
Charles Wesley knew it. His hymn “And Can It Be” rivets our attention on the sacrificial death of Christ –
• “How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”
• But that astonishing death in the foreground has an entire world of doctrine as its background
• From the immortal Son who, out of free and infinite grace, “left his Father’s throne above,” to glorified believers “clothed in righteousness divine” and approaching “th’eternal throne”
• This is a hymn about the death of Christ that somehow also celebrates all the works and ways of God and invokes God himself
• It’s a ‘Metonymy’
Paul knew it - the early church knew it - Wesley knew it - and we know it today. Recognizing the centrality of the Cross is not just an exercise in precisely calibrating our doctrinal emphases or of taking care to be theologically correct. It is a matter of deep, spiritual reality.
The centrality of the cross changes everything.
• When you receive the Good News that Jesus died for you, the result is like dropping a rock in a smooth pond
• The ripples radiate outward to the farthest edges of reality
• It is the death of Christ that enables us to die to ourselves
• It is his death that justifies us before God’s perfect righteousness, that sets us free, that gives us courage to face persecution
• The community centered on the Cross is a great company of people reconciled to God and each other through the Cross
• People centered on the Cross know how to die - learn how to live - and love like they’ve been forever changed by the love they’ve received
If you willingly carry the cross, it will carry you. It will take you to where suffering comes to an end, a place other than here. If you carry it unwillingly, you create a burden for yourself and increase the load, though still you have to bear it.
• If you try to do away with one cross, you will find another and perhaps a heavier one
• How do you expect to escape what no one else can avoid?
• Which saint was exempt?
• Not even Jesus Christ was spared
• Why is it that you look for another way other than the royal way of the Holy Cross?
There's nothing that needs to be preached any more or any stronger. Nor is there any theme or subject or cause with a greater need for it to be preached than to preach about the cross of Christ, and what it really means. The Cross is a sign of man's complete dependence upon the Grace of God for salvation, and forgiveness of sins. There's a divine meaning in the death of Christ. God's only plan for our salvation is all based on his death on the cross. The world will never understand the cross and what it represents without us talking about the power that we have received because of Christ and how He died on the Cross but rose again and overcame death, hell and the grave.
So the Cross stands forever as a symbol of those circumstances and events in our experience which –
• Humble us
• Expose us
• Offend our pride
• Shame us
• Reveal our basic evil
It is the Cross which brings this out. Any circumstance, any incident which does this to us, Jesus says, if we are a disciple, we are to welcome. That is his meaning.
• Take up your Cross
• Accept it
• Glory in it
• Cling to it
• Because it is something good for you
• It will reduce you to the place where you will be ready to receive the gift of the Grace of God
• That is why the Cross is so valuable to us
Paul learned, and he knew the value of the Cross. I can imagine the scene when the Apostle Paul appeared before nero, the roman emperor, to give answer to the charges against him and he did not defend himself but preached the Cross of Christ. If I had only been present that day to watch, listen, and learn.
• I can imagine the emperor, in his royal robes, seated upon a throne
• His name was known throughout the empire
• But nobody knew of Paul
• Here was this obscure little Jew, bald-headed, bandy-legged, totally unimpressive in his physical appearance -- he says so himself in his letters
• And he was a leader of an obscure, heretical little sect that was known only as troublemakers
• Nobody had heard of Paul, while everybody had heard of Nero
• But the interesting thing is that now, two thousand years later, we name our sons Paul, and our dogs Nero
THE CROSS, THE CENTER OF OUR THEOLOGY. The place where God’s love and God’s holiness embrace is at the Cross.
• Here is the love of God. God the Father sent his Son, his only Son, to suffer and to die for our sins
• His life - for your life
• His pain - for your gain
• Here is the holiness of God
• The death penalty is executed against sin
• The sins of God’s people are paid in full
You can’t omit the message of the cross without totally compromising Christianity. In fact, you don’t really have Christianity any more without the Cross. Because the Cross is “foolishness” and a “stumbling block” to many, some have tried to “smooth it over” by taking that part out — but you can’t do that without destroying the message. it is not Christianity any more without the cross. The Cross is the “bones,” the “skeleton”, if you would, of the Gospel message. It is what holds it all together. if you take the skeleton out of a body, what do you have? --
• You don’t really have a body
• You basically have a pile of mush on the floor!
• The same thing is true with the Gospel
• Take out the Cross — the “skeleton” of the Gospel
• All you have remaining is a pile of Theological mush
• You don’t have Christianity without the Cross!
I fear that for perhaps a generation or so, we have tried to get away from the “foolishness” of the message of the Cross. in a desire to be “relevant” and to “get more people in.”
• Many pastors and churches have backed away from the message of the Cross
• You don’t hardly see a Cross displayed anywhere on a Church campus any more
• The idea has been - “Let’s dress cool, and soup up our music, and kinda ‘smooth over’ the message — and not really emphasize things like sin, and the Cross of Jesus and we’ll draw people in”
• The problem with that kind of “Camouflaged Christianity” is that cool looking facilities or slogans or slick presentations can’t save people
• There is only one thing that can save anyone, and that is the message of the Cross of Jesus Christ
The reason we need to emphasize the proclamation of the Cross is because of the Power of the Cross –
--I CORINTHIANS 1:18 FOR THE PREACHING OF THE CROSS IS TO THEM THAT PERISH FOOLISHNESS; BUT UNTO US WHICH ARE SAVED IT IS THE POWER OF GOD
--ROMANS 5:9 JUSTIFIED” BY THE BLOOD OF JESUS ON THE CROSS, AND SAVED FROM THE WRATH OF GOD THROUGH IT
--EPHESIANS 2:16 THROUGH THE CROSS GOD RECONCILED MAN TO MAN, AND MAN TO GOD, AND PUT TO DEATH THE ENMITY BETWEEN US
--COLOSSIANS 1:20 GOD MADE PEACE BETWEEN US AND HIM THROUGH THE BLOOD OF THE CROSS
--COLOSSIANS 2:15 GOD DISARMED THE SPIRITUAL POWERS, AND TRIUMPHED OVER THEM THROUGH THE CROSS
--I PETER 2:24 JESUS BORE OUR SINS IN HIS BODY ON THE CROSS, THAT WE MIGHT DIE TO SIN AND LIVE TO RIGHTEOUSNESS
--I JOHN 2:2 THE WRATH OF GOD AGAINST US FOR OUR SIN WAS “PROPITIATED” OR SATISFIED THROUGH THE DEATH OF JESUS ON THE CROSS
--COLOSSIANS 2:14 GOD “CANCELED OUT THE CERTIFICATE OF DEBT CONSISTING OF DECREES AGAINST US, WHICH WAS HOSTILE TO US; AND HE HAS TAKEN IT OUT OF THE WAY, HAVING NAILED IT TO THE CROSS”!
--That is the power of the Cross
--At the Cross -- You can know that your sins are forgiven
--At the Cross - You are right with God
--At the Cross - You have a home in heaven
--At the Cross -- You have victory over Satan
--At the Cross -- You have peace with God
--Peace even in the face of death, because of the Cross
--Yes, my brothers and sisters --
On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
the emblem of suffering and shame;
and I love that old cross where the dearest and best
for a world of lost sinners was slain.
So I'll cherish the old rugged cross,
till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
and exchange it some day for a crown.
O that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
has a wondrous attraction for me;
for the dear Lamb of God left his glory above
to bear it to dark Calvary.
