The Cross

Dictionaries (10/30/02)

Stauros (4716):

A pointed, upright stake. An instrument of cruel punishment. Came to signify the crucifixion of Christ. // exposure to death, self denial // word shares its root with the English 'staff'. Also came to represent the doctrine of the saving power of Christ's death on the cross. The thought of taking up one's cross came from the Roman judicial custom of forcing the condemned to carry their cross to the place of their crucifixion. // Note from Hebrew-Greek Key: Where the blood of Christ directs us to His sacrifice, the cross directs us to both His sacrifice and His suffering.

Diaperaoo (1276):

To cross over or pass over // a way across, to cross entirely // (Lk 16:26)

Erchomai (2064) Peraiteroo (4008):

() to come, to appear. Used of person, thing or time. Christ's return. To come into being, to be revealed. To go. () further, beyond, or besides. // () to come or go () through or across (from the verb 'to pierce,' This also works into the previous definition (1276)) // () to arrive or return, to go towards, to depart, to oppose (go against), to come or go with a purpose. Messiah as He that is to come and as He who has come with divine authority. Also used in reference to others (both good and bad) who came with a divine purpose (John Baptist, Elijah, the Holy Spirit, Antichrist). () down (Jn 6:17)

Prospeengnumi (4362):

to fasten to // to impale on a cross // (Ac 2:23)

Xulon (3586):

wood, a tree // timber, a tree, or a wooden item // a wooden beam from which someone is suspended. A gibbet or cross, a stock or shackle, fetters, a tree (Ac 5:30, Ac 10:39, Ac 13:29, 1Pe 2:24)

Concordance (10/30/02-11/4/02)

Gospel Verses (10/30/02)

Mt 10:38 If you won't take up your cross and follow Me, you are not worthy of Me.
Mt 16:24 Any who would follow Me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.
Mt 27:32 The Romans compelled Simon of Cyrene to bear His cross for Him.
Mt 27:40 They mocked Him, speaking of how He had claimed He would destroy the temple and rebuild it in only three days. Considering this, they called upon Him to save Himself! If He was the Son of God, they reasoned, He ought to come down from the cross.
Mt 27:42 He saved others, yet He cannot save Himself. If He is indeed King of Israel, let Him come down from the cross. Then we will believe Him. [He did. They didn't.]
Mk 8:34 He called His disciples, along with the crowd, and told them that any who desired to come with Him needed to deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Him.
Mk 15:21 They forced Simon of Cyrene, father of Alexander and Rufus, seemingly at random, to bear His cross.
Mk 15:30 Save Yourself! Come down from the cross!
Mk 15:32 Let this Messiah, this King of Israel come down from the cross. Let Him do so now, that we may see it and believe Him! Thus, they insulted Him, and even those who were crucified with Him joined in.
Lk 9:23 He told them all that if they wanted to come after Him, they would need to deny themselves, take up His cross daily, and follow Him.
Lk 14:27 He who will not carry his own cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple.
Lk 16:26 Between us is a great chasm, and none may cross over from your side to ours, nor may we cross over to yours.
Lk 23:26 When they led Him away, they grabbed Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and made him follow behind Jesus, carry Jesus' cross. [Interesting parallel to His instructions]
Jn 6:17 Once in the boat, they began to cross the sea to reach Capernaum. It was already dark, and Jesus still had not come to them.
Jn 19:17 They took Jesus to Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, bearing His own cross.
Jn 19:19 Pilate put an inscription on the cross reading "Jesus the Nazarene, King of the Jews."
Jn 19:25 Jesus' mother, her sister, Mary wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene were standing by the cross.
Jn 19:31 Since it was a day of preparation for the Sabbath (and that particular Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate to break the criminals' legs and speed their execution so that they could be taken away, and not remain on the cross.

Thoughts on Gospel Passages (10/31/02-11/2/02)

Our Cross or His Cross? (10/31/02)

Yesterday, I would have told you that the Scriptures said to take up your cross and follow, and in several places, this is indeed what they say. But then Luke, led of the Holy Spirit, writes that Jesus' words were that His disciples must take up His cross and follow (Luke 9:23). Now, there are three records of this: Matthew, Mark, and Luke all speak of it. Yet, Matthew and Mark speak of it as their cross, not His. How are we to resolve this? I think that if we also consider the fact that Luke later writes of Jesus declaring that any who would not carry his own cross and follow could not be a disciple (Luke 14:27), it should become clear to us that Luke was not simply confused as to what had been said. Nothing was lost in translation. Indeed, I think something very important is added.

Here, then, is a key point for us. His cross is our cross! We needn't scrutinize our lives trying to discern which part is that cross He asked us to bear. He is pointing to His own, and declaring to us that it is precisely this that we must bear daily.

What is that to mean to us? I think that for us to answer that question, we must consider what the cross meant to people then. The cross was an instrument of torture. This was a slow, agonizing form of death imposed to not only punish the criminal, but also to humiliate them, and all who may have sympathized with them. Bearing the cross was adding insult to injury. The criminal, having been sentenced to this most painful and insulting form of death, knowing what was coming, was then forced to carry the instrument of his own torment to the place of execution. This was part of that whole process of humiliation and torture. It began early, not only once one was upon the pole.

And, believe me, the cross was not a light thing to carry! Even in prime health, that's a lot of weight to be lugging around. Think of carrying a twelve or sixteen foot railroad tie on your shoulder. That might get you into the ballpark. Think of hauling that railroad tie for the length of, say, your average parade route, on a hot summer's day. Think of the sweat. Think of having no drink to restore yourself.

Think of a crowd not unlike that at a holiday parade watching as you do this. Think of them, each and every one of them knowing that you must be a particularly vile criminal to be undergoing such treatment. Some of them, perhaps many of them, know you, know your family. What dark secret were you hiding all this time, they wonder. Some of them think they know what you've been up to, trying to plant the seeds of rebellion. In their minds, you may even deserve this. Or perhaps, wanting that rebellion themselves, there's more in the area of pity, or maybe anxiety over their own fate. There's a lot of people on this route who don't have a clue who you are, but they sure know what that cross means. They know it means you must have done something horrible. You must be a thief, a murderer, or some such. Justice is being served, no? Think of walking such a path, knowing yourself innocent, knowing the one who sentenced you to this knows you are innocent, knowing that many of those abusing you from the sidelines know you are innocent. Think of walking, stumbling down the road in all of this, and added to it all is your full understanding of what awaits at the road's end. There will be no reprieve from the governor. There will be no miraculous intervention. There is absolutely no question of the outcome.

And yet, through it all, He continued to love us. He continued to love us, for whom His death was required. He continued to love us, by whom His death was cried out for. He continued to love even those who had sentenced Him to this. That is bearing a burden! And that is bearing it well.

The Burden of the Cross (10/31/02)

Yet, the call of Christ to His disciples was not to praise Him for being able to do so well under all these conditions. The call of Christ was not to memorialize the event by declaring the symbol of the cross a holy thing. The cross is not a holy thing. It might be a reminder to us. If it is anything to us at all, it should be a reminder to us. It's not a fashion item. It cannot be a fashion item! We need to recapture the understanding that to be associated with the cross was to be associated with shame! Jesus did not say "look at My cross!" Nor did He say "worship the cross!" No. Worship was, is, and ever shall be reserved to God alone. His command was "take up My cross, your cross, and follow."

The Burden of Embarrassment

Think about that. Then, understand what Christ was asking of His disciples. "Take up your cross. Take up My cross." This is going to cost you everything! It's going to cost you any dignity you thought you had. It's going to cost you any friendship you used to have with the world. Nobody's going to associate with somebody carrying the cross! It might lead the authorities to bring them in as well! In front of a nation that was anxiously awaiting the arrival of some great leader to break them free from Roman rule, this man had come claiming to be the one. Yet, He was being crucified. He was being humiliated. This was not what the people expected, not what they wanted. This was embarrassing.

And in the midst of it, Jesus was telling His disciples, "Come! Join me in My embarrassment, walk with Me in My humiliation!" In many ways, this remains the call to us today. In America, perhaps, it is only the embarrassment of people around us thinking that we must be simple, or backwards - weak in some way to need such a crutch. In much of the rest of the world, it's a far more dangerous association. It remains a deadly serious matter to take up the cross of Christ, to declare association with this reviled King of kings.

I was thinking, the other day, of an old church song, "Ain't it Grand to be a Christian?" This strikes me as yet another song that we really need to reconsider, another case where we need to think about what we're singing, instead of just snapping our fingers to the tune mindlessly. Is it grand to be a Christian? Ultimately, yes. But in a very real sense, in the present moment, absolutely not! It's a dangerous thing, being a Christian. It's going to cost you your life. That's the reality. It costs to be a Christian. It costs. The cross was an instrument of death, and it remains so. If we are willing to take up our cross, we are willingly facing the death of what we were. We may or may not face physical death as a direct result of our decision, but there will certainly be death.

There will be a death of old associations. Like it or not, a decision to walk this road is going to bring change in who you are. Like it or not, many of those you've been hanging out with are not going to understand, are not going to follow you on the path you've chosen. There will be a death of those friendships. Even if you try to keep them alive, they will pass away.

There's going to be a death of old pleasures. Things that used to seem fun and harmless to you are going to look different in the light of the cross. There's going to be times when you want to go back and play with them again, but I can tell you that when you do, the fun will have gone out of it. Those pleasures have died, and playing with dead things just isn't much fun. It's bad for you, and obviously so.

There's going to be a death of pride. This will often be a slow and painful process of dying. Pride doesn't go easily. But as I've said, the cross was aimed to be a tool of embarrassment and humiliation, as much as it was a tool of torture. Pride can't tolerate embarrassment, will do anything to avoid humiliation. Dignity must be upheld! But Jesus says, "No. As they treated Me, they'll treat you as well, for you are My witness. They cannot look upon you without being reminded of Me." And what was His treatment at their hands? Look at what was happening around the cross. They were laughing at Him, taunting Him. "Save yourself, if You're so hot!" "Come on, free Yourself from this!" "Oh, yes! Then we'll believe your are the King of Israel." The King had come, but He was an embarrassment. Who could follow such a one? Pride and dignity won't stand for it!

Last night, Pastor was speaking about David, the peculiar worshiper. The story of his bringing the ark back to Jerusalem was the context, and of course Michel's reaction to her undignified husband was brought out. As Michel reacted to her undignified husband and king, so all Israel was reacting. Jesus was not the dignified, conquering hero king they wanted. He was an embarrassment to them. King? He didn't even have a home. He was wandering like a vagrant with a bunch of unemployed fishermen for followers. This is a king? Not for us, thank you. We'll stick with the oppression.

This is the reaction in the world, still, today. Jesus remains an embarrassment. He remains foolish to a people that think themselves wise. Christ? How can you believe in Him? Science, man. That'll explain it all to you! But, hey, each one to his own crutch right? You want to go for all that mythology, fine, just don't trouble me with it. He's not the crutch we want. We'll stick with the oppression.

Or, there's the alternate reaction so popular today. How can you be so bigoted! How can you claim that your truth is the only truth? What right have you got to say all these other religions are false? How dare you claim your God is the only God! Any God who would be like that isn't the God for us! No thanks! We'll stick with the oppression.

"Let Him come down from the cross," they said. "Then, we'll believe Him." He did come down, just not in the way they wanted. But, He did come down. They still didn't believe. Even if one were to return from the dead, He taught, it would not be enough to convince this people to choose life. He not only taught it, He lived it. And history continues to show that He was quite right.

His Burden is Light

What we've seen in all this is an incredible burden, a burden that borders on being impossible to bear. So how can He tell us that His burden is light? There's no way we can hope to carry what He carried! It's not even in the realm of the thinkable! This is light? A burden that would crush the strongest and most courageous of men? How can He say this?

I'll tell you how! It is because of the fact that our cross is His cross. Absolutely, His cross is beyond our strength to carry. His burden is all of mankind! We have enough difficulty dealing with our own family. But there's something we forget. When we take up His cross, He's already carrying it! The burden is light, because the burden is not on our back, but on His. I have this image in my mind right now of Jesus bent low, such that His cross is near the ground. Here is His invitation to us to take up that cross of His. But, as we lay our hands to the task of taking up that cross, He stands once more. He is a big God. When He stands, the cross upon which we have taking hold is lifted higher than we can reach. And we are lifted with it. "If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Me." The burden He calls us to bear is light enough to draw us to Him, because it is His burden, and it's already on His shoulder!

Side Thoughts (11/1/02-11/2/02)

There are a couple of other items that caught my eye in these verses, not that they necessarily bear directly on the subject, but they remain interesting just the same.

It was already dark… (11/1/02)

The first of these is a portion of John 6:17. There, John is describing a trip across the Sea of Galilee. The disciples had all entered a boat and headed for Capernaum. Jesus had told them to go on ahead and He would meet them. Here, John is pointing out that night was falling and still there was no sign of Him. It's the wording that really caught me: "It had already become dark, and Jesus still had not come to them."

This just strikes me as so very descriptive of our lives before He called us to Himself. This is the state of the world around us. It is already very dark out there, and still Jesus has not come to them. We don't need to look very far into current events to recognize the truth of this. It's dark. People are shot at random by a person who has not even a complaint against them, who doesn't even know them. It's dark. Planes are commandeered and flown into buildings in hopes of achieving some sort of afterlife reward. It's dark. People strap bombs to themselves hoping to kill many innocents on their own way out. It's dark. Religion is seen as a great evil, and man as the greatest good. It's dark. And Jesus still has not come to them.

Why not? We who know Him know His love and His care. We know how He came to us in that same darkness and pulled us out. Why not them? Why, if He loves as we know He does, are any left to stumble on in darkness? There is no simple answer to this. Just as there is no single formula for His coming into a life with redeeming power, I think there's no single formula for His not doing so. However, I do believe we must bear a portion of the blame. We are called to bear His light into that darkness. We are commissioned and trained to bear witness of the Truth. Yet, we have grown accustomed to the safety of our church clubhouse. We have really taken that command not to be of the world to heart. But, we've forgotten that there is a second piece of that command: remain in the world.

We cannot witness to a world we won't visit. We can't witness meaningfully to a world that speaks and thinks a completely different language. In large part, the church has reached a place where it speaks only in tongues, but it's not the gift of the Holy Spirit, it's our own brand of jargon, our own Christianese. We have folks among us who cannot really express what they know and believe without slipping into that Christianese. Even without this problem, the Truth we know is so completely other than what those around us feel they understand about reality, that attempts to speak Truth to them will come across about as effectively as if we spoke to them in some alien language. Truth has become alien to them. Before we can Speak truth to them, we must understand their own language, we must be able to speak their language, to translate Truth into words they can understand. We must be able to bring them into the language of Truth, so that when Truth is spoken, it will make sense to them.

Paul took pains to know the culture into which he was spreading the Gospel. He prepared himself for the field he wished to plant. He knew the land, knew the thinking, and knew how to speak Truth in the language of that land's understanding. When he declared that it is in God that we live, we move, we have being, he was declaring Truth to the Greek philosophers. He knew that they had been looking for answers to those very questions. He understood where their thinking was, where they sought for the keys of truth, so he planted Truth squarely in that place, set it out right where they were looking, and shouted "Here it is! Here is the answer you've been looking for! Pure and simple, in your own words, He has answered the question for you. You've been looking for the source of being. He is the source. You've thought to find the essence of being in what moves things. He is that which moves things."

Paul was bringing the light of Christ into a world that was already very dark. He was not satisfied to sit in his church at Antioch and learn. He was not satisfied even to remain there and teach. He was not satisfied with that, because he had learned what the message was about. He had learned what the church was about. It was about preparing messengers. Messengers aren't prepared just so they can hang out at the office. They are sent with the message. We've had years, even decades of preparation, yet we are perfectly happy to hang out at the office. Let somebody else carry that message, thanks. Maybe our trainers should carry it. Better yet, let the message wait. The one who wrote it, if He's really anxious about getting it out, maybe He should just carry it Himself.

It's already dark out there, and still Jesus has not come to them, because none were found willing to bring word of Him. Do you care? Do you care enough to change? Are you willing to do what you signed up for? Are you moved enough by this to begin fulfilling your vows to a holy God? How many times have you said "Thy will be done?" How many times have those words become hollow, as we refuse to do what we told Him we would do? Lord, have mercy.

A high day (11/2/02)

John makes a point of saying that the Sabbath before which Christ was crucified was a 'high day' (John 19:31). This brings to mind something Pastor had mentioned about Sabbath not always referring to a Friday/Saturday period. His understanding is that the high holy days are also considered to be Sabbaths. Thus, there are two possible ways to view this verse. John may be saying that Passover that year happened to fall on a regular Sabbath day. Alternatively, he may well be saying that the day was a Sabbath for the very reason that it was a high holy day.

This seems a reasonable thought. Consider that Roman justice was an orderly matter. There were appointed days in the week when one could come before the proconsul for justice. Further consider that the proconsul was at least reasonably familiar with local custom, and charged with keeping the peace. It would not have been in Pilate's interest to have scheduled his court days to constantly conflict with the Jewish Sabbath. The story we read in this verse from John would have been so typical a tale as to make the Roman governor's life miserable. If, on the other hand, this were one of those holy days that occurred on different days each year, then it is quite reasonable to expect that Pilate may not have taken it into consideration, that he might not make exceptions to his schedule for this one day. It's an interesting thought, at any rate. I'd be curious to see if there's somewhere one can find the dates of Passover across the years…