Concordance (10/30/02-11/4/02)
Other Verses (11/3/02)
Ac 2:23 By God's predetermined plan, you nailed Him to a cross by the hands of godless men, and killed Him.
Ac 5:30 God, the same God our fathers worshiped, raised up Jesus, whom you had put to death upon a cross.
Ac 10:39 We are witnesses of what He did in Israel and Jerusalem. They put Him to death upon a cross.
Ac 13:29 When they had done all that was written about Him, they took Him from the cross and laid Him in a tomb.
1Co 1:17-18 Christ sent me to preach the gospel, not to baptize. He did not send me to speak clever words, for such would have made His cross void. The word of the cross is foolishness in the ears of those who are perishing, but they are the power of God to those of us being saved.
Gal 5:11 Why am I still persecuted, if I am preaching circumcision? Were I to do so, the stumbling block of the cross would be no more.
Gal 6:12-14 Those who are trying to look good by their deeds are pushing you to be circumcised. Thus, they hope to avoid the persecution that comes due to the cross of Christ. These circumcised ones, they don't even keep the Law themselves, yet they would have you circumcised so that they can boast in your flesh. Not I! If I boast, it will be solely about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which this world is crucified to me, and I to the world.
Eph 2:16 I seek to reconcile them as one body to God through the cross, for it puts enmity to death.
Php 2:8 Being found a man, He humbled Himself in obedience even unto death, even death on a cross.
Php 3:18 Many remain enemies of the cross of Christ. I've told you of these, and even now, I weep for them.
Col 1:20 God reconciled all things to Himself through Christ, having made peace through the blood of His cross. By that blood, all was reconciled, both in heaven and on earth.
Col 2:14 He has canceled our debt, those decrees which were writ against us, and taken them away, having nailed them to the cross.
Heb 12:2 Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith. For the joy He saw before Him, He endured the cross, despised its shame, and has now sat down at the right hand of God's throne.
1Pe 2:24 He bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we could die to sin and live to righteousness. This is the meaning of "by His wounds you were healed."
New Thoughts (11/4/02)
Why a Tree?
In almost every mention of the cross in the book of Acts, it is not the cross that is referred to but a tree. Why is this? Were Peter and Paul trying to reduce the embarrassment that so many felt regarding the cross? Were they trying to make Jesus a little more presentable by taking away that word, and putting a less painful one in its place? I think not. In fact, I suspect they were doing just the opposite.
In Deuteronomy, Moses is presenting the Law of God to the people once more, making sure it is understood in all its implications and applications. There, in verses Dt 21:22-23, he tells them that when a man's sins are worthy of death, he is to be hung on a tree, and buried the same day. He declares that the reason this is to be done is because such a one is cursed by God, and all care must be taken to avoid defiling the land God gave as an inheritance.
Those to whom Peter and Paul were preaching knew this law. They were speaking to the Jews. They were speaking to crowds in which there were doubtless Pharisees and Sadducees present and listening. The scribes, the students of the law were hearing, and what they heard was no longer a matter of some wrong done by the Roman overlords, or even by their fellow countrymen. No, the offense was increased. The cross, as cruel an instrument as it was, was only a tool of man's making. By speaking of the tree instead, the Apostles forced their hearers to contemplate that this act had shown Jesus to be cursed by God! God was cursed by God! This was the message they bore!
God, the sinless One, the righteous and holy One of Israel, had loved His creation so much that He could not bear for them to suffer the curse they had brought upon themselves. So, He took their sins upon Himself, and cursed Himself instead. Can you imagine? This was a hard thing. This was a message impossible for its hearers to take, except God Himself move upon them to hear the truth of it, and not just the impossibility.
The Cross We Know?
Is this the cross we know and declare? Is this the kind of message we bring into the world today? A great deal has been made of creating 'seeker friendly' churches, of creating an atmosphere where the lost can be comfortable while they wait for the Holy Spirit to find them. I don't see this in the model of Scripture. The words we hear from the Apostles are not words that create a comfortable atmosphere. They are not at all 'seeker friendly.' This was the message of their revival: "by your own hands you killed Him, but God has raised Him up." This was not a 'come on in' message, this was an increase of guilt. This was a crushing blow delivered to the pride of works, so that perhaps those who heard might be able to truly hear.
Consider the things Paul has to say about the cross. It is foolishness to the minds of the dying (1Corinthians 1:18). If we succeed in tailoring our message so that it becomes palatable to the world around us, then we have utterly failed. The power of the Gospel is not in our words, but in the Holy Spirit accompanying our poor efforts, using our poor efforts to reach those whom God is determined to reach. This is the only reason that the cross is the power of God to those being saved. It is the message that God has chosen to give us, it is the message He has commanded us to bear to the world, through which He has chosen to bring salvation. No matter how pretty our words, they only serve His purposes as they declare the message He has prepared: Salvation is in the cross of Christ, in the blood He shed upon that cross, in the life He gladly gave and took up again.
Foolishness. Utter foolishness in the ears of a technologically savvy world. People don't return from the grave. This is the nonsense stuff of children's fantasies. No, indeed! People don't return from the grave. It takes something far greater to bring life out of death, it takes God. He has done it! And, He has made that life available to you who continue to walk in the paths of death. Oh, may you hear the truth of that! Oh, may you hear the power of God in that truth, and be saved!
Paul also speaks of the cross as a stumbling block in Galatians 5:11. It's not going to be a convenient thing, to believe on the cross. It's not going to be the way to get ahead in this life. It's going to be difficult to truly live out the life of belief. Many will put on a show of taking up the cross, but will drop it at the first sign of trouble. Many want the social benefits of being in the church, but want nothing to do with the work of the church. Many will gladly wear the cross around their neck. It looks so pretty there, with its gold and its sparkling stones. But to take up the burden of the cross? No thank you! To feel a portion of what our Lord and King felt? Not for us, thanks.
Jesus felt such compassion for those He saw that it brought Him to tears. He wept over the spiritual state of Jerusalem. He wept in anger to see the effects of death, because death was not a part of the proper order. He could not look upon the lost world around Him and do nothing. He could not sit comfortably in the knowledge that He was God, He was safe, these things would not touch Him. He did not choose to hide in the safety of the synagogue or the Temple. He went out to help. He went out to touch the untouchables. He went out to give His life for those dying all around Him. And He calls out now, as He did then: If you would be My disciple, take up this burden of Mine and follow Me. As I do, do you likewise. If you would be known as children of God, then act as children of God. I am the Son of God. Act as you see Me act. Love as you see Me love.
Paul goes on, in Galatians, to speak of those who are trying to avoid the persecution that comes due to the cross of Christ (Galatians 6:12). Notice that there's no 'may come' here. It comes. If you and I are truly carrying the cross that Christ bore, if we are truly doing as He did, persecution will come. Jesus came into the world He had made, John tells us, and the world did not know Him (John 1:10). Light and life had come, but darkness chose to reject that light and remain dead. Darkness, if it would remain darkness, cannot tolerate the Light, not even a little light. The world, if it would remain the world, cannot tolerate Righteousness, not even a little righteousness. If we hold true to the cause of God, if we hold true to the mission of bearing witness to Him, there will be persecution. The world, by and large, likes being the world. The average sinner would be far happier to be allowed to continue in his sins, preferably without being reminded of the fact that they are sins, and certainly without being reminded that it is death he is rushing himself towards.
People don't like to be reminded of their failures. It takes the moving of the Holy Spirit to bring acceptance of the truth about ourself. It took that move for us to accept, and to begin seeking change. It will take that move for every person who hears our message. But, it's not for us to demand that the Spirit move upon this one or that one. God will have mercy on whom He chooses to have mercy. As for the rest, well, they will react as flesh will react. Rejection will come. Anger will come. Persecution will come.
We have a choice to make: do we care enough to bear the persecution? Do we love our Lord enough to carry on His mission in spite of it all? Is it all about Him, or will we still insist on reserving our portion of pride? The cross of Christ will forever bring us to the crossroads. We cannot consider the work that He accomplished on that cross, nor can we consider the work that He requires of us, without being brought to a point of crisis, a point of crucial decision. We cannot. If we are not sensing that crisis point daily, if we don't see the crucial decisions that need to be made, if we don't see the crossroads at which we stand moment by moment; I can only believe that we have not yet understood our Lord, we have not yet taken up the cross to follow Him.
The cross of our Lord, said Paul, has crucified the world to me, and crucified me to the world (Galatians 6:14). There is nothing in that realm that can captivate my heart any longer. By the same token, there is no way left for the world to be pleased by me. As far as the world is concerned, I'm dead. I have disappeared from their radar screen. I no longer exist. This is the status of a true disciple! And the true disciple rejoices to know that status! Paul wasn't complaining here, he was overjoyed! This was a "look what the Lord has done" moment!
The world thinks of me as a dead man! They have sentenced me in their courts, they have sent me off to the judge, that he may commit me to my cell. They are so certain of my defeat that I have ceased to be a consideration in their thinking. But, rejoice, says the Lord, I have overcome death! From his prison cell, Paul was wreaking havoc on the world order of death. He was, as Pastor has been saying lately, making it hard for people to go to hell.
Paul was not a man without opportunities. He had not turned his back on the world because the world had nothing to offer him. No. He was a well-educated man, a devout Jew and a legal Roman citizen. He had learning, and he also had a trade. He was quite well prepared to earn his way in the world, and to do well by it. He was positioned for worldly success, and in what we see of his early life, we see that he was working hard to gain that success. But when the cross, the crisis point, came to Paul, what a change! Blinded by the light of glory, he still recognized that he stood at a crossroads. He could continue on the road of worldly success, or he could choose to follow Christ. He could walk the broad road before him, or accept the stumbling block of the cross. He could continue to be the persecutor, or willingly choose to be persecuted, that others might live. He chose. He chose right then and there. He chose to count all that the world had to offer as rubbish, and to accept the life that Christ gladly gave.
We are given this same choice moment by moment. Every day, we are faced with this decision. With every person we meet, every coworker we speak to, every job we are given to do, we are faced with this decision: will we serve Christ or the world? Will we protect our pride, or be about our Father's business? Will we walk in this world with the eyes of our hearts open, or will we blind ourselves to the crises around us, thank God for our own salvation, and ignore the pain that continues in the darkness? Do we know the cross of which Scripture speaks? Have we taken it up? God's looking for a few good men…
True Healing
Finally in this age of bless-me babies, I want to notice the words of Peter. We are all terribly fond of quoting "by His wounds you were healed." It's true. It's all true! But, I remain as convinced as ever that we have allowed this to become a distraction. By and large, those who look to this verse are looking for a physical healing. I can't have a cold! God says I'm healed! I can't have acne! Jesus paid for that! Can't we see the nonsense of this attitude?!? Even in the more critical illnesses, in the face of cancers and other serious physical disorders, is this really what Christ died for? So that we could be a bit more comfortable during the short span of this life? To me, this doesn't really fit with the message of the cross such as we've been shown it in Scripture.
Peter looks to the real point. The healing He bought was not a matter of fixing this flesh that will pass away anyway. Lazarus was raised from the grave, but he most assuredly returned to it later. Where Jesus brought physical healing in His earthly ministry, there was always a spiritual reason. He didn't heal for the sake of healing flesh, He healed for the sake of making the righteousness of heaven visible. He didn't open physical eyes simply so the blind could see trees, He was removing spiritual blinders so that the truth of God could be seen.
Look at Peter's message in 1Peter 2:24: He bore our sins on the cross so that we could die to sin and live to righteousness. This, he tells us, is the meaning of "by His wounds you were healed." There's nothing there that speaks of healing headaches, or backaches, or leprosy or cancer, or any other physical ailment. No! Peter shows us the reality of healing that matters. It's a matter of the spirit! Our spirits were sick unto death, our lives a matter of dead men walking, because the sentence of death that our sins had earned hung permanently over our heads! But, Christ by His own blood shed upon the cross has brought healing to that spiritual problem. Because of what He has done, we are spiritually healed; we can die to sin.
We can! It's possible. Before He came, it was impossible. As often as not, it still feels impossible, but the word of God is that because He bore our sins on the cross, we can! We can live to righteousness! We can make the right choices at those crossroads that will assuredly come. There's an echo of the battle over free will in all this. Before He came, before He comes into a specific, individual life, that life has no real freedom to choose life. We can choose freely, but all that we can freely choose is death. In our freedom, we are so fully enslaved to sin and death that there is no way to break free. But He comes with power. He comes with healing that matters. He comes and heals our wills, allowing us, for the first time, to choose with real choice. The wise will choose willing submission to Him, and in that choice of slavery to righteousness, will for the first time know true freedom.
That is healing! That is life! That is the work of Christ, the work that we are called to take part in! That is the work that will lead to persecution. The slavemaster of sin is not pleased to see his slaves freed. He will fight. We will know persecution in this life. But we serve a Master who has overcome the world. His is the victory. Praise be to His name.
