The Cross

Topical (11/5/02-11/11/02)

New Thoughts (11/7/02-11/11/02)

The Crisis of the Cross (11/8/02)

In its own way, the cross is a most fitting symbol for Christianity, for real Christianity. The cross was cruel in nature. Looking back at its linguistic roots, it is shown to have begun as a sharpened shaft piercing the body laterally. It was painful. True Christianity, while not cruel in nature, can seem cruel to our human nature. It will certainly pierce us through. It will be painful to follow Jesus.

When the call of God comes, it will be a crisis point. What is a crisis? It is a turning point. It is a significant event, a time of radical change. It is a decisive moment. It is a crucial time, one where the possibility of a bad outcome is great. The call of God comes with great possibility of good, but the flesh is going to see a great possibility for a bad outcome. How can it not? The call of God comes asking for the death of the flesh! Jesus didn't hide this fact. In fact, He worked to make it extremely clear to His disciples just what it would mean to follow Him.

"If your family means more to you than Me, if there is the least possibility that they could distract you from the work I put before you, you cannot follow." The message is clear, you will have to leave behind everybody and everything that you love. You must drop it all if you want to go down this road. Parents, children, siblings, it doesn't matter. If they are not traveling with us, they'll have to be left behind. But this was not the worst of it. Even when Jesus adds that His disciples must give up all they possess (Luke 14:33), we haven't heard the hardest part. No, He adds more. We must despise even our own life (Luke 14:26). We must have no care for our own life, if we are going to follow. This is getting to be a hard choice. Jesus is not making it easy. This is not the comfortable gospel of the modern church.

Yes, we will have to willingly, joyfully lose it all for His sake. Look what He is asking you to do. Pick up your own cross, grab hold of that very instrument that will be the instrument of torture to you. Grab hold of that symbol of your humiliation. Wrap your arms around that thing, and carry it with you wherever you go! For us, the cross has largely lost all but its symbolic meaning, but think of this word going out to men of Jesus' day! Mark yourself as the worst of criminals, the most despicable of men! Never mind that I've told you to give up every means of making a living, I'm telling you to pick up the means of your death! Never mind that I've told you to give up the comforts of home, I'm telling you to pick up the instrument of your torture and make sure it's with you wherever you go. Now there's a seeker friendly message!

But even here, Jesus doesn't stop. He issues a warning to those that would still choose His path: If you are doing this to save your life, it is already lost. If that's your motivation, forget it. If you're hoping that following Me will give you a more comfortable time of it here on earth, just turn back now. You're already dead. But, if you come through not only this crisis, but all those crises that will come daily as you walk with Me, it may well cost you your life. Far from making you more comfortable here, this walk may well kill you, it will kill you. Yet, in that dying, you will have secured eternal life. This is a crisis! Can I accept this? Can I accept that dying in the course of the mission of the Gospel is a good thing for me? Can I die to myself? Can I set this whole earthly life aside?

Many before us have faced this question on a very real level. It comes to a point where it's not just theorizing anymore. It's a very real crisis. Many around the world will face this crisis even today: Is Christ more to me than my life? Is He more to me than continuing this life in the agony that will result from the torture I face? Is He worth more to me than saving my loved ones, should they face the tortures of this enemy? Many have answered a resounding "Yes!" to this. Many today will come through such a crisis with that every same resounding "YES!" These are ones who will know beyond all doubting that their faith is real. These are the ones who already knew beyond all doubting that their faith was real.

For us in America today, this is almost as unfathomable as the cross itself. It is very hard for us to imagine being put to such a choice. We consider ourselves persecuted when we are not allowed to speak in some forum or other. We consider ourselves persecuted when popular media speaks unkindly of us. Listen! We were told up front that offense would come. We were told up front that down this road lay persecution. But for the western church in general, I think we need to hear the truth of "you have not yet resisted to the point of bloodshed." Face it. We've barely resisted at all.

And still, Jesus has not finished presenting this crisis to you. He has not finished with discouraging all but the most earnest from following after Him. Look at the reward we who follow are promised in Mark 10:30! No, we won't go unrewarded. We will have a hundredfold return on the family we left behind. OK. That doesn't sound bad, and we all see this to be true in the family we have in our churches. But it's not just the family the He has promised to multiply to us. He tells us that part of our reward will also be that we shall have a hundredfold increase in persecutions! Doesn't that sound rewarding? Oh, but it is possible that we could endure it all for the sake of the joy that is set before us, because this is not the whole of the reward. Those who can walk through these crises intact, who can accept the cost, who can let go of all that life means to them in favor of what Christ means, will indeed attain to eternal life. Why? Because not their own life, but the glory of God, has been the purpose of their every move.

The call sounds impossible. The call is impossible. We are called to make an impossible choice, and we are called to make it repeatedly. Yes, the call is impossible - to man. But all things are possible with God! And, should we doubt it, God has left us a record of those who chose the impossible. We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses that shout out to us by their lives that this choice can be made, and lived - even unto death. Luke records that James and John, when they heard the call of Christ, put their boats ashore and left everything behind to follow Him. The record of Levi is much the same. He was in a very profitable position as a tax collector for Rome. But at one call, he just got up and left that all behind him to follow. Look at Paul: Roman citizen, highly educated, a star performer in the area of Jewish religion. He had everything going for him. But a call came, the point of crisis came upon him. In that moment, he chose to throw it all away, to count it all as worth no more than last night's garbage.

Paul's life is also a record of the truth of Jesus' warning: Choose this road, and you will have multiplied persecutions as your reward in this life. Paul knew persecution seemingly wherever he went from that point on. He knew persecution from the church in Jerusalem until Barnabas spoke up for him. He knew persecution from every synagogue in every city he visited. He knew persecution in the streets, on the water, in the country. Yet, he remained faithful unto death. He remained about the Lord's business no matter where he found himself. In the prison cells of Rome, he did not slip into despair, rather he grasped the opportunity, and thereby was reaching even the members of Caesar's own household with the Gospel of Christ Jesus!

Count the cost. Don't choose blindly. You have been shown what you can expect if you will truly follow Him, so there will be no cause for you to complain when the price is yours to pay. No, and you cannot escape the choice. This is the crisis of Christ and His cross. You cannot evade choosing. You cannot put off choosing. You will have to make the choice, one way or the other. There is a very real, in fact a guaranteed possibility that choosing Christ is going to bring pain in your life. It will bring death. Fleshly desires, sinful ways, these will have to die. We cannot truly live until that death has occurred. We cannot walk as living sacrifices without a death. It's going to hurt. Dying generally does. But life is much sweeter when the dying is over! Choose you this day, but make sure that choice is firmly established. Be certain that, should the challenge of choosing life or Christ come to you tomorrow, next week, or next year, your choice will remain the same. No turning back!

Crucifying Pride (11/9/02)

The apostles certainly understood the cost of what they were getting themselves into. In almost every case, they wound up paying the full price of following Jesus. They not only took up their crosses daily, but they died for their convictions. They were also very clear on the fact that this was not going to be a prestige assignment in the eyes of the world around them. Long before their lives were forfeit, their pride would be crushed from them.

Pride, Augustine wrote, is the root of all sin. Every sinful act is an acting out of man's pride, his need to exalt himself. Pride is the sign of a man devoted to himself, and Christ is calling for total devotion to Himself instead. We can't give our all to two causes, we can't serve God and money, we can't belong to Christ and ourself. It won't work.

The cross, we have seen, was an instrument not only of torture, but of humiliation. Jesus is going to be an embarrassment to us at some point. It will become uncomfortable to be known as one of His. Again, the early church understood this quite well. They did not miss the significance of what was happening in the way of our Lord. The early church was Jewish. They were trained from youth in Jewish belief, tradition, and Scripture. They recognized exactly what was happening in the crucifixion of Christ. They saw just how fully the shadowed worship of the Temple was being fulfilled in its reality before their eyes. "Let us meet Him outside the camp, sharing and bearing His reproach" (Hebrews 13:13). They saw quite clearly that in His death, Jesus was fulfilling the promise of the Day of Atonement.

They saw that He had completed the type of the scapegoat, He upon whom all their sins had been lain. The scapegoat was sent from the camp to wander alone in the wilderness, that the sins of the people would be far from them. The scapegoat was not to be associated with. This was also the verdict given to all those whose sins troubled Israel, they were removed from the camp of God's people. Jesus had served as both the goat of sacrifice and the goat of removal. He had been selected both as the one for God, and the one for the people (Leviticus 16:8). In His redeeming work, the reproach due to every man that ever was fell upon Him. Truly, He had become reprehensible in the sight of God and man as our sins were lain upon Him. But, because He bore that reproach, the atonement that Mosaic worship had only hoped for had come in reality. "It is finished."

It took a great humbling for Him to do this on our behalf. It took an emptying of all pride for the Son of God, the perfect and sinless One, to bear in Himself the sins of mankind, to suffer in His own flesh the penalty of our crimes. Let us meet Him. Let us share His shame in the eyes of men. Let us willingly forsake all the praise and honor of men, accepting their disdain, if only we can be found worthy in the sight of God! Let us gladly set aside all concern for our own reputation, if we might be of use in furthering the kingdom of God, if we might be allowed to pursue the work of the Gospel, if we might be acceptable in His sight. Let us crucify our pride on the cross He has told us to carry. Let us humble ourselves before our Lord and King, our pure and holy God.

Paul was equally clear on the crisis that is the Gospel message. He was equally clear on the fact that human pride was going to have to die in any place where the Gospel was going to grow. In 1Corinthians, Paul was dealing with a church poisoned by pride. The Corinthian church was so proud of what they had become. They were so sure that they had this business of Christianity down. They were so proud that they couldn't even see what their ways were doing to the reputation of God amongst those around them. Listen, we are not responsible for defending God's reputation. He has that covered. We are, however, responsible for upholding His reputation. Inasmuch as our reputation as Christians reflects upon His own, either to glorify or to tarnish His image, we must take our responsibility seriously. The Corinthian church had lost sight of this. They were caught up in the power of the gifts. They were caught up with the freedom of those in Christ Jesus. But they had forgotten the reality of the call. Paul writes to them with a reality check. "I will not discuss these gifts and wonderful programs and rules you've come up with. I will not speak with you about anything but Jesus Christ. That's it! He is the only thing that matters, and until you have come back to a true understanding of Him and His purposes in the church, all this other stuff is meaningless. And, because you have lost sight of Him, I will restrict the conversation further. I will only speak to you of His crucifixion, because until you truly understand all that that event entails, until you are clear that you were called to join in that crucifixion, to die with Him, this freedom you claim for yourself will be abused, these rules you make for yourself will be no better than the rules of the Pharisees, these services you create will be as empty as those in any other pagan temple in the city. You are not turning the world upside down with this. The world has turned you upside down!"

Until our pride has been sacrificed completely, until we have come to the place of willingly joining Him in His humiliation, we will be unfit to serve. Until and unless we have joined Him in His humiliation, we have not yet shown ourselves worthy of sharing in His glorification. This is not to suggest that we can earn our way into heaven. It is to suggest that if we have truly been called into the life He brings, it's got to show. It can't help but show. Where the promise of the Spirit is, the fruit of the Spirit must also be. What I am saying is that if our devotion to Him is complete, it will not be a devotion only to the pleasant parts, only to the heavenly reward. No, it will be a devotion to His cause whatever the circumstance, it will be a commitment to walk beside Him, to share in the opinion the world has of Him, to accept the reproaches that will fall upon us for His sake, and to walk through it all with no more complaint than He Himself made.

Devotion Has a Cost (11/10/02)

Devotion has a cost. It will, in fact, cast us everything if the devotion is real. David was a man devoted to God. He was determined to glorify his God in every day, he was devoted to worship his God in every moment. And, he knew that the worship he was determined to give to God could not be a cheap worship. Worship costs. Worship requires sacrifice. A sacrifice that costs us nothing is no sacrifice at all. David had faced this dilemma in a very real way. Arounah, being a loyal subject of his king, offered to give David the land he wanted for free. David could have accepted this, and gone ahead with his plan to offer that land up to God as a sacrifice. But it would have been no sacrifice, and he knew it. It would have been worshiping with strange fire, and he knew it. So he rejected the gift, not rudely, but with the explanation that he simply could not offer a sacrifice without personal cost. Then, he bought the land. (2Samuel 24:24).

In a separate study, I've been teaching on Romans 12:1, the verse that tells us that it is our reasonable, spiritual act of worship to live out our remaining days as living sacrifices. Pastor has pointed out that as far back as Abraham, you can see this connection between sacrifice and worship. In offering his son, he was called to sacrifice, but he knew he was also called to worship God in that very act of sacrifice.

Devotion to the Christ of the cross will require painful decisions, as we have seen. It will be a costly devotion. Yet, every cost we remain determined to pay in full is but an act of worship, a sacrifice made to the cause of Christ. But, can I tell you that every sacrifice we joyfully make in the service of our Lord and King, Jesus Christ the Son of God, will bring us a higher degree of freedom! As a living sacrifice, every offering we make of our self, of our self-will, of our desires, will free us from bondage to the very thing we have offered up. As we offer up a sacrifice of pride, pride no longer remains to constrain us from following Jesus. As we offer up our desires, they no longer remain to distract us from the command of our Lord. As we offer up our self-will, we are freed of its reins, so that we can truly pursue His will, which we know is both good and perfect. We know, in spite of our imperfections and our inability to submit as fully as we know we ought, that His will is good. It is in our best self interest to pursue the plan He lays before us. We know this, and yet… We also know that His will for us is perfect. There can be no better plan. Perfection cannot be improved upon. We cannot, in spite of our high opinion of ourself, come up with a better plan. We cannot even come up with one that approaches the wisdom of His.

Devotion has a cost. A life of living sacrifice is expensive. It is expensive materially, for it requires that we recognize everything we have as being here for His use and not our own. When He calls upon us to use what He has given us, we who live to be a sacrifice dare not hesitate to use our resources as He has required. It is expensive temporally. A life of living sacrifice is time consuming. Sacrifices require preparation and sanctification. There are processes and procedures which must be followed. We who live to be a sacrifice must recognize that the time He has given us on this earth is given that we may use it to His glory. It is not to be spent in idle and wasteful pursuits. It is given to us to use in pursuit of His kingdom pursuits. It is expensive emotionally. A life of living sacrifice is a life spent giving ourself to the need of others. It is a life of being more concerned about our neighbor's well-being than our own. It requires that we be compassionate even to those who spitefully use us. It requires that we accept the role of scapegoat, even as our Lord did before us. It requires that we accept the rebukes and taunts that come our way, and continue praying and loving in spite of it all.

Precious in the sight of the Lord is the life of every saint. He knows the price that each saint has paid to achieve holiness. He knows the price His Son paid to achieve each saint's sanctification. The price of a living sacrifice is costly indeed. But, though it seems that it is we who pay the price, reflection upon the cross of Christ will show that even the price we think we pay was paid in full by Him. We are, in effect, permitted to offer ourselves as a sacrifice with no personal cost to ourselves. The price of our sacrifice was paid in full by our Redeemer. Because of His position in the courts of our God and Father, we are permitted to offer ourselves. Yet, our offering is not, perhaps for ourselves. Rather, we come and present ourselves as His offering. We have been living sacrifices, willing and joyful in the offering, thinking, perhaps, that it we are giving ourselves on behalf of ourselves. The reality, however, is that we are merely presenting ourselves, having been sanctified and made acceptable by His once-for-all offering of Himself for us. We are merely presenting ourselves as His offering, a sacrifice of great personal cost to Him, and thus an offering that remains fit to offer in the presence of a holy God. Devotion has a cost. Our devotion has cost Him dearly.

Crisis and Crossroads - Choosing the Right Road (11/11/02)

The way of the cross is the way of the crossroads. Daily, moment by moment we will come to a place of decision. Moment by moment we will have opportunities to choose His will or our own. We are free to choose either road as we continue. It's a terrible freedom to have, when we don't have a moral compass to guide us. Peter gives us fair warning with regard to this freedom. "You are free," he tells us, "and you should certainly behave as ones who know their freedom. However, you must never allow your freedom to become a hiding place for evil." (1Peter 2:16) Our choices, while we are free to make them, are not free of moral implications. We are not free to do evil in our forgiven state. Let me rephrase that. We most certainly are free to do evil. However, as sons of God, we must not allow ourselves to choose evil in our freedom.

God leaves us free to choose obedience or rebellion, but He doesn't allow us to choose without consequence. We are personally responsible to Him for our choices. I have heard a number of people lately pointing out that people by and large refuse to take responsibility for their actions. In large part, the government we have set up over ourselves trains us to be this way. The legal system promotes this victim mentality, saying that whatever went wrong, there must be somebody else to blame and to sue. God doesn't play this game. He lays out the charges, and tells us most clearly that we are without excuse. We will not be allowed to shift the blame to others when He is sitting in judgment.

Consider the rules we are given for this life: Don't seek your own good, but look after your neighbor's good (1Corinthians 10:24). Even when we are absolutely certain that what we intend to do is lawful for us, there remains a greater consideration: will it build up or tear down? Notice, in 1Corinthians 10:23, that it is not about ourselves that we are to consider this question. It's not about what will build us up. No, the question to ask is whether our choice of action will build up our neighbor. Don't allow your legal freedoms to master you (1Corinthians 6:12). Yes, it is permissible for you to do this thing, but that's not the point of this new life we live. Your freedom to do is not the same as your right to do. In your freedom you have a great responsibility: to use that freedom to build up those around you first and foremost, to be the master of your own freedom.

We are called to willingly forego our rights in the interest of the far greater matter of promoting the work of God, of moving His kingdom concerns forward. Throughout the final chapters of Romans, Paul writes to the church regarding the responsibilities that they have towards each other and towards the world. He spends a fair amount of time speaking to this freedom we have to do as we will, and about the self-imposed limits that the Christian is called to place on his freedoms. In Romans 14:10, Paul is addressing the issue of judgments and quarrels arising over these questions of what is allowable and what isn't. It is not, unfortunately, uncommon in the Church that we will insist upon our freedoms (or our view of the forbidden) over and above all other concerns. Paul points out the problem with this, the danger in this. We will all give an accounting for our actions, every one of us. But, that accounting will be done before God, Himself, and no other. We are in no position to judge one another, we can barely handle judging ourselves!

True, he writes, there is nothing unclean about the things you are choosing to do. No! The uncleanness is in the choice itself! In the closing part of studying Providence, the McClintock & Strong Encyclopedia made note of the understanding that sin lies not in the performance of the deed, but in the choice. The moral content of every act is in the choosing to do it. Isn't this also a large part of what Jesus was driving at as He brought the Mosaic Law back to its proper focus? It's not sleeping with your neighbor's wife that declares you guilty of adultery in God's sight, it's the fact that you considered it! It's not the killing of your neighbor that declares you a murderer, it's the fact that you could even think negatively about him. He is a part of God's creation, an act of God's creation. How can you hate His creation, and claim to love Him?

Paul comes down to the root of the problem in Romans 14:15-16. It is a two-fold issue. First, he points out that when we insist on our freedom to do as we will in spite of our brother's concerns, we are hurting him spiritually. If we are allowing ourselves to act in a way hurtful to our brother's spiritual well-being, we have violated the central commandment when it comes to our dealings with mankind: love them. Real and earnest love for our fellow man is the very thing that Jesus tells us will distinguish us in the sight of the world, and will bring them to know the truth of His own claims and ministry.

This brings us to the second issue that Paul points out: by insisting on our 'right' to do as we wish, we cause what may truly have been good thing to be spoken of as evil. The Pharisees' desire to live a holy and righteous life was a good thing. That they put in place all sorts of safeguards to keep from straying was a good thing. Yet, by the use they made of these safeguards, the good came to be viewed as an evil, and in that it became abused, it was evil. Consider what occurred with the Law of Moses. This was the Law God Himself had handed down, a very good thing indeed. Yet, because of the use sin made of it, it became an evil to mankind, bringing only death.

By our actions, we will have a direct impact on how people view the Church, and God. If we abuse our freedom, if we allow that freedom to become a cover for sinful choices, it is not ourself alone that will suffer the consequences. As we move in the ministries of the Church, we have to recognize that our actions reflect on the Church, that our poor choices will result in the great good of God's Church being seen as an evil upon the land. I accentuate the Church with a capital "C", because the damage we are able to inflict by our poor choices goes beyond the local body. It goes even beyond the Church universal. The damage we inflict goes to the very reputation of God.

Here, we see that we sin doubly in abusing our freedom. We have broken the Law of love that binds our decisions in regard to our fellow man. We have also broken the primary purpose for which we were created. We were created to glorify God. When we choose to act in ways that tear down our brother, when we insist on behaving with no regard for those around us, and tarnish the good name of His ministry, we act to diminish His glory. Don't give any man reason to be offended, Paul declares in 2Corinthians 6:3. Notice that he doesn't limit this to believers, nor does he limit it to non-believers. No man. That's it. None. Offend no man, he says, for fear of discrediting the ministry, for fear of impeding the progress of the Gospel, for fear of giving God a bad name.

Throughout today's writing, I have been talking to myself, and I know it. My own choices have been most thoroughly unconsidered of late. I have chosen frustration in the course of serving in God's house. I have chosen anger in the face of a dear brother. I have once more chosen pride when I should have chosen humility. Lord, I have asked my brother's forgiveness, and I need to ask Yours as well, for my sin is against You, as You have been showing me this morning.

Father, I don't know what to do with this. I want to offer You only my best, yet so often it seems I wind up giving You my worst. What happens to all that You have taught me when I get into these situations? What am I doing that shuts me up to Your leading? How can I continue, my God, to allow such a thing? I need Your touch to change me. I need Your wisdom to keep me from overstepping what it is You have called me to. I need to be drawn by You rather than driven by circumstance.

I beg You, Lord, if I have been going beyond what You have for me, if I have been drawing back from what You have for me, if I have simply had lousy aim, and gone off to the side of what You have for me, that You would yank me back onto the proper course. God, if You will not equip me to serve as I ought, then I beg You to remove me from service. Far better that I should be sidelined than that Your name should be tarnished by my foolishness. Yet, I would that You would restore me instead. Restore me to a serviceable condition Lord, that I might yet serve in Your courts in the fullness of the grace and peace that You provide.

Topical (11/5/02-11/11/02)

Cross

Crucifixion

Self-Denial

New Thoughts (11/7/02-11/11/02)

The Crisis of the Cross (11/8/02)

Crucifying Pride (11/9/02)

Devotion Has a Cost (11/10/02)

Crisis and Crossroads - Choosing the Right Road (11/11/02)

© 2002-2004 - Jeffrey A. Wilcox