Images (12/16/02-12/17/02)
Our Burden Bearer (12/16/02)
His cross, my cross - they are one. The burden that was mine, He took upon Himself, the burden of my sins, all the baggage I had loaded myself with. And in that same moment, He not only took up the weight of my sins, but also the weight of every sinners' sins throughout the course of time. The burden must have been unimaginable, the suffering He must have felt, the pure and spotless One, whose compassion on those around Him was already so great as to bring Him to tears. Now that which caused such sorrow in Him was truly and really upon Him. All the suffering that sin had brought into the world, all the suffering that it would bring, all the agony of separation from God, focused in on Him in that moment of Redemption. Is it any wonder He sweat blood as He contemplated what must come?
When we consider His death, we always seem to focus in on the physical torments He went through; the lashing, the beatings, the crown of thorns, the physical agony that was His upon the cross. And certainly, those torments were very real, and painful beyond our ability to comprehend. Yet these were but sufferings common to many a man, sufferings unto death, certainly, but common sufferings nonetheless. For Jesus, this torment was amplified a thousand fold, raised to the nth degree by the fact of His sudden experience of the separation from the Father that sin must cause. The sinless One bore all our sins! He is God. He can no more tolerate sin in His presence than can the Father, yet here He was, bearing all the sins of man, feeling the full impact with none of the pleasures. All the negatives of fallen creation dumped upon Him, the Father turned away. His first and only experience of separation from that perfect unity that is in the Trinity. Truly the burden of the cross was great.
And He calls us to join Him. He calls us to take up our cross, His cross - they are one. He tells us, who can look back upon this historical event and gain at least some sense of just how awful that burden truly was, to take it up! And yet, He has the audacity to tell us His yoke is easy and His burden light! How can that be? The burden that was sufficient to crush the Son of Man is light? No, indeed it is not a light burden, but it remains light upon our shoulders because Jesus has been there before us, and remains there with us.
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!
Above and Below (12/16/02)
Jesus calls us to take up our cross, to carry this light burden. We cannot carry our cross and have it before us to marvel at simultaneously. It won't work. If the cross remains before us, we have not obeyed the command to take it up. If the cross is an object for us to marvel at, we have fallen into crass idolatry and the cross has done no more than to increase our sins. If the cross is visible before us at all, it ought only to be the shadow thereof. We may bow down in the shadow of the cross, but never NEVER to the cross. The cross is not holy. It is not even that which took place upon the cross which is holy. No, it is the One who accomplished all upon that cross, the Redeemer, the Spotless Lamb of God; He alone is holy.
I want to build upon the image I wrote of in the last section. We bear this shared cross, this cross that is both ours and His, and yet in a way, it is the cross that bears us. We are called to take up a burden, but as I noted before, that burden is really bearing us, as He lifts His burden once more, drawing us to Himself. Indeed, we are called to live in the shadow of the cross, for it is the burden that connects us to our Lord and Savior. But the cross is above us, not before us.
So picture, if you can: The mighty Redeemer bears this cross to which we hold, bearing our burden in the way He has told us to. The cross is above us, and the radiance of His glory surrounds the scene. He alone is all-powerful, He alone can bear this burden before Him and not upon Him. He stands behind and above this burden of the cross, and the light of His glory bathes it in light. We are below that cross, clinging to it as He lifts us up. Though there is no shadow in Him, there is, beneath our feet, the shadow of that cross that unites us. Indeed, there before us is the shadow of the cross, lit by the glory of God. What is that shadow, but the next crossroads?
Throughout this study, I have seen the crossroads return again and again. It is the via crusis, the way of the cross. It is the way through the valley of death. It is the seemingly ever present point of crisis on our road back Home. Ever and always, that shadowy cross marks the crossroads before us, and it always points out the way we should go. But, our sight is not always perfect. Sometimes, we miss that marker, and turn aside. Were we bearing this cross alone, it would turn with us, and our proper course at the next intersection it would no longer indicate. But, our big Brother, our big God, Jesus the Christ has hold of this cross we bear, and though we stray, it continues to point homeward. Like a compass, it points towards the lodestone of heaven, and it will not be turned from pointing true!
I wish I had the artistry in me to draw this image. How it speaks of our security! How it speaks of our peace with God! Lifted up to my Savior by the cross He bears, directed in this life by its shadow, knowing that if I will but keep my eyes on the vertical, in the valley of death it will only be that flesh which separates me from my Father that will undergo death. Guided by the vertical beam, ever pointing the true course Home, I can face the challenging decisions of the day. There need be no issue of pragmatism, no question in our minds as to what is truth. There need be no question as to what is the right thing to do in a given situation. All we have to do is see the shadow of the cross, marking the place of decision and showing the road home.
He will not test us beyond our ability. He will always provide with the test, the way to victory through the test - the shadow of His cross, reminding us of our calling and pointing us to His answer. What would Jesus do? It's only a partial question. More to the point is, what would He have me to do here and now. Where does that shadow fall? That is the way I must travel. I must go through that crossroads, it cannot be bypassed. I am not given the choice of going around, only through. In the pure light of Christ, I can discern that shadow, and I can discern which is the horizontal, and which the vertical way.
Lord, help me to be faithful to choose that vertical way. Keep my eyes open as I navigate the day before me. Keep my eyes open to Your guiding. Point out to me the via crusis as it lays before me in this moment, help me to see the shadow of our shared cross laying before me in the life I live today. Strengthen me, Lord, to accept the death this flesh must accept if ever I am to know completeness of life. As I take up our cross, Lord, help me to die to myself as You died before me, to accept whatever must come as I serve You, to set aside all pride and dignity, to offer all of that up before You. May pride and dignity die on the horizontal, my Lord, that I may join you on the vertical journey. Lift me unto Yourself, my God, that I may rejoice in Your goodness, in Your glory.
Slavery, Death, and Life (12/17/02)
The sign of the cross: to us, it is a symbol of the church, a symbol of belief, but in its origins, it was a symbol of a court verdict of guilt, it was a symbol of punishment. But it was more than this. When the victim bore his crossbar to the execution site, he not only declared that verdict of guilt, he also declared that he was not a citizen. Roman law forbade subjecting its own citizens to this punishment, much like the flogging the preceded it. A citizen had bought with his citizenship, the rights to more civilized legal proceedings. No. This was a slave's death, the death reserved for one taken as the spoils of war, for this is what most slaves were, prisoners of war.
Paul chose to die such a slave's death spiritually, that he might know the life that was his as a son of the living God. He chose to declare himself a prisoner of war in this world, and a rebellious slave at that. He would not willingly subject himself to the overlord of this earthly age, but declared himself boldly as a citizen of heaven. Like many a noble's son captured in battle, he knew himself held for ransom, and he knew that the ransom had been paid. We also need to develop this mindset. We also need to look upon ourselves as aliens and strangers in this land, enemies of the worldly state at loose behind enemy lines. Yet it is not the world that we war against, but the spirits and principalities which have subjected the world to their own control. We are free. We are the resistance. We are tasked with helping our fellow captives to join us in our freedom.
The world around us has been subjected to a tyrannical ruler, an overlord with no love for our homeland or our kind. Our Redeemer has freed us from his rule, paid the ransom and called us out of the dungeons of sin. But, He has left us in the land to fight for His cause, and the overlord from under whom we have been freed, finding us still in his demesnes, will take it as his right to punish us. His punishment is to place that burden back upon us, that we must carry that burden to our death. We, being rebels and aliens, must die the death reserved for such, the death of crucifixion. This is where the cross comes in.
We are commanded to take up our cross and follow our Lord. The enemy has placed this burden upon us, but our Savior has commanded us to accept that burden, to willingly bear the stigma of an alien and a rebel to this fallen order, and to follow Him. This last part is key. If we have truly obeyed, not only taking up the cross, but truly following Him, then we have already been to that place. The sentence has been carried out, and our death accomplished. We have already arrived at our execution site and been executed. We have been lifted upon the upright, and the crossbar of sin has had its due. In that death, like Paul before us, we enter the reality of life as a son of the living God.
Yet, in this world, we are as dead men. Through the cross, I am crucified to the world, and the world to me, said Paul. This was a reality for him, and it should be a reality for us. Dead men bear no burden in this life. The burden of the cross, as we have seen, bears us more than we bear it. This will be true so long as we have truly followed. The cross of sin will remain heavy upon our backs until we obey in full, and follow Him. We follow Him all the way down the via crusis, through the crisis point, to the hill of Golgotha. We follow Him all the way - through the valley of the shadow of death, and into the glory of rebirth. The burden is lifted, and the burden lifts us up to Him.
His command thereafter is to live out the reality of our situation, for truly we are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what the cross has done in us. That's what we have to offer those still in bonds around us. If we allow ourselves to be bowed down by sin again, to be caught up in the snares of death again, what have we to offer those who never broke free? Live as a son of God! Live in the glorious freedom of Christ, the freedom that can obey out of love rather than fear, the freedom to live, the freedom to pursue God with a whole heart, with a whole mind, with a whole will.
"Our will and God's will are as two separate pieces of wood; so long as both lie side by side there is no cross; but put them across one another, then there is a cross." That quote from Fausset's Encyclopedia still blows me away. Death lies in the opposing of our will to His will. The cross is still an instrument of death, and ever will be. And wherever that crossing of wills is found, it will be found that His will is the vertical, the upright, the righteous will. Our will can either align with His, and join in the vertical life that is ours as His sons and daughters, or our will can oppose His. In that latter case, it will ever be found that our will is that horizontal crossbar of death. A choice that opposes the Creator's purposes can only choose death, for His purpose is life. May we be found willingly accepting the death of our will wherever it crosses His own. May we ever be found pursuing the vertical, upright, righteous way, the way pointed out for us by the shadow of the cross which bears us up to Him!
