Preface First – the title could be misleading, this series is about The Centrality and Supremacy of Christ, it is not about an instrument of execution; Second – working with the foundational understanding that Jesus’ death is an act of obedience to God which uniquely reveals all who he is for us. “Christ is to us, just what his cross is. You do not understand Christ till you understand his cross.”” (P.T. Forsyth) (p. 44-45) Banner at head of march protesting about the removal of Jesus from Christmas, “Jesus was born to die.” Third – there are false representations of the cross. Since the Roman Emperor Constantine supposedly had a vision with the words “By this sign conquer” and adopted the cross as his battle standard the shadow of a false cross has fallen over Western civilizations to this day. When Osama bin Laden regularly declares war on “crusaders” and “cross worshippers” he cannot know that he is opposing a false cross, an idol. [(Compare burning cross of the Klu Klux Klan, the cross as jewellery, or medals made in the form of crosses (Iron Cross/Victoria Cross/Croix de Guerre (cross of war))].
1. A Despised Object
The most influential book on the cross in the last century opens with, [Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God,] “The cross is not and cannot be loved.” The true cross exists in an atmosphere of strangeness and offence. If there is not about your life a challenging strangeness and offence (aura of sacrifice 2 Cor 2:15 -16) then you are not living in the power of the cross.
In the Old Testament a person “hung on a tree” was , “cursed by God” (Deuteronomy 21:22 -23). In the Roman world even the word “cross” was considered a vile expletive too shameful to be spoken (Cicero Rab. Perd. 16; compare Seneca: Epistle 101 to Lucilius) New Testament believers lived with the reality of the scandal of the cross, “But if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offence of the cross has been removed.”(Gal 5:11)
Thrilling books on the second coming of Christ can make their authors millionaires, but the thought of identifying with a tortured human being is appalling to the ordinary workings of the human conscience. It is in fact impossible for the cross to be popular. The true cross is never “cool” or “hot” or “wicked” or “awesome”.
2. Emptying the Cross of Its Power
The generally anaemic state of Western Christianity – with its materialism, egoism, hedonism, immorality, lack of genuine community, Biblical ignorance and absence of the miraculous is directly attributable to what Paul calls “emptying the cross of its power”(1 Cor 1:17-18).
The real cross cannot be powerless, but it has “enemies” (Phil 3:18) which can make it seem that way. In Paul’s day these enemies included human wisdom, “rhetorical elegance”, but today we might call it practical, relevant, down to earth, pragmatic polished speakers of lifestyle Christianity.
Where would you go in Perth where it could be categorically said of a church “these person know and live the message of the cross.” Where are the “prophets of the cross”? Are you praying that God would raise up such people??
“I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:19) says Paul, “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17) Compare v.12 “they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ”. “always carrying in the body the death of Jesus”(2 Cor 4:10)
A church that marginalises the cross is dying – perhaps not numerically, financially, politically, but dying as a church. Revelation 3:1, Jesus to the church at Sardis, “‘I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead.” This is exactly what David Wilkerson said when he came to Perth last year.
3. What Does the Cross mean to God?
We must first speak of what the cross means to God before going on to speak of what the cross means for us. How powerful is the cross for God, what impact does it have on him? This is not that hard a question to answer, because the scriptures reveal to us what is most important to God.
When we call the Bible “the Word of God” we mean that God speaks to us through this book about himself; as Jesus said “out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matt 12:34). The Spirit pours out into the words of scripture what is impacting the heart of God.
Words like “cross”, “crucify”, “tree”, “blood”, “death”, “slain” “handed over”, “suffering”, “sacrifice”, “atonement” permeate the writings of the New Testament. The cross of his Son overcomes and impels the heart of the Father to speak tenderly, fully and clearly in his Word of the death of Christ. The Father’s heart is moved to speak of the cross (true spiritual fathers will always point you to the cross 1 Cor 4:15).
Paul spoke dynamically of the cross, “And I, when I came to you, brothers, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. 2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, 4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.”(1 Cor 2:1- 4)
We always speak from our hearts about what is important to us – the Eagles, our family, spouses, finances…etc. Since the cross seems so infrequently to be spoken of with conviction we know that the preachers are not being taken up into the power of the cross.
Every society has“movers” and “shakers”, once upon a time I was such a person; but those who know the cross are “moved” and “shaken” by its kingdom power (Heb 12:27). We all desire to be “overcomers” of temptation, sin, sickness, Satan, death, and this is a biblical truth (John 16:33; 1 John 2:13- 14; 4:4; 5:4 -5; Rev 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21; 12:11; 21:7). But in the new Testament the “overcomers” are first overcome by the power of the cross.
“For the love of Christ controls us/compels us/leaves us no choice, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”(2 Cor 5:14 -15).
[Key word Paul uses here, synecho, literally means, “to hold things together”. Under the revelation of the love of Christ manifested in the cross Paul cannot “hold it together”, he is overwhelmed. Today many how to achieve the mastery in life, but few come to pieces the love of God revealed in the cross. (Compare, Rom 5:17, “reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ”, 8:37 “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us”)].
4. Jesus is Overcome by the Coming Cross
Jesus is a person constantly overcome by the love of the Father. He lives in a sense of the Father’s overwhelming love for humanity in him. This breaks out most visibly when he steps out on the road to Calvary – at his baptism, ““You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.””(Luke 3:22) (N.B. This is said of us in Jesus.)
Deep inside of Jesus there is a power operating of which his words, miracles, healings and deliverances are simply outward manifestations. The Gospels rarely speak of Jesus inner life, but when they do, one emotion dominates, compassion, which in Greek literally means a gut – wrenching emotion. “Moved with compassion, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.””(Mark 1:41) “When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.”(Matt 14:14). Sometimes the inner feeling is so heart moving he is constrained to speak of it, “Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion on the crowd [(because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.””(Matt 15:32)(Compare, John 11:33,38 “33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled... 38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb.”)]
We must not think that Jesus possessed the attribute of “being moved” in himself, Jesus is not “an individual” in our modern sense, he reflects and expresses the compassionate love of the Father, he is revealing the God who said this to Israel, “How can I give you up…? How can I hand you over, O Israel?… My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender. 9 I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.”(Hos 11:8 -9). The compassion of Jesus is an overflow of the pain the Father feels over the lost condition of humanity.
Power scares us, a famous politician once said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” (Lord Acton). Unless something redefines power for us, unless God’s love takes on a concrete “safe” form for us we will never trust his power, we will never want him to overwhelm us. Everywhere people are frightened of the power of others, in the work place, in marriage, in families.
The Roman father had supreme power. He had the power of life and death over his entire household, he could sell his children into slavery, an unwanted child could be killed by exposure, his word was final and absolute. No wonder in writing to the Romans and Galatians about God as Father Paul says, “For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs” (Romans 8:15-17)
If we understand it, the revelation of the cross is ultimately a revelation about the nature of the power of the Father.
Jesus never has power-in-himself; his power is his relationship with the Father. As he moved through this world proclaiming the kingdom of God he was constantly conscious of being over- ruled by the Father’s love and that this love manifested itself in compassionate displays of power for the powerless. Jesus’ had this in common with the poor, prostitutes, children, Samaritans, demon possessed and suffering of his day; they knew that in themselves they had no power. What he revealed was that they could be powerful through him in the Father.
There was a condition however, “And he called to him the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”(Mark 8:34). If you would know the power of the cross you must go the way of the cross. What does this mean?
5. The Death of the Cross
Wherever power is exercised without manifesting the expense of the cross, an evil spiritual force is at work. It must never be submitted to = worshipped.
Watching a programme on television last week about the Roman Games I felt the relevance of this statement, “The emperor has to be seen as a powerful man before an enormous number of people.” (The Beasts of Rome ABC TV 29/10/06). The emperor claimed divine honours and was worshipped as the source of the peace and prosperity of the empire. In the thinking of the New Testament the power behind everything idolatrous is a demon (“No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be participants with demons.” 1 Cor 10:20- 21, compare Rev 16:13 – 14). Most of us submit to these “powers” in society/ church every day.
Evil human and demonic powers seek adulation before the masses, but the true power of God dies in manifest weakness before a few.
The true power of the cross is that God in Christ identifies with the powerless, it is manifest in the terrible cry of dereliction, “ “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?””(Mark 15:34). To be grasped by this cry we must feel the impact of sin on the human relationship with God, P.T. Forsyth, the so-called prophet of the cross said: “Guilt is absolute impotence with God.” He means in the natural awareness of sin we totally lack a heart knowledge that we impact God, move his heart, cause his insides to be stirred in such a way that he cannot be passive to our condition.
When Jesus enters into this condition he has no sense of being ruled over by the love of God, no sense of the Father’s compassionate painful love, no awareness of the Father’s identification with humanity. No sense he is the Son. God appears to him so distant, so remote that everything everyone else had thought of him – as the supreme embodiment of the sovereign power of despotic human fatherhood feels true.
“For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”(1 Cor 1:22 – 25)
his is one of the strangest verses in the Bible. Is the “weakness of God” just a metaphorical way of speaking? Does it just seem that God is weak on the cross? Or does God in Christ (2 Cor 5:19) actually so totally identify with us in our weakness, impotence and emptiness (Phil 2:7- 8) that in the heart and conscience and spirit of Jesus Christ there is no sense of authority or power or supremacy or victory over sin and shame and darkness and evil at this point of the great act of the cross? This is the true power of the cross, that here our Saviour so identifies with us with us in our fallen impotence with God that he has over him no overcomer, no lordship, no covering of Fatherly strength.
The power of the cross is that by identifying with the lostness of the human condition to the point of embodiment, “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14), “he condemned sin in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3), “he who knew no sin became sin” (2 Cor 5:21) that it and it alone takes away the weakest of all human conditions: sin, with its shame and guilt. What a power!
Years ago I had the privilege of hearing a man called Father Tom Forrest, perhaps the only man through whom I could actually discern the unity of the persons of the trinity as he spoke. Tom spent 23 years working with the poor in the Caribbean, and became International Director of Evangelization 2000 , the global Roman Catholic evangelistic effort. With the Chinese house church leader, Samuel Lamb, who spent 20 years in prison, Tom is perhaps the most humble man I have ever met. He said “humility is power”, and I would say “power is submission to God’s authority”. This has a precise application; it is submission to the authority of God in Christ to forgive us and to cleanse us from all sin!
6. Why are we not getting it?
When Jesus (Rev 1:1) identifies himself to John in Revelation 5:6 as the Lamb “standing as slain” he tells us clearly from heaven, he is speaking from heaven today (compare Heb 12:25) that the cross is as real to him today as it was 2000 years ago. Through the cross you are right in his heart, his guts, his person today.
If the cross is not impacting the church today, if it is being increasingly marginalized, if brothers and sisters are not embodying its power, then the Bible explains why with total clarity. Peter tells us, “For whoever lacks these (godly) qualities is so near-sighted that he is blind, having [deliberately] forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.”(2 Pet 1:9). There is something in us that always wants to forget where we have come from, and it is an unstable conscience.
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son keeps on cleansing us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins (to one another), he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word (of the cross) is not (abiding) in us.” (1 John 1:7- 10)
A church built on the foundation of the crucified Christ will be a church living in the ongoing action of the forgiving and cleansing power of the cross – a church open to the power of God, not afraid to confess weakness, fear, shame, guilt, anxiety, a church living in humility and brokenness followed by the resurrecting and restorative presence of God – signs, wonders, miracles, conversions.
The revelation of the cross will always motivate the human conscience to seek an ever greater experience of forgiveness, “the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, cleanse our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.” (Heb 9:14). Such a church “boldly approaches the throne of grace to find grace to help in time of need” (Heb 4:16), “we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, …draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience”(Heb 10:19, 22).
Application
“For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” (1 Cor 1:26 -29)
Jesus manifests the power of his cross = his own death (how intimate is that!) among the self –confessedly weak. (He can only do it this way because he was unashamedly self –confessedly weak on the cross Heb 12:2.) The Evangelical Revival of the 18th broke out when Whitefield and the Wesleys started to preach to the lowly coal miners in the open air, revival broke out when the Salvation Army sought out the alcoholics and derelicts in the abysmal conditions of 19th “Go for souls and go for the worst.” (W. Booth), the Pentecostal revival broke out at the beginning of the 20th in Azusa St through the preaching of a one eyed African – American. It will only break out in Perth when we too are granted the faith (Phil 1:29) to realise and release our spiritual weakness. This is a national problem.
We may not think of ourselves in this way, but Australia is a powerful nation. Ask the people in E Timor, the Solomons and PNG about it. There is one thing they cannot do without and we both know it – our money and our security forces. But something is happening in these nations, in their resentment we can hear our Father saying, “let the strong say I am weak, let the rich say I am poor.” The attitude of most Western nations is that we really want the rest of the world to become like us whereas in the Spirit, we need to become like them.
(Ross Clifford on Sonshine 1/11/06) West Papua, a few years ago, a Christian working in remote part of country. (We must believe he was exactly where God wanted him to be, Eph 1:11) Captured by a tribe that had not seen anyone from outside their area. Put him in compound with their dogs for some months. (Seen dogs in Aboriginal settlements in outback Australia.) Poked and prodded him to see if he was “human”, never seen an outside human being . He was not resentful about being treated like an animal but learned their dialect, told them about love of God, stayed on and embodied the message of the cross, the village turned to Christ, some in Bible College etc. The people who are proclaiming this story = testimony of Jesus (Rev 19:10) those who put him with the dogs.
Where do you expect to find Jesus and the power of his cross today, you will never find it in places where wealth and strength and knowledge and achievement and success are openly displayed. You will find it in serving the persecuted, the psychiatric, the abused, the indigenous, the depressed, the fearful, poor, the refugee and the like. “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” (Matt 25:40).
Yet there is something more personal than all this, something closer to home. Did you come here today looking for a solution to your problem or did you come seeking the authentic power of God. Every human being naturally wants to avoid the suffering of sickness, relational breakdown, emotional disrepair, spiritual inadequacy and persecution. But there is, in our confusion, something that seems to our disordered consciences the most dangerous and destructive form of suffering of all, the painful confession of sin, the place where we can only cast ourselves on the sheer mercy of God, on the infinite power of the cross. This is exactly the place where we need to be.