In His Name Devotionals
WHAT CROSSES ARE GOOD FOR
In His Name Devotionals
WHAT CROSSES ARE GOOD FOR
With all the talk about the crosses in our religion, you'd think we Christians would understand their meaning. But sometimes we miss the point altogether.
Understood historically, biblically, and in the light of Jesus' personal experience, crosses have one and only one meaning: death.
When someone in the first-century world started down the road carrying a cross, everyone knew he was not coming back. It was the end for him. He said good-bye to everything he had known or been before. When the work of the cross was done, he would be gone.
That is why the cross is the symbol of Christianity. The old man does not need a new perspective. The sinful nature does not need a new and passionate commitment. That person needs to be destroyed. She needs to be done away with once and for all. He needs to be terminated! Since God is holy and cannot compromise with sin, the only way He can save a sinner is to destroy him and then raise him to newness of life. In Jesus' words, this means that anyone who would be saved must "Repent and believe the good news!" (Mark 1:15). In his repentance, he must forsake sin. More than that, he must forsake himself. No covering up. No making excuses. No defense. He must acknowledge the judgment of God against sin and confess himself worthy of death.
Then, by faith, he must look to Jesus for cleansing, rebirth, and life. By means of a burial in water, his life as a rebel is symbolically laid to rest, his sins are washed away by Christ's atoning blood, and he rises as a new creation to begin a brand new life in the power of the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.
Surely all of this theological insight about the cross is summed up best in these words through Paul: "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).
It is this meaning for crosses that is lacking for too many of us. We represent ourselves as having taken up our crosses, but the old person has not been put to death. He's been dunked, but he isn't dead. She's done some lamenting, but she hasn't been liquidated. The old person has been denounced, but the rascal still isn't destroyed.
The words of Jesus still ring across the centuries: "If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me" (Mark 8:34).
Crosses are good for only one thing. Dare we deny it? So before you climb on yours, be sure you really mean it. Please don't mock Jesus' cross by diminishing the meaning of your own.
