The cross of Christ must be a recurring theme (1 Cor. 1:23; 2:2; 15:1-4; Gal. 6:14 etc). Man is so prone to justifying himself and measuring himself so loosely. We grade on the curve, sin is not so bad, but the cross lets us know the truth of the matter. Sin is man’s biggest problem – no doubt about it. Economic, environmental, employment and health problems are more challenges rather than problems. Sin is THE problem. If only man could see that! And it is so vital to see it because without sorrow for sin there is no joy of salvation – no salvation really (2 Cor. 7:10).
As Guthrie put it; Sin, Oh! sin. Thou art a hateful and horrible thing: ‘ that abominable thing which God hates’…..Brethren, surely the wonder of wonders is, that sin is not that abominable thing which we also hate. We do not live in the spotless purity of glorious and unapproachable light as God does and we get used to the dark! Your darkness, my darkness, the world’s darkness. And so we construct a new paradigm where grey is considered the blazing light of noon-day and blackness is a creamy off-white. Where have all the sinners gone?! I remember speaking to an open young man some time ago who said “I’m quite selfish…like the average Australian”. Yet when I asked him if he thought he was going to Heaven, he said he was confident he would because he hadn’t done anything really bad. He just had no idea how bad his sin was and the penalty it deserves.
We witness this blind and self-satisfied approach to life in every way. We live in an age of grading on the curve. Its popular to blame every problem of youth, from poor academic test scores to juvenile crime, on low self-esteem. Some years ago they appointed a task force in California to confirm the alleged benefits on raising self-esteem. In spite of any evidence to support the alleged link, teachers have been taking this mantra to heart and handing out lavish praise and high grades in hope that students’ feeling of self-worth and academic performance will improve. What happened was grade inflation. In some schools C’s became nearly non-existent, and some students, on moving to higher education where the policy was not followed, got a shock. One student said, oblivious to the irony, Man, its almost impossible for an average student to get a distinction in this class!
Professor Lillian Katz argues that self esteem does not come from cheap success in a succession of trivial tasks, from phony flattery by a teacher, or from gold stars and happy faces. It comes from effort, persistence, and the gradual acquisition of skills, and is nurtured by a teacher’s genuine appreciation of the content of the child’s work. When teachers praise mediocre work then that’s what they’re likely to get. Moreover, if a teacher gushes over work on a task that really was easy, the message really is that the child isn’t really that smart – wow, Jack, you did an awesome job of adding two and two!
The upshot has been an increase in the level of illiteracy and numeracy. Here’s the point, many students are unaware that their writing and maths skills are deficient – and how could they know! – they have always received high scores! Self-esteem is one thing, but narciscism, personal glorification and self-celebration are other things entirely.
God did us a great service by the cross in showing us how vile our sinfulness is. That black is black and white is white. When we look at the cross and think about what God was doing there, it becomes apparent that it must be true that the wages of sin really is death. If sin is a light matter and of no real consequence, then what was God doing on the cross! You don’t go hunting butterflies with a 12 gauge shotgun and neither do you get a D10 bulldozer to turn over your flower bed! If that would be overkill then what would the cruel death of the Son of God be if sin really isn’t that much of an issue? God has told us so graciously by the cross that sin is as black as black. He could have parted the clouds and given us the father of a lecture and ranted and raved about how terrible we are and He would have been right to do so. Instead He went out and died for us. (I remember my father replacing a panel of glass in a dining room buffet that I had foolishly broken, and making a stencil of a reindeer design and spraying with different paints to try and match the frosted design on the opposing piece of glass. The time and trouble it cost him impressed me more than the lecture Mum gave me) God has tried to tell us from the beginning that sin is destructive and horrible. Adam and Eve sinned and destroyed fellowship. Then there was the mark of Cain, then the flood, then Sodom and Gemorrah. And in Israel there was that gloomy room called the Holy of Holies which you couldn’t see because it was hidden behind a thick veil and only one man could go there on one day of the year and then he couldn’t go unless he had blood to offer. Why was it so hard to get into the presence of God? All because of sin. And why does God have to make such a big thing of it anyway? If it upsets Him why not just rebuke man and let him go his own way? Because he made us for fellowship with Him in the quality of His holiness and sin destroys that. Sin even reached up into Heaven to destroy God. It wasn’t extraordinary sinners that crucified Christ – it was ordinary sinners – ordinary sins like envy, love of money, political ambition, lying, etc. – so we were there that day! And while sin upsets God, His love for us is greater and stronger than His hatred of sin, and so we had the cross.
By the cross our self-defensive ways were condemned. All the ways of a man are right in his own eyes, but the cross shows that this is not true – not by a long chalk. Personal protection is big with us too. But we see Jesus resisting the urge to call on thousands of angels to deliver His from the cross. “It’s not fair!” is big with us too, but in the cross we see the innocent taking on the punishment due the guilty. We want our pound of flesh and we’ve got to have someone to blame. This litigious society we have become is ridiculous. People need a reality check – to come into this world is to come into a world of risk, pain and suffering. Time and chance happen to us all. But pretty soon we’re going to be standing around afraid to move or say “boo!” because someone will sue us. And we’ll stub our toe and look for someone to sue. And we’ll all starve to death while we’re frozen to the spot unable to grow any food because someone might eat it, get sick, and sue the farmer!
That’s not life! We need a reality check and the cross gives us that. Life is risk – even risking all, and safety at all costs is not life as God intended it. If it were then God would never have left Heaven. Life involves vulnerability. Rev. 12:4 speaks of it – the dragon stood before the woman to devour her child as soon as it was born. There’s nothing so vulnerable as a baby and yet when God the Son entered the world that is how He came. The whole Scheme of Redemption rested upon the premise that the Saviour would play out His life and ministry on this planet we call home and with all the risks associated with living here. And the price He paid for coming here was to suffer death, even the death of the cross.
And spare a thought for the Father of all this. Heaven wasn’t indifferent the day the Messiah died. It didn’t go dark for no reason! W. M. Clow said, If the visible sacrifice was Christ’s, then the invisible sacrifice was God’s. In a book called The Healing Cross. Farmer said Love meets its most searching test when it is faced with the necessity of deeply estranging the loved one in order to bless him. And the more the love is pure and intense, the severer the test is, the more fierce the temptation to keep friendship at the cost of truth. When love is crying out for fellowship it is the hardest thing in the world deliberately to pursue a course which you know for the time being will destroy it.
And the cross condemns our self-will. In John 4:34 Jesus said My food is to do the will of Him who sent me. In 5:30 he said I seek not my own will but the will of the Father who sent me. And the cross becomes the supreme example to illustrate that the common theology “Everyman for himself” is ungodly. How serious are we about doing the will of the Lord? Hearing, believing, repenting, confessing and being baptised are the beginning steps of the Lord’s will, not the end. At what point do we draw a line in the sand and say to God, Don’t come pass that line! What parts of our life are off-limits to God (cf. Gal. 2:20).
The cross shows that God has inherent rights over His creation up to and including the life itself (see the example of Jesus in Heb. 10:1-12). Luke 22:42 (not my will but thine be done) is not only Jesus reminding Himself of this fact, but instructing us as well. It is not the will of the Lord for us to be crucified for the sins of the world, but Phil. 2:17 may be more in line for us.…offered on the sacrifice and service of your faith…
The cross exposes our self-promotion. Though He were a Son….He suffered… There is no room for boasting in Christ. Did he have to die? Surely there are better scenarios. The Devil presented a couple in the wilderness: throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple in view of adoring crowds and having angels catch Him would rate better than death on a cross wouldn’t it? But if He did have to die He could have grabbed centre stage and died at Athens or Rome, anywhere but on a hill outside Jerusalem! In fact the place is so obscure we’re not even sure where it is located.
The cross blasts our self-reliance. Man loves to not only justify himself, but save himself as well – “I don’t need any help!” If you were to die and stand before God in judgment and God was to ask “Why should I let you into Heaven?”, what would you say? Most people answer this scenario by declaring how good they are and undeserving of punishment – few mention their need of the cross. Sometimes people feel failures as Christians but I tell you what, we became Christians because we are failures! “Into thy hands I commend my spirit” He said. Not only did the cross expose our sinful ways, it dealt with our sins too – thankfully. All we like sheep have gone astray, but he has laid the iniquity of us all on Him.
