The Triumph of the Cross

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. -- Galatians 6:14

Holy Week seems a good time to consider the Cross, its meaning and its implications for us.  It is central to Christianity, as Paul makes plain here and in many other places.  There is the historical cross, a real piece of wood to which Jesus of Nazareth was nailed and upon which He died.  The cross has, too, a metaphorical meaning.  We are to take up our cross daily, bear our afflictions and troubles as Christians and learn to walk in faith with our eyes upon God’s truth and our hope in Him.  The Cross is also a figure of speech for all of the doctrines that make up the gospel as well as for the death of Jesus. 

Death by crucifixion was an ignominious, inglorious, humiliating public death.  It spoke of the weakness and insignificance of the individual against the power and prestige of the corporate state.  To the world, the death of Jesus is a shame, both in the sense of being tragic and in the sense of being a disgrace.  We will say of a person who dies “too soon” in some accident that the death is a shame.  We feel it was unnecessary, even pointless.  The world will say of Jesus that He was a great teacher or a great philosopher, that, like Socrates, He was put to death for the sake of jealousy, envy or religious conflict.  It was really too bad.

Jesus does not allow those who believe in and follow Him that option.  We have to understand that He came to die:   Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour (John 12:27).  The Cross is both pit and pinnacle, His darkest hour and His greatest triumph. 

The Cross shows us the vanity and futility of the world, putting it to death, crucifying the world to us.  We are, in turn, crucified to the world.  Our judgment about those things held in high esteem changes.  We judge now according to the standard of Christ, considering righteousness and a good conscience superior to worldly ambition, popular acclaim, and material acquisitions.    

Like the bronze serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness, the Cross is transformed from an image of loathing and fear to an object of hope.  It heals and counters the poison that has invaded the soul of man, offering an antidote and the new resurrection life in Christ.  We rejoice in the Cross which signifies the defeat and destruction of the enemy of our souls.

Legend of the Fallen

And he said to all, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. -- Luke 9:23

Jesus bore our burden of sin upon the cross.  The good news of His death, burial, and resurrection is the revelation of His love for us, our salvation, justification, reconciliation, and peace with the Father.  He offers to take the burdens that weigh us down and wear us out, and in exchange, He offers us a sack of slack to carry, a yoke that is easy and light.  How does this square with the daily cross Jesus says each of us must take up?

I have been talking around this, I think, all week.  I’ll probably talk around it today, too.  The Cross frees us from the captivity and delusions of the world, the flesh, and the devil, but I’ve still got this natural human life to live out.  We do not suddenly get translated to heaven when we rise from the waters of baptism.  It would be a lot easier to be a Christian if that were the case. 

Instead, we spend the rest of our lives dealing with, resisting, renouncing, and, ultimately, overcoming the sin nature.  As I may have noted in the post about 1 John 3, Matthew Henry argues that Jesus did not carry away “ our moral infirmities, our proneness to sin”.   I don’t know about anybody else, but I know for certain that my own “proneness to sin”, if it has been taken away, still calls home a lot. 

My problem in this world is me.  That’s the daily cross.  It’s my tendency to blame other people, my feelings of selfishness and self-righteousness, my inclination to believe that I am better, somehow, than the people who get in my way.  It’s easy for me to think that life should please me and go my way, that others exist for my benefit, that things should be fair and that, at the same time, I ought to be able to do pretty much as I please.  So, constantly, daily, I get up and I pick that cross up, and I do a hundred things that go against the grain.  I give in.  I give others the benefit of the doubt.  I help somebody else.  I sacrifice, and, if I’m not careful, at the end of the day, I get to thinking I’m a really good guy.  As Rick and Father Stephen point out, self-improvement is a loser’s game.  The reason I carry this cross isn’t to make me better but to put my old, fallen self on fully display for what it is. 

I watched I Am Legend, which might not have been the best choice under the current conditions, but I got through it.  I watched the alternate version which makes more sense.  One thing that really hit me is when Neville is offered the chance to leave and join other survivors, he resists, insisting that New York City is his site.  “I can still fix this,” he shouts. 

That’s one of my favorite phrases.  I can fix this – except, I can’t.  I can’t fix my self.  But I can take up my cross and bear it.

And the Walls Come A'Tumblin' Down

For although we are walking in the flesh, we do not wage war in a fleshly way, since the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments and every high-minded thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. – 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

The essence of the gospel is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. Recognizing that the Lord was wise, good, and kind in a human sense is not transformative. That is what Paul defines as “knowing Christ after the flesh”. Jesus does something only He can do -- something only God can do. He identifies with us, taking our sins upon Himself, and paying for them with His own blood. But there is more. The Last Adam also gives the old Adam what he had had coming for a long time. When Jesus was nailed to a cross, He took Adam with Him. After all Adam was created in the likeness and image of God, he did not go down easily. It was mano-a-mano. The only way to do it was for Jesus to embrace Adam so closely that they could not be separated in life. It was risky business, but it meant they were nailed hand-in-hand to the same cross. They came down together. They were buried together. But only One came out alive.

Every battle we face as believers involves a meta-battle. Fortunately for us it is a battle that has already been won by Jesus. By faith we can appropriate the spiritual victory the Lord gained in crucifying the old nature.

We’re walking through this world looking like everybody else. I, for example, am saddled with a particularly rough looking tent. I’m pretty sure that, not only did it come off the slightly irregular rack, but it was probably a return after somebody used it to camp out in a weekend hailstorm. The flesh we walk in puts some restraints and limitations on us, no doubt. To overcome, we reject the weaponry and power of the old nature which is rendered inoperable, put out of commission through the power of the Cross. Instead we take up the weapons of the Spirit and His power.

With the meta-battle behind us, we are enabled to come against, and potentially demolish strongholds in our lives -- those things that hinder, block, and entrap us. And of what are these high-walled fortresses constructed but arguments and thoughts. Wait, I believe they use some hubris in the mortar mix. There we go: arrogance, pride, fleshly wisdom, and carnal philosophy are the walls, and they are defended by fear.

Someone may say that, yes, some people may be battling mind parasites, but my problems are real, external threats. It may be true enough that the psychotics, the neurotics, and the delusional need to take “every thought captive”, but that does not apply to me. Whatever you think. I believe that argument is itself something of a delusion.

I believe that I do not war against flesh and blood, but against rulers, authorities, world powers of darkness, and spiritual forces of evil. I believe that most, if not all the fighting, takes place upon the field of the human mind.

God created this world and He owns it. It is derived. We readily acknowledge that. As a creation, it is subject to physical laws. Our outward physical forms must, in general, conform to the rules of biology and physics. But we, the rightful lords and stewards of the cosmos, are spiritual beings first and foremost. Robin’s sidebar quote of St. Francis is applicable here – change worlds. The high ground is ours. What are the towering walls of a fortress when you’re flying at 30,000 feet? Relatively speaking, the walls of Jericho weren’t even a speed bump.

The flesh attacks from the ground in a frontal assault. It builds siege machinery and ramps, attempts to scale the walls, and laboriously, day after bloody day, prosecutes the same battle over and over. The walls never fall. The stronghold is never surrendered and the enemy is never taken captive. The unhappy paradox is that we strengthen the walls by fighting in this fashion.

Paul says add a dimension. Move the fight from the flatlands to the heavens, and throw in some shock and awe. The battle is the Lord's, and the victory is ours.