The cross.
What is it really? Today it is depicted as something common. Department stores
are full of merchandise that has been plastered with its symbol across it ,
from T-shirts to car tags. Jewelers have pounded it into all sorts of finery
for us to adorn ourselves and wear. It has become big business and brought much
profit to those who have reaped from its economic benefits. But it was never
intended to be a lucky trinket or some type of decorative decor. The cross of
Christ is not to be profaned by being used as some form of good luck. Wearing
it or hanging it in our homes does not bring us good luck, nor does it make us
more spiritual in the eyes of God, because we proudly display or advertise to
others by our demonstrating some form spirituality with it. Before Jesus died
on the cross, it represented one thing to humanity, a monstrous repulsive
instrument of death. When Jesus accomplished salvation’s plan by His death on
the cross and His resurrection from the grave, that old rugged, nasty cross now
represents the Grace of God to all mankind. Jesus’ victory over death removed
the shame of the cross and made it beautiful and glorious. Everything God wants
man to know about Him comes together in those cross beams of His only Son’s
suffering.
What was Jesus
doing on the cross those six hours, stretched out against the sky? He was
thinking about you and me. He had made His mind up in the garden the night
before to go through with it, knowing that only He and the Father truly
fathomed what was about to transpire over the next few days. There is much more
to the death of Jesus on the cross than the visible suffering, terrible pain
and private unseen suffering, and the incredible public shame and disgrace of
such a horrible death for the Son of God and One who was completely innocent
and underserving of what He was to endure.
In his letter
to the Colossians, Paul tells us about some invisible events taking place
outside of this physical realm that we see and outside of our ordinary space
and time during the time that Jesus was dying on the cross, he says, …in Jesus
all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to
himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of
his cross. And you, who once were estranged and hostile in mind, doing evil
deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to
present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him. Col. 1:19-22 He
also met fully the broadside of the demonic world, fallen angels, and all the
power of evil forces as well, disarming them all completely and guarantying
satan’s final destruction in Revelation 5:1-7.
After the
cross, the next event in eternity for humanity was Jesus’ return to reenter His
body in the tomb just before dawn on Easter morning. When contemplating what
the cross really represents in the divine transaction between God the Father
and God the Son, in an eternal perspective, Jesus who had known no sin had to
suffer the revulsion and destruction of being changed from a perfect man into a
loathsome, repulsive creature loaded down with mine and your and yes, the sin
of the world, so that even God could not look upon Him. Yes, that was the
ultimate sacrifice that Jesus made for me and you. He was willing to go through
Psalm 22 as predicted earlier in scripture to restore what satan and man had
destroyed through sin. God must and had to punish that sin and the only way,
was that Christ suffer our punishment as a substitute and bear the full weight
of the eternal separation from God, that Divine Justice demands and we deserve.
God’s kindness on the cross is meant to lead us to repentance and how great is
that kindness, never to be mocked, misunderstood nor taken for granted, but it
is however; all the time. Yet, John 3:16 reminds us that, For God so loved us,
that He gave us His only Son. Yes, God
demonstrated his love for us that while we were yet sinners, God sent Jesus to
the cross to die for us and that those who accept and receive what He did, may
reap the benefits of that great sacrifice; even to those that parade its image
but have no understanding or idea as to its real purpose. I hope today that the
next time you see a cross, it will have a deeper meaning than it ever did
before.
Loving on you,
Bren
