Why is the cross so important? Who is behind the idea of the cross?

<p>Why is the cross so important? Who is behind the idea of the cross?</p>

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East Ridge SDA Church

The Cross

Steven Grabiner

God Revealed

So if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, where Paul talks about that.

A Christian writer has said that to remove the cross from the Christian would be like blotting the sun from the sky.

To take away the cross for the Christian would be like plunging the world into darkness.

The cross brings us near to God, reconciling us to him.

With the relenting compassion of a father's love, the Lord looks upon the suffering his son endured in order to save the race from eternal death and accepts us in the beloved.

So the cross of Christ, it's vital, it's essential, it's the heart of obviously what makes us a community of faith, but I'd like to ask the question, Why?

What is it about the cross that is so meaningful?

What really was accomplished at the cross?

What happened when Jesus gave up his life?

And so, to begin to get our minds thinking, let's just think for a second.

If I were to ask you that question, well, what is really so important about the cross?

Where does it fit into your understanding?

Now if you went to Sabbath school this morning, your minds might already be tuned in a certain direction because in Sabbath school the study was on?

So if we think about the cross, why is it so important?

That's intriguing, what do you mean by that?

So if we think for a minute about the meaning of the cross.

It pays the penalty for breaking the law.

Okay, it pays the penalty for breaking the law.

That's a really essential and common image that we think about when we think about that.

And that's kind of a legal metaphor, right?

The Bible uses many different metaphors to talk about what happened when Jesus died.

God can still be just and he can justify it.

Okay, he can still be just, he can maintain his justice, the righteousness of who he is, and at the same time can bring justification or forgiveness to us.

It's the ultimate revelation of love, which is his very character.

Okay, it also is a revelation of love, and that's what my sermon title is this morning, God Revealed, So we'll come back to that.

Any other word pictures that come from the scriptures?

Okay, so it also reveals what Satan's like.

So if we think about the cross, there's a legal aspect, there's the revelatory aspect, There's, let's call it the great controversy aspect in which it talks about what's really going on, the evil of sin and Satan.

Good, any other word pictures in scripture?

Okay, he became sin for us, identification.

He's showing us what real selflessness is all about.

Yeah, that's another really good metaphor that there's this victory that takes place.

Okay, so there's the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which brings death.

And then there's the cross as a tree, which brings life.

That's a good, that's good, there's a sermon there.

That reconciliation is another Bible metaphor that talks about what happened when Jesus died.

You know, it's interesting, if we take these different metaphors and there's more, and we apply them to the human condition, it's amazing how the different metaphors apply to different parts of human experience.

For example, oftentimes humanity struggles with guilt.

So the image, the legal metaphor, okay, you're freed from guilt, that helps.

Sometimes we feel separate, alienated from God.

So the reconciliation metaphor helps there.

So the image from freedom and victory helps there.

And kind of highlighting these, because it's really important as we try to do evangelism, as we try to meet people and share with them, that we have more than 1 way to communicate about what God did.

Well, any craftsman, any tradesman has more than 1 tool in their toolkit.

Physician has different modalities that they're gonna look at to try to bring healing.

A carpenter has more than just a hammer, right?

And it's the same thing when we meet different people.

People are going to respond in different settings to different aspects of what Christ did at the cross.

And sometimes it's the legal aspect and sometimes it's the relational aspect, the reconciliation.

We've been adopted And we need to learn to view the cross from all these different images.

So A, we can have a right understanding, and B, we can communicate that effectively to people that we meet.

People that are suffering from different things, different aspects, different human parts of the human condition.

The Bible also describes us as being blind and ignorant about who God is.

And so let's turn to our passage, 1 Corinthians 1 in verse 18, and see what this passage tells us as we read through it about the cross, about the death of Christ on the cross, which is really what we're talking about here, and what it tells us.

What's the meaning behind this tremendously important thought?

Again, A wonderful book, great controversy.

Reconciliation

Several weeks ago, we began looking at a very important topic for Christianity, for Christians, and that was the topic of the cross of Jesus Christ.

And again, several weeks ago, maybe A month ago, we began looking at the cross from different directions.

You know, today in Christianity, it's very obvious that the cross is a symbol related to our faith, but it wasn't always that way.

In fact, in early Christian art, the cross wasn't a symbol that was used.

Some of the symbols that early Christians used to denote their faith, well, 1 of them was the peacock as a sign of the resurrection.

Not quite sure of the connection, but That's what they did.

They would paint the peacock on their tombs.

Again, it was a sign of the resurrection.

Daniel's, the story of Daniel in the lion's den is found very early in Christian art as well.

When Daniel's brought out of the lion's den, another symbol of the resurrection and how God protected the innocent.

Then of course there's the symbol of the fish that we still see on bumper stickers today, back of individuals' cars.

And of course the Greek word for fish and the Greek letters, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior, they are the same thing.

The word for fish in Greek makes an acronym with those different letters.

But eventually the cross became a symbol in art to stand for the Christian faith.

Unfortunately, around the same time in history when that was happening, the meaning of the cross was being lost.

Around the 2nd century and 3rd century, as Christianity was becoming more popular, 4th century, the sign of the cross became everywhere present, but its meaning was lost.

And I wonder if the same thing could be possibly true today.

That we're very familiar with that symbol, but what it means is something else.

So Again, several weeks back, we looked at the cross and we saw that according to 1 Corinthians 1, the cross reveals God's plan for humanity.

And then a few weeks back, as we had communion, we saw that the cross was the place where Christ was able to make the covenant come to fruition at no matter any cost to himself.

So this morning I'd like to look at another dimension of the cross and it's the dimension of reconciliation.

So if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn to this passage, First Corinthians, excuse me, Second Corinthians chapter 5 and we're gonna start in verse 18.

But as you're turning there, 2 Corinthians 5, we'll start in verse 18, we think about reconciliation.

Again, there's lots of different metaphors.

There's redemption, slave metaphor, temple metaphors, different word pictures about the cross.

I think every 1 of us have probably had a broken relationship somewhere in our life.

Whether it's with a friend or a spouse or a parent or a child, we're all very familiar with the need for reconciliation.

In reconciliation, this picture brings about something that touches deeply to our heart.

And again, as we're looking at the cross, not only do we want to understand it for ourselves, but being able to explain different aspects of the cross enables us to reach different people in ways that are meaningful to them.

And reconciliation is 1 of those pictures that really just transcends boundaries.

Because everybody, I believe, has experienced some kind of brokenness in their life.

As my wife reminded me this week, a really interesting thought, that human tears preceded raindrops.

That human tears are older than the rain.

That Adam and Eve, the humanity, cried before rain ever fell.

And the brokenness, the fractured relationships, the alienation that comes between individuals and families and peoples and countries is something as old as the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and ended up breaking that relationship, which is the foundation of all others.

And in breaking their relationship with God, they broke their relationship with 1 another.

And human history has been this continual unfolding of nation against nation, tribe against tribe, people against people, husbands against wives, parents against children, broken relationships.

Aren't you glad there's a reconciliation picture for the cross?

That this foundation need that we have in humanity, we really can see it being fulfilled in the life and death of Jesus Christ.

So before we turn here again, we think about this in our human condition, what is it that causes us to need reconciliation with God.

What is it that causes you and me to need reconciliation with God?

Isaiah chapter 59 verses 1 and 2 tell us that sin has made a separation.

Your sins have separated between you and your God.

So sin causes this break between us and God.

And you see that all throughout scriptures.

Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 1 tells us that we're dead in our trespasses and sins.

Colossians chapter 1, verses 19 through 20 tell us that we're alienated from God.

Romans Chapter 5 tells us in verses 9 and 10 that we're enemies with God.

Does any of that ring true in your own life?

Do you ever feel like you're alienated from God?

Or that sometimes God feels like an enemy?

Certainly at least before our Christian experience, but even sometimes in the midst of our Christian experience, we recognize this separation.

Well, praise God, there's a reconciliation.

And it's a beautiful picture about what Jesus did at the cross.

And I want to say at the very beginning that as I've been studying about the cross, I just really feel totally inadequate.

This morning I was talking to the king's daughters, daughters of the king, sorry.

And I heard them earlier in their song and I said, you know, you really, you should just take the whole service.

And so they're ready and I'm gonna step down and they're gonna come down.

They said they could take it, but they're just not quite ready, but we should probably arrange that sometime.

To broach a topic that we're gonna be studying with through eternity, I should feel inadequate.

And we should feel inadequate as we look at it so that God's spirit could teach us the tremendous cost of that reconciliation, what it brings, and how I can apply it to my life.

How I can really be, as the text tells us, a minister of reconciliation.

So let's look here, 1 Corinthians, excuse me, 2 Corinthians 5, starting in verse 18.

And would somebody who has the King James read verse 18 for us, nice and loud.

Okay, so that first phrase, it's really, we're gonna, if I can use the metaphor of chewing our food, we're gonna chew through this passage really slowly this morning.

And we just read that all things are of God.

Well, of course, God created everything, but Paul's saying something very specific.

And if someone else has another translation, New international, new American standard, English standard version.

The new American standard here says, now all these things are from God.

And so the question that we immediately ask is, well, all what things?

What does he mean that all of this is from God?

And we have to go back and we read a few verses before this where Paul begins to talk about the impact of Christ's death on his life.

So let's just jump back quickly to verse 13.

For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God.

If we are of a sound mind, it is for you.

Verse 14, for the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that 1 died for all, therefore all died.

And he died for all so that they who live may no longer live for themselves, but for him who died and rose again on their behalf.

There's a tremendous meaning in those verses, but just in quick summary, Paul's talking about Christ's death that included in some sense, all of us.

And if we believe it, it should make a change in our life.

Verse 17, he says, "'If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creature.

The Substitute

Several weeks ago, we began looking at the cross, the place where Jesus died, and trying to discern some of the insights from the cross.

In Christian history, the symbol of the cross has had lots of different meanings to it.

Certainly in the days of Jesus, the cross was a symbol of what in his day?

Cross was the symbol that Rome had been ruling.

However, a few centuries later during the time of Constantine the Emperor, that famous emperor who made the first Sunday Law, the symbol of the cross underwent a major transformation.

Supposedly Constantine had a vision and in that vision he heard the words, in this sign you will conquer and he saw a picture of the cross.

And he did conquer, conquered the rest of the Roman Empire, became the sole emperor of Rome and made the cross a symbol of prestige.

Where now Christianity became the main focal part, the main religion in Christianity.

A sign of punishment, a sign of conquering, and yet also oftentimes a sign is a symbol of compassion.

You know we think of individuals, many hospitals, there might be a sign of the cross or people do things in the name of the cross, But the cross has had a complex history.

It's been used as a symbol for persecution during the times of the Inquisition, during the time of the Crusades, where people were forced to worship.

It's been used in the pogroms against the Jews, again, a symbol of force and persecution.

How do we understand the death of Jesus in relation to our Christian experience?

And so as we've looked at the cross, as we've looked at different aspects of it, we looked first at 1 Corinthians 1, and we saw that what takes place there reveals God to us.

It's the power of God revealed at the cross.

We also saw that the cross is the place where God's covenant comes to fruition.

Jesus himself said that this is the blood of the new covenant where he's able to bring us into a harmonious body of people.

A few weeks back we looked at the cross as a place of reconciliation where we can come to God realizing that God is not counting our trespasses against us.

So let's turn back to 2 Corinthians 5, which is where we were a few weeks back.

And what I want to look at this morning, I want to kind of raise a thorny issue with you this morning.

I hope that the cold has stimulated your brain cells and you're ready to think with me.

Sometimes heat makes us a little sleepy, right?

The cross can also be difficult for our day and our culture.

There's a lot of Christian writers today that actually question the, what let me call the traditional understanding of what took place when Jesus died.

For example, if you think about it for a moment, the cross wrongly understood can miscommunicate certain things.

What we sing, there's power in the blood, right?

But how many of us like getting involved with blood?

But the rest of us, you know, blood is, no, enough, there's blood.

What would it really have been like at the crucifixion?

Would we be singing, yeah, there's power in the blood, standing in front of the cross?

My cousin, who's not a Christian, most of you know that I grew up in a Jewish family and he and I over the years have written back and forth over different topics.

A few years ago he wrote me a story, which some of you might have heard.

It's roughly told, it's a story about a man who works at a train yard and his job is to make sure the trains are on the right tracks.

And his son came with him to work 1 day and his son, unbeknownst to the man, toddled out of the shack that he was in and went down and he was on the tracks.

And lo and behold, there's a train coming down the tracks and the man sees, as the story goes, his son on the tracks and he realizes the train is headed right for his son And he can turn the tracks or he can let his son be killed.

And he chooses to save the people on the train and sacrifice his son.

And that's often used as an illustration of what happened on the cross.

My cousin wrote that to me and said, this is barbaric.

Well certainly someone is dying for someone else but it almost looks, and in the story it's true, that this son is just an unknowing, uninvolved victim.

That is not what took place at the cross.

2 Corinthians chapter 5, starting, I'm just going to jump back real quickly and get to our main verse.

But in verse 18, 2 Corinthians 5, 18, Paul says, Now all these things, I'm reading from the New American Standard, all these things are from God.

The King James says, all things are from God.

All these things talking about the plan of salvation from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.

In Christ, reconciling the world to himself.

It's an important point here that I want to stress.

And again, I appreciate it being brought out in the song, Spencer.

Many of us have this difficult concept with the death of Christ.

We ask the question, if God told us to turn the other cheek, how come God doesn't just turn the other cheek?

I mean, God told us, if somebody slaps you, just turn around and just forgive them.

Why the necessity for the death of Jesus on the cross?

Is it just some kind of an accident like my cousin's story where the train's coming, oh, someone's got to die, Better the son than the people on the train.

That's really not what's taking place at all.

So let's kind of think through this this morning.

And let's go back down to verse 20 and then 21.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us.

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The Cross

God Revealed

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