The cross is the beginning of everything. It calls for the destruction of self, sin and death. The message of the cross is a powerful message that equally repels and attracts mankind. A tremendous offense to self-righteousness, it is none the less a fascinating proposal – that God through Christ has reconciled mankind to himself. That God can, through this incredible act of reconciliation, love the sinner. Not only so, but God seeks out the sinner with the intention of loving him, unlovely as he is.
Interestingly, Christians of almost every stripe will affirm this truth; that it is by faith alone that we are saved, apart from works. That no amount of keeping any law will buy us a part in this reconciliation, but that faith in Christ alone is equal to the task. A large part of them will even agree that to keep the law apart from grace is impossible. After that is where things go a little haywire. It seems that people understand how to find the door into Christianity, but like junior high school boys at a first school dance, they have no idea what to do once inside.
This indicates that while most people understand the basic function of the cross, they have no idea what the purpose is. We know that we are saved by what Jesus did on the cross, but why? A large number would say that it is so we may do good works – so that we may become ‘purpose-driven’ by God’s works. Some would say that it is so we may keep the law. Many believe that it is so that their sins may be forgiven and they can start fresh at being better people with God’s help. There are as many different purposes assigned to the cross as there are denominations – for it is not the effect of God’s work in the cross that we question, but His purpose. Purpose is the divisive issue.
The problem is that we see purpose as being an assignment. We assume that God saved us for the purpose of doing something. We want to make the fruit of salvation the purpose of salvation; all of the things that scripture mentions as being the fruit of salvation (good works, keeping the law, forgiveness of sin, becoming ‘better’ people) become to us a to-do list, and we divide ourselves on the basis of how we prioritize our lists. The typical result of the gospel in our lives is a new grace empowered to-do list looking suspiciously like the law-empowered to-do list we kept prior to salvation. Is that all there is? Forgiveness of sin is great, but what in the world am I to do?
We think we know what to do with the cross, but the resurrection – the purpose of the cross – is another matter. Without the resurrection the cross is destructive and divisive. If Christ dies to fulfill the law and atone for sin but never rises again, the world is left without any control. The sinful nature, no longer held to account, is free to do as it pleases. The Holy Spirit cannot come because Jesus never goes to the Father. Man is free to pursue his own self-seeking and self-god-making desires. The tree of life is restored to mankind while he still knows good and evil. Adam is no longer banished from Eden, but lives eternally in his fallen state. While this paints a bleak picture of the world at large apart from the resurrection, it is reproduced in countless ‘Christians’ every day, who would partake of the cross but never partake in the resurrection.
The purpose of the cross is to prepare for the resurrection. Not just in a historical sense, but in a personal sense. God does not kill us through the law and forgive our sins just to abandon us to ourselves. No! He kills us so we can be made alive again! He does not seek out that which is lovely, but that which is unlovely so He may destroy the unlovely and create something lovely in its place. He does not send his Spirit to assist us with our doing, but to create something completely new of us that can actually bear fruit for Him. This is no remodel, but complete demolition and building from the foundation up.
In this sense the resurrection may be less understood than the cross because it is even more offensive and off-putting than the cross itself. It doesn’t allow anything to pass through the cross. When we get to the other side of the cross and stare resurrection face to face, it refuses to recognize us if any part of us is still alive. More than that, it insists that old Adam must not exist any longer. It insists that ‘all things are made new’. Not even a scrap of our old filthy righteousness, our fleshly to-do list keeping Adam, can be resurrected. The Spirit says, “My purpose is not to help your Adam become a better Adam. My purpose is to raise you from the dead. Since you are not dead, there is nothing I can do for you.” So many of us at that point become junior high school wall flowers – we came to the dance, but we didn’t know we were supposed to actually dance. We take our to-do list out of our packet and go find people whose to-do list resembles our own and solace each other with the idea that God can’t mean we actually have to die to live.
The cross is divisive. It divides everything; law and grace, sin and the fruit of the Spirit, Adam and the new creation, death and life. The work of the cross is not as ambiguous and sentimental as we think it is. Its one purpose is to kill us. It is the instrument of our execution. And it does this for one reason – to prepare us for resurrection. Even if we somehow crawl off the cross alive, the Spirit recognizes the life in us and cannot resurrect us. Christ had to die specifically so he could be resurrected, and so must we. If we refuse to die, if we refuse to let go of the Adam and the to-do list that he holds dear, we still belong to this world and there is nothing –nothing – that God can do for us. Drop the to-do list, come off the wall and join in the dance, my friends. Let the cross prepare you in death so that you can be made truly alive.
God Bless
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