The centrality of the cross

1 Cor 1: 17 – 31

Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 21 Sep, 2008

LAST WEEK we saw that an effective church has to start out on a firm basis of holiness, grace and peace. Those are the attitudes we need. But what of the content of our message?

As I mentioned last week, Paul does not muck around with pleasantries. He does show a genuine concern for the Corinthians, but he doesn’t waste words about the weather and the state of the Roman economy. He gets right down to the core issues, even in the words he uses in his greetings.

So he tells them how important it is to live out and enhance the holiness which is already theirs through faith in Jesus, how important it is to experience the full extent of grace in their gifts and ministries, and how important it is to live in the kind of unity which expresses itself in peace. And then he continues with an outline of the centrality of the cross of Jesus.

You remember that I said that we often fail to recognise the full extent of grace. We see the tip, and miss the iceberg.

We do the same with the cross. We know that, “Jesus died for me,” but do we go on to consider its full implications?

The problem is that the cross is not just something which was foolish to the Greeks. It still seems foolish to us today.

And it is not just something which offended Jews, it remains offensive today.

But the cross is also not just something that was powerful in its day: it remains powerful in our present age.

I am not ashamed of the gospel,

Paul said,

...for it is the power of God unto salvation.

This powerful message is the message of a foolish, offensive cross, but a cross which saves.

A FOOLISH CROSS

The Greeks just couldn’t get it. They had exactly the same attitude that people have today.

Paul says,

...Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: ...foolishness to Gentiles,

The non–Jews of Paul’s day had the same problems with the message of the cross as our society has.

The most common attack on Christians that I read is that Christians are irrational, ignorant and stupid. Many atheists even call themselves “Brights”. They don’t want to define themselves by something they don’t believe. But, above all, they want to emphasise a claim to be more intelligent than religious people.

If you prefer to neglect facts, it is easy to think that you are brighter than everyone else.

But the message of the cross isn’t an easy one. No one has problems with a man who went about doing good. No one worries about someone who spent a lot of his time preaching to people. No one even has much of a problem with his being arrested and killed. The Buddha did good, the Stoic philosophers went about preaching. Socrates was killed for his beliefs.

But when we claim that, somehow, God went to the cross in the person of that man, Jesus, it causes problems. When we claim that his death is more than the death of a good man, when we say that it has eternal meaning, that is when people object. When we claim that his death on the cross means that God has become involved with our human life, people get uneasy. And when we declare that the only way to escape from the total mess that the world is in is through belief in the power and effectiveness of what Jesus did on the cross, then people get angry. They turn on us. That is not what they want to hear.

But God has given all people assurance of this fact by raising Jesus from the dead. If Christ is not risen, our faith is meaningless. And, if he is risen. all other faiths are.

Even we Christians can find it hard to keep the focus on the cross. Put it in plain terms, and It just seems too incomprehensible.

How could God be so united to a human being that he could experience death on a cross? How could the death of one man make a difference to the lives of everyone in the world? How could death be redemptive — that is, how could the death of a single man buy back the lives of every single person in the world and liberate us all from death and hell and the grave? And, how could this same man have risen from the dead to live forever? Whoever heard of such a thing? It seems totally foolish to nearly everyone.

The Greeks said, “Such things just can’t happen.

But the Jews also had a problem with this message.

The Greeks said, “It’s illogical!” the Jews said, “We might believe it if there were some really flashy miracles. We might believe it if this Jesus had driven the Romans away with a single word. We might believe it if he had caused thunderbolts to rain on our enemies, if he had soaked a sacrificial bull with water and then burnt it up with fire from heaven, if he had caused signs in the sky and wonders on the land. But dying like a criminal on a cross? We can’t accept that!

And you and I have to face these very same questions. “Is this logical?” and, “Is this a true sign of God’s power?”

It all boils down to one basic question: what will you do with Jesus? How do you respond to him?

A POWERFUL CROSS

From a merely logical position, the message of the cross does seem foolish. It is hard to believe that someone died, that that death deals forever with all sin, and that he rose from the dead when this was all over.

So when Paul spoke in Athens, people said,

What is this babbler trying to say?

And after he explained his message to them, we read,

 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.”

Of course, you can’t prove unique events. But history is about unique events, and no experiment to prove these things. All you can do is look at the testimony and ask is it credible.

The message of the cross is an incredible proposition, supported by credible evidence.

Jesus fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecies of God’s servant who would suffer and die for us all.

Surely he has borne our sorrows,
And by his stripes we are healed.

— Isaiah wrote.

Jesus fulfilled the prophetic psalm,

^{PSA 22:1} My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Even down to soldiers casting lots for his clothing, even down to them not breaking his bones, it was all there. How did the psalmist, probably David himself, know about a death sentence where hands and feet were pierced, where limbs were torn out of joint — something just not done in ancient Israel?

But it happened to Jesus.

Jesus fulfilled Daniel’s prophecy, which times the birth of the Messiah to 6 BC. It also predicts the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.

The significance of the death of Jesus is written in blood. It is there for anyone to see. But, just to make sure of things, he rose again from the dead.

His enemy, Saul saw him. His brother, James, saw him. Peter, James and John saw him. So did Thomas, and so did Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus.

The cross is not powerful in the world’s sense. It is not a means to drive enemies into the sea or to fill the gullies with their blood. It does not enhance our prestige. It exposes our lust for power and exalts the weak and lowly.

But it is powerful because it confronts us. It is powerful because it reveals the corrupting effect of what we humans consider to be real power. It is powerful because it places a challenge before us:

The world says, “I will kill you!” The cross says, “I will rise again!”

The world says, “I will make your name a curse forever.” The cross says, “I will turn curses into blessings.”

The world says, “There is no God. There is nothing. I am the ultimate source of power.” And the cross says,

“Though he slay me, yet shall I live:

^{(JOB 19:25, 26)} I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been destroyed,
  yet in my flesh I will see God.”

And there is nothing that can defeat a message like that.

It might sound foolish to our ears, but it is a message of an unconquerable power: the power of faith and of love. As Paul says,

²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. ²² Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, ²³ but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

A SAVING CROSS

A beautiful young woman, whose mother was scarred and ugly, went to the city to study. At the end of term, she found herself on the train home with a friend and fellow student.

At the station, the girl’s mother came to greet her daughter, but the girl pretended that she didn’t know this ugly woman.

Afterwards, when the young woman was alone again, her mother came to her, and explained how her ugliness was the result of burns she had sustained rescuing the daughter from a fierce housefire when she was a baby. The daughter wept for shame, but a different kind of shame.

She had felt shame to be associated with such an ugly woman, but now she felt shame to have denied someone who had paid such a heavy price for her.

Many people are ashamed to be associated with Jesus. He is ugly.

What I mean by that is that no one wants to be associated with someone who died as a criminal. No one wants to be associated with death, in fact — particularly with such a cruel and sordid death.

No one wants to be identified with an unpopular cause, like Jesus of Nazareth. We want to be on the side of the conquering hero, the success who sweeps opposition before him. We want to look good.

No one wants to be challenged to defend the message of the cross in a world which thinks, “If you can’t put it in a test tube, it can’t be real.”

So many people feel shame at the thought of the cross.

The Jews believed that anyone hanged or crucified had to be under God’s curse. So they asked, “How could God use someone accursed like that to do good in the world?”

It seemed shameful even to talk about anyone who had suffered in that way.

Even today, you find that Muslims use much the same arguments against the idea that Jesus was crucified. They say, “How could Allah let one of his prophets suffer like that?” And they reject the cross and the message of the cross.

And that raises a question: how do you feel about the message that Jesus died for you, that his blood cleanses you from all sin, that there is redemption for all who come to him in repentant faith?

Paul says,

^{1COR 1:18} For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

The cross saves because it tears away all human pretensions. We imagine ourselves to be powerful. We imagine ourselves to be better than the common herd, even though we are in fact like the rest of humanity.

But the cross says, “Respectable people do horrific things; powerful people are not to be trusted; there is corruption in all hearts; we would all have shouted for Jesus’ death, or stood mutely because we didn’t have the guts to do otherwise.”

Do you not believe that?

How many of us know, when we are honest, that we have joined with the mob to exclude the unpopular person, to play pranks on the one person we have singled out? How many of us would have to say, “I stood by and let someone get hurt because it was the easy way out for me.”?

We have all done it. We are all sinners. And, in a small way, what we have done to others is what we did in a big way to Jesus.

The cross saves because it leaves us no wriggle room. We will either stick with the world, or we will identify by faith with Jesus who died on the cross.

But the world says, “Keep in step and you will do fine.” And there is not much room for those who get out of step,

On the other hand, Jesus says,

If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself daily, take up his cross, and follow me.

There is no intermediate position, there is no middle road.

But God promises, for the sake of Jesus, to give eternal life to all who go with him.

There will be suffering. There may be persecution, but there will be life evermore.

The cross confronts us with that choice: what will you do with Jesus? Release him, or crucify him once more?

SUMMING-UP

There is so much we could say about the message of the cross. I have touched on a very few aspects today.

The facts of the cross might seem incredible, but the way it works makes it the only possible answer to human need.

You can’t change the basics by introducing better, tougher laws. You can’t improve people by forcing them through tighter hoops. The only truly saving message is that God loves each of us with a passion, that he suffers when we go wrong, that he longs to draw the rebellious child back to his loving arms.

And that is the message of the cross.

God commends his love to us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

And the message of the cross still confronts us today, and still demands a response.

Will you believe this message today? Will you receive Jesus today, or keep turning him away?

Whoever comes to me I will never, ever cast out,

says Jesus.

 ^{MT 11:28} “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. ²⁹ Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰ For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Will you come to him today? AMEN
 

© Peter R. Green 2008. Permission is granted for quotation in full for non-commercial purposes provided that authorship is acknowledged and this copyright notice is displayed with the text. Portions also copyright The Bible, NIV (Zondervan Ltd.)