March-April 1999
The Cross of Christ
by Greg Albrecht
| If I stop at a traffic light behind a
car sporting a bumper sticker with a hangman's noose, I will definitely avoid eye contact
with the driver. But I wear a cross around my neck. An ugly instrument of cruelty and torture... |
Have you ever considered how strange it is that the symbol of capital punishment in the Roman Empire has come to be worn around our necks and to adorn church steeples?
If the clerk at the market where we buy groceries started wearing a necklace with a gold symbol of an electric chair on it, I would probably assume he or she is a fan of some new suicidal alternative rock group. If I stop at a traffic light and the car in front of me sports a bumper sticker with a hangman's noose, I will definitely avoid eye contact with the driver.
But I wear a cross around my neck. An ugly instrument of cruelty and torture reminds me of the love of Jesus I once didn't know about, but now by God's grace I do. It reminds me that not only did Jesus die on the cross, but that I too have died, for Jesus comes to live his life only in men and women who have given up their lives to follow him.
An Eternal Reminder
The cross reminds me that time and eternity intersected 2,000 years ago. God, in the person of Jesus, was voluntarily born into humility and poverty in a stable in Bethlehem. As the Lamb of God, he voluntarily poured out his life on the cross that we might be forgiven of our sins. He rose from the tomb, just as he said he would, that we might live. The cross reminds me of his birth, his death and his resurrection.
Of these central events in Christ's life, the resurrection has priority. Without the resurrection, the cross is simply a reminder of the tragedy that God became one of us in order to save us, but in the end we rejected him. Without the resurrection, the nativity scene serves only to commemorate the birth of God in the flesh, who lived and died. The resurrection gives meaning, focus and vision to the crib and cross, as well as to our lives.
"If all the Resurrection means is that Jesus' spirit lives on like Abraham Lincoln's or Adolf Hitler's but that otherwise he is just as dead as anybody else who cashed in 2,000 years ago, then, as St. Paul puts it, 'our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain' (1 Corinthians 15:14). If the enemies of Jesus succeeded for all practical purposes in killing him permanently around a.d. 30, then like Socrates, Thomas More, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King and so on, he is simply another saintly victim of the wickedness and folly of men, and the cross is a symbol of ultimate defeat" (Wishful Thinking, Frederick Buechner, page 32).
Triumph Over Death
Jesus' disciples "didn't get it" until the resurrection. Neither do we. We don't know how to make sense of God coming into our world to live and die, unless and until we realize that he rose from the dead and that he lives today. The fact that he loved us so much that he sent his Son to die for our sins is wonderful. But if the Son simply died for our sins, we would have no victory celebration -- we would simply experience remorse.
The resurrection event is the mystery of the ages (Colossians 1:26-27), because it sets the stage for Christ to give us new life, life eternal. The resurrection is a paradox, but not a contradiction. Jesus did not triumph over death by refusing to die. He died that we might live, and because he is risen we are given new life -- his life -- now and forever.
That's the reason the cross I wear is empty. Jesus was there once, but not anymore! Once he was in the tomb -- buried -- but not anymore! He is alive. He is risen. And so are all of those who believe in him and accept the new life that only he can give.
Greg Albrecht wears the ultimate symbol of victory as he directs Plain Truth Ministries. "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" (2 Cor 1:18)