Don't Forget the Cross

“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… We proclaim Christ crucified.”

- 1 Corinthians 1:18, 23a

This spring, as I have captured some of the beauty of the dogwoods, azaleas, wisteria, and the like, I noticed that crosses kept showing up in my pictures.

O.k., I’ll admit it – the crosses didn’t just “show up” in my pictures; I wanted to frame them into the shots.

There’s something about the cross that keeps drawing my eye… and my heart.

The thing is, we might not notice the cross if we’re not looking for it. It stands front and center in our churches, but where does it stand for you?

Jesus never took his eyes off the cross. It was his purpose. It was the reason he came from heaven to earth in the first place.

We want to shy away from the cross. In modern times, we write it off as a relic of uncivilized times, a device of inhumane torture. The way of the cross doesn’t fit today’s notion of redemption – how can such a thing really save the human race? We want to shy away from the cross.

Don’t. Don’t look the other way. Don’t miss the cross.

“See, from his head, his hands, his feet,

sorrow and love flow mingled down.

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

or thorns compose so rich a crown?”¹

It is the cross that tells both the “what” and the “why” of Jesus’ death. On the cross, Jesus took upon himself the death we deserve. Jesus suffered total abandonment by his Father, so we wouldn’t have to. John R. W. Stott once noted, “Our sins sent Christ to hell. He tasted the torment of a soul estranged from God. Bearing our sins, he died our death. He endured instead of us the penalty of separation from God which our sins deserved.”² That’s the “what” of Jesus’ death that the cross explains – our sins sent him there.

But it’s not just our sin which we witness on the cross. It’s also love. “See… sorrow and love flow mingled down...” Jesus took our sins upon himself, because he loves us. He loves the world. Every. one. of. us. He did for us that which we are unable to do for ourselves, because he loves us.

Don’t miss the cross. Don’t jump straight ahead to Easter without Good Friday.

Because the cross – and what Jesus accomplished on it – is the reason that we call that Friday “Good.”

There’s something about the cross. Don’t miss the cross.

1Isaac Watts, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”

2John R.W. Stott, Basic Christianity(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996 edition), p. 93.