The Glory of the Cross

When you’re driving down the highway and you see the Golden Arches, you know that there is a McDonalds nearby. You look in your rearview mirror and see a car with a hood ornament that is a three-pointed star. You know right away that you are being followed by a Mercedes. A flag with stars and bars snaps smartly from the flagpole. You know you are in the United States of America.

There is something about a symbol that captures the imagination. Perhaps that is because one picture is worth a thousand words. Every major world faith has a symbol.

The symbol of Hinduism is the spinning wheel, which stands for the endless cycle of life and death and reincarnation. You can see it on the Indian flag. The symbol of Buddhism is the lotus blossom, which is supposed to represent the emergence of beauty and harmony out of the muddy waters of chaos.

The symbol of Judaism is the six-pointed star of David. It’s on the flag of Israel. The symbol of Islam is the crescent. It is on the flag of Turkey and Pakistan and other Islamic nations. The symbol of atheistic Communism is the hammer and sickle, representing industry and agriculture; the brotherhood of factory workers and farmers.

What is the symbol of Christianity? It is the cross. You can see it on the steeples of churches and worn around people’s necks. The floorplan of a great cathedral is laid out in the shape of a cross.

The cross is the universal symbol of Christianity because you can only grasp what it means to be a Christian when you come to grips with the cross.

Jesus Christ was a great teacher, and a great healer. He performed wonderful miracles and He lived a holy life. But none of those things are the most important thing about him. The most important thing to know about Jesus was that he died on the cross.

Let’s take a look back in history for a moment. The cross was an instrument of torture and death. It was invented by the Assyrians as a means of punishing and humiliating their enemies. It was later adopted by the Greeks, and perfected by the Romans

In fact, by the 1st century, crucifixion had become the standard Roman method of executing slaves and prisoners. The great Roman historian Cicero declared “Let the very name of the cross be far away not only from the body of a Roman citizen, but even from his thoughts.”

It’s hard, in that context, to imagine a more unlikely object becoming the symbol of the church than the cross. The equivalent in the 20th century would be the symbol of a hangman’s noose, or a picture of an electric chair.

Yet the cross became the symbol of the church, and the focal point of its teaching. Far from trying to cover up the fact that their leader had died an ignominious death on a Roman cross, the early Christians actually gloried in it. Nowhere do we see this more clearly than in the preaching of Paul.

1 Corinthians 2:1 When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Galatians 6:14 May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ

The cross, which dignified Romans found so objectionable, so scandalous, is mentioned no less than 76 times in the New Testament, in virtually every book.

There are three important things you need to know tonight about the cross:

1. The cross was God’s idea…

The cross was a terrible instrument of human wickedness and cruelty. But it was also an instrument that God used to fulfill His purposes. On the Day of Pentecost, Peter said to the Jews of Jerusalem:

This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.

At another time, Peter said “Now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did your leaders. But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ would suffer.”

The cross was no accident in God’s eyes. Far from it! It was the means God had chosen to use to purchase our redemption.

But why did Jesus have to die on a cross? Couldn’t he have died some other way? Why couldn’t he have been stoned to death, or beheaded, or drowned?

There’s a very specific reason for the cross, and this is the second thing you need to know about it.

2. The cross was the sign of God’s curse on the sinner…

The main reason that most Jews today do not accept Jesus Christ as their Messiah is precisely because he died on a cross and not in some other way. Why is the cross such an insurmountable problem for them? Because of what the Jewish Law says…

Deuteronomy 21:22-23 If a man guilty of a capital offense is put to death and his body is hung on a tree, you must not leave his body on the tree overnight. Be sure to bury him that same day, because anyone who is hung on a tree is under God’s curse.

The Jew reasons “Anyone hung on a tree is under the curse of God. Jesus of Nazareth was hung on a tree, ergo, he cannot be the Messiah”.

Can a cross be considered a tree? It most certainly can. The Romans themselves referred to the cross as the “arbor infelix”, the barren tree. And the writers of the New Testament go out of their way to refer to the cross of Jesus Christ as a tree.

They wanted everyone, especially their fellow Jews, to understand that Jesus, as he hung on that Roman tree, was under the curse of God.

You would think that, if they wanted to be successful in winning Jews over to Christianity, they would want to hush up the fact that Jesus died on a tree. But they didn’t. They went out of their way to emphasize it.

1 Peter 2:24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree

Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”

When Jesus died on the cross, he became accursed of God. He became our substitute, the one who died in our place. He bore the brunt of sin’s penalty. He took the curse that we deserved so that we would not have to.

Once upon a time, there was a little boy who had a severe allergic reaction to bee stings. The doctor warned his parents that one sting from a bee could quite possibly kill their son. They had to take great precautions when he was outdoors.

One day, the father took his son fishing. As they were sitting there on the dock, all of a sudden, the father was stung by a bee. Instinctively he swatted it, only to see it land on the arm of his son sitting next to him. But the father did not panic. In fact he had no fear at all for his son’s safety. Why?

Because he knew that he had already received the bee sting himself. And he knew that bees can only sting once. The bee that was sitting on his son’s arm was totally harmless. It had been disarmed—it had lost its power to sting. It couldn’t sting the son, because it had already stung the father.

When Jesus died on the cross, he took the sting of death and sin for us. That’s why Paul said in 1 Cor. 15: “Where, O grave, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”

The cross was the means by which the Son of God took away the sting of death by bearing it himself.

That’s why Christians are not ashamed to admit that Jesus died on a tree. Quite the contrary: we’re glad that he did. Because the Scripture says that in so doing, he was assuming on our behalf, and in our place, the curse of God against sin.

Far from disqualifying him to be the Messiah, the fact that Jesus died on a tree as our substitute shows that he is the Messiah; the suffering servant of God, the Redeemer of Israel and the whole world.

3. The cross is the reason we exalt Jesus Christ today…

The interesting thing about the early Christians’ preaching of the Gospel is that they preached Christ crucified. They certainly mentioned the Resurrection, but the Gospel they preached was not a resurrection Gospel, it was a crucifixion Gospel. The crucifixion is where they placed all their emphasis.

Because that is where Jesus placed his emphasis. He constantly spoke to his disciples about his impending death. And, although they did not understand it at the time, Jesus used the kind of language which showed that he knew he was going to be crucified. He spoke of himself being lifted up, as one is lifted up on a cross and left hanging between heaven and earth.

John 12:32 But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself.” He said this to show the kind of death he was going to die.

John 3:14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

John 8:28 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am the one I claim to be

The crucifixion is why we give glory to Christ. Because it was on the cross that love’s redeeming work was done.

Philippians 2:8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

When we catch a glimpse of heaven in the book of Revelation, the climax of the Bible - the completion of God’s great program of redemption, we see Jesus Christ, the central figure. The multiplied thousands upon thousands of his redeemed people and the angels - a great throng that no one can number - bow down and worship him. And what do they say?

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.”

They say that because the cross was Jesus’ greatest accomplishment. By the cross, he purchased our salvation.

1. The cross was God’s idea.

2. The cross was the means by which God placed on his Son the curse for our sins.

3. The cross is the reason we give glory to Jesus Christ.

When Jesus designed a service to help us remember Him, he didn’t design a service that would remind us of his birth. I suppose he could have. He could have had us pass out to one another little pieces of straw to remind us of the manger in which he lay. Nor did he design a service that would remind us of his resurrection. Perhaps he could have had us take in our hands a little stone to remind us of the stone that was rolled away from the tomb.

He designed a service that would remind us of what he did on the cross. He had us eat some bread to remind us of His broken body and drink some wine that would remind us of his shed blood. Because the cross is the reason he came. He came to die for you and me.

That is why we glory in the cross on Good Friday. We come to remember. We come to give thanks. We echo the words of Charles Wesley:

O that our faith may never move,

But stand unshaken as thy love!

Sure evidence of things unseen,

Now let it pass the years between,

And view thee bleeding on the Tree,

My God, who dies for me, for me.