Читать книгу The Grace-Filled Life - Maxie Dunnam - Страница 14

JOHN 18:1-11; 1 CORINTHIANS 1:1-25; 1 CORINTHIANS 2:1-5

John Milton was one of the great English poets. In 1629, he wrote his lovely poem On the Morning of Christ's Nativity. A year later, he attempted to write a companion poem entitled The Passion. After some eight toilsome verses, he gave up. Sometime later, he wrote these words about the unfinished poem, "The subject that author finding to be above the years he had when he wrote it, and nothing satisfied with what was begun, left it unfinished." Though we are powerless to adequately put into words the full meaning of the Cross, we cannot leave the matter "unfinished" as Milton did. There is something haunting about it that will not let us put it aside.

BEYOND OUR KNOWING

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18)

If ever there was a person of one subject, it was Paul. His mind and heart are set like flint: "I decided [Some translations have 'determined.'] to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2). He was confident that the "wisdom" of God was most clearly expressed in the Cross. The depth of this wisdom is beyond what we can fathom; we depend on the Spirit for revelation and the demonstration of the power of the Cross.

A popular monk in the Middle Ages announced that in the cathedral that evening he would preach a sermon on the love of God. The people gathered and stood in silence waiting for the service while the sunlight streamed through the beautiful windows. When the last glint of color had faded from the windows, the old monk took a candle from the altar. Walking to the life-size figure of Christ on the cross, he held the light beneath the wounds of the feet, then His hands, then His side. Still without a word, he let the light shine on the thorn-crowned brow.

That was his sermon. The people stood in silence and wept. They knew they were at the center of mystery beyond their knowing, that they were looking at the love of God, the image of the invisible God giving himself for us—a love so deep, so inclusive, so expansive, so powerful, so complete that the mind could not comprehend nor measure it, nor words express it.

Paul knew that too. He comes back to it again and again: the purpose and power of the Cross. We could explore it from many directions, but let's focus on Christ and the Cross as the power and wisdom of God.

Look for a moment at Jesus just prior to the Cross. He is in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knows that the Cross is imminent, and he is wrestling with it, praying that "the cup" might pass from him. His enemies come with their torches looking for him. They didn't need torches. He was not hiding, but was there in the moonlit openness for all to see.

What courage! And what authority! They came in numbers and power. He asked them, "Whom are you looking for?" They responded, "Jesus of Nazareth." With boldness, Jesus said, "I am he." What happened then? Scripture says, "They stepped back and fell to the ground" (John 18:4-6). There was authority in his very being.

The scene shows us that Jesus chose to die. He could have escaped death. He chose to die. He even helped his enemies arrest him. He was utterly obedient. "Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?" (18:11). This was God's will, and that was enough for Jesus.

Earlier in the evening, before his arrest in the garden, Jesus was in the Upper Room with his disciples celebrating Passover together. He confronted Judas with the fact that he was going to betray him. He even gave Judas the command, "Do quickly what you are going to do," (13:27) and the Scripture says that after Judas had received the bread, he went out into the night.

Jesus knew where he was going, what he was going to do, and what it was going to result in—his own crucifixion—the Cross. When this happened with Judas, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him" (13:31).

GOD'S WISDOM AND POWER

So John presents the Cross as the highest point of Jesus' Glory. With this in mind, let's look at the Cross as the wisdom and power of God.

The Cross is the revelation of God's heart. Here we see that there is more love in God than we can even imagine. That means there is more love in him than there is sin in us. We need to know this because it is quite possible for us to become so aware of our wretched tendency that we grow oblivious to God's redemptive capacity. Jesus did not die on Calvary simply to fulfill prophecy from the Old Testament. Neither did he suffer and die as a human sacrifice to appease an angry deity. The Bible clearly and frequently says that ours is a God of love and mercy. Jesus died on the cross to show the extent to which God will go to reveal to us just how much we are loved. The cross is one of the most dramatic reminders of God's unmerited and unending grace. At the cross, we are assured there is more love in God than sin in us.

Paul says our first need is for forgiveness and power over sin. In Colossians 1:22, he paints a beautiful picture of what the Cross does for us. "He has now reconciled [you] in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable before him" (RSV).

Put the truth of the Cross as the wisdom and power of God another way. The Cross is the throne of God's saving power.

Halford E. Luccock used to laugh at the hymnal that has as number 364 Jesus Demands My All; then, at the bottom of the page, it reads, "For an easier version, see Number 365." There is not only no easier version for eternal salvation; there is no other version than the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross is the throne of God's saving power.

A preacher wrote me a letter expressing his opposition to the position I had taken in my lecture on evangelism. The point that he argued against was my contention that what we think of Jesus Christ will determine what we do about evangelism. I was pleading for a recovery of belief and commitment to the uniqueness of Christ as God's way of salvation for all humankind. I was also calling into question the belief in universal salvation.

The fellow shared a story from a lecture he had heard over twenty years ago. The only thing he remembered about it was the exchange between the theological lecturer and an overly enthusiastic super-evangelical student. The student asked the impertinent question, "When were you saved?" The professor thought for a moment. "When was I saved?" he asked rhetorically, then paused. "I was saved two thousand years ago."

The writer used this to argue against the point of my questioning universal salvation, the belief that eventually everyone is going to be saved. He offered the story to refute my position, but I take it as support. Our salvation occurred two thousand years ago—on the Cross of Jesus. The Cross is the throne of Christ's saving power.

Do you remember the words of the liturgy of Holy Communion? "Jesus Christ who made there, by the one offering of Himself, a full, sufficient sacri-fice for the sins of the whole world." So it is; so it shall always be. The Cross is the throne of Christ's saving grace. And, as the revelation of God in Jesus dying on the cross, it tells us that there is more love in God than sin in us.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

What does it mean to be a Christian with power and authority? There is more love in God than there is sin in us: how might the truth of this statement affect your life today? How does what we think of Christ influence how we witness and how the church practices evangelism?