Covenant Presbyterian Church

We are regularly confronted with men who feel quite competent to tell us what is wrong with the world. If we only had more educational programs for the poor, after school care for children of single parents, a more effective UN presence in oppressed nations, then crime, poverty, and ignorance could be defeated. Conservatives tells us that government is the problem, out of control spending, high taxation, and globalism. More sensitive souls identify racism, prejudice, environmental abuse, and hatred as the source of the evils in the world. Everyone has an opinion on the nature of the problem. I would suggest that the greatest problem in the world today is its lack of faith in Jesus Christ as the way, truth, and life.
Even the church has lost its proper sense of mystery, wonder, and awe that comes from kneeling at the foot of his cross and understanding the significance of our Savior’s death. This loss, more than any other single factor, also explains the church’s loss of power. You see, the cross is not only our only legitimate boast; it is the one weapon before which Satan must flee. Once we turn away from the glory of the cross, our preaching loses its compulsion, our worship its humble gratitude, and our lives the motivation for obedience. It is the cross alone in which we must glory - not our programs, our relevance, or our sophistication. All is rubbish if we lose sight of Jesus Christ, and him crucified.

Part of this loss is to be explained by the manner in which the cross has been grossly misinterpreted by liberal scholars, pastors, and Christians, who are often embarrassed by blood atonement, crave the acceptance of the world, and are unwilling to glory in the sufferings of a crucified Savior. This loss is also due to the manner in which the cross has been reduced to the death of a great martyr, an unsuccessful revolutionary, or a misunderstood rabbi. The loss of mystery and awe before the foot of the cross is sometimes to be explained by the gross materialism of our age, the rise of atheist science, which leaves no room for the Christian God, and the entrenchment of radical pluralism, which views the cross as simply one significant religious event in the history of man’s attempt to understand our ultimately unknowable universe. And, we cannot fail to mention that the glory of Christ will be tarnished in the life of the church to the degree that we allow the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches to choke out the word. The cross must be everything, or it will become nothing.

Pause again, believer, before the foot of the cross, and marvel at its meaning. It is the most significant event in the history of the world. To appreciate the cross, however, we must see something of our own standing before God apart from Christ. It was sin that nailed Jesus to the cross - not sin in general or the gross examples of sin that all despise - it was the sins of anger, gossip, lust, anger, meanness, miserliness, worldliness, and discontent. On the cross, Jesus bore the penalty those sins deserved and would have received had not God intervened to provide an acceptable substitute to satisfy his perfect justice. The reason men do not marvel before the cross is that they misunderstand sin. It is trivialized, excused, mocked, and treated as a "mistake" rather than an affront to God. If you would regain a sense of wonder before the foot of Jesus’ cross, you must reconsider the ugliness, treachery, and unbelievable ingratitude associated with every sin.

Consider the cross from the perspective of God. He intervened. He did not leave fallen man in his slavery. Incomparable love is manifested at the cross as well as inflexible justice. They intersected in those crosspieces one dark day two thousand years ago. Again, however, men no longer understand love. Love is sex. Love is emotion. Love is feeling. Love is "accept me as I am without judgment." God’s love, on the other hand, is the action of his mercy and goodness to sinners that deserve justice, pity toward those that deserve his wrath, and omnipotence savingly exercised toward the impotent. Love is gracious sacrifice. As long, however, as there is a self-help section at the local bookstore, as long as love is viewed in shallow, selfish, and humanistic terms, men will never bow before the cross, broken, crying, and utterly humbled before the amazing love of God. He will never be done with himself, emptied of his vain efforts toward self-improvement, freed from the delusion of love masquerading as lust, indulgence, and ego.

It does not have to be this way. The world can experience another reformation of thought and life. It will. Jesus is praying that all men will know that the Father has sent him. A significant portion of the church is currently standing in the way of this reformation. As unbelievable as it may seem, the majority of professing believers do not bow in wonder before the cross. They have lost the attitude of Paul: "And God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." And, "For me to live is Christ." They are too sophisticated, too scientific, too preoccupied with the fleeting to embrace the glory of the cross, a crucified Savior, and a life dedicated to thankful obedience in response to his indescribable gift.

This is the problem in the world today. We do not hear the thunder of Calvary, echoing the justice of God across the heavens. We do not feel the darkness that descended that day, as the Father turned his face from his Son so that he would not have to turn his face from us. We do not see the blood flowing from his pierced side, testifying that redemption is accomplished, Satan defeated, and the Father satisfied. And having lost these impressions, we carefully place the gospel story in the back of our minds, glad we are not going to hell, but unable to create and sustain the zeal, sacrifice, and boldness that transformed a humble band of Galilean fisherman and women into heralds of the day of salvation from sin, darkness, chaos, and tyranny.

Child of God, let it never be said of you that you have lost the mystery, wonder, and awe of the cross. Return to Calvary often in your thoughts and prayers. Though they did not know it, when the Romans dropped the cross in the earth that day, God planted his glorious flag of salvation. It is that flag to which all will rally, to which all the nations will throng. This will only occur, however, as the church recovers and retains the belief that it owes everything to the blood of Jesus Christ, that daily life must always be pursued with the eye of faith beholding our Savior’s humble standard, and that every promise of God is ours because the Son of God incarnate bled and died for our salvation. Lose everything else, but do not lose the wonder of the cross. Sell everything for this pearl, but do not sell your soul to the world for a few crumbs of supposed respectability and acceptance. It will not profit us if we gain the whole world but lose our own soul. The only way to keep our soul is to have and hold the mystery, wonder, and awe of Jesus Christ, and him crucified.