The Power of the Cross

This continues the discussion from the entry "The Person of the Cross". We talked about how Paul's life was forever changed by his encounter with Christ. Paul turned from being the chief persecutor of the early church, to being one of its leaders. How could this radical change take place in a person? Yet this is what we see in Paul. As Paul deals with the many theological issues and questions about life in general, he always comes back to Jesus on the cross. Paul knew the person of the cross and he knew the power of the cross. The cross in Paul's time was an object of shame. It was a place of weakness. No one would have worn a cross around their neck. If you were to have had a family members crucified, you would never mention it to anyone. Yet we see Paul boast in the cross, because for Paul it was a place of liberty. Paul saw the cross as the source of freedom, freedom from self, freedom from the flesh, freedom from the world around him.


In the cross Paul recognized the source of its power rested in the humility of Jesus. Jesus who was God, humbled himself to the point where being God wasn't something to be grasped. He humbled himself to the point of becoming human servant. As a servant he was obedient to death, death on a cross. Paul saw this and was greatly humbled. When we see Jesus on the cross we should hear him saying, "I am here because of you, it is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying!" In light of this, the cross is the ultimate source of humility. At the foot of the cross we all shrink. In doing so we are freed from the burden of self, flesh and the world. How can we live our lives selfishly knowing what Jesus did for us on the cross?


The power of the cross that changed Paul, it is also what drove Paul. In the letter to the Galatians he said this, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20 NIV) If we want to live the life God has called us to live, we must be crucified with Christ, and he must live through us. The way we allow that to happen is to understand what he did on the cross. Jesus loved you and gave himself for you, that is the power of the cross. In this we find the ability to live out our lives to the glory of the Father, which will bring us to the next point in this line of thought, "The Purpose of the Cross".




-ps