Message of the Cross

When I was five or six years old -- I don't remember my exact age -- I frequently played with the neighbor girl who lived across the road from us. She was a year younger than I was, and we often tramped around our respective yards as we made up adventures to act out for our dolls.

Even at that young age, the Holy Spirit was working in me to give me a missionary's heart. I wanted to tell other people about Jesus. As a five or six year old, my understanding of Jesus' redemptive work on the cross was very limited, but I understood the heart of it: The world needs Jesus. Without Him, we're lost. With Him, we have a rich inheritance. I couldn't put it in so many words, but I understood the gist.

My friend's family were not Christians. So in my missionary zeal one day while we were playing on the cement slab outside of our utility room, I talked to my friend. I told her that Jesus loved her and died on the cross for her sins, and that to go to heaven someday, she needed to ask Him to live in her heart. Then I prayed with her, asking her to repeat after me. Which she did.

It was the message of a child, because after I prayed with her (this is really embarrassing, but I'll tell it anyway, because it brings me to my point), I decided to, you know... "decorate" this little present I'd just wrapped. "You have to pray the prayer three times," I told her.

And just like that, my missionary message went from something incredibly special and meaningful to the story of Aladdin and the genie of the lamp, who with a quick rub of the lamp had three wishes for the asking. It went from the power and mystery and intimacy of Jesus and His incredible plan... to fantasy and magic.

And I cringe even today over it... and pray that the Lord worked around my mistake in the heart of my friend, and eventually brought her to know Him in His real power and awesome wonder, and not in the limited lens I placed over our conversation with my thoughtless words.

I didn't get very far in 1 Corinthians again; I'm finding -- like I did when I went through the book of James -- that the message in the words is so very rich, it's difficult to move more than a few verses at a time. It's like eating one of those delicious chocolate lava cakes. You manage a few bites, and it's the best thing you've ever put in your mouth... but it's so rich, you immediately need to down half your glass of water to be able to spread out the impact on your taste buds.

Anyway, in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Paul says: "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. I came to you in weakness and fear and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power."

I love this morsel of rich chocolate. Paul strips down the message of the cross he's mentioned in 1:18. In just a few sentences, he removes Pharisaical laws and the rigors and traditions of the Jewish observances (though he himself is a Jew and -- in regard to the law -- a Pharisee himself). Paul says in Philippians 3:4-6: "If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: Circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless."

But look where he goes with it: "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for Whose sake I have lost all things." Aaah! I love it!

Y'all, Paul, though he was an apostle, called by Christ Himself to do missionary work, had never met Christ in His physical body while Jesus walked the earth, but look at how Paul refers to Him. He knows Christ, and because of the amazing, awesome power of knowing Christ, he willingly puts aside everything else.

He strips it down to the bare essentials. "I have resolved to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified!"

Hallelujah!

No repeating the message three times, no rubbing the magic lamp, you don't have to kneel in a certain way. You don't have to decide how to raise your hands: Cup your hands in front of you? Raise them half way? All the way with no kinks in the elbows. You don't have to make a certain quota of leadership committees, or sing only Hillsong Worship or sing only Bethel Music or only traditional hymns. You don't have to speak in tongues or prophesy or evangelize or teach or preach or show hospitality. Those are all gifts of the Holy Spirit, and they do come with living a life sold out to Jesus...

But look what comes first. "I have resolved to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

When the music fades... and all is stripped away... and I simply come...

Y'all, I wish you could have been in my living room this morning. I wish we could have had a corporate worship session; the Holy Spirit was moving. Maybe we can; I'd love to open up my home for worship. 

This morning, as I prayed, the Lord reminded me of the time I had planted lilac slips in my yard outside; my mother had sent them up from her bushes she'd had in her yard in Asheville where they lived, and my dad and I worked hard to dig holes for them and rest them in the ground. Before long, my driveway was lined with small single-stemmed lilac plants that looked more like weeds than anything else.

In my prayer time, though, the Lord brought me back to those lilac bushes, and He showed them to me as they are now (towering above my head, creating a thick and tall hedge along the edge of my driveway). He said: Watch this, and as I watched, the lilac bushes grew so high, they towered above my head like trees, and so thick, it was like standing on the edge of a forest and looking into it, and there was no end, no "other side."

He said: "When you begin with the message of the cross, the forest is the result, not the other way around."

It brought me to my knees. What a thought: If we bring the forest to the world -- "Rub the lamp three times" -- what we get is confusion, derision, and unbelief. If we bring the message of the cross to the world, the Holy Spirit grows the forest. 

So often we get it mixed around. Join this church or denomination, do these things, pay attention to these enumerations of how to live a holy life...

I've been saying this since I began this blog last year, and I've been saying it even more frequently now: Strip it down.

Get back to the basics. The message of the world is cluttered and messy. The message of the cross is simple: 

Jesus died in your place. He holds out his nail-scarred hands to take your sins. When you hand your life to Him, He takes your sin and drops it off as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12). He did it all on the day He spread his arms and said: "It is finished." Three days later, He came back from death... the only One to ever do so... because He loves you that much. Someday soon, He is coming back to reign as the King of kings for all eternity. 

That's the message of the cross. And it requires a decision from you: Will you hand Him your eternal life? Because we all have eternal lives -- whether our lives end up in heaven with Jesus... or in hell with the Deceiver -- it's up to you. Yes, I said hell, but you should note: Hell was not created for people. Jesus Himself says in Matthew 25:41 in regard to the Day of Judgment: "Then [God] will say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for... for who?... prepared for the devil and his angels.'"

So yes, hell is real. But so is heaven, and so is the grace and the mercy and the redemption and the beauty of the message of the cross. We can be free from sin and death: "Because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death!" 

That's good news! That's the message of the cross!

I was going to go into all sorts of cool things I discovered today while I was reading in Acts 18 about Apollos and about Paul's time in Corinth and Priscilla and Aquila, and there's just some really awesome background to this letter to the Corinthians... but it'll keep. Ask me about it sometime. Quite literally, I love nothing better than Jesus and His Word, and I always love to talk about Him. For now, take that message, take that lilac slip and plant it. The Holy Spirit will bring the forest.