Dying to Live
Although we have turned it into a pretty picture, a piece of jewelry, and a steeple topper, the cross is and always has been a symbol of death. Crucifixion is the cruelest means of execution ever dreamed up in the demented mind of a depraved world.
To Christ, the cross meant more than indescribable suffering and physical death; it also meant dying to His will in order to submit Himself to the will of His Father (Matthew 26:39, 42). As a result of His supreme act of obedience, Christ has become “the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him” (Hebrews 5:7-9).In other words, only those like Christ—willing to take up the cross, deny themselves, and do the will of God—will be saved by Christ (Matthew 7:21)!
This explains Jesus’ words in Mark 8:36, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Contrary to popular opinion, there is no such thing as cheap or costless Christianity (Luke 14:26-33). Neither is there such a thing as a “crossless“ follower of Christ. As Amy Carmichael once poignantly put it in a poem:
No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And pierced are the feet that follow me;
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who has no wound nor scar?
There is no easy road to Calvary, but there is no other way to Heaven. Like our Lord, we too may sweat blood as we contemplate the cross and stumble beneath it as we bear its heavy load (Luke 22:44; John 19:17; Mark 15:21). Still, bear it we must if we hope to live forever, for “whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for [Christ’s] sake shall find it" (Matthew 16:25).
Recently, more than 400 people attended a rally for gay rights at the Metropolitan Community Church in Tampa’s Seminole Heights. According to the Tampa Tribune, the church’s “large wooden cross…was draped [for the occasion] with rainbow bunting, symbolizing the gay community.” Today, many people are attempting to confiscate the cross as a symbol for their cause. Instead of being draped upon the cross themselves—surrendering their will to God’s—they drape the cross with their personal colors, as though God has acquiesced to their selfish and sinful wants, wishes, and whims.
Far from symbolizing the gay community or any other earthly cause, the cross symbolizes death. For Christ, it was the place to die for our sins. For us, it is the place to die to our sins. Eternal life is possible because Christ took up His cross; it is only appropriated, however, when we take up our cross. To use the cross as a standard for our sin is not only sacrilegious, but spiritual suicidal.
Don Walton
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