"For Christ suffered for you and left
you a personal example, and wants you to follow in His steps.......
And He personally bore our sins in His own body on the Cross,
so that we might be dead to sin and be alive to all that is
good. It was the suffering that He bore which has healed you."
1 Peter 2:24.
The Cross remains the enduring symbol of the Christian religion.
It is the dominating theme in Christian art and architecture.
And yet it is an unlikely symbol for people love life and
the Cross points to death; they love victory but the Cross
tells of defeat.
Strange then that the Cross came to be chosen as something
for which to be proud and not ashamed; that it was declared
to be
"the final demonstration of human
sin and folly the ultimate expression of human jealousies
and contrariness ....... the sign of the inner tragedy of
all human existence."
But while the Cross illustrates the weaknesses and ignorances
of humanity in its treatment of Jesus it also speaks of self-sacrifice,
courage and dependence on God. The man on the Cross showed
that He was able to retain his faith untouched by the most
awful suffering from human cruelty. He made the Cross, not
one of defeat but of victory, not of death but life. It was:
"the outward and visible sign that
the inner life of God can not be touched even by the darkest
devices of sinful human nature."
The story of the Cross of Calvary and the crucifixion of
Jesus has so affected people that many have found faith in
Him as they realised what He did for them by the Cross. It
showed the extent to which God would go to bring people to
Himself in faith and love.
The fact that men see God in the face of Jesus Christ is
proved in the Cross of Christ which says so much about the
self-sacrifice of Christ. His supreme courage and disinterest
in His personal safety, is the reminder that in everything
He said and did in the days of His flesh. He was saying that
God is like this. By Him the people were shown God as He is
for when Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, comforted
the bereaved. He was telling them that this is how God cares
for you.
The great single truth of the Christian faith is that God
is like Jesus. And the Cross means people can say, "God
loves me enough to do that for me."
Peter Abelard said, "If only men could see the Cross,
the awfulness of sin, and the wonder of God, they would hate
sin and adore God."
The reality is that to many the Cross represents something
that happened long ago which does not affect their thinking
about God and themselves. There are those to whom the Cross
of Jesus is an irrelevancy for they do not want to see life
as He saw it. God and people as He saw them or to live by
a code of conduct which demands standards of morality and
decency disagreeable to them.
The Cross is so offensive to them that in all ages they have
wanted to be rid of it, and to deny that it has any value
to them in their secular world. The cross, though, is the
reminder to them that if the human race is to triumph in the
conflict between the flesh and the spirit. Good and evil,
the lower and higher natures, it must see the cross and what
it represents as the victory sign by which to conquer the
sins of the world.
The Cross was not an end but a beginning, for Christ lives
on in people and by His Church whenever and wherever He is
made known.
It is the task of the Christian and the church to tell people
everywhere, and all the time, of the significance of the Cross
and what it means to God and to people in His relationships
with them.
"At the Cross, at the Cross where
I first saw the light.
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
It was there by faith I received my sight.
And now I am happy all the day."
This was a simple rhymed testimony of one man's experience.
Such an experience is often echoed by others in words applicable
and appropriate for them.
Canon Dr. S.E. Long
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