The Gospel of the Cross

It was passion. The cross could be understood only through the power of God and his Spirit. An outpouring of passion from almighty God, passion made into words of death, of life, of resurrection; words that taste of wood, that taste of the cross. We preach Christ crucified—not dead, but risen, alive in all his immensity.

The word of the cross remains foolishness until Christ heals the schizophrenia of human wisdom in the mind and heart of the unbeliever who receives God’s beautiful touch. The gospel of the cross cannot be understood by human reason, but only through the Spirit. Jesus is the power and wisdom of God. The gospel rests on the word of the cross, on the crucified Christ who rose on the third day.

We must know that our old self was crucified with him (Rom. 6:6). We must remember that we have crucified the flesh (Galatians 5:24) and walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4). We were dead, and he raised us up with him. The Lord’s passion is understood through the revelation of the word of the cross, of the gospel of salvation.

The gospel of the cross heals the mind’s sight and sets those who are lame in spirit walking; it casts down anxieties and nourishes faith. God wants the world to know him through the message of the cross, through the foolishness of preaching. That is why we celebrate the living Christ. The resurrection dealt a mortal blow to human wisdom, to the rational intellect. No one can know God except through knowing Jesus Christ, eternal life—an argument that breaks the molds of science and reason.

To celebrate the passion of Jesus is to celebrate life. God seated us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 2:6) because he rose again. His death brought death to our corrupt nature; his resurrection caused us to be born again so that we could understand the greatness of the gospel of the cross from a spiritual perspective. The cross remains the center of Christianity. The resurrection was the irrefutable historical event for which thousands of Christians allowed themselves to be burned at the stake, surrendered themselves to the jaws of lions, and endured the most outrageous forms of martyrdom in every age. The resurrection is the gateway to saving faith, its crown, its banner. It can be grasped only through the word of the cross, through the gospel of the hammer and nails, through the blood of the Passover lamb.

All God’s wrath poured out on his Son so that the world might believe in him and be saved: the righteous one for sinners, the innocent one for the guilty, the holy one for those who could not be reconciled. And death could not prevail. It could not prevent all the glory of God from resting upon his head. For an instant; despite the vinegar, the piercing crown, the drunken soldiery gambling for his clothes. That is why it is passion: because of his willingness to die so that the world might live, because of his love for those who follow him, because of his calling to redeem millions of slaves to sin who boast of their perverse condition.

The gospel of the cross has never ceased to be proclaimed and still seeks “fools” who will preach its foolishness, who will boast of nothing except the cross of the Lord (Galatians 6:14), who are conscious of having risen with Christ and of embodying the privilege of being a new creation. God seeks men and women who understand the value of the cross: simple like his fishermen, learned like Nicodemus, foolish to shame the wise, weak to confound the strong, despised because they are unknown so they might teach the exalted know-it-alls a lesson, passionate like the women who stood at the foot of his cross and later told the disciples of the miracle of the empty tomb.

If you, then, have been raised with Christ, seek the things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. (Col. 3:1). Here is the challenge: to look to heaven so that our message may lose its frail humanity, our preaching may drown in its own inconsistencies, and Christ may remain—his gospel from heaven, the irreplaceable word of the cross.

May God bless his Word!