THE BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?

EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?

GOD - MAN
Is Jesus really God?

RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?

RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?

SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?

TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.

SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.

FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?

GUIDANCE
How does God guide?

REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.

BORN AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?

SAVING FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven

ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?

TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?

MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.

THE CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the new millennium.

PURPOSE
How can I find a great purpose for living?

IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of God.

SELF-ESTEEM
How can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.

LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.

THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.

Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.

Why the cross is not popular

To the first century Christians in Corinth, Paul wrote: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing…we preach Christ crucified: a stumblingblock to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength” (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23-25).

At the 1988 IFES European Conference on Evangelism in Wurzburg, Germany, beneath a vast banner, “The love of Christ moves us”, John Stott spoke on Paul's preaching on the cross of Christ in Corinth, and the objections to his message—intellectual, religious, personal, moral and political—to an audience of 1,000 students from across the continent. He described the first-century Corinthians as “typical” and added that the world in which we live today is just as hostile to the gospel:

We are fooling ourselves if we imagine that we can ever make the authentic gospel popular...It's too simple in an age of rationalism; too narrow in an age of pluralism; too humiliating in an age of self-confidence; too demanding in an age of permissiveness; and too unpatriotic in an age of blind nationalism... What are we going to share with our friends? The authentic gospel or a gospel that has been corrupted in order to suit human pride?

Let’s look at these five points:

Too simple in an age of rationalism. Though there is much about the cross we will never fully understand in this life, its basic message is simple enough for a small child to understand: Jesus loved me so much he was willing to die for my sins. He rose from the dead, and if I acknowledge my need, ask for his forgiveness and invite him into my life as my Lord and Saviour, then he will not only forgive me and become my friend and companion through life, but will one day welcome me into his forever kingdom. The simplicity lies in the fact that I don’t have to “do” anything to become a recipient of God’s grace. God has done it all. My pride tells me that I should have to do something difficult to earn such a wonderful gift. However, the New Testament declares that there is nothing I can do, and until I am prepared to acknowledge that fact I am not likely to receive it. Like a climber who is thrown a rope while clinging desperately to some protrusion from a cliff face, all I can do is to reach out and take the help offered. Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Though there is a place for exploring the truth of the gospel from an intellectual perspective, I need to be humble enough to acknowledge that God knows a bit more than I do. Peter Kreeft, in Making Sense Out of Suffering, describes God’s way of saving humanity as follows:

That God should step right into Satan’s trap, Satan’s world, Satan’s game, the jaws of death on the cross; that he should give Satan the opportunity to cherish forever, in dark, satanic glee, the terrible words from God to God, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”—this was something “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived” (I Corinthians 2:9). That God should take alienation away from man by inserting alienation into the very heart of God; that he should conquer evil by allowing it its supreme, unthinkable triumph, deicide, the introduction of death into the life of God, the God of life, the Immortal One; that he should destroy the power of evil by allowing it to destroy him—this is “the foolishness of God [that] is wiser than men, and the weakness of God [that] is stronger than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25).

It is interesting that the Greek word for “foolishness” that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 1:18 and 23 to describe the view which many hold of the gospel is "môria", from which comes our word “moron”. You must be a moron to believe that one criminally executed, and between two bandits at that, is the Saviour of the world! Our intellectual and moral pride can keep us from accepting God’s free gift of salvation. To just repent and believe is too simple.

Too narrow in an age of pluralism. If it is true that Jesus really was God present in the flesh, the second person in the divine Trinity, and that the main purpose of his coming was to die for my sins so that I might be reconciled to God, then it is pure logic to suppose that he is the one to whom I should go for that reconciliation. Because of who he is and what he has done, he had every right to make the statement, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The early Christians also had every right to say, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). They were merely stating the truth. However, in this postmodern age, when the greatest virtue is tolerance of every view, this is far to narrow! I explore this theme further in the booklet What Is Truth and Does It Matter? Of course, if you don’t believe that we are sinners in need of forgiveness, then maybe there are other ways of finding God. This brings us to our next point, which, I suspect, for most people who don’t like the idea that salvation is by means of the cross, is the heart of the problem.

Too humiliating in an age of self-confidence. Celsus, writing in the second century, was a formidable critic of the Christian faith. For him it was a contemptible religion and he regarded the death of its saviour its most pitiful expression. He mocked the Christian notion of the “tree of life” and “resurrection of the dead” as complete fables. “What drunken old women, telling stories to lull a small child to sleep would not be ashamed of muttering such preposterous things?” The cross in the twenty-first century is no more popular for obvious reasons. The cross, as it is presented to us in the New Testament, makes it clear that we are all guilty before God. It brings into the light of day the depths of human sin and the consequences of our pride and disobedience. The cross also makes clear that God does not like sin very much! God’s purity and holiness are such that nothing tainted with evil can live in his presence. Paul tells us that the righteousness and wrath of God are revealed in the gospel (Romans 1:17, 18).

Oswald Chambers died in his early forties, but his books, published posthumously by his wife from his transcribed talks, have been a blessing to many. In his book My Utmost for His Highest, he warns against thinking we can have forgiveness apart from the cross:

Never build your case for forgiveness on the idea that God is our Father and he will forgive us because he loves us! That contradicts the revealed truth of God in Jesus Christ. It makes the cross unnecessary, and the redemption ‘much ado about nothing.’ God forgives sin only because of the death of Christ. Conviction [of sin] is given to us as a gift of shame and repentance; it is the great mercy of God. Jesus Christ hates the sin in people, and Calvary is the measure of his hatred.

And God does not balance up our good deeds and our bad deeds in determining whether he will accept us or not. As John Piper puts it:

There is no salvation by balancing records. There is only salvation by cancelling records. The record of our bad deeds (including our defective good deeds), along with the just penalties that each deserves, must be blotted out—not balanced. This is what Christ suffered and died to accomplish (Colossians 2:13, 14).

The cross also reveals that we can do nothing to rescue ourselves from our predicament, which is certain judgement. We need a Saviour. This is all very humbling and too much for many to accept in an age when there is so much emphasis on our need to believe in ourselves. That is why you will find more people in church on Easter Day than on Good Friday. However, if we are to experience forgiveness and all the good things that God longs to give us, then we must accept God’s verdict on our condition and reach out in humility and faith for all he has to offer.

Gypsy Smith, 1860-1947, was born in a tent, raised in a gypsy camp, never attended a school—not even for a day—yet he influenced the lives of millions of people for God through his powerful preaching. He was converted to Christ at the age of 16 and worked with General William Booth of the Salvation Army for some time before ministering as an itinerant evangelist, working with a variety of organisations all over the world, but particularly in Britain and America. In his autobiography he tells how his father was seeking God and one night dreamed he was travelling through rugged country over rocks and boulders, thorns and briers. His hands were bleeding and his feet torn. Utterly exhausted, he fell to the ground. A person in white raiment appeared and as he lifted his hands he saw the mark of the nails. He knew it was the Lord. Jesus said, “I suffered this for you, and when you give up all and trust me, I will save you.” Shortly after that, Gypsy’s father found Christ.

Dominic Steele, who heads a ministry in Sydney to media professionals “Christians in the Media”, told in Challenge Weekly how he learnt this truth 20 years ago as he sought to find a relationship with God:

What was revolutionary for me was seeing that the initiative in fixing this problem came completely from God. When God sent Jesus to die for me, Jesus paid totally for all my wrong. There was nothing I could contribute.
For me this was very insulting, because I am a self-made person. I have what I have because I have earned it…
I remember sitting with a friend going back and forward over this. Eventually I came to the point where I accepted what he was saying: It’s all from Jesus’ initiative and nothing from me. There’s a powerful sentence in the Bible that puts it clearly, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8, 9)”…
Understanding the resurrection of Jesus and God making him Lord of the universe was next. This was big. From now on Jesus was to be in charge—not Dominic. He was Lord of the universe, but specifically He would be Lord of me. It was January 26th, 1986 that I made the first decision to do something that I didn’t want to do—that Jesus wanted me to do. That was the day I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Saviour. That was the most important day of my life.

The story is told of a mother who once saved her little girl from a burning house, but suffered severe burns on her hands and arms. When the girl grew up, not knowing how her mother’s arms became so scarred, she was ashamed of the scarred, gnarled hands and always insisted that she wore long gloves to cover up the ugliness. One day her daughter asked her mother how her hands became so scarred. The mother told her, for the first time, how she had saved her life with those hands. The daughter wept tears of gratitude and said, “Oh, mother, those are beautiful hands, the most beautiful in the world. Don’t ever hide them again.” Whether the cross of Christ is an embarrassment to us, or whether it is the most significant event in human history, in which we glory (Galatians 6:14), depends on our understanding of who it was that hung there and what he was about.

Too demanding in an age of permissiveness. Jesus said that the most important commandments were to love God with all our hearts, souls and minds and to love our neighbours as much as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40). He said lots of other things too about what he expected of those who would follow him, that I have spelled out in my booklet Does It Matter How We Live? A Christian view of Morality. The sort of demands he makes do not go down well in today’s society.

Paul Wadell, in Becoming Friends, says:

To speak of friendship with God can sound so cozy and consoling, as if we are all snuggling up to God; however, there is no riskier vulnerability than to live in friendship with God, because friends have expectations of each other, and because friends are said to be committed to the same things…Any friend of God is to faithfully embody the ways of God in the world, even to the point of suffering on account of them. There may be grace and glory in being a friend of God, but there is also clearly a cost.

I will explore further what is involved in being a disciple of Jesus in the next chapter.

Too unpatriotic in an age of blind nationalism. Though God chose one particular race of people, the Jews, to prepare for the coming of Christ, the New Testament is very clear that he died for all humans of all ages. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). This means that people of all cultures and nationalities are equally valuable to him. God does not accept or reject people on the basis of their upbringing, gender, social standing, intelligence, political persuasion, particular beliefs, past behaviour, or any other criteria, but only on their response to his love and offer of reconciliation. Facing up to this truth and a willingness to accept those I have considered inferior to myself as of equal value to God are a necessary part of repentance in becoming a follower of Jesus.

Home

Copyright

About the Author

E-mail

Links

BUY RESOURCE MATERIAL

Site design by ttdesign.com