GOD'S GREAT NEWS for MAN'S GREAT PROBLEM - Romans 1-8

How Important is the Cross?

If you are like me, you often think of the cross of Christ as one variable in the overall equation of Christianity. I remember sitting in church as a kid, growing up attending youth groups and Christian camps, where I heard various and sundry things about the Christian faith: God is love ... Jesus wants to be your friend ... Invite Jesus Christ into your heart ... How amazing that God became man ... Jesus died for your sins, so you won't have to go to hell ... You really need to read your Bible. All these words are true. But in studying Romans and the rest of the Bible, I have come to view the cross differently. Just how important is the cross of Christ?

Over the last few weeks, we have been reflecting on the cross of Christ as the heart of the gospel, the heart of God's great news in Romans 1-8. The cross was God's great answer to the human problem in Rom. 3:21-26, and the cross is the pivot point of human history in Rom. 5:12-21. As we have studied this, I have been reading a book entitled On a Hill Too Far Away, and its thesis is that the cross of Christ needs to be erected in the center of our churches, not relegated to the margins. The man who wrote this book, John Fischer, has very astutely identified the chief problem of comfortable Christianity in the late 20th century: our cross is too polished, and it is far too distant from both our evangelistic proclamation and our worship. Over and against this modern malaise, Fischer finds an old church in New England that seems to have been built to avoid this problem. Here are his descriptions of the Presbyterian Church of Old Greenwich, Connecticut, found on pg. 15, 16, 26:

"In Old Greenwich, Connecticut, stands a church with a cross in it. Unlike most churches, whose crosses adorn the front wall behind the preacher, this one is bolted down into the concrete floor in front of the platform, not more than three feet from where the preacher stands. Its positioning defies reason and art and convention. No architect in his right mind would have designed such a placement. It is an obstruction. The preacher's words have to pass through it; the congregation's eyes always have it somewhere in view, so that even when they look away, it is still there, impressed on the back wall of the retina. It is a sturdy wooden cross, ten feet tall. The cross bar is set high on the vertical beam, so high that is seems out of proportion compared to other more proportionate crosses that decorate other more proportionate churches. Nothing about this cross is pretty. It is made of raw, untreated wood, and when you see it up close, you think of splinters, of something hard ... immovable. It is set deep in the concrete floor as well as bolted to it ...

"The Old Greenwich cross has to be reckoned with. It is in the middle of everything -- weddings, funerals, concerts, baptisms, dedications, prayer meetings, Sunday morning services. Where do you put the casket? Are the bride and groom going to stand on either side of it? What if the bride's dress gets caught in a splinter? Where do you put the horn section? Where do you stand? Every event that takes place in this church has to accomodate this cross in some way. It cannot be moved easily like the pulpit, or the platform chairs, or the communion table, or the planters of ivy that line the platform's edge. It's almost as if the church was built around this cross -- as if it were the first thing down before the walls went up and the roof went on. Something tells me that's the way it should be."

So, how important is the cross of Christ? The cross of Christ is not simply one of the variables of the Christian faith: it is the single and only focal point. It is the hub of the wheel of Christian doctrine, around which all other doctrines revolve.

Even our own use of language appeals to the essential nature of the cross. When we are making an argument or stating a point, we often say something like, "The crux of his argument was ..." or "the crux of the issue is ..." But in Latin, the word "crux" means "cross." In Christian faith, the cross is indeed the crux of the issue!!

Today we are going to celebrate together the centrality of the cross of Christ, in three ways. First we will see the cross as the axis around which the whole Bible revolves. Then we will see the cross as the pivot point of human history. Then we will see the cross as the central and only solution to the human problem.

Christ's Cross is the Axis of the Bible

When Paul presents God's great news for man's great problem of sin, he begins by outlining the Biblical foundations of the cross. He writes in Rom. 3:21, "But now apart from the Law the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets." The righteousness of God was demonstrated through the cross of Christ, and the cross was witnessed by the Law and the Prophets. In fact, the cross of Christ is what the entire Hebrew Bible points toward. Without the cross of Christ, the Hebrew Scriptures is a book of empty promises. With the cross of Christ, the Hebrew Scriptures is a book of one great promise well fulfilled, in history, on the day the God-Man died at Calvary.

The fact is, the cross is the central axis of the entire Bible. From the promise of Gen. 3:15 that "... I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel," when the cross and resurrection were first foreshadowed in the Hebrew Scriptures, to Rev. 5 when the angels sing "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing," it is the axis of the Scriptures. From the pathos of God's instructions to Abraham in Gen. 22 to "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah; and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you ..." to the reality in Romans 8:31, 32: "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?," we find the cross to be the axis of the Bible. From the bronze serpent lifted up by Moses in the wilderness to save the people from their lethal snake bites in Numbers 21 to Jesus' teaching of Nicodemus that He was to be lifted up in John 3:14-16: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whoever believes may in Him have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life," it is again the axis of God's Word.

The narrative of the cross is the story at the center of the Bible. It fulfills the great stories of the Hebrew Scriptures: He was the seed looked for in every generation; He was the true ram in the thicket provided on Moriah; He was the final Passover lamb; He was the final atoning sacrifice to end the annual agony of Yom Kippur; He was the Man who became sin for us when he was lifted up like the bronze serpent; He was the kinsman-redeemer prefigured in the love story of Boaz and Ruth; He was the suffering King of Psalm 22; the Suffering Servant of Isaiah; the Jonah cast into the sea to save the ship of humanity. Without Him those stories just trail off into a "..." with no end, rather than a happy ending with an "!" signifying complete resolution.

But is the cross the central point of the NT? Absolutely!! It is described four times as the climax of the four Gospel accounts. Like the fourfold Hallelujahs of Rev. 19, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the Gospels is the fourfold Hallelujah in the middle of our Bibles. It is the event upon which every one of Paul's epistles reflect. To read the New Testament is to read about the cross. Dr. Leon Morris, one of the great scholars of this century, has sought to erect the cross at the center of modern evangelical thought. Both he, and John Stott quoting and endorsing him, affirm that "the cross dominates the New Testament."

Fulfilling the OT promises, dominating the New Testament, and standing at the centerpiece of the greatest statement of the gospel of God in Romans 1-8. The cross is indeed the central axis of the entire Scriptures. It is the centerpiece of God's revelation, where He revealed Himself most humbly and openly, His bleeding heart of love pumping itself to a terrible death on a machine of torture.

And our own Christian thinking and preaching must reflect this if we are to have an adequate answer to the angst of this era. Let me share with you the following story about the turning point in the life of one of my personal heroes, Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Here is what he discovered about the primacy of the cross of Christ, from John Stott's The Cross of Christ. "According to Dr. Douglas Johnson, the first General Secretary of the IVF, this discovery [between the objective and subjective understanding of the atonement] was the turning-point in the ministry of Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones, who occupied an unrivalled position of evangelical leadership in the decades following the Second World War. He confided in several friends that 'a fundamental change took place in his outlook and preaching in the year 1929.' He had, of course, emphasized from the beginning of his ministry the indispensable necessity of the new birth. But, after preaching one night in Bridgend, South Wales, the minister challenged him that 'the cross and the work of Christ' appeared to have little place in his preaching. He went 'at once to his favourite secondhand bookshop and asked the proprietor for the two standard books on the Atonement. The bookseller ... produced R.W. Dale's The Atonement (1875) and James Denney's The Death of Christ (1903). On his return home he gave himself to study, declining both lunch and tea, and causing his wife such anxiety that she telephoned her brother to see whether a doctor should be called. But when he later emerged, he claimed to have found 'the real heart of the gospel and the key to the inner meaning of the Christian faith.' So the content of his preaching changed, and with this its impact. As he himself put it, the basic question was not Anselm's 'why did God become man?' but 'why did Christ die?'"

The cross is the axis of the Scriptures, and it ought to be the heart and soul of Christian preaching, especially now at the end of the 20th century when men and women only want their ears tickled with "how to" formulae, and the word "sin" is decidedly out of vogue. But sin is still our problem, and the cross is still God's solution to that problem. This is why we must continue to see the cross not only as the center of the Scriptures, but as the pivotal event of human history.

Christ's Cross is the Pivot Point of Human History

Most of us today are products of an educational system that presents human history as evolutionary. Whether this is passed off as the scientific explanation for the history of human life on this planet as Darwin stated it, or whether it is passed off as a theory of history as Hegel stated it, human life is seen as evolving in a linear fashion: from single-celled creatures to apes to man, or from thesis to antithesis to synthesis, the history of humanity is seen as evolving forward, from worse to better ... and better ... and better. The lie inherent in this linear perspective is that the unseen distant end of human life and history is NOT better if we view life this way: the end of that line is hell without God, an isolated darkness.

But God's perspective of human history is not linear, but circular, revolving around an axis that is its defining event. As the globe of this world revolves each day one full revolution around its axis, God has designed human history to revolve around the defining moment of all history: when Jesus Christ died on the cross and was raised again, a three-day passion that broke the tyrannical reign of sin and death and instituted the eternal reign of Christ's grace and life. Paul tells us this in Rom. 5:19, 21, concluding his description of God's view of human history: "For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. ... that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."

Human history is not like the timeline we read in history books, nor is it evolutionary and constantly moving toward the better place, but rather history is constantly revolving around the central axis of the cross of Christ, just as the natural globe of this world revolves around its axis one revolution each calendar day.

So, not only is the cross of Christ the central axis of the Bible, it is the pivot point of human history. Now all of this is interesting. But the greatest reality is that the cross of Christ is the central and only solution to the human problem. Living in this world is difficult. It is problematic. Our problems overwhelm us. But to each of our problems God articulates the wisdom and power of Jesus Christ crucified.

Christ's Cross is the Central and Only Solution to the Human Problem

The simple reason the cross is the central and only solution to the human problem is because it alone faces man with his great problem of sin. As we saw in Rom. 3:21-26, the cross is God's way of salvation from sin. There is no other.

The cross faces humanity with its sin. Three times in Rom 3:24-26, God speaks of the public, open nature of the cross. Paul tells us about the "... redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as an atoning sacrifice in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration of His righteousness at the present time, that He might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." God put Christ on display at the cross, facing humanity with its sin and at the same time demonstrating His great salvation from that sin. Thus, the cross faces humanity with its sin, and it erases the sin of those who believe in the power of His blood by faith.

At the cross, the sin issue cannot be avoided. Paul accuses humanity of a grand cover-up in regards to sin in Rom. 1:18. But over and against this cover-up is the public display of God's response to sin at the cross. The public nature of the cross makes us face our sin, and either admit it unto forgiveness as the repentant thief did, or deny it and compound it by scorning the bleeding God on the cross as did the unrepentant thief. On the central cross between the two thieves died the God-Man to save them, and both were faced with the reality of their sin and the centrality of God's solution to their sin in Christ. Sin was compounded in the one who did not believe; sin was forgiven the one who believed and was saved.

Jesus dealt with the problem of sin in a very public way, uncovering man's cover-up. Jesus paid the price for sin, at the same time revealing our sin and forcing us to make a choice about Him and what He was doing. It was either scandalous and scornful to the unbeliever, or it was scandalous and salvific for me as a believer. At any rate, it was scandalous: Jesus Christ the Righteous became sin for us, displayed publicly as the sin-bearer for the world, paying the full price for all our sin. This is why we sing:

Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain, He wash'd it white as snow.

Now that sounds fine and good in church. But what about when a brother of mine called from the VA hospital this week, in hellish torment from clinical depression, not having slept a wink for the last two nights, asking for prayer and a visit? What does the cross of Christ say to that terrible human problem, the problem of pain?

The cross is God's answer to the problem of pain, His pain matching ours blow for blow, torment for torment, hurt for hurt. If our God had lived in heaven only, issuing ethical laws and holding people accountable, we could legitimately cry foul against Him as a distant and detached deity. But our great Savior Jesus Christ left all that behind, coming to this world of suffering to suffer Himself a terrible death of torture to save us from the torture and hellish torment of sin and death. As Francois Mauriac stated in his "Foreword" to Elie Wiesel's book Night, "And I [Francois Mauriac], who believe that God is love, what answer could I give my young questioner, whose dark eyes still held the reflection of that angelic sadness which had appeared one day upon the face of the hanged child? What did I say to him? Did I speak of that other Jew, his brother, who may have resembled him -- the Crucified, whose Cross has conquered the world? Did I affirm that the stumbling block to his faith was the cornerstone of mine, and that the conformity between the cross and the suffering of men was in my eyes the key to that impenetrable mystery whereon the faith of his childhood had perished?" The conformity between the cross and human suffering is what makes the cross such a real word in a real world.

The playlet entitled The Long Silence, illustrates this forcefully, quoted here from the Cross of Christ by John Stott, pg. 336,7:

"At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God's throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly -- not with cringing shame, but with belligerence. 'Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?' snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. 'We endured terror ... beatings ... torture ... death!' In another group a Negro boy lowered his collar. 'What about this?' he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. 'Lynched ... for no crime but being black!' In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. 'Why should I suffer' she murmured, 'It wasn't my fault.'

Far out across the plain there were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that man had been forced to endure in this world? For God leads a pretty sheltered life, they said.

So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. A Jew, a Negro, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever. Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must endure what they had endured. Their decision was that God should be sentenced to live on earth -- as a man!

'Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Give him a work so difficult that even his family will think him out of his mind when he tried to do it. Let him be betrayed by his closest friends. Let him face false charges, be tried by a prejudiced jury and convicted by a cowardly judge. Let him be tortured. At the last, let him see what it means to be terribly alone. Then let him die. Let him die so that there can be no doubt that he died. Let there be a great host of witnesses to verify it.'

As each leader announced his portion of the sentence, loud murmurs of approval went up from the throng of people assembled. And when the last had finished pronouncing sentence, there was a long silence. No-one uttered another word. No one moved. For suddenly all knew that God had already served his sentence."

Truly, no single person who has ever lived or will ever live has more right to speak to and salve our suffering than our Jesus Christ who died on the cross for us. This is why we sing:

O sacred Head, now wounded, With grief and shame weighed down,
Now scornfully surrounded, With thorns, thine only crown;
How pale thou art with anguish, with sore abuse and scorn!
How does that visage languish Which once was bright as morn!

What thou, my Lord, has suffered Was all for sinners' gain:
Mine, mine was the transgression, But thine the deadly pain;
Lo, here I fall, my Savior! 'Tis I deserve thy place;
Look on me with thy favor, Vouchsafe to me thy grace.

What language shall I borrow To thank thee, dearest Friend,
For this thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?
O make me thine forever, And should I fainting be,
Lord, let me never, never Outlive my love to thee.

Not only does the cross face us with our sin and God's solution to our sin, and not only is the cross God's deep answer to the problem of pain and suffering, but the cross has a way of silencing the self-righteous boasting of humanity. Just after highlighting the cross as the heart of the gospel of God in Rom. 3:21-26, Paul speaks to the silencing power of the cross in Rom. 3:27: "Where then is boasting? It is silenced ..." In other words, any and all excuses we offer up for our behavior before God, any attempt at self-justification we might offer, are all silenced at the foot of the cross. What good could you or I ever accomplish that would come within a thousand light years of the great good Jesus accomplished on that cross for us?

Even the fiery and bombastic genius of Beethoven was greatly subdued by the cross of Christ. In his religious masterpiece, the Missa Solemnis, which many consider to be the greatest mass ever written, Beethoven does something very compelling in the third section, the Credo, in which the creed is expressed. When he comes to the subject of the cross, this mass which took vocal volumes and singing ranges to new heights comes to a respectful moment when the cross is introduced: the strings play in tremolo, the music halts totally, a silence hangs in the air, and then the soloists reverently sing the Latin words Crucifixus etiam pro nobis, meaning, "was crucified also for us." At the height of Beethoven's creative genius and romantic power, even his heart trembled and was quieted in awe-inspired respect and reverence for our crucified Lord. This is why we sing:

When I survey the wondrous cross, On which the Prince of glory died,
My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast, Save in the death of Christ my God;
All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood.

But in saving us from our sin, and salving our suffering, and in silencing our self-righteous boastings, the cross offers us a real righteousness available nowhere else. The great glory of Rom. 3:22 is that by faith in our Christ of the cross the righteousness of Christ is infused INTO us. This is where God's righteousness becomes my righteousness by faith: "Even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ into all those who believe ..."

The pathway to becoming a righteous person is the key journey in Judaism. This journey is torturously portrayed in the book The Chosen by Chaim Potok. In the book, a Jewish boy named Reuven befriends a boy genius named Danny. Danny is a genius of memory, with a perfect photographic memory. But he is arrogant. Danny's father is a tzaddik, a "righteous one." He is also an Orthodox rabbi. The story unfolds about how this supposed tzaddik set about to raise his son Danny as a tzaddik. He raises him for years in absolute silence from his father. The only time they talk is when they study Talmud. That book is a tragedy: man's way of making a tzaddik, a righteous one, is by a father's silence; God's way of infusing His righteousness into us was by sending His Son to die on a cross for us, then raising His Son again, that He might give His Son's righteousness to us as a free gift when we believe. Man's way is to make another man walk the path of pain; God's way is to walk the path of pain Himself, that He might make the treasure of His righteousness a gift freely given to believers!! This is why we sing:

What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

This is all my hope and peace, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
This is all my righteousness, Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Not only can we find real righteousness at the cross of Christ, but we find there the first thing we need before all other things: we find forgiveness.

While Jesus was on the cross, He spoke seven words. The first word was "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Forgiveness is the first thought of Christ on the cross and the first need of humanity. But what was happening when Jesus uttered these words? He was in the process of being crucified. At the crucifixion, the Creator God who made the tree from which the cross was hewn had chosen to lay His bleeding back on its unplaned roughness. It was an ironic end for a carpenter who had spent the greater part of His life working with wood. That main vertical board was about 7-9 feet in length, the cross board slightly less long. Jesus was tied to both so He wouldn't writhe in pain and unsettle the nails as they were being driven through Him and into the wood. Once He was tied down, the horrible nailing began. Long iron nails like railroad spikes were taken out of a bag held by a Roman footsoldier. The nail was placed on the palm of the hand, and was hammered down. Through His hands which the night before had gently washed the feet of His disciples were driven hard, cold spikes of iron. I wonder if maybe Jesus' words were uttered in the brief moments between the falls of the hammer. "[Hit -- the first hammer blow] Father, [hit] forgive them; [hit] for they [hit] know not [hit] what they do [hit.]" A cadence of ultimate cruelty and greater kindness, one answering the other. But the sound of His forgiving voice rings still through this first word of the cross, while the vicious hammering rang out only once in time.

The glory of the cross is that Jesus offers forgiveness to any and all who come to Him at the cross. Think about all the weight of guilt carried around by those who don't yet know our Jesus!! It is a terrible burden, and we sleep with it, rise with it, eat with it, and carry it all day, being unable of ourselves to be rid of it. If only we would come, just as we are, to Him, and hear Him forgive us as He forgave the nailers. Any who come will never be turned away. This is why we sing:

Just as I am, without one plea, But that thy blood was shed for me,
And that thou bidds't me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

Just as I am, thou wilt receive, Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve,
Because thy promise I believe, O Lamb of God, I come! I come!

May any who are here who carry the load of guilt, any who have not yet found the healing power of God's forgiveness, come to Jesus Christ right now!!

But the good news of the cross does not end with forgiveness. The cross brings peace between God and man. Paul tells us in Rom. 5:1 the first result of believing in Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the cross: "Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ."

When I think of the peace purchased by the cross, I think of my trip to Israel. Now Jerusalem is supposedly a city of peace, according to its name, but we all know that is one of the great ironies of the world. It is far from a city of peace; recently it has been a war zone. But when we went into Israel, we learned something fascinating: that if you wish to travel in the war zones of the West Bank, Gaza Strip or East Jerusalem, where tensions between Jews and Arabs run highest, you will be endangered unless you are a Christian pilgrim wearing a clearly visible wooden cross around your neck. The Arabs will respect you as a Christian pilgrim and leave you be, and the Jews will respect you as a tourist, given the fact that tourism is a major source of revenue for the country. I remember walking through the war zones bearing the sign of the cross, and walking in peace. This is a parable to me: I can walk anywhere in this world experiencing total peace with God, because I have believed in Jesus Christ and what He did for me on His cross. This is why we sing:

I saw the cross of Jesus, When burdened with my sin;
I sought the cross of Jesus, To give me peace within;
I brought my soul to Jesus, He cleansed it in his blood;
And in the cross of Jesus I found my peace with God.

Finally, not only can I find peace with God at the cross of Christ, but I can find at the cross the model for how human relationships are supposed to work. Good human relationships are based on self-sacrificing yielding, the giving of God's love and not the taking from another to meet my needs. The cross of Christ is the ultimate model of a loving relationship: that God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son. And the cross is to be the model for all relationships between disciples of Christ in the church, according to the command Jesus gave to the disciples just before He went to the cross, that they love one another just as He loved them. The cross is also the model of loving husbanding, the husband laying down his life for his wife. The cross is the model of loving relationships with the world, in the church, and in the home.

I have never read a better story outlining this than in Chuck Colson's book The Body. It is the story of Father Maximilian Kolbe. For years he had presided over the largest friary in the world, gently but strongly shepherding the other 762 priests and lay brothers there. Then, on Feb. 17, 1941, Father Kolbe was arrested by the Nazis, and in May 1941 was sentenced to Auschwitz. He was told that life expectancy for priests was about one month. He labored there until one night in July, when news spread that a man had escaped from Barracks 14, where Father Kolbe lived. Unlike many other escapees, the man was not caught. So, Camp Commandant Fritsch forced all the men in Barracks 14 to stand all day at attention. At the evening roll call, he announced, "Ten of you will die for the fugitive in the starvation bunker. Next time, 20 will be condemned." The exhausted prisoners swayed with terror. For out of all the gruesome tortures of Auschwitz, the starvation bunker was the worst. Death on the gallows, a bullet in the head at the Wall of Death, even the grisly gas chambers, were humane when compared to Nazi starvation, where both food and water were denied the prisoners. In there, the prisoners ceased to look human after even a day or two. Their throats became like paper, their brain turned to fire, and their intestines dried up and shriveled within them. Even the guards were frightened by the prisoners who dried to death in the starvation bunker.

The prisoners anxiously awaited the random selection of the ten men who would die. Commandant Fritsch went through the lines, looking at teeth, tongues, etc. to choose the weakest breed of prisoner, like horses for the glue factory. Soon ten men were chosen. One man, #5659, was crying out, "My poor wife! My poor children!! What will they do?" But like the others, he had to take off his shoes and fall in line. But suddenly, an older prisoner did something unheard of: he broke ranks and walked right up to Commandant Fritsch. Instead of immediately shooting him, Fritsch barked out, "Halt! What does this Polish pig want of me?" Father Kolbe calmly told the Nazi butcher, "I would like to die in place of one of the men you condemned." Fritsch stared at him in disbelief ... he didn't seem to be insane. "Why?" snapped Fritsch. Sensing the need to use tried and true Nazi logic, Kolbe replied, "I am an old man, sir, and good for nothing. My life will serve no purpose." Fritsch then asked, "In whose place do you want to die?" "For that one," Kolbe responded, pointing to #5659. Fritsch agreed, and number #16670 replaced #5659 on the death ledger.

Father Kolbe then took off his shoes to join the other condemned men. As he did so, #5659 passed by him at a distance, wearing an expression of pure astonishment that had not yet become gratitude. But Kolbe wasn't looking for gratitude. If he was to lay down his life for another, the fulfillment had to be in the act of obedience itself. The joy must be found in submitting his small will to the will of One more grand. The men reached the starvation bunker. "Remove your clothes!" shouted an officer. Christ died on the cross naked, Father Kolbe thought as he took off his shirt and pants. It is only fitting that I suffer as He suffered. The ten men were herded into a dark, windowless cell. The door was shut and locked.

Gradually, the camp became aware of something extraordinary happening in the starvation bunker. Usually there were howls of pain and panic, the sounds of screams and fighting between the prisoners, but this time it was different. There was heard the sound of singing. A gentle shepherd was leading these men through the valley of death, pointing them to the Great Shepherd. Father Kolbe was the last of the men to die."

That is how powerfully the crucifixion love of Jesus flowing through us in our relationships can impact our world for good. That is why we sing:

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this That caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
To bear the dreadful curse for my soul.

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down, sinking down,
When I was sinking down Beneath God's righteous frown,
Christ laid aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside his crown for my soul.

Thus, the cross of Christ is the central and only solution to the human problem. At the cross, sin is faced and erased for all who believe. At the cross, suffering is salved by a suffering Son. At the cross, self-righteousness is silenced. At the cross, real righteousness is infused into the believer as a free gift. At the cross, we find forgiveness from the One who even forgave the nailers. At the cross, we find peace with God in a warring world. And at the cross we find a wondrous love that is the model for all loving relationships we yearn to have.

Conclusion: The Cross is Central for our Church

In conclusion, we spoke at the beginning about how the Presbyterian Church of Old Greenwich has a large cross erected in the architectural center of the church. And in our church, we have been laying a new foundation over the past several months, with our proposed Welcome Booklet. In that booklet, we include a Doctrinal Statement, comprised of seven points of doctrine:

Concerning the Bible
Concerning God
Concerning Man: His Creation, His History, His Destiny
Concerning the Cross
Concerning the Christian's Responsibility
Concerning the Church
Concerning the Future

When we were writing this statement, we were totally unaware that there were seven points. We were also keenly aware that the statement needed to place central emphasis on the cross of Christ, since it is the axis of the Bible, since it is the pivot point of human history, and since it is the central and only solution to the human problem. But what we did not know was that we put the word about the cross right in the center of the doctrinal statement, point #4 out of seven! It seems that the cross is always the center, even when we are not aware of it! This, then, is the central doctrine of our church:

Concerning the cross

Jesus Christ's sacrifice on the cross is the crux of our faith, the axis of the Scriptures, the pivot point of human history, and the defining moment of God's redemption history. Fulfilling all the promises of the Hebrew Scriptures for a divine solution to man's terrible problem of sin, Jesus Christ humbly submitted Himself as a sinless substitute to die on a cross for sinful man across all time. His sacrifice alone satisfied God's holy requirement for atonement for man's sin. God's acceptance of His sacrifice was seen in Christ's resurrection on the third day. Only through the cross of Christ is sinful man reconciled to God, and because we have been crucified with Christ, we are fully identified with Him. The love of Christ on the cross becomes the love God desires to pour through us in our marriages, in our families, in our relationships within the body of Christ, and in our relationships with the world.

(Gen. 3:15, 22:1-19; Ex. 12; Lev. 16, 17; Num. 21:1-9; Ps. 22; Is. 52:13-53:12; Matt. 26-28; John 15:12, 13; Acts 2:22-36; Rom. 1:18-5:21; Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:18-33; I John 3, 4)

May the cross of Christ remain central to all we think and do at our church, in our homes, and in our hearts!!

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