THE WAY OF THE CROSS

THE WAY OF THE CROSS

                “Everyone trips over the cross falling either to the right or the left. The world that falls either to the left or the right is working itself into a frenzy of madness. Those who fall to the left go the way of Sodom and Gomorrah and those on the right go the way of the Pharisee and the Accuser. Both believe they are righteous. Both have become mad with accusation. They spend their days blaming others for their own sins while their own self-righteousness rots their hearts within them. They seem to live, but have no life. Everyone trips over the cross. They fall either to the right or the left… unless they obey the Lord and take it up.”    Lazarus the Layman

                The cross restores us to the freedom that Adam and Eve enjoyed before the fall. At the cross we lay down the Law on stone and we take up the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. At the cross we lay down the tree of knowledge of good and evil and we take up the tree of life. We lay down the weakness of the flesh and we take up the power of God unto salvation.

                This passage through the cross is known as the New Birth experience and no one can see or enter into the kingdom of God unless he has been born again.

                Satan has been working overtime in the church over the matter of law and grace. He is effectively removing the Law of its vital role in our death. It is designed to bring us to a complete death, but many Christians, like the Pharisees of old, reason that if breaking the Law brought death; then keeping the Law will bring life. So they fail to come to a complete death and then they replace the work of Christ with their own efforts to keep the Law. This is not salvation!

                Then there is the other crowd that dies to the Law and is born again, but instead of remaining dead to the flesh and alive in the Spirit, they begin to live by the flesh. But living by the flesh puts them back under the Law, but they deny the Law its jurisdiction over the flesh and so they become lawless. They begin to do whatever seems right in their own eyes. They excuse the sins of the flesh, or else they live perpetually in Romans seven, sinning and confessing, sinning and confessing and finding no real freedom or oneness with Christ. They can’t seem to escape the feelings of guilt and judgment that hound them.      

                Romans 8 is the solution to the problems of Romans 7. It is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus that sets us free from the law of sin and death in order that the Law (Of God) may be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. But we must allow the Law of Moses to bring us to a complete death to the flesh, so that in being born again, we may now live by the Spirit. As long as we remain alive or even partially alive under the Law of the flesh, we can never fully live by the Spirit.

                The Law then leads us to the cross, but it is the cross of Jesus Christ that brings us to an utter and complete death to the flesh. Once truly dead, the grace of God comes into our mortal bodies and gives us new life and the strength to take up our cross and follow after Jesus.

                Paul describes this life of bearing the cross in 2 Cor. 4:7-10 saying: “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the surpassing greatness of the power may be on God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”

                In times of ease and prosperity we have developed a Gospel and a Christian life that would have been totally foreign to Paul and the early Christians. They didn’t promise each other happiness and prosperity if they came to Christ. Most came to Christ knowing that they may have to give their lives for their faith. Becoming a Christian was nearly a death sentence and the early church worshipped in hiding, in people’s homes and even in underground catacombs.

                Many of these catacombs have been excavated in Jerusalem and in the countries where Christianity had spread. Most of their underground meeting places were dug in the shape of a cross. Many had carvings of the sign of the fish to indicate that this was a Christian meeting place, and many others had the combined sign of the Menorah and the fish indicating that they were Messianic Jews. The combined sign of the Menorah and the fish is still used by Messianic Jews to this day.

                What I am saying here is that time and circumstances, especially in America, have served to distort the Gospel. We no longer embrace death to the world and to the flesh. Instead we sort of carry all of our stuff with us into the Christian life, knowing neither true death, nor rebirth, nor the sufferings of Christ. To me, the epitome of a distorted Gospel today is the prosperity Gospel , as we may hear it on TV. It has put self- back in the driver’s seat and pandered to the lusts of the flesh. Self- denial is no longer popular to preach… nor do we embrace any truth that would cause us the least discomfort. We want the world and Jesus too. So we comfort ourselves with Psycho-babble.

                We think that life in the Spirit is free from Law, when in fact, it is only through life in the Spirit that the Law is fulfilled in us. Paul made this clear when He told the Pharisees that the Gentiles without the Law were being more obedient than the Jews who had the Law. By life in the Spirit their uncircumcision had become circumcision, while because of the Pharisee’s persecution of the church, their circumcision had become uncircumcision. See Romans 3:24-31, Romans 2:25-29.

                We need to understand that grace does not do away with the Law, Grace makes the Law possible, for when through New Birth the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in our hearts, the Law is fulfilled by the fruit of the Spirit. It is the life of Christ being lived in us and that life satisfies the Law in every way. And as the Sabbath shows us, we do it all in a state of rest, for it is God who gives us both to will and to do His good pleasure.

                Adam and Even didn’t have the Ten Commandments in the Garden. They didn’t need them. They were Spirit filled and they walked in union with God. It was only after they believed the lies of the Nachash that they came into slavery.

                Living by grace has always been the theme of the Bible. Noah was saved by grace. Abram was taken out of Ur by grace. He believed God and it was reckoned unto him as righteousness.  Israel was delivered from the slavery of Egypt by grace, for the Law was not given to them until after they had been delivered. The Law did not deliver them, grace did. The Law was given to provide a framework by which they could maintain the freedom that had been given them by grace.

                Neither are we saved by the Law. We too are saved and set free from slavery by grace. In our flesh we could not fulfill the Law and so God, through Jesus Christ, put our flesh to death so that the Law could be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Life in the Spirit does not render us lawless; rather it makes the Law possible through faith.

                Now, emerging parts of Christianity are trying to do away with the Law, and the cross, and death to self and the blood of Jesus that covers our sins and the New Birth as well. That is not Christianity. That is the doctrine of demons and people are being set up for the rule of the antichrist and the Mark of the Beast.

`               We live in momentous times. The world is descending into chaos and gross darkness. I therefore beg you to embrace the deep things of the Gospel. Don’t candy- coat it. Don’t look for a short cut. Instead embrace Jesus with your whole heart and allow Him to plunge you beneath His cleansing flow. Embrace death to self and life in the Spirit. Embrace humble obedience to God and to His Word, for this is the only way to true freedom.

                There is a certain kind of arrogance in some areas of Christianity today. It is a certain kind of triumphalism, as certain kind of presumption that God is going to bless us and empower us to bring in a great harvest of nominal Christians. He is going to do it by swelling our great churches to overflowing with people who neither enter into Christ’s death or the power of His resurrection

                It is as though we can somehow skip the whole bloody cross and repentance thing and embrace newer concepts, positive affirmations, Spiritual lives without the Holy Spirit, purpose driven lives without the Bible… unity outside of Christ. But such teaching will lead directly into the arms of the antichrist.

                Today we need the real thing like never before. We need the real Jesus who honestly said to us: “This I command you, that you love one another. If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” John 15:17-19

                As Christians we tend to attach ourselves to things: Institutions, ideologies, projects or programs. Today I invite you to mentally cut loose from all of that and to attach yourself to Jesus Christ alone. Enter into death through His cross and enter into life through His resurrection and His promise is this: “…the Helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in My name; He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful.” John 14:26, 27.

                “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him and We will come to him and make Our abode with him. He who does not love Me, does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.”

                We can have absolute assurance of salvation, but we must be born again to see it and that new birth is through the cross… through death and resurrection. As such we pass from death into life and Jesus has promised that those who live and believe in Him will never die. John 11:25, 26.

                In John 6:47 Jesus gives one of His emphatic “Truly, truly” statements to which He wants us to pay particular attention; saying: “Truly, truly I say to you, he who believes has eternal life”!

                 In Christ we have been born into eternity. Now we just need to learn to walk like the eternal people that we are. Selah