The Cross as the foundation and content of our lives

Isaiah 53:1-9; Romans 5:1-11

While we often wonder how to interpret the Scriptures, the more important challenge is to allow the Scriptures to interpret us. To view our life in light of the central message of the Scriptures.

Paul's message to the Christians in Rome takes this approach. It contains an important lesson for us all.

The apostle starts with life's experience.

Peace with God.

The Christians have experienced peace – peace with God.

Peace here is more than the absence of war. It is the inner peace, the inner harmony that we would all like to have but, as we also know, it often escapes us.

The lack of inner peace keeps a whole pharmaceutical industry alive and well, and makes psychiatrists and psychologists a welcome addition to modern life. Some people would argue and some GP's would confirm that more sickness is related to the absence of inner peace that to physical causes.

Faith in Christ promises peace – peace with God!

Faith. This peace came to the Christians then, and it can come to Christians now. And it can come at any time in any place, because it is not dependent on what humans can do. Inner and lasting peace is not at our disposal to create or to give. It is not dependent on human intelligence, competence and achievement.

We may not like that, because we have been trained in an ethos that says: get a good education, work hard and you will have happiness.

Now, there is nothing wrong with a good education; and there is nothing wrong with competence and hard work. Sometimes, especially in voluntary organisations like the church, you could use a few more people who are intelligent, well educated and work hard.

It is an illusion, however, to think that intelligence and hard work can bring happiness. They can bring money and success, but happiness and inner peace cannot be bought or achieved.

Inner peace is a gift! A gift of God which we gladly and joyously receive in faith and celebrate in baptism.

That is the Christian experience: peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

But now the question comes: is this peace that Christians have found in faith and baptism, is that merely some movement of the soul or chemical change in the mind. Is it merely psychology, or is there more to it? Not less, but more!

The answer that the early Christians and the Christians through the ages have given is loud and clear: peace with God is God's doing in and for us. It came to us through faith in Jesus Christ.

It "came", and it did not just come in a general religious attitude or experience; it came through faith "in Jesus Christ".

But the self-reflection becomes even more precise. Jesus Christ is understood with reference to his death on the cross.

Listen to this:

"… while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly."

"… God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners, Christ died for us."

"… we have been justified by his blood, …"

"… while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son."

So, if we want to understand how the peace of God is grounded, we have to ask why the Cross, why the death of Jesus, is so important:

for our faith,
for our peace with God,
for our reconciliation with God,
for our access to the grace of God,
for our justification,
for our salvation.

Death as the force of separation and isolation

If in the ancient world, especially in the ancient Jewish world, someone would say that the death of a person had significance for our life, for the life of the nation, no one would be surprised.

In the years before Jesus, for instance, some Jewish people rose up against the Roman occupation and were killed for it. They were called "martyrs" and their martyrdom would have significance for the people of Israel. The 2^nd book of the Maccabeas contains the story of the voluntary death of seven sons. Here is a quotation as to how that death is understood:

"I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our fathers, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation and by afflictions and plagues to make you confess that he alone is God, and through me and my brothers to bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty which has justly fallen on our whole nation." (2 Maccabees 7:37f.)

This concept lives on in the Middle East where people who die, or who give their life for what they consider a good cause, are said to be rewarded by God.

Such concepts may be strange for us today, therefore we need to understand the Cross differently if it is to speak meaning into our life.

Let me try it this way.

The death of Jesus really resulted from Jesus' passion for life and Jesus' passion for the giver of life, God.

Jesus did not die – he was killed.

Jesus did not want to die – but when face with the challenge and choice of obedience to God or compromise, he chose God and thereby set a signal that are things in life for which it is worth to die.

Jesus lived "out of God" alone – what we call by grace alone through faith alone.

Jesus reflected God's love by loving the stranger, the widow, the orphan and the leper and by being committed to non-violence.

Jesus saw the lilies of the field and the birds of the air not something to be exploited but he saw in them parables of God's ways.

Jesus, with other words, his faith, his love and his vision embodied a new way of life – away beyond selfishness and greed and unbelief.

But he was killed.

Selfishness and greed and unbelief - sin! - brought him to the cross.

If that would have been the end, then selfishness, greed and unbelief would have triumphed. It would not only have killed Jesus, but it would have triumphed over God! Sin, not God, hate, not love would have called the ultimate shots. The murderer would have ultimately triumphed over his victim!

But love is stronger than sin and death; God outlasts greed, selfishness and unbelief.

By taking the dead Jesus into God's own being, God made himself vulnerable, God opened his love, his heart, his being to the estranging power death. Thereby God removed the sting of sin and death. He raised Jesus from death and made this known by letting the risen Christ appear to the first disciples. They join the celebration of the triumph of love over sin, of God over death:

"Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" (1 Cor 15:55)

Nothing ! Nothing "in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 8:39

That my friends, is the basis for our peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ!


Thorwald Lorenzen 8 February 2004