The Centrality of the Cross

This is the text of a sermon preached to a Guild meeting on 16th January 2007.

The most famous skyscraper in New York City is probably the Empire State Building, which stands in the heart of midtown Manhattan, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. It was designed by an architect called William Lamb and was built during a single year during the Great Depression, giving work to a great many hard-pressed New Yorkers. The excavation of the foundations started on 22nd January 1930 and the building rose at an average rate of four and half stories each week until it was finished on 13 November 1930. The building stands 1454 feet high. When it was finished, it was the tallest building in the world, and it remained the tallest building until 1974 when the Sears Tower in Chicago was built. In November 1932, a searchlight shining from the top of the Empire State Building was used to signal that Franklin D Roosevelt had won the Presidential election. It could be seen by people up to fifty miles away. Even today, the Empire State Building is still the 9th tallest building in the World, and only the Sears Tower has more than the Empire State Building’s 102 stories.

The building dominates the city skyline. People can see it from all over New York City. It’s so big and so famous, so quintessentially New York that it would be hard to imagine the city without the Empire State Building.

That’s what the cross should be like in our lives. It should be something that so much part of who we are, what we are and what we do. It should be harder for us to imagine life without the cross being part of it than it is for New Yorkers to imagine their city without the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.

The cross is absolutely central to everything we do, from when we first became Christians, right through our lives – our Christian lives and our daily lives, and all the way through to when we end our days. In heaven we will see Jesus Christ and he will still have the nail prints in the palms of his hands.

Our passage tells us why the cross is so important. If you have your bible’s open at the passage in Colossians chapter 1 you can see how the passage can be divided into three distinct sections.
The first section tell us, in verses 15 to 19, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of who the man who died on the cross really was.

The second section tells us, in verses 20 to 22, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of what Christ’s death on the cross achieved and for whom it was achieved.

The third section, in verse 23, tells us that the cross is central because of the place it should have in our lives, in our thoughts, our actions, our hearts and minds, especially in the light of the first two sections about who He was and what He’s done for us.

I just want to take a bit of time looking at these three sections and trying to bring out what they mean for us as Christians.

We start with the clear teaching of the first section in verses 15 to 19: one of the reasons the cross is of such significance to us is that the person who died on the cross, Jesus Christ, is none other than the Son of God.

If we truly grasp what this passage says about Jesus Christ, never again will we be satisfied with seeing him as just a great teacher, or a prophet, or a brave martyr for a cause, or a revolutionary, or a tragic failure of history who was so misunderstood he paid for it with his life. All of these man-made idols of Christ are shattered by what Paul says here. This passage in Colossians is Paul’s equivalent of John’s great testimony to the deity of Christ at the start of his Gospel. There John writes:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that has been made." And of course later John makes it very clear the "Word" he talks about is Jesus. "The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son."

Although there are different emphases and ways of putting things between the different New Testament writers (for example Paul in talking about the Gospel loved to use the picture of a law court and believers being found "Not guilty" – which we call justification; whereas John liked to use the picture of being born again to describe the change in people’s lives when they become Christians), in fact in all the essential things the New Testament writers like Paul and John are absolutely in agreement.

In Colossians 1, Paul’s words echo those of John. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son. superior to all created things [notice not superior to all other created things – he is an uncreated being, as eternal as God the Father]. For through him God created everything...God created the whole universe through him and for him."

Let’s look at what is said here in a little more detail.

Verse 15 puts is in no uncertain terms: "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God."
Do you know that saying "Oh, he’s his father’s son all right". I’m usually on the receiving end when I do something my mother doesn’t approve of. But basically it means that there’s no doubt that the two men are father and son because the son thinks and acts just like his dad. That’s really the same thing that’s being said here between God and Jesus. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God." And of course this is not just Paul’s view, this was Jesus’ own view as well. In John 14. Jesus makes the amazing claim: "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to Father except by me. Now that you have known me, he said to them, you will know my Father also, and from now on you do know him and you have seen him." At which point the apostle Philip pipes up with what he must think is a helpful comment: "Lord, show us the Father; that is all we need," he says.

And then Jesus tells him of before continuing with these amazing words: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father...I am in the Father and the Father is in me."

You see the holy Trinity consists of three persons in one essential unity. They always act together and in agreement with each other, even though they don’t exactly do the same things. There’s a tremendous mystery here. From eternity God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit existed together, but they were invisible. God is a Spirit. That was, until Jesus Christ came to earth that first Christmas, to show us God in a visible form, in the presence of a human body and with a human as well as a divine nature.

And because Christ is God and not a creature of God, he is superior to all created things as verse 15 says.

In the light of the cross especially, how amazing are those words in verses 16 to 19? This Christ is God. He is the creator of all things. God the Father planned the universe, but the Son built it. "God created the whole universe through him" verse 16 says. This ties in with what the Psalms teach. Psalm 33 says that God created the heavens and earth by his Word. Genesis 1 tells us that too. Each time something was created, it happened as soon as God said it. "Let there be light" and there was light and so on. And from John’s Gospel we know that Jesus is the Word of God. So through Jesus, God created everything, by the power of his Word, his Son. But the bit of this verse that really blows my mind is the last three words of verse 16. Not only did God created the whole universe – everything that exists or ever existed outside of God – not only did God create that through Christ, he created it for Christ.

It really is amazing to think about that. Things don’t just exist for no reason. There’s nothing chance about anything in our universe. It’s all here for a reason – and here the Scriptures actually say what the reason is: it all exists because Jesus built it and it all exists for Jesus’ pleasure and purposes. It’s not here primarily for us, although in his grace, God does give us the use of the world and its resources for our pleasure and enjoyment. But it’s really for him.
This is why in verse 17, Paul can make a claim that is either supremely profound or completely outrageous. He says that everything in the universe can only be seen in its true perspective and in its proper place to the extent that we grasp its relationship with Jesus Christ. The example he gives is the church in verse 18. Jesus is the head of the church, not any human leader or any church office, such as popes, archbishops or even earthly monarchs.

Okay, now let’s come back to our focus this evening: the cross. The first reason the cross should be of profound interest to us, and why it should influence every part of our life, is because it was on the cross that this Christ – the true Christ of the Bible, the visible image of God, God himself become a human being, the Creator of the world and the one for whom the world was made – this Christ, died on the cross.

Imagine it. The one for whom the world was made. The one who fashioned the blueprints of the very trees themselves finds himself nailed to a wooden cross and left to die by the creatures he made. It is like a horror story. Frankenstein maybe. The creatures turns against their creator and kills him. It also says a lot about human nature and human sin, that we could turn against our maker and slay him. It is hard to imagine anything more ungrateful, more perverse than that.

But of course, unlike any human equivalents, the events of the cross came as no surprise to God. He knew that it would be necessary for Christ to die in order to accomplish his plans for the world.

It would have done us no good had Peter or John or Paul been crucified rather than Christ. It was precisely because Christ is God, a being of infinite value and worth, and a being without sin himself, that his death can save a multitude of sinners, people like you and I.

And this brings us on to the second part of the reading. The cross of Christ is central to our lives because of what Christ achieved for us on the cross.

In verse 20, "Through the Son, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself."
After Adam and Eve sinned, the universe started to go wrong. Not just human beings, although it is true that we do "go wrong" from birth. It’s what the Bible calls sin. It’s because we are sinners – because there’s something bad inside us – that we do the things we call sins. This is what Paul is talking about in verse 21: "At one time you were far away from God, and were his enemies because of the evil things you did and thought."

But the entrance of sin into God’s perfect creation, had other knock-on effects. Death entered the world. The physical world began to go wrong causing everything from disease and disabilities, to the extinction of many animals and plants, natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes, and a hundred other things. From Eden onwards, the whole universe has been going off the rails.

But God has decided it won’t always be this way. Through his Son, he’s going to undo all the wrong things and restore the universe to its original condition.

I don’t know if any of you are familiar with computers. When a computer is brand new, just out the box, it works perfectly. But as time passes, it begins to go wrong. As more information is added to it, files start to corrupt. Maybe it picks up viruses from the Internet. Eventually it wears out. Well what God’s going to do with the universe is like a computer engineer taking an old computer full of bad memory space, corrupt files, viruses and all the other junk programs running on the computer and completely cleaning out the hard drive, resetting the computer back to it was when it was new. That’s God’s purpose for the universe.

And the way he’s going to do it is through the cross. Verse 20: "God made peace through his Son’s physical death on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven."

In other words, although the greatest thing the cross achieved is the salvation of God’s people, this is not the only thing it achieves. Now, we mustn’t take a verse like this out of context and try to claim that this means that God won’t condemn anyone to hell. The Bible says very clearly on dozens of occasions that those who do not accept Christ will go to hell.

So here, when Paul talks about God bringing all things to himself, he means the whole universe – the physical and spiritual realms, the animals and plants, the planets and stars, and of course humanity. All of it can only be renewed and will be renewed in the new heavens and new earth because of the cross. Without the cross, the only thing God could do with the universe and still be true to his own holy and just nature, would be to condemn it to hell. Because of the cross, God can not only redeem people to populate the new heaven and earth for all eternity, he can actually bring the whole of creation back together in peace and harmony with Christ as its head, and restore creation to the way it was in the beginning.

Christ’s achievement on the cross is central to our lives because it was there, on the cross, that he dealt with sin once and for all. He took the punishment that sin deserves from a just God upon his own shoulders. That was why on the cross he cried out before he died, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Because he felt cut off from God by the weight of human sin.

Like a sacrificial lamb, he took our sins away. He died that we might have eternal life, and where once we were God’s enemies, by taking sin away, the relationship between God and human beings can be restored and renewed, and we can be God’s friends. Verse 22: "But now, by means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence."

We can never let the cross drift towards the edges of our life if we remember this one simple fact. It is only because of the cross that we can actually be friends with the almighty God! And if we have come to Christ by way of the cross, then he is our God and we are his in the eternal covenant of grace. Psalm 25:14 says: "The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant." God’s covenant with his people is essentially a bond of love and friendship with them. That bond cannot exist between a holy God and a sinful people. It can exist, even for a God of love and grace, only where the problem of sin has been dealt with. It can exist and thank God it does exist between a holy God and a redeemed people (in other words a sinful people who have had their sins paid for by the blood of Christ). And the only way sin can be dealt with is through the cross. There is no other way. You cannot sort out the problem of sin for yourself. You don’t have the right to say your sins don’t matter. That’s God’s place. And God says sin does matter. It matters so much that only by sending his own Son to die for sinners, could the problem be sorted out. Think of it for a second. If there was another way to save us, why did Christ have to die? Why did God not just tell us the other way and not allow his beloved Son to suffer? There was no other way: only the way of the cross. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."

And so we come to the third section of this passage in verse 23. And the point being made here by Paul is the main one I wanted to focus on tonight. The cross matters supremely because of who died on it, and what that death achieved, and the cross must remain the supremely important thing in our Christian lives always. In other words, we must never make the mistake of thinking that we need the cross to become Christians, or even that we need the cross to get to heaven, but in between those two events, we can forget the cross and get on with living some other way. It doesn’t matter what that other way is. For some people, it might be a way doesn’t pay much attention to what we do is right or wrong. It might be the free-and-easy life whereby we tell ourselves that anything goes because we’ll be all right in the end. At the other extreme, the way we want to go might be to live by exact conformity to certain moral laws or standards. That everything we do must be right and correct. That although we might need the cross to become a Christian and once we’re trying to get into heaven, for the rest of the time, I’ll please and win his approval by good works and all my outward show of being a "good person". Yet another, unfortunately a way that many Christians in pentecostal and charismatic churches go, is to seek to go beyond the experience of the cross to some deeper, more "spiritual", more exciting, more dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit.

I’d just like to say one thing about all of these positions – they’re all equally and totally wrong. The Christian life is neither a licence to sin, nor is it living under the burden of laws in fear that if we don’t do enough good, God will stop loving us, and nor is it a quest to seek one mystical experience after another. The cross of Christ – the gospel of Christ and him crucified - remains at the heart of the Christian life throughout all our time on this earth. This is surely what Paul is referring to in verse 23 when he writes: "You must of course continue faithful on a firm and sure foundation, and must not be shaken from the hope you gained when you heard the gospel." And what is this firm and sure foundation? What are they to continue faithful in? It can only be the magnificent truth laid out in the previous verse, where the cross of Christ is lifted high as the one and only way of salvation, the way whereby God’s enemies are changed into his friends and made pure and holy to live forever in God’s presence.

The cross remains the focal point of our lives, and must remain so if we are not to go astray. It was because many in the Galatian church turning aside from the gospel of the cross to other teachings that the apostle Paul came down harder on them in Galatians chapter 1 than he does at any other point in his letters. Listen to Paul’s words in that chapter: "I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are accepting another gospel. Actually, there is no other gospel, but I say this because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell."

And what is this gospel that Paul wants to protect so fiercely? He tells us: "In order to set us free from this present evil age, Christ gave himself for our sins, in obedience to the will of our God and Father. To God be the glory for ever and ever!"

So instead of thinking it doesn’t matter how we live, the cross stands to tell us that sin is very real and very costly. Rather than thinking it doesn’t matter if we sin, the cross tells us the price that was paid for our sins, our past sins, our present sins and our future sins. And when we stand in its shadow, and see how much sin does matter, surely we are less inclined to take a cavalier attitude to how we live.

Or maybe at the other extreme, we’re caught up in thinking we have to obey perfectly every law and commandment otherwise God won’t accept us. This time the cross stands as an emblem of God’s grace and God’s love. It was not because of our own efforts that we were first saved, and it is not because of anything we do that we will end up in heaven, so our lives here on earth need not be burdened down by guilt and the hard effort of trying to be perfect and failing all the time. We need to look at the cross here and remember that when Christ said "It is finished!" on the cross, everything that would contribute one iota to our salvation was already right then and there complete and perfect. Paradoxically, we can actually do more for God, and live better lives, when we stop trying to be good in our own strength, acknowledge we are sinners saved only by grace, and then live in thankfulness for what God has done for us, rather than fear of what God will do to us, if we aren’t obedient enough.

And to those who want to go beyond the cross to something more exciting and dramatic, the warning to the Galatians comes most strongly of all. To think that there’s something better than the cross out there to discover or experience only shows you haven’t understood the wonder of the cross properly at all.

That’s why the cross, rather than the manger, or the empty tomb, became the universal symbol of Christianity. Because it is the most important thing that ever happened. And it’s entirely right that the cross should be at the heart of the Guild badge. But much more than that, it must be at the very heart of our lives, at that secret place deep inside where we treasure what is dearest and closest to our hearts.

If the cross isn’t there for you tonight – perhaps because you’ve never come to Christ at the foot of the cross and looked up and saw the Son of God crucified for you, then that same Christ, now risen to glory and with all authority in heaven and on earth is saying to you right now, "Come to me, believe in me, trust in me and I will save you. I can do it because I died on the cross."

And if you have already come to Christ, but have maybe been stuck in a rut in your faith, or if you’ve got caught up in other things and put the cross to one side, then now’s the time to come back to the very heart of the faith, and acknowledge again the central and abiding place the cross deserves in your life.

In another letter, Paul put it this way: "As for me, however, I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Later in Colossians he writes: "God has now brought you to life with Christ. God forgave us all our sins; he crucified the unfavourable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross."

And in this passage, Paul ends up with this simple confession: "It is of this gospel that I, Paul, became a servant – this gospel which has been preached to everybody in the world." May we all be servants of this gospel, and keep the cross of Christ central to everything we do.