The Power of the Cross

By Bill Kierce

One of my favorite hymns is Sir John Bowring’s poem put to music, “In the Cross of Christ I Glory.” Bowring was one of Great Britain’s most brilliant and influential statesmen in the early 19th century. By the age of ten, the child prodigy had mastered multiple languages. As an adult, he served two terms in Parliament and was named governor of Hong Kong, then a British colony. During the First Opium War between China and England, Bowring emerged from his bunker after the canon bombardment of his city from Chinese ships to discover a church and its cross proudly standing amidst the debris. Within hours, he had penned the words that begin the hymn: “In the Cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time; all the light of sacred story gathers round its head sublime.”

For nearly two thousand years, the cross has stood as a symbol of hope, a reminder that death need not be the end of life and that nothing or no one is beyond the redemptive reach of a holy and loving God. On September 11, 2001, America’s most disastrous day, it was a cross that emerged from the twisted shards of metal remaining from the collapse of the World Trade Center. When Edmund Hillary successfully scaled the 29,032 feet of Mount Everest in 1953, it was a cross he buried atop the world’s tallest peak. The cross of Christ is humanity’s great equalizer, the plumbline by which our most devastating earthly losses and greatest achievements find eternal perspective.

Yet the cross has not always been the official symbol of Christianity. In fact, in the first generation after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the cross was considered too gruesome and offensive to brand the movement. So, the icthus, or the form of a fish, became the secret symbol of the emerging Christian church. However, it is the preaching of Christ crucified as King of kings and Lord of lords, not the symbol of a fish, that has emboldened and empowered the Christian witness since the Day of Pentecost and its first 3,000 converts (Acts 2), who were willing to risk life and limb for the cause of Christ, as do countless others around the world today.

When the Apostle Paul wrote the first of his epistles, the cross was his theme. In Galatians 6:14, he says, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (NIV). And in Galatians 2:20, he similarly states, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul doesn’t choose to boast in his apostleship, nor his many accomplishments. He doesn’t even boast in the resurrection of Christ, for the resurrection depends upon crucifixion. Nor does he boast in the Virgin Birth of Christ, another non-negotiable tenet of Orthodoxy, for it is the crucifixion that affirms the purpose of his birth.

In this current season of the Christian Calendar that we call Lent—the 40 days of preparation for celebrating Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday—the cross is a natural and sometimes even, if I dare say, necessary subject of our preaching and teaching. But why more so than at other times of the year? This makes no more sense to me than giving up Coca Cola and cookies for six weeks as a show of our dedication. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the core message of our faith. In 1 Corinthians 1:18, Paul champions that the cross is “the power of God unto salvation,” and that’s not just for six weeks of the year. Jesus himself challenged his disciples in Luke 9:23, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” The cross that justifies and sanctifies us is a daily application of grace.

In Romans chapter 6, the Apostle Paul reminds us of the three-dimensional nature of the cross. On one side of the cross, Jesus died for our salvation. As a popular song says, “It was love that kept him there” when he was taunted and tempted to come down from the cross and prove that he was truly God. Preachers often romanticize the death of Christ on our behalf by saying, “If you were the only one living, Jesus would have still died for you.” I would like to believe this is true, but it is utterly irrelevant. Biblical references to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ are plural. We and us pronouns are prominent in the passion narratives and commentary. Why? Because the personal pronouns of I and me are the essence of our sin problem. Am I individually important to God? Are you? Absolutely. But if we read Romans 6 correctly, our Lord Jesus did not die just to save us; he died to kill us. Consider this: “For we know that our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with . . . because anyone who has died has been set free from sin” (Romans 6:6–7). Paul continues, “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Jesus Christ” (Romans 6:11). There are two sides to the cross: On one side, Jesus died for us; on the other, we died with him and are called to re-enact that death on a daily basis through the surrender of our will to the indwelling empowerment of the Holy Spirit. This means that the cross puts to death our self-interest and the tendency of our flesh to preserve our own lives. Just as Jesus did, we must resist the temptation to come down from our crosses to save ourselves. A sanctified life is a crucified and resurrected one.

When I committed my life to Christ in a series of revival services at age fifteen, one of my two Sunday School teachers in the 4th Door Class gave me a small silver cross along with a poem aptly named “The Cross in my Pocket.” I kept that cross in my pocket for many years as “a reminder to me that I am a Christian, no matter where I may be.” Every time I would reach for change or my car keys, I would consciously handle that small cross with great appreciation for what Jesus did just for me. Then one day I heard the Holy Spirit say to me, “Bill, it’s time to get the cross out of your pocket and into your heart.” That’s the sanctifying work of God. The cross in my pocket doesn’t threaten the normalcy of my life. In some ways, it only perpetuates the notion of my self-focused importance to God. The cross in my heart puts that notion to death every time I must surrender my will to the crucifying work of God’s grace in me and remain there until the work is done, forgiving someone undeserving of it or giving up my right to be acknowledged, appreciated, or even noticed. With all due respect, friends, that’s more than giving up Coke and cookies for six weeks during the Spring. Only the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ can save us from ourselves and sanctify our self-interested will so that it conforms to the purposes of God. Not even a fish (reference to the early ichthus) can do that.

Contemporary theologian N. T. Wright shares the testimony of an old archbishop in Paris, France. One day, three boys had run rampant through the streets of Paris causing trouble and getting into mischief. At the end of the day, they decided to play a prank on the parish priest by embellishing their misdeeds in successive moments of confession. The first boy entered the booth and offered his confession. Then the second boy did the same. The priest was already onto their game. When the third boy made his way into the confessional, the priest listened and then offered the boy this penance for his sins: “Son, I want you to make your way outside into the garden and stand before the large crucifix. I want you to look at it intently, foot to face. Then I want you to look into the eyes of Jesus and say, ‘Lord, I know that you did all of this for me, and I confess to you that your cross doesn’t mean very much to me.’ ” The priest commanded the boy to do this three times, each time gazing upon the cross for three minutes. When the boy set his gaze upon the cross of Christ for the third time, he could not contain the flood of emotion as his heart opened to what Jesus had in fact done for him. The priest found him crumpled at the feet of Jesus in true repentance. N. T. Wright reports that when the old archbishop shared this story, someone in the audience asked, “How do you know that this story is true?” To which the archbishop replied, “I know it is true, because I was that boy.”

What does the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ mean to you? Does it mean more than Coke and cookies? Is it worn around your neck as a symbol of sentimental faith? Is it a trinket in your pocket to remind you how to behave? I hope it is more than that. The cross of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto our full salvation through the death of self-interest. It is the gateway to the resurrection power of a sanctified, Spirit-filled life.