APOLOGIZING FOR THE CROSS
There are those who would apologize for the doctrine of the cross but Paul wasn't one for them. He said, "We preach Christ crucified" --we don't whisper it. "We preach Christ crucified," said J.H. Jowett, "we don't timidly submit it for subdued discussion in the academic grove; we don't offer it to the hands of exclusive circles--we preach it, we stand out like the town-crier in the public way, and we proclaim it to the common and indiscriminate crowd."
Lothar Coenen (New International Dictionary New Testament Theology, 3, 48-57) reminds us that in classical times, the kerux (the preacher), was the person who was commissioned by his ruler or the state to call out some item of news to the public with a distinct, clear voice. Despite some differences in function and self-understanding, that's what the early church did. They stood out in public and with loud voices so that everyone could hear they preached about a crucified Christ and thought they were saving the world (1Corinthians 1:21)!
"We preach Christ crucified" he said--we don't preach our own commitment or holy lives. In 2 Corinthians 4:5, the the face of those who loved the limelight, he said "we proclaim not ourselves; we proclaim Christ Jesus as Lord." And why not, since he is the Lord and Savior! Our changed lives are no substitute for the atoning life and death of Jesus Christ so we mustn't offer our moral and spiritual attainment as a necessary proof of the cross. It isn't our transformed lives that make the cross the moral and spiritual center of the universe. It's the cross that creates our transformed lives as a witness to the true moral and spiritual center of the universe--Jesus Christ and him crucified.
But we shouldn't hesitate to thank God for and speak of the way he has changed our lives. These are a part of the proof of the truth of the gospel because they make Christ's cosmic victory concrete in local places. But they can't stand alone and they mustn't be made a substitute for or a mask that hides the cross events themselves. What transforms us and shapes our lives is the cross. In a very real sense our lives don't validate the gospel but the gospel makes sense of our lives. It's true that we need more than words about the cross if we're to make the whole gospel known all around us. Along with the message and Bible study we must have discipleship and outreach because this too is an aspect of the redeeming work of Christ. But it is the Christ himself that we speak and sing and pray and live. If we hide him behind our fine lives and gentle ways and lovely marriages and families we are obscuring the gospel by which the world and we are saved.
"We preach Christ crucified" he said--we don't preach the crucifixion of Christ. It isn't the crucifixion that gives glory to Christ but Christ that gives meaning and glory to the crucifixion. It isn't a deed we proclaim but a person who embraced and accomplished the deed we call the crucifixion. It isn't the bare act of dying we proclaim but the person who accomplished the dying. It isn't the bare act of dying we proclaim but the meaning and purpose and the effects of the act of dying.
Nevertheless, it is Christ crucified that we preach. While in John 10:18 Jesus insisted that no one robbed him of his life and that he chose to follow the will of his Father by laying it down, he was still seized and killed.
This was no death of old age or "natural caused". It would be a tragedy to underestimate how much is revealed in the incarnation but it would also be a calamity to short-circuit the meaning of the incarnation by avoiding the cross. Luther raged against the theologians of glory who wanted all the sweetness and light of logic but exorcised the cross. To reject the cross as the critical point of the revelation and work of God is to create a god in our own image. Whatever else the cross says, it says that God will not be boxed-in, he will reveal himself as he is and not as we determine he can or cannot be.The united witness of the whole biblical corpus is to be given its place but the cross is the peak from which everything is to be surveyed and understood.
The crucifixion wasn't merely a way of dying it was a kind of dying; it was a violent death at the hands of transgressors. It was humanity conspiring to do away with the unique Son of God and by doing so revealing unfathomed depths to our sin. On the other hand it was the supreme act of obedience in the life of a holy Son that crowned and completed his self-offering to his Holy Father as humanity's redeeming representative (Philippians 2:8).
His death was more than something he and his Father agreed would take place, it was a purposed attack on the satanic kingdom. Revelation 12:11 in an outburst of joyful praise tells us the followers of Christ overcame Satan "by the blood of the Lamb". Not by his pitying love, not by his warm affection, not by his tolerance and bravery, not by his sweet words and true teaching, but by his blood! All these other things must be taken up into that death or that death has no meaning or atoning value. But all these things must be taken up into his death because his death was the crowing moment of his life; it was the point at which he offered all that he was and did and meant to do on our behalf. However it is to be spelled out, the death of Christ is the judgment of God against the sin of a whole humanity. Jesus' death was not so much his getting what we deserved, as it was the Holy Father getting what he deserved. What Christ ceaselessly offered his Holy Father in his daily living is brought to focus in a cross that consummated his holy obedient life. In the cross we see God getting what he deserved; what we should always have given him. Finally and completely a human gave to God as an obedient child, what the Holy Father was worthy of.
His wasn't only a death that spoke the judgment of God against sin and offered to God his holy due, it was tasted "for" (on behalf of) every person (Hebrews 2:9). It was as Scots theologian P.T. Forsyth said, for every person, from every person, as every person and because he was always alone except for Him who never left him, it was apart from every person. He died alone in a sense in which it wasn't possible for anyone else to die alone.
We make much of his death. How could we do otherwise? We speak of its glory, its power, its love and heroism--all true but in a very real sense it was "just another death". Though we now know differently, at that time and for so many on that day the crucifixion was nothing they hadn't seen or heard of before; it was back to the daily grind once the initial hubub died away. "He tasted the average man's death, not the hero's alone, the death of the little man, the failure and collapse of the man in a mean way of moral business, the cave-dwellers of the conscience. He tasted that in our moral death which is most universal, the commonness of it the sorriness of it, what gives it access to all doors, and entrance at the very cracks and chinks in the rear of our nature. He tasted death from a generation of vipers. It was death by sickly candlelight in a little house in a back street among miles of them. It was death made cheap, death for the million."
But it was that cheap and ordinary death that the church proclaimed because for all its ordinariness it was the most momentous event in human history.
EXCERPT FROM THE DRAGON SLAYER REFLECTIONS ON THE SAVING OF THE WORLD
Lothar Coenen (New International Dictionary New Testament Theology, 3, 48-57) reminds us that in classical times, the kerux (the preacher), was the person who was commissioned by his ruler or the state to call out some item of news to the public with a distinct, clear voice. Despite some differences in function and self-understanding, that's what the early church did. They stood out in public and with loud voices so that everyone could hear they preached about a crucified Christ and thought they were saving the world (1Corinthians 1:21)!
"We preach Christ crucified" he said--we don't preach our own commitment or holy lives. In 2 Corinthians 4:5, the the face of those who loved the limelight, he said "we proclaim not ourselves; we proclaim Christ Jesus as Lord." And why not, since he is the Lord and Savior! Our changed lives are no substitute for the atoning life and death of Jesus Christ so we mustn't offer our moral and spiritual attainment as a necessary proof of the cross. It isn't our transformed lives that make the cross the moral and spiritual center of the universe. It's the cross that creates our transformed lives as a witness to the true moral and spiritual center of the universe--Jesus Christ and him crucified.
But we shouldn't hesitate to thank God for and speak of the way he has changed our lives. These are a part of the proof of the truth of the gospel because they make Christ's cosmic victory concrete in local places. But they can't stand alone and they mustn't be made a substitute for or a mask that hides the cross events themselves. What transforms us and shapes our lives is the cross. In a very real sense our lives don't validate the gospel but the gospel makes sense of our lives. It's true that we need more than words about the cross if we're to make the whole gospel known all around us. Along with the message and Bible study we must have discipleship and outreach because this too is an aspect of the redeeming work of Christ. But it is the Christ himself that we speak and sing and pray and live. If we hide him behind our fine lives and gentle ways and lovely marriages and families we are obscuring the gospel by which the world and we are saved.
"We preach Christ crucified" he said--we don't preach the crucifixion of Christ. It isn't the crucifixion that gives glory to Christ but Christ that gives meaning and glory to the crucifixion. It isn't a deed we proclaim but a person who embraced and accomplished the deed we call the crucifixion. It isn't the bare act of dying we proclaim but the person who accomplished the dying. It isn't the bare act of dying we proclaim but the meaning and purpose and the effects of the act of dying.
Nevertheless, it is Christ crucified that we preach. While in John 10:18 Jesus insisted that no one robbed him of his life and that he chose to follow the will of his Father by laying it down, he was still seized and killed.
This was no death of old age or "natural caused". It would be a tragedy to underestimate how much is revealed in the incarnation but it would also be a calamity to short-circuit the meaning of the incarnation by avoiding the cross. Luther raged against the theologians of glory who wanted all the sweetness and light of logic but exorcised the cross. To reject the cross as the critical point of the revelation and work of God is to create a god in our own image. Whatever else the cross says, it says that God will not be boxed-in, he will reveal himself as he is and not as we determine he can or cannot be.The united witness of the whole biblical corpus is to be given its place but the cross is the peak from which everything is to be surveyed and understood.
The crucifixion wasn't merely a way of dying it was a kind of dying; it was a violent death at the hands of transgressors. It was humanity conspiring to do away with the unique Son of God and by doing so revealing unfathomed depths to our sin. On the other hand it was the supreme act of obedience in the life of a holy Son that crowned and completed his self-offering to his Holy Father as humanity's redeeming representative (Philippians 2:8).
His death was more than something he and his Father agreed would take place, it was a purposed attack on the satanic kingdom. Revelation 12:11 in an outburst of joyful praise tells us the followers of Christ overcame Satan "by the blood of the Lamb". Not by his pitying love, not by his warm affection, not by his tolerance and bravery, not by his sweet words and true teaching, but by his blood! All these other things must be taken up into that death or that death has no meaning or atoning value. But all these things must be taken up into his death because his death was the crowing moment of his life; it was the point at which he offered all that he was and did and meant to do on our behalf. However it is to be spelled out, the death of Christ is the judgment of God against the sin of a whole humanity. Jesus' death was not so much his getting what we deserved, as it was the Holy Father getting what he deserved. What Christ ceaselessly offered his Holy Father in his daily living is brought to focus in a cross that consummated his holy obedient life. In the cross we see God getting what he deserved; what we should always have given him. Finally and completely a human gave to God as an obedient child, what the Holy Father was worthy of.
His wasn't only a death that spoke the judgment of God against sin and offered to God his holy due, it was tasted "for" (on behalf of) every person (Hebrews 2:9). It was as Scots theologian P.T. Forsyth said, for every person, from every person, as every person and because he was always alone except for Him who never left him, it was apart from every person. He died alone in a sense in which it wasn't possible for anyone else to die alone.
We make much of his death. How could we do otherwise? We speak of its glory, its power, its love and heroism--all true but in a very real sense it was "just another death". Though we now know differently, at that time and for so many on that day the crucifixion was nothing they hadn't seen or heard of before; it was back to the daily grind once the initial hubub died away. "He tasted the average man's death, not the hero's alone, the death of the little man, the failure and collapse of the man in a mean way of moral business, the cave-dwellers of the conscience. He tasted that in our moral death which is most universal, the commonness of it the sorriness of it, what gives it access to all doors, and entrance at the very cracks and chinks in the rear of our nature. He tasted death from a generation of vipers. It was death by sickly candlelight in a little house in a back street among miles of them. It was death made cheap, death for the million."
But it was that cheap and ordinary death that the church proclaimed because for all its ordinariness it was the most momentous event in human history.
EXCERPT FROM THE DRAGON SLAYER REFLECTIONS ON THE SAVING OF THE WORLD
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