The Cross as Judgment

The early Christians did go deeper. They also saw the cross as a judgment upon themselves and all men. Suppose, once more, that you are one of those early Christians. As you gaze at the cross, you discover in a new way what evil really is. You see the consequences, for example, of falsehood and treachery. For Jesus was placed on the cross by lies, conspiracy, secret plottings, refusal to grant fair hearings, bribed witnesses, and all the rest. Perhaps you cringe a little when Peter reminds you in a sermon that Jesus was "crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men" ( Acts 2: 23).

But, far deeper than that, the cross shows you how evil your "good" can be. It is a judgment upon all the things you have come to think of as decent and worth-while. For who are the people who have put Jesus on that cross? The criminals, the dregs of society, the scum of the earth? No, they are up there getting crucified with him. The people who have put Jesus on the cross are the "good" people, the upholders of Roman law and order, the leaders of the best religious movements of the time, the respectable, law-abiding citizens.

People like you!

And you realize that you and your kind, with perhaps the best of intentions, are responsible for the man who is dying up there. Of course it's hard to take. You rebel when Peter says to the "religious" people, "You denied the Holy and Righteous One, . . . and killed the Author of life" ( Acts 3: 14, 15).

And when Stephen takes up the same tune and says, "You have now betrayed and murdered [the Righteous One]" ( ch. 7: 52), it is too much for the "decent" people in the crowd, so they kill him too. Maybe you were there. At all events, the fact you cannot escape is that evil is most powerful when it pretends to be good. And in the light of this disturbing fact nobody receives a clean bill of health. And no matter how far removed you may have been from the actual crucifixion, you, Mr. First Century Christian, feel judged by the event.

Suppose now that you are a twentieth century Christian once again. You are clearly a great distance away from the actual crucifixion, and you heave a sigh of relief. But the relief turns out to have been premature. For you find yourself unable to avoid the unpleasant conclusion that the things that sent Jesus to the cross in the first century are things that are still being done -- by you -- and that they must disturb God just as much now as they did then. If falsehood and treachery did that to Christ in the first century, they are doing it to him in the twentieth. If the "good" people were responsible for his death in the first century, they continue to crucify him in the twentieth. Your easy dismissals of Christ ("impractical . . . too visionary . . . sure, sure, but you gotta be realistic . . . too idealistic . . ."), your refusal to take him quite seriously enough -- these things keep him on that cross. His cross is a judgment on you in the twentieth century, just as it was on you in the first century. It tells you that your sin is not just sin against another man, but sin against God. Just as sin and evil crucified Christ in the first century, they combine to do so in the twentieth. The cross is judgment, no matter who you are, no matter where you stand.

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