Friends:  It’s my birthday week, the last week of school, Indianapolis 500 weekend coming up with family in town, Memorial Day, summer beckons … why not say something outrageous about the Cross of Christ? See the column below. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #914

May 21, 2024

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Cross Off 70

By Bob Walters

“The days of our years are three-score years and ten ...” – Psalm 90:10

There you have it.  Psalm 90 says we will live 70 years. If I wake up Thursday morning, May 23, I will have proven the Bible correct, celebrating the big Seven-O.

Psalm 90 goes on to say that strength may give us 80 years, but the whole of Psalm 90 is not about the glories of old age but the pitifulness of our overall lives.  God’s been watching us, the psalmist – believed to be Moses – says, and God is not impressed. Our days are “toil and trouble,” Moses prays, “… and they are soon gone.”

Shortly thereafter, he entreats of God, “…teach us to number our days so that we may get a heart of wisdom” (90:14). God delivered that “heart of wisdom” fifteen hundred years later in the living, human and divine person of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Jesus is our “heart of wisdom.”  Living a long life will not give us wisdom; not the kind of wisdom for which the psalmist pleads: the wisdom of God, not the wisdom of man.  It is one of a gazillion Old Testament phrases that speaks directly to man’s only source of relationship with the wisdom of God, and of God Himself: Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament, throughout, sets us up to know and appreciate Christ.

The New Testament reveals the new life and covenant in the wisdom of Christ.

James 1:5 says that if any of us lacks wisdom, to ask God for it, “…who gives generously to all without reproach.”  God gave us Jesus Christ so we would pursue wisdom – in Christ – that transcends this life and bridges into eternity. And we traverse that evil-to-good bridge by the grace of the person of Christ, who actually is the bridge.

And speaking of that bridge, as I wander ever closer to the next bridge from this life to eternity, for my birthday I thought I’d say something true, but maybe outrageous.

Here goes.  Not long ago I was watching a Bible expositor draw that familiar sketch of the Cross spanning a chasm between the world and heaven, death and life, dark and light, evil and good. Condemnation, fear, guilt, sin, lies, and hell on the left; salvation, love, grace, forgiveness, truth, and the Kingdom of God on the right. 

Let me first say: “A wise man’s heart inclines to the right, but the heart of a fool to the left.” says Ecclesiastes 10:2.  But that theological drawing of the left-to-right bridge over the chasm to transcendent God?  That bridge is not the cross of Christ; that bridge is the person of Christ. Our relationship with God – salvation – depends on Christ alone.

Somehow, dependably, most of humanity loves the dark and hates the light, says Jesus (John 3:19).  We go left when the Bible says go right. Our hearts and deeds are evil, Jesus is saying.  And we prefer they remain unknown, in the dark, on the cross.

But … we are not saved by the cross. We are not saved by the Bible.  We are not saved by church. We are not saved by baptism.  We are saved by the person of Jesus Christ: His love, His grace, His obedience, and the blood of His covenant with God.

The other stuff is important: the tools of our knowing. The cross is an example.  The Bible is our guidebook.  The church is His body. Baptism is the gift of signing on to the promises of Jesus – heart, mind, body, and soul.  But salvation.  O! … salvation.

Salvation is a relationship with a real person, Jesus, and comes from no earthly relic, event, idea, or deed. The supremacy and sufficiency of Christ is unchallenged

In the Holy Spirit, we know that our salvation resides in Christ alone. Outrageous!

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) knows his birthdate – “5-23-1954” – better now than at any previous time of his life because of how often healthcare providers ask for it.  Psalm 90, by the way, is considered the oldest Psalm as the Jews wandered Sinai.  P.S. – I have written much about the Cross since beginning this weekly column / blog in November 2006. Here are 12 on the Cross, in order, my blog search button says are the best. Click on the number to see the column. #812 and #640 are my favorites (on PCs it's "control-click" on the link).

650 4-30-19 – Life Beyond the Cross (Preparing for eternity)

651 5-7-19 – Living at the Cross (The Cross is closer than we think)

652 5-14-19 – At the Foot of the Cross (Jesus lives; how do we live?

812 6-5-22 – Person to Person *** (The saving personhood of Jesus)

640 2-19-19 – Cross Purposes *** (Purpose of the Cross)

692 2-17-20 – Close Call (Church)

862 5-23-23 – Just Like That (Lessons of the Cross, and last year’s birthday)

750 3-29-21 – Father, Forgive Them (Jesus on the Cross)

663 7-30-19 – For My Sake (Understanding the Cross)

287 5-15-12 – Sin and God’s Saving’s Plan (My sins on the Cross)

527 12-20-16 – The Cross, Christmas, and Freedom (Strength of the Cross)

393 5-25-14 – Defining Moments (Importance of the Cross, and my 60^th birthday)

 

Friends: Embracing the mystery of the cross while living with joy and certainty is a great way to be a Christian.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #862

May 23, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Just Like That

By Bob Walters

“For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” Jesus to Nicodemus, John 3:17

There are many things I do not understand about the mystery of the cross of Jesus Christ, but the obvious lessons – to me anyway – are plain as day.

 The appearance of Jesus in humanity proves God’s existence.  The self-sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross proves God’s obedience and righteousness.  The resurrection of Jesus proves God’s command over life and death. Jesus sending the Holy Spirit proves God’s personal involvement in our lives, loves, faith, and creativity. 

Our human minds want to put Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit behind three different doors with three different functions.  That is the heresy of “modalism”, and it is wrong.  The Trinity’s eternal life of community and love should be our model – since we are created in God’s image – for completeness in Christian fellowship and Kingdom obedience.  But we divide and judge God the same way we divide and judge humanity.

We over-think details of the cross like whether Jesus was separated from God, or “when” specifically we were forgiven, or where Jesus’s spirit “went” when He died.

I’ve heard good ideas for and against God’s separation from Jesus – “why have you forsaken me?” – but Romans 8 says we can’t be separated from the love of God, so I go with that one.  I think our forgiveness was founded in the very presence of Jesus, not only the history-changing, human life-changing event of the cross, which defeated the death that man received in the Fall.  Whether dead Jesus’s human spirit went to Hades or to Heaven or nowhere before Easter Sunday … does not matter to me.

That the resurrection showed Jesus was God? That really matters to me.  

Our contemporary and ubiquitous Christian focus on sin, guilt, forgiveness, and salvation creates a tightly defined, though to me schizophrenic, window through which we experience God’s love.  Where is the joy?  We Christians are still begging for the divine forgiveness already freely ensured on the cross 2,000 years ago. It was a gift no one would imagine or think to ask for. What if one sacrifice restored our life in God?

That is what Jesus did on the cross, “once for all” (Romans 6:10). It is finished.

We are oddly urged to shout our joy in Jesus while contemplating our horrible filth, unworthiness, and sin, plus guilt for the suffering He endured on the cross. All true, but His grace enables our rebirth into God’s Kingdom, revealing God’s desire and love.  A mother in childbirth endures great pain, but it is her love a child learns, not her pain.

That is what I do with my rebirth in Jesus. I do not demand answers; I am thankful knowing the truth that God exists, considers me part of the team (Jesus), and guides my steps in love (Spirit).  Grace allows me to press forward, not look backward. My purpose is no longer a mystery, it is to glorify God and to participate in His glory.

Chistian irony today is that the selfless love of Jesus is so often preached as the focus on, and condemnation of, self.  We are to examine ourselves, sure, but to see if Jesus is in us.  Which to me means, who must I forgive? Jesus already forgave me.

In faith, we find our salvation today in God’s truth and grace.  Just like that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) today, May 23, celebrates human birthday no. 69.