The Freedom of the Cross

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.

The power of the cross released in me. When Christ died on that cross on Golgotha my world was what was shed from him. He was released from the mortal clothing that he had worn for his 33 years and was again garmented in heavenly raiments. He had come to earth as a human baby to become like me and now that he had sacrificed his life for me, as the perfect, unblemished one, he was being transformed. Unlike the transfiguration, this was humanly painful, wrenching, as the useless mortal body died away in those hours of passion to reveal the resurrected Christ.

And that’s the power that is released in me. Not the power to die and be resurrected. But the power of that one moment when all creation stood still to witness a moment that no one had seen, as the Son of God took on all the sins of all humankind and paid the price. Only God could do that. No man could have paid the high price and no man could have recovered from the moment of release.

“Because of what Jesus did and suffered all association between the world and Paul have ceased. They are dead to each other.” Adapted from Exegetical Notes, Series C Epistle Texts, Sundays After Pentecost, by Harold H. Buls, Concordia Theological Seminary Press: Ft Wayne IN, 1985, pp. 34-38.

I am freed from the ropes and snares and mortal indebtedness of sin because Jesus the Christ went to the cross.

No wonder the world’s calendar recognizes that event as a line of demarcation, after which the calendar was restarted with AD, (anos domini, the year of our Lord).

The knowledge of that release has no power. It’s in the application of it in my life that God’s incredible plan for me gets revealed and released. That is when I live what He died for, the freed slave to sin, the joyful free man who returns to the condition he was created for, a devoted lover of God and disciple of Jesus Christ.

It was only in that moment.

I have done nothing nor could I do anything that would cause any change in my condition. But everything I do now should point to that change and its origin. The cross. The end of the world to Christ, and to me. Now being “in” the world and not “of” the world.