The cross of Christ draws us into itself until his story becomes ours. It is this drawing of men and women toward the death of self, toward the affliction of the conscience with a knowledge of their sin before God, it is this that makes the cross such an offensive thing to those seeking glory and it is this that increases the hatred many religious souls have for Christ crucified.

The cross reveals the hatred of all men, religious or pagan, for Christ as the Son of God who bears our sin. Our unlikeness to God in his humility or what we call our "ungodliness", is layed naked and bare when we stand beneath the cross looking at Jesus. And until we too cry out, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", we have no understanding of who God is or who we are before him. Anything less is a shallow, self-created allusion of likeness to Christ, a false religion of self-worship that glories in its supposed knowledge of God as merely a martyr rather than a sin bearing Saviour.

The cross opposes all other "theologies" that boast of human attempts to know God outside of a suffering conscience, one that has nothing for it's hope but resurrection from the dead because it is slain by the wrath of God, as was Christ on the cross. Being "crucified with Christ" can mean nothing else but the death of self and new creation in Christ. All other theologies and theologians are declared by God to be his enemies: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth". That which is ungodly and unrighteous is any theology that does not see God through the cross alone(Luther). Such theology suppresses the truth about God's "foolish" and "unwise" way of salvation (1 Corinthians 1 & 2). They are theologies of glory, seeking the praise of men rather than the praise that comes only from God (John 12.43).

The cross of Christ is first and foremost God's attack on sin (Forde). Before it saves it destroys; it saves in and through the very act of condemnation; it refuses to justify any but the ungodly, therefore, the denial of our ungodliness is a denial of the cross. To not see this is to be, like the Pharisee's, blind to what was truly happening at Calvary, where "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so thatt in him we might become the righteousness of God." (2 Corinthians 5.21). This isn't a theology we can write about or speak about and not experience. If we are not drawn into the experience of Christ bearing our sin, if we are not convicted that we are the crucifiers of Christ, we have missed the whole of Christian faith and anything else we might believe has only been a pretense, a means of covering ourselves with the fig leaves of self-righteousness.

The cross is a means of death, not an escape from it. It is Christ going ahead of us, making a way of life through death, the only way of life, and a way we must follow if we would have it. Where many Christians come off the way or what I have called the Jericho Road, is in seeking a dailylife apart from this experience. We may hold the cross as a mere theory of reconciliation and mistake that for the experience of the reconcilation itself. Evidence for this mistake is the unwillingness to die daily, to have a daily experience of the cross, a daily crucifixion with Christ. Not having the daily death is the reason for not having the daily abiding in his life, for the Spirit of Christ resurrected is never different than the Spirit of Christ crucified. The fulness of the Spirit's work, not our work, must be effective in us day by day if we are to see the fruit of seed once planted in our souls.

The test of the soul is its knowledge of death in Christ. Only the soul alone with God on the cross knows the truth of its own experience in dying for sin and being alive to his righteousness. Souls like this are called "overcomers" in the book of Revelation, overcomers by the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7.13-14). They have had such an experience that it can only be described with a "new name" (Revelation 2.17), a name only given when the "body of death" has put immortality at the "last trumpet" sound (1 Corinthians 15.52-55), when the voice of Christ says, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." (Matthew 25.34).

EDIT: This is a reposting from my original blog, The Jericho Road, a post I like and wanted to share again. I will continue to blog there as well.