The Journey of the Cross

In grace God offers us forgiveness, cleansing, liberation and healing as he meets us in the places of our lives that are most alienated from him; he is involved in the most terrible aspects our hearts. I think this is what makes this journey uncomfortable. This journey towards wholeness in Christ, or the process of being conformed to Christ-likeness, primarily takes place at the points of our unlikeness.

Why can’t he meet me where I rock? Start where I am doing well? How much of my devos, church life, and worship are set up simply to affirm myself in the areas I am already doing well in?

It is obvious that if spiritual formation is about us in the process of being conformed to the image of Christ, it is going to take place in those spots not yet conformed. As the spirit pushes at some area in our lives it will always be confrontational as he challenges us to come out of brokenness of self into wholeness in Christ. The confrontation will come through various channels like the Word, worship, preaching, a friend, an enemy, a situation. The reason this is such a struggle at times is that this part of unlikeness—this brokenness—is who we are! It is not something we wear that needs to be taken off. It is us!

Christ tells us in Luke 9:23 to “Deny yourself.” I noticed that he doesn’t say deny sin, or deny the world, or deny a particular enjoyment …he says deny yourself. That part of me not conformed to the image is not a thing in me – it is an essential part of who I am. Jesus knew that in order to deny ourselves we would need a radical change. In order to deny our total self he goes on to say, “take up the cross.” All of me must die so that Christ can live through me.

Do we fully get what taking up the cross really means? Those who first heard this call knew exactly what it meant. If you took up a cross you had said good-bye to everything; you were going to die.

There seems to be a new cross in our churches today. It is like the old cross, but different: It comes with a padded shoulder rest; it is more compact and comes in three choices of popular colours. A.W. Tozer talked about the difference between the new cross and the old cross and how from the new cross has sprung a new philosophy of the Christian Life – a philosophy of “redirecting the person”, and offering everything the world does, but cleaner. The new cross encourages a new life but not denial or the surrendering of the old life before this new life can be received. But the old cross would have nothing to do with the world. It meant the end of that journey and a new one beginning.

“The cross is a symbol of death. It stands for the abrupt, violent end of a human being. The person in Roman times who took up their cross and started down the road had already said good bye to their friends. They were not coming back. They were not going out to have their life redirected; they were going out to have it ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing, spared nothing; it slew all of the person, completely and for good. It did not try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck cruel and hard, and when it had finished its work, the person was no more. God salvages the person by liquidating them and then raising them again to newness of life.”
A.W. Tozer

In coming to Christ we do not bring our old life up onto a higher plane; we leave it at the cross. This is the daily journey … a journey of dying daily to myself and allowing God to raise me up again to wholeness in the image of Christ. And with so many other voices telling me how to have a full life, it is not an easy journey without spending a significant amount of time in prayer in the Word and with other believers, and serving Christ every day.