Sentilong Ozukum
The Cross is the universal symbol of Christianity. Can we turn any direction without seeing one? It is there perched atop a Church. It is there buried or carved into a graveyard stone. You hit the street and you’ll find the cross printed in T-shirts, suspended around a neck or engraved in rings. You board the city bus and there lies the Cross printed in the windshield. The Cross is indeed an odd choice. In the ancient Jewish culture, the Cross was an instrument for execution just as we have electric chairs and hypodermic needles today. Indeed it was one of the cruelest forms of execution known to humankind. It was abolished in AD 315 because even the Romans considered it too inhumane. Yet the Cross has always been regarded as the symbol of the Christian Faith. The symbols of the other Faiths are perhaps more upbeat- The six pointed Star of David. The crescent moon of Islam. A lotus blossom for Buddhism. Yet a Cross for Christianity. Imagine a gold plated electric chair hanging at the pulpit in your Church or around your neck. Would you suspend a hangman’s noose in your drawing room? Would you paint a picture of a firing squad on your Bible? Yet we do so with the Cross! Back in school, I observed Sisters and Fathers making a triangular touch near the forehead and shoulders while praying. I learnt later that they were making the sign of a Cross with their hand. Today thousands make the sign of the cross while praying. Would you make the sign of a guillotine? Fancy ourselves performing a Karate Chop on the palm every time we pray.
Why is the Cross the symbol of Christianity?
To find the answer please grab a paper and a pencil and draw a Cross. It need not be geometrically accurate. Look at the Cross. A simpler design could no exist. One beams horizontal and the other vertical. One reaches out- like God’s love. The other reaches up- as does God’s holiness. One represents the width of his love. The other reflects the height of his holiness. The Cross is the intersection. The Cross is where God forgives us without lowering his standards.
How could He do this?
The answer – God put our sins on His son and punished it there. “God put on Him the wrong who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God.” (2 Corinthians 5:21) Christ never sinned but God treated Him as a sinner, so that Christ could make us acceptable to God. I remember watching the movie The Last Emperor. A young child is appointed as the Last Emperor of China and lives a life of magical luxury with a thousand servants at his command. “What happens when you do wrong?” his brother asks. “When I do wrong, some one else is punished.” the boy Emperor replies. To demonstrate, he breaks a jar and one of the servants is beaten. When God sent His Son to earth, He reversed this ancient pattern. When the servants erred, the King was punished. Imagine or envision the moment. God on the throne. You on the earth. And between you and God, suspended between you and heaven is Christ on the Cross. Your sins have been placed on Christ. You do something wrong,
Jesus receives the blow. You multiply your sins, so does the blow. Since Christ is between you and God, you don’t receive the blow. You don’t receive the pain. The sin is punished, but you are safe, safe in the shadow of the cross.
The Cross
My! What a piece of wood? History has idolized it and despised it, gold plated it, worn and trashed it. You can’t ignore it. You can’t ignore a piece of lumber that suspends the greatest claim in history. History has done everything to it but ignore it. That’s the one option that the Cross does not offer. No wonder Paul called it “the core of the gospel.”
