Boasting of the cross

Triumph at the Cross

Midweek Lent

Galatians 6:14

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.

HE did this for ME?!

Boasting of the Cross 

Has this ever happened to you?  You’re hungry for an apple.  You go to the fridge.  You find the shiniest, smoothest, plumpest Macintosh apple you can find.  You grip it between your fingers.  Open your mouth wide.  Sink your teeth into the fruit almost down to the core.  And then the horror hits you with an explosion of disgustingness in your mouth.  It’s rotten.  Your facial expression turns so horrified it would make your mother worried.  You purge the rotten nastiness out of your mouth as quickly as you can, not caring where it lands.  And for the next ten eternal seconds your body shivers and convulses at the thought of what just happened.  An apple has never gone from one’s hand to the trash so quickly.  Yuck!

That is what it is like for God each time we sit down in our pews with a hint of pride for how often we attend worship and how pleased he must be with us for how often we are here.  If God had a mouth out of which he could…well, you get the point.

God does not smile upon us and frown upon others because we are here and they are not.  God does not have mercy on us because of how sorry we are for our sins this time around.  God does not love us because of how much we love him.  God is not proud of us for our good church attendance or how often we read the Bible.  God knows our hypocrisy.  Our good works are at times nothing more than thin skinned rotten fruit.  “Why do we need Christ’s grace if we can be justified as a result of our own righteousness?  Why do we need the Holy Spirit if we are strong enough on our own to love God above all things and fulfill God’s commandments?” (Apology II (I) 10).  We can’t save ourselves.  Our works count for nothing.

That was the whole reason Paul wrote his letter to the Christian congregations in the region of Galatia.  Some people were teaching that in order to be true Christians you had to first follow some Jewish rules.  In order to be saved, they taught, you had to fulfill some requirements.  It makes sense to us, doesn’t it?  In order to get, you gotta give.  If you want it, you gotta earn it.  Nothing is free in this world.

Except for what Jesus did for you on the cross.  That is free.

This Lent we are focusing on Jesus’ triumph at the cross.  Jesus’ cross isn’t just what we see: that an innocent man suffered the excruciating shame of a naked death only criminals deserve; that someone we call the Son of God died in a most barbaric way.  Lots of people died like that.  Jesus’ cross is more than that.  We couldn’t know it on our own, so God tells us about it in the Old Testament prophecies and in the New Testament Epistles.  Christ’s cross is what God says it means for us.

On Jesus’ cross an exchange took place.  Jesus took our self-righteousness and counted it as his self-righteousness.  Then he was punished for it in our place.  In exchange, Jesus gave us his perfect life; counting as ours what we could never do.  On the cross God endured the extreme of human wretchedness in order to bring us freedom and peace as children of God.  On the cross your consciences were cleansed.  Your guilt was forgiven.  Peace was made between you and God.  At his trial, the people exclaimed about Jesus, “He is worthy of death.”  No, we are worthy of death.  But Jesus died in our place so that we could live.

It is because Jesus did that for Paul that he exclaimed, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  Paul didn’t boast in his works, in his faith, in his righteousness.  It is not the nature of true faith to boast in itself.  Faith, in its purest justifying form, is conscious not of itself, but only of Christ. It is not the nature of faith to consider that it is doing anything, but only that Christ alone did everything.

Perhaps you remember the Pharisee and the tax collector.  When that tax collector went to the temple to pray, he barely had the strength to get there.  He didn’t feel like he belonged.  He didn’t feel like he deserved to talk to God.  But he went because he knew God shows mercy at times, and, well, perhaps he would show mercy to him.  Barely setting foot in the sanctuary, he simply and humbly appealed to God, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.”  He didn’t care what others thought about him.  He wasn’t bothered by who was and wasn’t there. Only those of the world look for praise from others.  Even before Jesus had gone to the cross, the world was crucified to the tax collector and the tax collector to the world.  He just wanted God’s mercy.  He just wanted forgiveness.  That man knew what the cross of Christ was about.

My dear Christian friends, let us be crucified to our self-righteous pride.  Jesus blots out our pride from our record.  You may wonder, “Jesus did this for me?!”  Yes!  Your faith which trusts that is a faith which boasts of Jesus’ cross alone.

And then, our fruits of faith aren’t rotten.  We aren’t hiding hypocrisy.  Our fruits are pure and ripe and sweet, because they are fruits that grow from being connected to Christ and his cross.  Amen.