Cleaning Up The Cross

Maybe some of you have had this experience before, but I was sitting listening to the message last Sunday and as I was listening the Lord was downloading something completely different than what the point of the message was. I understood the pastor, I was tracking him and it was a good sermon, but the message the Holy Spirit was giving me was different, and each main point, each scripture verse, even the songs we sung, zeroed in on what the Holy Spirit was telling me in a much more finite way than what the pastor was.

I have expressed this before, but I think it is important to say it again, much of what I write is a form of mental processing. Some stuff is very set in my mind, I know it to be truth and I want to express it that way. Other stuff is just me talking, I might believe it, but I'm wrestling through the "truth" of the matter, while other stuff is just what I'm thinking, I'm not so sure and I'm using this medium to process through it. In a lot of ways I am holding a mirror up to myself - if I'm writing about it, it means I probably struggle with it just as much or possibly more than the body of believers out there. Please struggle through these things with me.

As I was listening to the message last Sunday the words I kept thinking were "cheap grace." I asked myself, "What does that even mean?", and I started to get the picture of a "cleaned-up crucifix." One that has a solemn looking Jesus on the cross with a crown of thorns and possibly even a tear in his eye.

This is how many of us see the sacrifice of Jesus, or at least that is how we live our lives. We take Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and we sanitize it, we dab up the blood and clean up his wounds. This is cheap grace. Cheap grace gives us the ability to justify our sins, to ignore the deep sacrifice of Jesus to erase those sins - and so, we keep on sinning. Romans 12:1 says:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship.

When Paul spoke of "our bodies" he wasn't speaking of simply our physical bodies and sexual sin, but of our mind and our soul as well. Giving God everything. We tend to compartmentalize and give God our Sunday mornings, or our 15 minutes before the day begins. Paul urges us to become "living sacrifices" that is how we worship God. I think this becomes clearer when we see a vivid depiction of Christ's sacrifice for us. However you feel about the gore in Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, most scholars agree that it is an accurate portrayal of the crucifixion. If you have objections to the film, that is fine, but tell me which of the two, the picture above, or the video clip below, shows the deep sacrifice that Jesus demonstrated for us?



Christ commands us to live a life of sanctification, meaning a process of becoming holy. As Paul says, offer a living sacrifice, "holy and pleasing to God." Are we on an all-consuming journey to become Christlike, to become holy? I know that at times, I can be all consumed, but then it fades, and I either ignore the cross, or I take some bleach and wipe up the blood, clean it up a bit. I make His sacrifice seem insignificance, which also makes my sin seem insignificant. I fully understand the concept of grace, but true grace is different from cheap grace. The grace that we experience through Christ cost a lot, it wasn't cheap. We can do nothing to earn this grace, but if we grasp this sacrifice, we should have the all-consuming desire to be holy and to be like Christ. If there is one thing that Christ commands us over and over to do it is to follow Him, to learn from His ways, and then, as Ephesians 5:1 says, "be imitators of God."

At the end of the message we sung the song Sweetly Broken by Jeremy Riddle. I was deeply convicted and knew the Holy Spirit was asking me some very pointed questions: Does your life reflect a desire to be Christlike, to be holy? Do you drink in His suffering? As Paul said in Galatians 2:20, are you crucified with Christ?

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

The very least we can do to show our connection with Christ is to obey His commands, to keep His ways. Each time we sin, we cheapen His grace, we cheapen His sacrifice. Only through accepting that there is nothing that we can do and then allowing Christ to plant a desire to do everything for Him can we begin the process of sanctification. Only then can we begin the process of being crucified with Christ, dying to ourselves and allowing Christ to fully life through us. Listen to the words of this song below, read the lyrics, and ask yourself as I did, "Do I drink in His suffering?"

Sweetly Broken by Jeremy Riddle

To the cross I look, to the cross I cling
Of its suffering I do drink
Of its work I do sing

For on it my Savior both bruised and crushed
Showed that God is love
And God is just

Chorus:

At the cross You beckon me
You draw me gently to my knees, and I am
Lost for words, so lost in love,
I’m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered

What a priceless gift, undeserved life
Have I been given
Through Christ crucified

You’ve called me out of death
You’ve called me into life
And I was under Your wrath
Now through the cross I’m reconciled

Chorus:

In awe of the cross I must confess
How wondrous Your redeeming love and
How great is Your faithfulness