LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
The Center of God's Message
God's message, which is Christ, cannot be twisted or altered. And at the center of this message is his cross. His life, his deeds and his words have the cross as their focal point. Many today would like to take the cross out of the Gospel, and also the blood of Christ, because it hurts certain exquisite sensibilities, but how vain would our faith be without the blood and the cross of Christ!
Christ came down from heaven to die. This is how Paul, the greatest exponent of the mystery of Christ, understands it. His principal letters have as their starting point the work of the cross.
Romans speaks orderly of the whole mystery of godliness, of righteousness, holiness, the glory of God, of the body of Christ, but all this has its explanation and its meaning in the words of chapter 3: "Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation through faith in his blood, to show his righteousness..." (v. 24-25). Because there was that blood, there is forgiveness of sins; because there was that cross, there is victory over sin.
The first epistle to the Corinthians has this central theme: "For the Jews ask for signs, and the Greeks seek wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Gentiles foolishness" (1:22-23); and he adds: "For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (2:2). For the great need of the Corinthians, the only and sufficient answer was Christ crucified.
To the Galatians led astray and bewitched by the law, Paul speaks boldly of the "stumbling block of the cross" (5:11), that many want to avoid the persecutions that come by "the cross of Christ" (6:12), and concludes by saying "But far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world" (Gal. 6:14).
In Ephesians, the great epistle of the mystery of Christ and the church, Paul begins by saying: "...in whom (the Beloved) we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace" (1:7). In Philippians, Paul takes us on the way of the cross of Christ, from the throne of God "unto death, even death on a cross" (2:8).
And Colossians, the epistle from the cosmic heights, tells us: "For it pleased the Father that in him all fullness should dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross" (1:19-20). Blessed cross of Christ!
Here we have touched mainly on one aspect of the cross, that of redemption, but there is much more. But in it is summed up, in a word, the whole mystery of piety. Without the cross we can have Jesus, but we will not have the Christ; we can have a religion, but not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.