The message of Christ, to first-century listeners, was a stunner. To the Jews, anyone executed on a Cross was accursed of God, cut off from all covenant blessings—humiliated and rejected. To the Roman Gentile world, a man on a Cross was no longer even a man, but a sub-human beast, a vile criminal subjected to the most brutal and degrading death anyone had ever devised—humiliated and rejected. Why would anyone follow such a Messiah? Yet in His own teaching, Jesus, and then His emboldened apostles did not put primary emphasis on His victorious Resurrection, but on the deep meaning of His Cross as the defining center of God’s salvation. Join me this weekend for “Three Looks at the Cross” to help us understand better who we are apart from Christ (good and bad), who God is for us through Christ and who we become in Christ. There is power, joy and hope here.
