When Jesus died on the Cross, He died to save us from something and equally to save us to/for something. The Cross provided not just one, but both of God’s greatest gifts: salvation from death’s grip and the new birth of life in the Spirit: “For God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son He loves, in whom we [now] have our redemption—the forgiveness of our sins” Colossians 1:13-14. In the security of God’s love and acceptance, by the power of God’s Spirit and through the model of God’s Son, we (all of us—the church) can now grow, step by step, into the visible and compelling demonstration of God’s Kingdom of love and joy and peace and justice in the present. For our third look at the Cross we will explore how the Cross shapes who we become as a community in Christ.
