The Cross

Easter is coming. We celebrate the resurrection. We celebrate with abandon, but the only way is through the cross. In meditating about Easter you can't get very far without thinking hard and long about the cross. Michael Card years ago called it a violent grace. A man hanging on a tree taking the curse for you and me. You can't have a true resurrection without a death first. Life comes through death, and Christ showed us the way when He hung on the cross.

The cross has become something that modern Christianity doesn't always like to talk about. Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, was shocking to us, and so it should be. Seeing in stark reality what our Saviour and our God went through for us is more than we can handle. The early church did not depict Christ on the cross. The earliest art form that we have discovered where Christ is hanging on a tree dates around 420 A. D. We could stop an wonder at this, but could it be that crosses were too much of a reality in that culture to graphically depict it? Maybe everyone was well aware of what dying on a cross meant. Maybe they had family members that had died in such a gruesome way, too many painful memories. A violent grace, the cross. Meditate with me today about just what it cost our Saviour.

One might lay down his life for a righteous man, but for a sinner such as I?