Friday, March 27th

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Friday, March 27

Luke 23:32-43

Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him there, along with the criminals—one on his right, the other on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots.

The people stood watching, and the rulers even sneered at him. They said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is God’s Messiah, the Chosen One.”

The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine vinegar and said, “If you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.”

There was a written notice above him, which read: this is the king of the Jews.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

But the other criminal rebuked him. “Don’t you fear God,” he said, “since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

The cross has become somewhat ubiquitous in our culture. We see it everywhere; not just on church steeples, but dangling from necklaces and earrings, even tatooed in a thousand ways on the bodies of young and not-so-young people all around us.

In many ways the cross has become a kind of fashion statement; the cross has become kind of “cool.”

But the cross was anything but cool.

The cross was an instrument of torture and death used by the Roman empire to punish, humiliate and intimidate the people groups they ruled.

When you stop to consider it, wearing a cross around one’s neck is like wearing a tiny gold guillotine or diamond encrusted electric chair as a piece of jewelry. While that strikes us as wildly inappropriate, wearing a cross does not.

Why?

I think we see the cross differently for two reasons.

First, we see it differently because of the one who died on it. Even people who don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God do think of Jesus as a good and innocent man. Those of us who believe Jesus is both Lord and Savior know that Jesus was not dragged to the cross kicking and screaming as were most crucified men, but that he allowed himself to be crucified. For Jesus the cross was not just a brutal death, but a triumph over the power of sin and death. Jesus transformed the meaning of the cross.

Second, we see the cross differently because it didn’t end Jesus’ life, it began Jesus’ resurrection life.

When the Apostle Paul summarized the gospel he put it this way:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.  (1 Corinthians 15:3)

The gospel hinges on the resurrection of Christ from the dead. But the resurrection could not have happened without the cross.

The cross was necessary for Jesus to atone for the sins of the world through his shed blood; and the cross was necessary so that Jesus could demonstrate his authority over even death itself by his resurrection.

Jesus transformed the meaning of the cross from death to life.

And that’s where we will start next week! Have a wonderful Easter weekend!

Pastor Brian Coffey