Canceling The Simplicity Of The Cross

False teachers will always try to lead us away from Christ Crucified. They offer formulas for success in the Christian life, but although they take their hats off to Jesus, He is neither the center nor the circumference of their message. “If you do this,” they boast, “then God will do this and that for you.” “Do it and you will get” is his theme. But this is ‘pure and unsullied’ legalism! Evangelical faith, however, differs from this, in fact quite the opposite. Faith, true faith, will cause us to give up our exhausting and useless efforts to do or feel something good in order to convince God to love us and bless us.

Sometimes, unfortunately, we stray from the gospel and feel that we must make an extra special effort in godliness so that we can gain more acceptance from our Heavenly Father. Sometimes we think that if only we could spend more time reading the Bible, praying, and witnessing, then the Father would really love us and consider us special. But thinking this way is the complete opposite of faith. It is, in fact, unbelief. True faith always relies on Christ alone to earn us full approval, acceptance, and blessing before God.

Then there is the religious. Like the false teacher, the non-evangelical, religious, conceited man always tries to get away from Christ crucified. But before condemning and judging him, we had better examine ourselves well. As stupid as it sounds, we often prefer to trust our own performance rather than Christ’s. Furthermore, we prefer to trust our own experience rather than Christ’s experience for us. In doing so, we leave the gospel and fall headlong into the religion of works. Remember this, the religious person does not mind adding the cross to his belief system, it becomes, so to speak, one of his many collectible trinkets, but by making the cross something extra, he cancels its simplicity and reduces it to any. The cross, for him, is just something that adds to it, but the truth is that adding any kind of plus to the cross leaves it confused.

The truth is this; the cross saves completely or not at all. Therefore, we can never divide the work of salvation between ourselves and the crucified Christ. It is not our performance but the work of Christ, dying and rising from the grave that gives favor before God and saves. Faith understands that only Christ saves. Faith adds nothing to the cross because faith sees the fullness and sufficiency of the work done there and leads us to rest in Christ alone. We do not come to Calvary to add anything, we come by faith to see and hear something. At Calvary, faith sees the glorious truth that all things have already been sufficiently and fully accomplished and also hears the ‘It is Finished’ of Christ Jesus, the sin bearer. Faith, having made us see and hear, makes us say a cordial Amen.

And that is the Truth of the Gospel