“The offence of the Cross”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Tuesday, April 4, 2023
1 Corinthians 1:18-31 (Forward, p. 65) CEV p. 1190
Over the centuries—and even to this day—people have had issues with the whole matter of the Cross. Many have found it offensive and a stumbling block to faith in a loving or just God. The apostle Paul here, in today’s passage, goes into some detail, not about its necessity or its meaning, but about its wisdom and its power. However, in some ways, he does touch on those two former things.
The Jews had problems with it and found it extremely offensive because they believed that the Cross was a sign of God’s curse--based on a passage from Deuteronomy 21, verses 22-23--and echoed in Galatians 3:13. So, the mere idea, the mere suggestion, that God’s chosen one, God’s Messiah, might suffer such an horrendous and shameful death was abhorrent, totally out of the question. Paul suggests that his Jewish comrades were constantly looking for signs or miracles as would befit a Messiah, whereas to them the Cross demonstrated just the opposite.
And, for the Greeks, the Gentiles, the idea was equally absurd, absolutely foolish to their way of thinking. For them, God was completely removed from the common ways of humankind, totally unaffected or uninvolved in their affairs. And so the mere suggestion that God might take on human flesh, share their sorrows and pains, and even die on their behalf was unthinkable. Who could ever, they thought, believe in a God so weak and vulnerable as that!
Modern critics of the Cross find other reasons for offence. Some have labelled it as the ultimate example of child abuse, of a father condemning his son to death--all for no good reason, as if that would matter. Others have attacked the entire idea of Jesus ‘paying for our sins’, the whole concept of His enduring a sacrificial and substitutionary death for our sakes. They suggest that God must be barbaric and nasty, a sadist at heart, in punishing anyone or in demanding death for anyone, regardless of their deeds. They suggest that such could not be the actions of a loving and merciful God.
But here they miss the main point of what they have just said, namely ‘the actions of a loving and merciful God’. They under appreciate just how sins affects us and what it means to us humans. They miss the consequences of sin, of how sin binds and enslaves us, and of how it leaves us in shame, despair and helplessness. They somehow overlook how sin inevitably damages our relationships with God, others and ourselves, and leads to countless evils in our world. They fail to see just how powerless we are to deal with it or overcome it. And, of course, they overlook the idea that sin severs our relationship with God, the author of life, and brings about death.
And likewise, they somehow downplay the overriding idea found repeatedly in the Scriptures, the idea of a holy and righteous God. We are told that God cannot countenance evil or sin, cannot overlook it or simply allow it to pass. And indeed, that is the basis of our entire idea of how the justice and policing system ought to work. Evil or crime in whatever form it takes cannot simply allowed to persist but must be dealt with. And if there is a penalty involved, so-be-it. But here, with us and God at least, there are two rather insurmountable problems. The first was that we humans were still estranged from God—or as Paul says elsewhere, His enemies—and therefore unlike to even want to deal the consequences of sin or with our separation or wrong-doing. But even more to the point was the mere fact that we could never bridge that God or pay the price, the consequences of sin, all on our own, by our own actions.
And so, what God did, Jesus did, there on the Cross, was to bear the consequences of sin, pay the price of sin, bridge the gap between ourselves and God, and undo the power of shame, guilt, and Satan, and forgive us and free us from the power and impacts of sin itself. It is loving and merciful in doing for us what we could never do for ourselves.
And, in ascribing ‘child abuse’ to the actions of God, those critics are making a terrible error, namely making too much of a supposed separation of the ‘persons’ of God the Father and God the Son. When Jesus bore that terrible death upon the Cross, it was really God the Father suffering there with Jesus and suffering for us as well. God the Father and God the Son, as Jesus stated repeatedly, are really one, so it wasn’t as if the Father was absent or uninvolved in what was happening to Jesus there on the Cross. God the Father was suffering along with Him, as indeed He does with all of us. God is never absent from us or what we are going through, but is with us in them, enduring them even as we do. And so, rather than finding offence in the Cross, we need to rejoice in it and in God’s ultimate sacrifice for us, but also to reflect with some solemnity and gravity over just what it has cost God to do this. Amen.
Forward notes: “Not many of you were wise by human standards” (verse 26b).
“My family and friends tease me that even with two graduate degrees, the most basic things often elude me: during my first North Dakota winter, I noticed my car’s backup camera wasn’t working and was prepared to take my Subaru to the shop, when a friend casually wiped off the camera lens with his thumb, immediately restoring it to functionality. I have what my grandfather called ‘book learning’ but not his common sense and life wisdom.
“Thank goodness the Creator can still use me as a vessel. Thank goodness we don’t all need a seminary degree to be ministers, for we are all ministers by virtue of our baptism, just as we are all theologians, because we can all talk about God. The disciples weren’t always quick studies either, but that didn’t stop them from fighting over who was greatest. If we are not wise by human standards, we certainly are not wise by God’s standards. We can’t study our way into heaven (eternal life in our enjoyment of God), but the kingdom of God is already near us, if we have the wisdom to recognize it!”
MOVING FORWARD: “In what areas do you need to seek God’s wisdom?”