THE WORLD BEHIND ME, THE CROSS BEFORE ME

THE WORLD BEHIND ME, THE CROSS BEFORE ME

Galatians 6:11-18

Dr. Wm. J. Maxwell

First Presbyterian Church, Newport, RI

April 9, 2006 Palm Sunday

It was a showdown unlike any “OK Corral” either before or since. The only reason we know about it is the fact that Jesus told his disciples about it. There were only the two of them, “The Prince of Darkness Grim” and the Son of God. As Luke tells us in his Gospel, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for 40 days He was tempted by the devil.” [i]

The devil fired off the darts and arrows of temptation, hoping that Jesus would take the bait, leaving behind any sense or desire of accomplishing His task of the redemption of the lost, the blind, and the dead. At one point, the Dark Angel laid before Jesus “all the kingdoms of the world.” And he said to Him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.”

Jesus was not about to give in to such temptation … not for a single moment. First of all, Jesus countered with the Sword of the Spirit – the Word of God. “It is written,” He said, “‘Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.’”

But secondly, Jesus wasn’t interested in having all the world’s riches and authority. It was almost as if you could hear Him saying, “The world behind Me, the cross before Me.” Even then, Jesus had the cross in mind to achieve our salvation.

Of course, there were other moments when a detour away from the cross seemed possible.

There were the times when the disciples of Jesus just didn’t get the road to redemption, but Jesus wouldn’t give in to their “little faith.” “The world behind Me, the cross before Me.”

And what of those adoring crowds on Palm Sunday, who thought their delivering King had at last come to rid them once for all from the scourge of Rome? “The world behind Me, the cross before Me.”

And what of those agonizing moments in Gethsemane? The thought of total separation of the Son from the Father while bearing our sin upon the cross – the very thought was horrific. And yet He prayed: “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may Your will be done.” [ii] “The world behind Me, the cross before Me.”

The cross was the Savior’s aim, goal and primary objective for His ministry. As P.T. Forsyth, the English Congregationalist, once wrote:

Christ is to us just what his cross is. All that Christ was in heaven or on earth was put into what he did there … Christ, I repeat, is to us just what his cross is. You do not understand Christ till you understand his cross. [iii]

The year after he wrote this, he wrote in another book, The Work of Christ:

On this interpretation of the work of Christ (Paul’s teaching of the cross as God’s means for our salvation) the Church rests. If you move faith from that centre, you have driven the nail into the Church’s coffin. The Church is then doomed to death, and it is only a matter of time when she shall expire. [iv]

PAUL, HIMSELF, MOST CERTAINLY WOULD HAVE AGREED.

“May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,

through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

Once again, Paul was placing himself in contrast to these false and deceptive teachers. He was showing the Galatians his determined purpose to boast and glory in nothing else but the Cross of Christ. So far as his own Jewish credentials were concerned, Paul could have boasted with the best of them. But again, because the Christian life is the Christ-centered life, and the Christ-centered life is the Cross-centered life, there was no boasting to be found except in that Cross.

Clearly, Paul was not interested in the world’s system of values and ideas that are so often opposed to the way and will of God. The world had been crucified to Paul and Paul to the world. He was dead to all their allurements, enticements and power.

Oh, Paul understood clearly the meaning of birth and family alliances, of learning, wealth or accomplishments. But as much as these are treasured by so many, the supreme boast for Paul was found in the cross of Christ. And for each and every Christian, the supreme boast and glory ought to be no less than the same: the Cross of Christ. The motto should ring true for us as well: “The world behind me, the cross before me.”

IS THERE NOT TO BE FOUND

A WONDROUS GLORY ABOUT THE CROSS OF CHRIST?

Albert Barnes, the Presbyterian pastor and Bible commentator of a former generation, once noted this in saying:

All is glory around the cross. It was a glorious Saviour who died; it was a glorious love that led Him to die; it was a glorious object to redeem a world; and it is unspeakable glory to which He will raise lost and ruined sinners by His death. O who would not glory in such a Saviour! [v]

Surely, it was a “glorious Savior who died” and a “glorious love that led Him to die.” William Holman Hunt, the great artist of 1827-1910, certainly believed so. He was determined to “do battle with the frivolous art of the day,” as he stated it, which focused so much upon trite themes. As an example of this, he’s perhaps best known for painting The Light of the World, which we find in one of our stained glass windows.

He deliberately spent three years between1870 and 1873 in the Holy Land. There he painted a very moving portrait of Jesus, as Holman sat on the roof of his house in Jerusalem. It is entitled “The Shadow of Death” and author John R.W. Stott describes it for us:

It depicts the inside of the carpenter’s shop in Nazareth. Stripped to the waist, Jesus stands by a wooden trestle on which he has put down his saw. He lifts his eyes toward heaven, and the look on his face is one of either pain or ecstasy or both. He also stretches, raising both arms above his head. As he does so, the evening sunlight streaming through the open door casts a dark shadow in the form of a cross on the wall behind him, where his tool-rack looks like a horizontal bar on which his hands have been crucified. The tools themselves remind us of the fateful hammer and nails.

In the left foreground a woman kneels among the wood chippings, her hands resting on the chest in which the rich gifts of the Magi are kept. We cannot see her face because she has averted it. But we know she is Mary. She is startled (or so it seems) at her son’s cross-like shadow on the wall. [vi]

To this description of the portrait that now hangs in the Art Gallery in the city of Leeds, England, Stott adds this fitting comment:

Though the idea is historically fictitious, it is also theologically true. From Jesus’ youth, indeed even from His birth, the cross cast its shadow ahead of him. His death was central to his mission. [vii]

Now, obviously, we are not all gifted artists as was Holman Hunt. Few of us could also afford the expense of three years in Jerusalem, sitting upon the roof and painting such a portrait as this. But we should nevertheless ask ourselves, what of the portrait of Christ in the gallery of our own minds and hearts? There, in that place known only to you, can you find “a glorious Savior who died”? Can you find there the testimony “to a glorious love that led Him to die”? You can, if as a Christian you are living the “cross-centered life.”

In the cross-centered life, we are also able to boast and glory in the cross because “it was a glorious object to redeem a world” and “it is unspeakable glory to which He will raise lost and ruined sinners by His death.”

How gracious and merciful of God the Father to send His Son into a world ruined by a grasp toward autonomy, toward total independence. From Adam and Eve’s attempt in the Garden of Eden to “be like God,” to this very day when the words “in God we trust” have become repugnant and offensive, a fallen race has raised its defiant fist up to God and said, “We don’t need You!”

But while divine justice could settle this matter immediately, God revealed the glory of His love and mercy upon the undeserving, so that, through the Cross of Christ, we can be saved and delivered by grace, live by grace, receive a gracious adoption, and live as those who know the true meaning of freedom.

Compare and contrast, if you will, the cross-centered life with the aims and objects in which people so often boast, and you will find so much of what the world offers as lacking in lasting value. Again, Albert Barnes is worth quoting … and personally affirming:

Let us not boast of our wealth. It will soon leave us, or we shall be taken from it, and it can aid us little in the great matters that are before us. It will not ward off disease; it will not enable us to bear pain; it will not smooth the couch of death; it will not save the soul. Let us not glory in our strength, for it will soon fail; in our beauty, for we shall soon be undistinguished in the corruptions of the tomb; in our accomplishments, for they will not save us; in our learning, for it is not that by which we can be brought to heaven.

But let us glory that we have for a Savior the eternal Son of God – that glorious Being who was adored by the inhabitants of heaven; who made the worlds; who is pure, and lovely, and most holy: and who has undertaken our cause and died to save us. I desire no higher honor than to be saved by the Son of God. [viii]

There is indeed no higher honor than this, but also no greater and no more glorious message for us to proclaim!

This was deeply affirmed long ago by the Moravian Christians, a Christian community founded by Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. Christian refugees from many nations and ethnic groups settled on his estate in Saxony in 1722, which then grew into a strong Christian community. Their stress was on Christianity as a religion of the cross of Christ and of the heart’s response. They defined a Christian as one who has “an inseparable friendship with the Lamb, the slaughtered Lamb.”

In spite of all their diversity, they found their unity in the cross of Jesus Christ, and their seal bears the inscription in Latin: “Our Lamb has conquered; let us follow Him.” They were sometimes called the “Easter People,” as they worshipped not only the crucified Lamb, but the risen Lamb as well.

But these Christians were not content to keep all this to themselves. Not at all! In only four years’ time, missions were founded in the Caribbean, Greenland, Lapland, North and South America, and South Africa. Later on, they began mission work in Labrador, among Australian aboriginals, and on the Tibetan border.

Those in such foreign lands know that there is a God, said Zinzendorf, but they also need to know of the Savior who died for them. “Tell them about the Lamb of God,” he insisted, “till you can tell them no more.” [ix]

Yes, there is no more glorious message for us to proclaim to all the world. For we have a glorious Savior, a glorious love, a glorious object of salvation, and an unspeakable glory awaiting those who confess and who live:

“The world behind me,

the cross before me”!