If you were to ask most people, “What is the symbol of the Christian faith?”  They would tell you, “The cross.”  The American Red Cross was started from a Christian base.  On the top of steeples or in churches you will see a cross.  The Roman Catholic Church has Jesus on the cross.  In their Mass, they celebrate the crucifixion of Jesus and in a sense, he is re-crucified every Mass.  The Protestant church usually portrays an empty cross, signifying the resurrection of Jesus and his finished work for us.  But the fish, the Bible, the letter “X” have never enjoyed the place of the cross in the Christian world.

                    We sing about the cross.  “On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame.”  “Alas and did my Savior bleed and did my sovereign die.  Would he devote that sacred head for sinners such as I.  At the Cross, at the Cross Where I first saw the light…” 

                    The cross is the place where Jesus died.  What stood in the first century as the most cursed, most painful, most humiliating way for criminals and war prisoners to die, became the place we celebrate the forgiveness of sins.  For we picture the cross as the altar where Jesus, the lamb of God, took away the sins of the world.  We see it at the place where God’s love intersected with the world.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotton Son…”  Here the cross is the place where God gave us his son.

                    Some modern theologians think that the cross was a place where Jesus died as an example of a willingness that we all should have to suffer for what is right.  Others see the cross as an unnecessary event in the life of this carpenter’s son.  But the Bible sees that the cross was the place where God dealt with our sin.  God’s hatred of our sin was so great and his love for us so compelling, that God bore our sins in his own body to set us free from sin.

                    As Christians, we look back on the cross.  We do so with horror.  Is this what God thought of sin?  Is the death penalty awaiting all of us?  And when we see this, we rejoice.  Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law, he became sin for us so that, as forgiven people, we could appear righteous before God.

                    The cross is meant to jolt us.  Imagine driving down the road, dozing off, waking up going down into a ditch.  At the last moment, we swerve the wheel and come back up onto the roadway.  Wouldn’t that experience compel you to change some of your habits?  Wouldn’t you consider stopping and taking a cat nap or getting a cup of coffee the next time you are tired and driving?

                    Or wouldn’t touching a hot wire make you think about going to the electric panel and turning off the breaker before you continue?

                    As Christians, when we look at the cross, we get a jolt as well.  We no longer look at things the same way.

                    In this light, we look at 2 Corinthians “15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” 2 Corinthians 5:15.

                    Here is the grand plan behind the cross.  The grand plan was for us to live for God!  

                    In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve lived for God.  God told them to take care of the garden and they did.  God came and talked to them in the cool of the evening.  They were close to God and did whatever he asked them to do.  As a family and as individuals, they were committed to living their lives as God would have them do it.

                    When Satan introduced sin, it all changed.  The feeler Satan put out was an accusation that God was trying to stop Adam and Eve from experiencing all that they could experience.

“1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”” Genesis 3:1-5, NIV.

                    This last phrase, “…you will be like God, knowing good and evil,” speaks volumes to me.  Here is Satan telling the truth.  God knows good and evil.  If you eat of the fruit, you will know good and evil.  Before they only knew good, but it is not a lie.  The lie is found in what is not spoken.  The lie is that God knows that you will be like Him.  In other words, God is holding back on you.  You are giving your all to him, but he is holding back on you.  Satan insinuates that there is no good reason that they would not be able to handle good and evil, that the only reason that God prohibited them from eating of the fruit was to stop them from being equal to him.

                    When Adam and Eve took the fruit and ate it, they started to live for themselves and not for God. If a person is disobeying God, then they are living for themselves. They are doing what they want to do, not what God wants them to do.

                    That is the purpose of the cross.  Our text today states this clearly. “15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.” 2 Corinthians 5:15.

                    I call this the boomerang effect.  We were created to live for God.  We have gone away.  Through the cross we can come back to being what we should always have been. 

                    Just as a boomerang has a turning point, so we have a turning point.  That turning point is when we recognize that we are living for ourselves or may be we would say we are living for others, and we turn and say, “I want to live for God.”  God puts the cross in front of us.  On that cross Jesus died.  On that cross our sin of rejecting God, of doing our own thing, of going our own way, is paid for by the precious blood of Jesus.  And when we put our faith in Jesus, we are forgiven.

                    Why did God forgive us?  Because he wants us to return back to him.  He wants us to live for Him.

                    For those who have made that decision, that decision to trust Christ and live for God, the first step he wants you to take is baptism.  The Bible always speaks of baptism as an act we take after we have put our faith in Jesus Christ.  Faith than baptism.  If you are serious about living for Christ you will do that.

                    Then those who are baptized need to learn the teachings of God and Jesus.  We need to learn those so we can obey them.  That is one reason that church, small group, Sunday school, Bible reading and Christian friendship is so important.  This is where we learn what God wants us to do.

                    In light of the cross and the purpose of the cross, I must ask this question, “How are you doing?  Are you living for self or Christ?”  Are you walking on obedience?  Are you learning what the Bible teaches?  Are you seeking intentionally to live for Jesus?

                    The church subscribes to World Magazine which gives a Christian and a conservative slant on issues.  In reading one of the recent editions, I came across two articles in that one edition that illustrates two people who I believe are living, not for themselves, but for “him who died for them and was raised again.

An Eitrean man imprisoned for nearly five years for being part of a Protestant church not recognized by the government has died after years of rough treatment as a religious prisoner.  Magos Solomon Semere was 30.  Multiple sources confirm Semere had been beaten and was suffering from pneumonia when Eritrean authorities offered him medical attention in return for recanting his faith.  According to a fellow prisoner, the young Christian man refused: “Magos was determined to obey the Lord rather than men.” (World Magazine, March 10, 2007)

World Magazine also had an article on Elliot Huck.  Elliot is a 14 year old boy whose nickname is “Spelliot.”  In 5th Grade he learned to spell more than 26,000 words for the Scripps National Spelling Bee.   In 2006 he made it to the nationals, but was defeated in the “lawnmower round”, a round designed to mow down most of the spellers before ESPN televised the final rounds.  Of the 44 that went on to the final round, he was 45th.  This year, the last year that he can compete, he made a decision not to compete in the spelling bee.  It seems that the Herald-Times, a major sponsor for the bee in Indiana, has chosen to hold the bee on a Sunday in a local library.  Though alternatives were given by local people to help change the day, the publisher refused.  He made this decision on his own, he was not forced to do so by his parents. He believed that a Sabbath day should be kept holy for the Lord. In an interview, he hoped people would see the larger picture.  He said, “My chief purpose in spelling is to glorify God. My chief purpose in not spelling will be to glorify God.” (World Magazine, March 10, 2007)

I don’t know about you, but I am impressed with the convictions expressed by these two men and the way they are willing to make sacrifices to follow the Lord.  I get the impression that they have crucified a life lived for self.  I get the impression that they live for Christ.  I find a picture of the resurrection life, the new life, the life that says no to self and yes to God.

If people said no to self and yes to God, we would have more honest people in the world.  People would not steal, cheat, lie, backbite, envy or covet.  They would not be suing others so quickly, would be more open to forgiving and being forgiven. 

If people were more open to God, we would not be facing a potential shortfall in ministers and missionaries, because people would think that serving God full time would be a privilege.

If people said no to self and yes to God, more marriages would not only remain intact, but the people who are in them would be more satisfied and happy with one another.  When two people are trying to live for God and not for themselves, it can be a wonderful place to live.

As we approach the Easter season, the impact of the cross for the Christian should grip our lives.  Christ died for our sins, this is true and we are thankful.  But Christ died so that we could live for God.  The way Adam and Eve lived for God and enjoyed his fellowship boomerangs back to those who take seriously this purpose.

Live for Jesus.

The Christ of the India Road: E. Stanley Jones, pg. 45

"Now the cross never knows defeat, for it itself is Defeat, and you cannot defeat Defeat.  You cannot break Brokenness.  It starts with defeat and accepts that as a way of life.  But in that very attitude it finds its victory.  It never knows when it is defeated, for it turns every impediment into an instrument, and every difficulty into a door, every cross into a means of redemption.  So I concluded, any people that would put the cross at the center of its thought and life would never know when it is defeated.  It would have a quenchless hope that Easter morning lies just behind every Calvary."

The meaning of the cross is just this.  If you are down, you cannot go any further. 

                    You are immune to insults.  Why?  Because the people who are trying to make us look bad may be wrong in what they say, but they don’t know the half of it!  They may call us “stupid” but they have no idea how much we really don’t know.  They may call us insincere, but they have no clue as to the measure of our true insincerity.  You cannot knock down a fallen man.

The boomerang effect.  Coming back to where we should have always been.