This Easter season I want to help Christians and non-Christians who attend our church to understand the importance and impact of the cross on the Christian.  The cross is a major symbol, displayed on our walls and on many steeples in our land.  But the message of the cross has even deeper meaning in our hearts.

           Last week we showed that the cross symbolized death.  The cross told of Christ’s death for our sins.  He died for us that we could be forgiven.  But he died so that we would not live for ourselves but for Him.  Therefore, we symbolically put our own plans to death, we consider the world and its opinions dead to us.  The old way of life is dead and we now live for God.

           This is not what the world celebrates.  The world celebrates doing our own thing, living our own life, being our own person.  But the Christian believes in doing God’s thing, living His life, being His person.

           The cross is often mocked in the world around us.  In Scotland, the churches took a pub to court because it called itself the cross.  It displayed crosses inside the pub in mockery to the Christian faith.  What used to be Charlie’s Nightclub, in Justice Mill Lane, Aberdeen, has reopened as the Cross and uses the crucifix as the central theme of its quasi-religious decor.

A huge metal cross adorns the main door, with illuminated crosses along the windows on the Bon Accord Terrace side of the building. There are also mock church notice boards, with pictures of clubbers inside the venue.

           But the cross is important to the Christian.  It not only signifies to us death, but when we think of the cross, we think of God’s love for us.

           The most quoted verse in Christendom is John 3:16. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (Joh 3:16).

           Notice this verses starts with the declaration of God’s love for us.  The love of God is universally accepted by people.  Everyone believe that God loves them.  I say everyone, but there are those who question this statement.  They are usually people who have done something wrong or feel bad about life.  They don’t think that God loves them.

           But the word “so” directs our attention to the way we know God loves us.  For God, love is not an emotional thing.  So many in the world around us say they love someone.  But when the emotions die, so doesn’t the relationship.   They will say, “I don’t live him or her anymore.”  What is absent is the emotion of love. 

           But God’s love is not an emotional thing.  The word “so” directs us to the way God love us.  It has the idea, God loved us “in this way.”  In other words, God’s love can be seen.   

           Now catch this point.  Real love always has a story or a testimony.  It can be seen and experienced.  If there is no story, if there is no testimony, than it is not the kind of love the Bible speaks of.

           Someone might say, “I love my wife.”  But if she doesn’t have a story to tell of that love, then the love is not the love of the Bible.  So when God loves the world, there is a “so”, a story to tell of how that love is seen by all.

           That story is the story of the cross.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotton son.  Where did this giving take place?  On the cross.  The death we spoke about last week was motivated by God’s love for us.  This is the story of God’s love, the cross.  If you take the cross out, there is no real story.  So many people think of the love of God but reject the cross.  You cannot truly know God’s love unless you come to the cross and see that His Son is dying there for you.

           Anything short diminishes our understanding of his love.  For it is His Son who died on the cross.  The Bible teaches us that Jesus birth was a miracle.  God in some way touched Mary and she conceived and gave birth to a baby that was both God and man.  We call this the incarnation.  Jesus was unique and different from any other man because of this.  Whereas we are God’s creation, Jesus was God’s Son

           When we reject Jesus, we reject His Father, who sent Him.  But when we understand Jesus and the cross, when we put our faith in Him, we understand the love of God for us.

           Paul says, 16 I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fulness of God. (Eph 3:16 -19).

           I want to share with you a picture of love from two perspectives, from the perspective of Jesus’ friends and from his enemies.

           13 Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (Joh 15:13).  These words were given to the disciples, friends of Jesus. 

           We use the same expressions.  A man might say to a woman, “I would die for you.”  A parent might say to her children, “I would give my life for you.”  A friend might say to another, “I would take your suffering and pain and give you health if I could.”

           What greater love can a friend experience other than knowing that their friend will die for them.  So many people have been disappointed by supposed friends who turn their back on them when the going gets tough.  But when you have a friend who is truly willing to die for you, you experience a great love.

           That is what the disciples discovered.  Jesus was willing to die for them.  This love Jesus had made them willing to quit fishing to become preachers, teachers and evangelists.  They were wiling to become missionaries to Egypt, India and around the Roman Empire.  They knew the love Jesus had for them.  Their friend had died for them.  As the apostle Paul said, “the love of Christ constrains me...”

           But I would argue that when Jesus used this term “no greater love” he did it in the context of friendship.  In other words, what is the greatest love friends would show to one another?  The act of dying for them.

           But there is a verse in Romans that speaks to me of an equal or greater love than dying for a friend, and that is dying for an enemy.

           5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us. 6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! 10 For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Ro 5:5 -10).

           Notice what this says.  Verse 6:  Christ died for the ungodly.  Verse 8: Christ died for the sinner.  Verse 10:  Christ died for his enemies.  I tell you that that is also a greater love.

           There may be some here this morning who are not believers.  Your unbelief does not make God love you any less.  He had to overcome that same unbelief in all of us before we experienced personally the love of God for us.  You may be living a bad life.  God loves the ungodly.  You may be really opposed to Christianity and religion and want nothing to do with it.  You consider yourself an enemy of God.  Christ died for you as well.

           That is love, when someone dies for an ungodly, sinful enemy.  But that is what the cross is to the Christian, a symbol of love.  The cross is a symbol of love for friends of Jesus and a symbol of love for those who used to be enemies of Christ.  For God so loved the world... included me.

           The practical part of this is found in Ephesians 4. 31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Eph 4:31-32). 

           The effect of the cross on the Christian is to make the Christian more tolerant of people.  We might not like what they do, but we engage them in order to help them know Christ.  We are kind and compassionate.  Many Christians try to separate themselves from the world.  Not only do they separate themselves from the sins the world does, but they separate themselves from the sinners who do them.

           But the cross teaches us kindness.  It teaches us compassion.  It teaches us forgiveness.  Instead of separation from people, we reach out to them in the name of Jesus.

           The Good Samaritan was wiling to give a cup of water to his enemy, even though his friends avoided him.  This is the picture of the Christian who understands the cross.

           So when we see the cross we see God’s love for us.  We walk away from the cross with the desire to love others as Christ loved us.