Pastor’s Corner October 2009

The following was published in our monthly newsletter, the Redeemer Report.

Why does Paul refer to the Cross of Christ as offensive?
– The Cross of Christ is offensive because it declares something about us we do not want to hear.

– The Cross of Christ declares that our sin is so great that it requires the ultimate punishment, and we do not want to hear or admit that. The Cross of Christ declares that our sin was so great that only One who has ever lived could shoulder it’s burden for us. We cannot save ourselves. The Cross of Christ declares that our sin brought about the necessity of the violence that came down on Christ and we could do nothing to improve upon it. The Cross of Christ is a message of complete sufficiency in Christ and total depravity and bankruptcy in us-that’s what is so offensive about the Cross. The Cross is an offense to the self-righteous. The man or woman who is relying on their own imagined strength for salvation, does not like the doctrine of the cross.
Charles Spurgeon spoke of how the Cross offends from the perspective of the preacher preaching the Cross:

“But if he starts to cast the sinner down in the dust, and to teach what Christ himself taught, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him;” and that, in the Scriptures, all men are declared to be “dead in transgressions and sins;” then the proud sinner will turn away, and say, “I am not going to be so insulted, as to have all my powers leveled to the ground! Am I to be made into a mere machine, or into a piece of clay, and to lie passive in the Potter’s hands? I will not submit to such an indignity.” If the minister will give him a little to do himself, and let him sacrifice a little to his own idol, he will drink down the false doctrine as the ox drinks down water; but since we tell him he is powerless, like the poor bleeding man when the Samaritan met him, he says, “I will have nothing to do with you.”
The Cross of Christ is offensive because it declares something about us we do not want to hear- we are sinners and only God can save us.

Indeed, considered personally- I am such a heinous sinner that saving me requires the punishment of Christ on the Cross and I can add nothing to it because I have nothing to add. I’m a poor sinner, and only Jesus Christ is everything to me.
So, Paul’s reference to the “offense” of the cross makes good sense, as it relates to the perishing who do not believe. But for me, who believes (by God’s grace), the cross means eternal life. All praise to Him.

1 Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

In the Lamb,
Pastor Tony Felich