Tag: The Cross

Growing In Humility

Published by Jeff Kennon on May 6, 2015

Pride is our greatest enemy! It has been defined as “contending for the supremacy of God.” Basically, pride causes us to think that we no longer need God. We tell ourselves we are ok. Pride causes us to go blind to our need for anything or anyone other than ourselves. Even as we grow in holiness, pride has a way of implanting in us and germinating into a desire for recognition of our new found godliness.

The Bible is fairly clear about the dangers of Pride. Solomon writes that pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18). Jesus declared that pride was one of the things that comes from within a person and defiles him (see Mark 7:14-23). And James writes that God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble (James 4:6).

So how do we grow in humility? First and foremost, we look to the cross. John Stott writes:

Every time we look at the cross Christ seems to say to us, “I am here because of you. It is your sin I am bearing, your curse I am suffering, your debt I am paying, your death I am dying.” Nothing in history or in the universe cuts us down to size like the cross. All of us have inflated views of ourselves, especially in self righteousness, until we have visited a place called Calvary. It is there, at the foot of the cross, that we shrink to our true size.

The deeper we go in understanding the cross, the more humility will ooze from our souls. The cross is where our greatest need was satisfied. The debt of our sin which we could not pay, was paid by Christ. God justified us, redeemed us, reconciled us, and is now transforming us by His grace and grace alone through the cross of Christ. It is not by our works or merit, but by grace in which we are saved.

Second, we grow in humility when we understand that our sin is just as great as those around us. Why is it that we see the sin in our lives akin to nothing more than a small habit problem while we view the sin of others as that which deserves God’s discipline? Collin Hansen, in his new book Blind Spots, writes that “if your sin is somehow less deserving of judgment that someone else’s, you’re in trouble.”

Third, growth in humility happens as we begin to preach the gospel to ourselves daily. The emphasis here needs to be on DAILY. Milton Vincent writes:

Nothing suffocates my pride more than daily reminders regarding the glory of my God, the gravity of my sins, and the crucifixion of God’s own Son in my place. Also, the gracious love of God, lavished on me because of Christ’s death, is always humbling to remember, especially when viewed against the backdrop of the Hell I deserve.

Preaching the gospel daily to yourself means you must find time to open God’s word and read it. And hopefully, not just read it, but study it, memorize it, and meditate on it. We need to be reminded each day of who we are and what God has done for us by the cross.

Finally, we must understand that growth in humility is a supernatural undertaking. It is dangerous to think that you have the power within you to develop an attitude of humility. It is our union with Christ, as His Spirit works within us, that transforms us. No doubt, God uses the daily preaching of the gospel to ourselves, etc…, but we must understand that it is God who works in us to conform us to the image of Christ.

Defeating pride is humbling yourself before God. It’s accepting Him at His word and trusting Him to do for you what you can’t do for yourself. It’s allowing His Spirit to change you to be that for which you were created.

And as we pursue Christlike humility, we do well to remember that everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 18:14).

Leave a Comment

A Hymn We Need To Recover

Published by Jeff Kennon on April 1, 2015

Written by Henry F. Lyte in 1824, Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken is a hymn that we would do well to recover.

Jesus, I my cross have taken,
All to leave and follow Thee.
Destitute, despised, forsaken,
Thou from hence my all shall be.
Perish every fond ambition,
All Ive sought or hoped or known.
Yet how rich is my condition!
God and heaven are still my own.

Let the world despise and leave me,
They have left my Savior, too.
Human hearts and looks deceive me;
Thou art not, like them, untrue.
O while Thou dost smile upon me,
God of wisdom, love, and might,
Foes may hate and friends disown me,
Show Thy face and all is bright.

Man may trouble and distress me,
Twill but drive me to Thy breast.
Life with trials hard may press me;
Heaven will bring me sweeter rest.
Oh, tis not in grief to harm me
While Thy love is left to me;
Oh, twere not in joy to charm me,
Were that joy unmixed with Thee.

Go, then, earthly fame and treasure,
Come disaster, scorn and pain
In Thy service, pain is pleasure,
With Thy favor, loss is gain
I have called Thee Abba Father,
I have stayed my heart on Thee
Storms may howl, and clouds may gather;
All must work for good to me.

Soul, then know thy full salvation
Rise oer sin and fear and care
Joy to find in every station,
Something still to do or bear.
Think what Spirit dwells within thee,
Think what Fathers smiles are thine,
Think that Jesus died to win thee,
Child of heaven, canst thou repine.

Haste thee on from grace to glory,
Armed by faith, and winged by prayer.
Heavens eternal days before thee,
Gods own hand shall guide us there.
Soon shall close thy earthly mission,
Soon shall pass thy pilgrim days,
Hope shall change to glad fruition,
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.

(Check out Indelible Grace for an updated musical version of this hymn.)

Leave a Comment

The Cross: The Signature Of Jesus

Published by Jeff Kennon on March 3, 2015

Challenging words from Brennan Manning…

The signature of Jesus, the Cross, is the ultimate expression of God’s love for the world. The church is the church of the crucified, risen Christ only when it is stamped with his signature; only when it faces outward and moves with him along the way of the Cross.

Fidelity to the Word will take us along the path of downward mobility in the midst of an upwardly mobile world. We will find ourselves not on the path to power but on the path to powerlessness; not on the road to success but on the road to servanthood; not on the broad road of praise and popularity but on the narrow road of ridicule and rejection.

To be a Christian is to be like Christ. Somehow we must lose our life in order to find it. Christianity preaches not only a crucified God, but also crucified men and women. There is no discipleship without the Cross. I am not a follow of Jesus if I live with him only in Bethlehem and Nazareth and not in Gethsemane and on Calvary, too.

-Brennan Manning, The Signature of Jesus (p. 10-11)

Leave a Comment

Living Like Christ Involves The Cross

Published by Jeff Kennon on February 11, 2015

As Christ-followers, we are constantly encouraged to “live like Christ.” What would Jesus do? we are often asked. And rightly so as John himself writes that whoever says he abides in him [Christ] ought to walk in the same way in which he walked (1 John 2:6).

But what does it mean to “walk like he walked?” I think theologian Kelly Kapic nails it when he writes…

The short answer is that Christians are called to imitate Jesus’ self giving love on the cross, not his crown as a king of his career as a carpenter. The point is clear: Jesus cross provides the primary pattern for our faithfulness to God in the present.

It was the cross of Christ in which humility, sacrifice, and love were exhibited. Therefore, for us to imitate Christ leads us to a life of humility, sacrifice, and love as well.

We are told by John that by this we know love, that he [Christ] laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth (1 John 3:16-18).

Our lives should be one of cruciformity. To be saved by the power of the cross is also to be transformed by it. Christ made us alive with Him so that we could freely live and find true life; the true life that goes counter to the ways of this world as it lives out the ways of the cross.

This life of the cross, along with the message of the cross, will look foolish to the world. Paul writes that God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being[d] might boast in the presence of God (1 Corinthians 1:27-29).

“When we remember,” Kapic writes, “just how radical the cross is, keeping in mind how it was considered ‘folly’ to worship a crucified Lord, we see how radical this metaphor becomes for shaping the Christian life.” The world glamorizes comfort, ease, and personal honor, but the cross is one of suffering, humility, and sacrifice.

However, though such suffering, humility, and sacrifice look weak to the world, they are really the ways in which God is shown to be most powerful. God does not and has not used the ways of our fallen world to reveal himself. Our King came to the earth by being born in a stable and died by way of a cross. Not exactly the way we would visualize the Creator of the universe coming to the world to restore it. And yet it is through such foolishness that we are being saved (see 1 Corinthians 1:18).

To walk as Jesus walked, therefore, and to live as he lived, is one which is shaped by the cross. It is a life of humility empowered for service and obedience. It is a life of self-sacrifice. And, contrary to the world’s thinking, it is a life of joy!!

Leave a Comment

Live & Lead By Way of The Cross

Published by Jeff Kennon on February 4, 2015

What does it mean to live and lead by way of the cross? I think Mark Sayers gives some good insight…

The hero of mythology descends from the sky, gaining fame and glory through courage, violence, and power. He then dies, His grave becoming a sight of hero worship. Christ defies this cycle. He emerges from the tomb, remaking the world with resurrection power, ascending to heaven because of His humility, His servant leadership. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the world would never be the same. Those who bow their knee at the foot of the cross admitting the absurdity of their own efforts to be godlike, who confess the chaos and sin within them, now enter into a new way of being—one not driven by striving, agenda, or applause. For these followers of Jesus would be taught to follow this new way of living and leading…the way of the cross!

(Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm by Mark Sayers)

Leave a Comment

Why We Never Graduate From The Cross

Published by Jeff Kennon on January 27, 2015

What actually happened when “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ” is a mystery whose depths we shall spend eternity plumbing –John Stott

We will never fully comprehend the love God has for us. A love and commitment to His creation that was so great that it resulted in the crucifixion of His Son. For many of us, John 3:16 is the first verse we learned and memorized and one in which we now tend to just quote from rote memory. However, the intensity of this verse still remains as we are told exactly how much God does love us…

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

God loves us SO MUCH that HE GAVE HIS SON. And when God the Father gave us His Son, the world didn’t even recognize him. John writes, He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him (Jn. 1:10-11).

In place of bestowing a crown upon the King of Kings, we nailed Him to a cross. Instead of building Him a palace, we placed Him between two thieves. But all was a part of the plan of God. Christ did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). Jesus gave Himself up for us (see Gal. 2:20). Though He knew no sin, He became sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21).

So as we gaze upon the cross, we witness the inexhaustible love of God. A love in which we must continue to remind ourselves of. In a graceless world in which love is shallowly rewarded according to merit and charm, the cross tells us that we are loved unconditionally by the one who created us. Though we look for love in all the wrong places, hoping it will fulfill the cravings of our heart, there is no other love than that found on the cross which will fill the deepest longings of our soul.

Jesus words that greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends, were not just proverbial fluff for Jesus, but were demonstrated upon the cross. Jesus words took on flesh and blood at the place of the Skull. Jesus, who is the very “radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and [who] upholds the universe by the word of his power (see Heb. 1:3), laid down His life on our behalf.

We cannot, therefore, graduate from the cross. The love of God is too deep to plumb it’s depths and our need to be loved is to great to be met anywhere else. Isaac Watts, in his hymn “When I Survey The Wondrous Cross,” concludes it by writing…

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

When we survey that wondrous cross, we come face to face with the amazing grace of God and begin to realize that there is no greater love. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5:6-8).

John writes that this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 Jn 4:10). As it has been written over and over, we cannot, and must not, graduate from the cross! For it is our continual gaze upon the cross in which we begin, as well as continually feast upon, the unending love of God.

Leave a Comment

We Never Move Beyond The Cross

Published by Jeff Kennon on January 23, 2015

“‘We never move on from the cross, only into a more profound understanding of the cross.” –David Prior

Paul, in writing to the church in Corinth, reminded them that when he was with them, he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Now I’m pretty sure he preached and taught other things. In fact, if you read the rest of 1 Corinthians, his writing has various concerns with the church. However, I think it’s the cross that forms everything he does teach and write.

For Paul, the gospel was the sole focus of his preaching. And as we read in his letter to the Galatians, it was his only boast! Paul did not move beyond the cross because the crucifixion of Christ was the event in salvation history in which our guilt, shame, and sin were placed upon Christ and absolved. It is the message of our salvation. It is our reconciliation with God and where all things are made right.

It is quite an incredible thought that the creator of the universe would limit himself in becoming a man in order to pursue his rebellious creation. And we must remember that his pursuit involved a cross. Yes, the God of the universe took upon himself our sin and died a most humiliating death. It is this message, the message of the cross, from which we never graduate.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

–Romans 11:33-36

Leave a Comment

Luther’s Theology of The Cross

Published by Jeff Kennon on October 31, 2014

Today, October 31, in the year 1517, Martin Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany. Though it was Luther’s first attempt of many at writing or speaking against the theological thinking of his day, it was and continues to be a defining moment in history. The Ninety-Five Theses ushered in the dawn of the reformation.

Of the ninety-five theses, it is Luther’s ninety-fifth that leads us to consider what some say is the heart of understanding Luther’s theology. It reads: Away, then, with all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Peace, peace,” and there is no peace. Blessed be all those prophets who say to the people of Christ, “Cross, cross,” and there is no cross! Luther is concerned with those who speak peace without the cross and offer glory without suffering.

In 1518, in another set of theses prepared for a debate at Heidelburg, Luther further defined his theology of the cross. He wrote: That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened. He wrote further that he deserves to be a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.

In the Heidelberg Disputation, it is important to understand that Luther is contrasting his theology of the cross with what he termed a theology of glory. A theology of glory was the medieval practice of theology that involved mere metaphysical speculation and attempted to find God by one’s own reasoning and wisdom. In contrast, a theology of the cross finds God on the cross through faith. Luther wrote that he who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil.

For Luther, to know God is to know him on the cross. Walter Von Loewenich writes in regard to this principle that God reveals himself in concealment, God’s wisdom appears to men as foolishness, God’s power is perfected in weakness, God’s glory parades in lowliness, God’s life becomes effective in the death of his Son.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians: Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. Would we have chosen the cross and suffering as God’s mode of saving the world? The cross is so scandalous and is only for the severest of criminals. Who would look for God on the cross? And yet Paul, and Luther, directs our gaze at God on the cross hidden in the midst of suffering.

Luther, beginning with his 95 Theses begins to direct the church of his day back to the cross. The question we must ask is do we need to recover a theology of the cross as a church? Do we prefer glory, strength, and wisdom compared to humility, weakness, and foolishness? Knowing that following Christ involves taking up our cross, are we willing to live sacrificial lives for the sake of gospel and others?

Douglas John Hall writes that a theology of the cross insists that God, who wills to meet us, love us, redeem us, meets, loves, and redeems us precisely where we are: in the valley of the shadow of death. As a result, will we engage the world around us and meet others with the truth of the gospel in the midst of their pain and struggle?

May we stand as Luther and proclaim and live life under the cross. And, may we daily remind ourselves that the word of the cross…to us who are being saved…is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18) Therefore, far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ (Gal. 6:14).

Leave a Comment