The Four Crosses:
We come to a crossroad in our life. We aren’t sure where we want to go, but we know that we need to make a choice. We need to find out which way we’re headed and why we’re heading that way. This is the first cross that each of us must come to in life. We must ask ourselves what it is that we believe, why it is that we are living, and which path it is that we will take.
We then come to the cross of Christ. We see that we cannot save ourselves; we realize that we have no hope of freeing ourselves from our sin and our flesh. We know that Jesus died for us and that He can provide us with eternal life. Now, as we stand in front of the second cross, we’re forced to make a decision as to whether we will receive Jesus’ free gift of salvation. Whether we will walk away from Christ’s cross unchanged, having seen the mercy of Almighty God, or whether we will receive what Jesus did on that second cross and begin living for Him.
The third cross we come upon is the cross of death. This is the cross that all believers must first jump up on. I do not mean to say that we literally climb upon a wooden post, but a metaphorical cross appears before us. At this point we must choose to die to our carnal selves and we must carry that cross as a reminder for the rest of our lives. Just as in Christ we have all died…. The Word says that in Adam all men die, but I am not talking about a death in the physical sense, I am talk about death to the fleshly world and desires. In Christ all men die to their desires, their nature, their will, their wants, their sin.
Unfortunately far too many Christians think that this is the end of the road. Many Christians have gotten to the point where they came to the cross of Christ and they’ve made a decision to follow Him and they even decided to jump on their own cross and die to their flesh- but then they stop. They’ve been fooled into believing that God’s ultimate goal for their lives is to be sin-free. They think that getting sin out is the ‘Missio Dei’. We decide that the ultimate goal of a Christian is to be free from sin.
Yet, we see men like David who had an extramarital affair and murdered a man to try to cover it up. Abraham who got so sick of waiting on God that he had sex with and spawned a child with his maidservant. We see Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, who was so addicted to smoking that the tobacco companies used his face and personal quotes about cigarettes as a logo to sell their products. These were men who had sin in their lives and they failed in some aspect or portion of their life; but they did far more for the cause of God than nearly any others throughout history.
Why?
Because they were willing to be obedient. Obedience is better than sacrifice and quite frankly we DO need to get the sin out of our lives- but we need to be obedient FIRST AND FOREMOST!
This is where we come to the fourth cross. If we look at the progression we see a man who stumbles upon a crossroad. After standing at the fork he makes a short deliberation and then decides to follow God’s narrow path to see where it leads him. When he walks just a short way down this road of discovery and curiosity about faith in Christ he is then taken to the cross of the Almighty One whom gave himself as a sacrificial atonement. The man stands before the cross of Christ and decides that in and of himself he has no good thing to offer and he cannot take that step towards God, Therefore he will receive the open door, the bridged gap, that Christ has made for him when He died on the cross. Once he has stepped away from the cross that led to his salvation he is now led to another cross which is calling to him. It is his own cross. Will he now die to his carnal desires and his own will? Will he now get up on that cross and die? Will he cross over from life in and of himself to death in Jesus Christ? He chooses to die to himself and take up his own cross. A wise decision and one that will change every fiber of his destiny!
BUT… there’s still more.
He has crossed from life into death, but now he needs to cross back into life. The fourth cross is a crossing from death to the flesh, into a new life in Jesus Christ. This is where so many believers fail. We love the freedom that Christ offers- freedom from sin, freedom from self, freedom from pain, freedom from religion and fruitless personal strivings, freedom from hell. Yet we sit back in joy, having been purchased at the highest price any has ever paid, and we do nothing to return the favor to the King. Too many believers have failed to take the fourth step- or at least to fully take it.
When a man or a woman comes to that fourth cross and decides to come back to life in Christ Jesus he or she makes a declaration tantamount to that of the apostle Paul.
“For me to live is Christ and to die is gain!”
We have now made the decision that our efforts, our time, our money, our belongings, our everything is going to be used to bring glory to God and not to ourselves. We have decided that we will now live to advance the cause of Christ, not the cause of self. We have become a people who live to serve and bless others- not because it’s easy or it’s natural (although with time it becomes that way), but because we feel indebted to the One who gave everything for us.
We cannot skip out on any of these four crosses or our personal walk with Christ will be lacking and our salvation can be brought into question. Have you come to the crossroad? Have you seen the cross of Christ? Have you taken up your own cross and died to yourself? Have you crossed over from a fruitless life into a metaphorical death and back into life in Christ so that you may live each moment for the glory of God?
