The message of the cross of Christ, an offense to the world

The message of the cross of Christ, says the apostle Paul, is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles (1 Cor. 1:23).  Indeed, it is an offense to human pride, to human wisdom, to whatever is dear to the depraved human heart and mind. 

For this reason, the enemies of Christ have done everything they could afford to do to get rid of the message of His cross.  They did to the messengers of the cross what they did to Christ.  Some of them they killed, many of them they persecuted.  But soon they realized the message of the cross had remained alive.  They could not kill it.  They could not suppress it.  They just could not stop it.

But not too recently, they have devised a new scheme to get rid of the offense of the message of the cross.  They have finally realized they could at least twist it.  So some of them have revised the story of Calvary saying that it was not Jesus of Nazareth that was crucified but Judas Iscariot or somebody else.  Or if it was Jesus indeed that was crucified, He did not really die on the cross, and so they argue.  Some have even sought to destroy the reputation of Christ, saying that He had an affair with Mary Magdalene years before His crucifixion.  They would even refer to extra-biblical sources if anyone wishes to check the verifiability of their claims, without even examining the reliability of those extra-biblical sources themselves.

To the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the message of the cross doesn't matter at all.  All that is needed to get rid of its message, and so they thought, is to get rid of God and have Him replaced by Reason (spelled here with the capital R).  Many of them therefore did not think twice to kick Him out of the new world order they invented for new humanity, which they believe has no need of God, no need of religion, and in Friedrich Nietzsche's words, no need of traditional moral principles His misguided saints have imposed upon humanity.  And if they could not totally get rid of the cross, they have already made all the rearrangements needed in the secular city of man to privatize its message.

For the postmodernists of our time, who stand on the shoulders of the existentialists, the non-realists, the post-structuralists, the relativists, the perspectivists, the phenomenologists, among others, the message of the the cross of Christ must be deconstructed, or, at the very least, relativized. The messengers of the cross are there to impose a totalizing and oppressive concept whenever they preach the Law and the Gospel embedded in their message, the postmodernists warn us all.  If that be the case, the message of the cross necessarily carries with it the greatest obstacle to unrestrained, libertarian freedom.  It must therefore be neutralized, and so they insist.

Sadly, it is right at the very doors of the Church that the message of the cross of Christ has been neutralized.  "At the time when the message of the cross is greatly needed," laments the evangelical pastor Erwin Lutzer of Moody Church in Chicago, "the evangelical church, has, for the most part, lost its nerve.  In order to not offend the 'seekers' who visit our churches, we have hewn the rough edges of the cross to fit the spirit of the age. Some pastors say openly that they will not preach the holiness of God, the depravity of man, and the exclusivity of the gospel message - for fear of erecting unnecessary stumbling blocks for those who are investigating Christianity."

But the message of the cross of Christ still remains the only sure answer to whatever is wrong with humanity.  To remove its offense is to deprive the world of its cure to human malady.  For at the cross of Christ our utter sinfulness has been exposed and our need for redemption offered once and for all by the shedding of the blood of Him who alone is holy.  The message of the cross may therefore be an offense to the world, but for those who believe, it displays the power and the wisdom of God.  "For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe" (1 Cor. 1:18, 21).

As the late Reformed theologian John Murray put it, the cross of Christ "is the most solemn spectacle in all history, a spectacle unparalleled, unique, unrepeated, and unrepeatable."  Beholding it, he added, "we are spectators of a wonder the praise and the glory of which eternity will not exhaust.  It is the Lord of glory, the Son of God incarnate, the God-man, drinking the cup given Him by the eternal Father, the cup of woe and indescribable agony.  We almost hesitate to say so.  But it must be said.  It is God in our nature forsaken of God.  The cry from the accursed tree evinces nothing less than the abandonment that is the wages of sin ... There is no reproduction or parallel in the experience of archangels or of the greatest saints.  The faintest parallel would crush the holiest of men and the mightiest of the angelic host."

References:

Lutzer, Erwin W. Why the Cross Can Do What Politics Can't: When They See You, Do They See Jesus? Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1999.

Murray, John.  Redemption - Accomplished and Applied.  Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1955.