We hang crosses as jewelry on chains around our necks and bracelets on our wrists, along with many who don’t know Christ at all. We affix them to our rooftops and on the walls behind our pulpits, sort of like a welcome mat put out to invite us into temple meetings that cost us nothing.
But the cross that leads to the kingdom are not those at all. That cross is the place where Jesus died a physically and mentally excruciating death. It is the place we’re supposed to die an equally excruciating spiritual death to all we ever were. The cross is not something Jesus did just so we wouldn’t have to. It’s something we need to join Him in. The Cross of Christ of the religious, like most everything else the religions of man put forth, is groomed to our comfort and liking rather than portrayed in truth that should strip that from us.
We desperately need to come to a fresh understanding of the cross, because it is where we fully engage in the first of those nine words that changed everything: “repent!” If the old man does not completely change his mind and turn from former ways and to God’s new ways, whatever is left alive of old perspectives will become a stumbling block on the kingdom journey. The old that must die in us is the kingdom of man, and the new we begin to take on the kingdom of heaven. That is why “repent” comes before the other eight words that changed everything.
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