The Power of the Preaching of the Cross

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In many churches, God’s commandments are carefully taught and Christians are told : "Now that you are a Christian, you have to do this, and no longer do that… You must no longer watch television or go to the pictures or to night-clubs. You must walk blamelessly, attend meetings, pay your tithes, etc…" All that finally becomes a set of laws and commandments that minister death instead of life. The burden grows heavier and heavier on the believer’s shoulders. He knows that those commandments are righteous and good, but soon realises that he is unable to practise them. Being unable to practise them, he takes refuge in hypocrisy. In the presence of others, he manages to control himself and to appear to be what he is not. But in private, with his family or his spouse, his uncrucified nature surfaces sooner or later. If that Christian has a heart for the Lord, he suffers. But many harden their hearts in the long run, because they see no answer to the problem. The message of the Cross has not resounded in their ears.

When a Christian walks in his new nature, he receives the commandments of God into his heart, into his spirit, and to practise them becomes natural for him ; not because he has been told that he must, but because he has received them into his heart as a life-giving law. He gladly practises the Word of God because he knows that the very Life of the Lord is at work inside him. His new nature rejoices in it. Can you see the difference between those two ways of living ?

Paul reveals to Christians that they have "died to the Law". That means they have died to every form of legalism. When God’s Law was given to the Hebrews, it was given to people who had not been born again. God’s commandments are good and perfect, but man’s carnal nature is unable to practise them !

In Old Testament times, men could not live a crucified life, that is to say as having died and risen in Christ, since they knew neither Christ nor the message of the Cross. The prophets spoke about those things, but they had not yet come to pass. So the Old Testament saints could not walk in the Spirit as born-again believers, as we are required to do. They had grasped many things concerning God, had received revelations from the Lord, and they walked in the light they had received. But the ultimate grace of new birth has been granted only to the Church of Jesus Christ, which is baptised in water and in the Spirit. The Church alone has been granted the revelation of her death and resurrection in Christ.

As long as Jesus had not come to this earth, no-one could live as the Church is required to live. If it had been possible, if there had been some way of living in perfection without the Cross, there would have been no need for Jesus to come. He had to come and die for our sins, then rise again, so as to grant that supreme grace to His bride, the Church, thus enabling her to walk in newness of life through His Spirit.

God had given mankind a perfect law, but it cannot be practised without the reality of the Cross. The purpose of that law was to show men that through their own personal human efforts they could not obey it. The law was given so that sin might be revealed. Men had to understand that they were born sinners, and that their human nature was a sinful one. That sin is in the flesh, in this body of sin. When God commanded : "You shall not kill," immediately that sin which is in the flesh declared : "I am going to kill." I would have been ignorant of sin if I had not received that God-given commandment. Sin, in my flesh, keeps on rebelling against God’s commandment and urging me to disobey.

So God granted the Law because He knows how evil man’s heart is. Man was unaware of that, so God had to provide him with the evidence of it. Man had to understand that his heart was so evil that he could not obey God. Even the most sincere and the holiest of men, despite all their efforts to obey, never reached one hundred per cent obedience. Under the stern tutorship of the Law, God wanted man to understand that he was a sinner who needed to be redeemed by Jesus. Man was thus made to understand that by nature he is sinful and unable to obey God’s Law.

Together with this conviction of sin, God was preparing the coming of His Messiah. Men were to see the only One who had ever obeyed the whole of the Law to perfection. The Lord Jesus was to come and satisfy all of God’s demands, and to bear the chastisement we deserved. Thus God wanted to show man how much he needed divine grace, and in what way man was to be born again through Christ, so as to be filled with the Spirit of God and enabled to obey God’s Law from the heart, for men’s hearts were going to be changed on the inside.

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