“But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know the One who sent Me” (John 15:21).
Have you ever wondered why people could be so angry with Jesus? Here was a man healing people, delivering folks from demons, touching the untouchable and loving the unlovable, and teaching us to be kind to one another, to love one another, to forgive one another. Yes, for sure He was a threat to the religious establishment which had abandoned the essence of Law and the Prophets. Yes, He was a threat to Jewish nationalism, as He still is.
But when we step back and consider the blessing that Jesus was to so many, and His kindness and gentleness, His service to others, how could the massed hatred of a people crucify Him? Pilate recognized that this didn’t make sense, he didn’t have the courage to do something about the insanity of it all, but he recognized the incongruity of religious people crucifying a good man, a very good man.
Mother Theresa served in a Hindu country, yet she was not crucified. Jesus served among His own people according to the flesh, and they crucified Him.
On the Cross, Jesus was saying to the Father, “Forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”
While He is saying this, what are the people and the Jewish rulers doing? They are sneering at Him and saying, “He saved others; let Him save Himself if this is the Christ of God, His Chosen One.” (See Luke 23:33 – 43).
The rulers and people acknowledge that Jesus saved others, that He has been a blessing to others, and yet they are murdering Him by a hideous torture. These are certainly fine upstanding religious leaders, such as we often find within Christian history and within contemporary Christianity. (We would rather be aligned with earthly power than with the Lamb of God.)
How is it possible that the people could not see the incongruity between professing to follow and teach the Law of Moses and the Prophets, and crucifying a man, any man? How is it that the religious leaders could engage in Satanic activity and not realize the depths to which they were sinking? Afterward, how could they not ask, “What have we done?”
(I cannot help but ask why we, professing Christians, become so enamored of the latest and greatest “Christian” programs to attract people and make us popular among ourselves and others, when Jesus says, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for their fathers used to treat the false prophets in the same way” Luke 6:26.)
Jesus says that when we are rejected and persecuted, which we will most assuredly be to one degree of another if we follow Him, it is because “they do not know the One who sent Me.” This is the baseline reason. There may be other reasons, but they all flow from the headwaters of others not knowing the One who sent Jesus Christ.
We must not try to avoid the reality that the Cross is an offense; it is a stumbling block. (Galatians 5:11; 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:2). The course on witnessing which I’ve referred to in this series, sought to remove the offense of the Cross, just as Peter sought to remove the Cross from Jesus (Matthew 16:21 – 23).
The Cross brings us low before God and devastates our pride and self-centeredness and sinfulness and self-reliance. Those who submit to the work of the Cross find eternal life in Jesus Christ; those who reject the Cross descend into the abyss of self-centered sinful darkness and rebellion. The Cross is the Way of Life in Christ to those who embrace Him (Galatians 2:20).
When we live lives of witness, we live in the Cross and out from the Cross, for to witness we must pass through the Cross, giving ourselves to Christ and others, witnessing cost us our lives, there is a Cost to Witness.
Witnessing also means that we present the Christ of the Cross to others, for if we have not presented the Cross to others, we have not presented Jesus Christ. Hence Paul writes, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).
The therapeutic and sociological “Christianity” which is engulfing North American Christianity puts Delilah to shame in terms of the art of seduction. But lest you misunderstand me, legalistic and tribalistic Christianity is also an enemy of the Cross (Philippians 3:1 – 3; Galatians 3:1 – 5).
Through all of this, we can have supreme confidence that the Gospel is the power of God and that we ought not to be ashamed. As Paul writes, “For I am not ashamed of the Gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek” (Romans 1:16). When we share the Gospel, we can trust God with the results.
O friends, the more I ponder the course on witnessing that I used in my congregation, the more I regret it, for it avoided the Cross and encouraged a way of self-preservation, and as Jesus teaches, the way of self-preservation is the way of death (Mark 8:34 – 38). It will cost us our lives to share Jesus with others, it requires the surrender of our will, it requires our own crucifixion with Christ (Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:3 – 11; John 12:24 – 26; Philippians 3:10).
Well now, dear friends, shall we follow the Lamb wherever He goes? (Revelation 14:4).
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