The Meaning of the Cross, part 3: Persecution

Meaning of the Cross and Persecution, Among Other Significations.

See the previous article, as this is the third in a trilogy, which begins with When I Survey the Wondrous Nace.

The luxury of what I do is that I don’t have to labor in deliberation and research in coming to some revelation. It’s not me. I’m no genius. I’m no holy man. I have read an ancient book and have read is plainly, and that book is a revelation. It’s hard to think about it as not, that’s all.

I think that there are two tendencies in which we indulge that keep us from this:

A refusal to settle on the one preeminent vital scriptural center to the faith, messianic prophecy, and
To compensate for this loss, the taking up theological issues that we are not in a position to know confirm true with certainty relative to that.

I think this is fundamentally a different kind of “biggest problem” we actually have.

Just to get your mind firmly against where we are going, to serve as a point of contrast, look for a moment at these videos:

If you don’t care for videos, go to these. If no, type in “the biggest problem in the church” and click on any link:

Here, the lack of “unity.” https://www1.cbn.com/questions/greatest-problem-facing-church

Here, its gossip: https://www.kcbi.org/it-might-be-the-biggest-problem-in-the-church-today/

Here, “biblical illiteracy”: https://christiantoday.com.au/news/the-biggest-problem-with-the-church-today.html

Here, gender identity, the struggle for truth in the public domain, Christians against immigration. Poverty, self-identity obsessed culture, and others: https://www.christianpost.com/voice/the-biggest-challenges-facing-the-church-in-2018.html

Folks, listen, the biggest problem in the church is that the church does not have a clue what the problem is, and that problem is one in which they have the least interest in so much as even offering as a possibility.

Of course, “biblical illiteracy” is the most promising. That is the biggest problem, but not general biblical illiteracy any more than a general ignorance and apathy. It’s about a certain kind.

Not to say that we should not take up these other issues to any degree or have any kind of certainty about them, to the contrary. Is faith progressive, by works, or momentary, by faith? Is Christ God or Man? Is the authority of faith and practice from tradition or scripture? Is the best NT text the textus receptus? I can’t count the weeks of obsession spent pursuing one cultural Christian “golden ticket” or another. I do not mean that we are not obliged to pursue these things. They are important. I mean that we are not to preoccupy ourselves with such questions by relegating to a comparatively ambiguous group the one topical preoccupation to which ordination we are as stewards.

Of course, if you have read much of this site so far you know what our biblical vital center of preoccupation should be: the messianic oracles of Christ. This site is not for the intention of listing them and explaining them. Too much good work has been done and is available on that. The site is for reestablishing the whole prophetic biblical stream of the Messiah as the foundation of faith, lost since the deaths of the Apostles (1 Co 3:10). If your a Christian and right with God but I have to go back and convince you that they are of an importance like no other truth you can extract from the Bible, then I might as well start obtaining my salvation by running a website that sells coffee pods and collect $1.00 donations that I send to World Vision. No, I want to convince Christians what grounding truths of the faith are lost without knowing it and not caring they don’t know, not convincing you of the truth of what has long been found, available like water, and which everyone is already gathering.

Truth is Redundant

And I apologize if I sound so redundant from post to post, but the truth is redundant in a certain way. Not redundant in how many times its stated, but redundant in that when you know it you sound boring, like a broken record talking about it. I don’t consider Christ or Paul to be wildly creative in how they were preaching. Compared to our cleverness they seem almost boring and simplistic. There is a whole lot of redundancy there, and a huge amount that is simply saying the same thing in a different way over and over. But if there is one truth to which we are morally responsible it’s reasonable that this one truth would be one that creativity and cleverness are not supposed to be compensating for. The power in this truth is not in the delivery of the message but the truth itself. Its exclusive reiteration is a testimony to who singularly powerful, important and self-sufficient it is. True, how we present it is important, and redundancy of expression is a no-no, but when the revelation is this big the more we can get it out there and get ourselves out of the way of it, the more it will be allowed to release us only to its un-obstruction and our awe.

This is the only topic of scripture and the only phenomenon of scripture that can be said to be exclusively historical, fundamentally doctrinal, and that which is not removed from the revelation without completely destroying how it is conclusively demonstrated as true. Derived from this particular revelation are all of the doctrines we believe and entertain, not the other way around. The doctrines are not established as objectively true or false without the messianic oracular stream. We may believe doctrines, we may be able to supply reasoning and proof texts for them, but if they are not prophesied or come out of the implications of prophecy then our belief and devotion to them is no better than what ties people to any common anti-revelational, unrevealed religion.

I repeat, the Oracles are the only biblical stream of scripture that proves God because it is history, and history is readily conceived as a miraculous cause and effect if there is a sure way to conceive it.

Our doctrines include those pertaining to salvation assurance, sacramental grace, and apostolic authority, salvation by faith alone, sola scriptura, the sovereignty of God, the day of worship, the existence of God, et al. These are the kinds of things with which we must deal and make a decision over, but as propositions they are not the ultimate ones of the faith. They are not the end of the faith, they are not the directing influence of the faith, the fundamental concerns of the faith, but contingencies to one uber influence to faith: the scriptural phenomenon of messianic prophecy alone. No, its not Uber anything like the earthly ride-share service, but the heavenly one.

The doctrines are conclusions and tropes of the philosophy of the Christian religion. They are not its supreme significations, but this is only the demonstrated truth of a transcendent revelation. The single most important doctrine is “Jesus is Messiah.” This simple fact is the main one that the Patristics, the Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and all the stripes in between have stumbled over (Isa 8:14; 1Pe 2:8). Not that they don’t believe Jesus is Messiah, but that Truth to them is not more important than tropes. If this issue is honestly confronted, it can radically change one’s fundamental relationship with the faith and change one’s life, ala 1^st century, not 21^st. It remains indisputable that the direct or indirect teaching of the church is that faith motivation is driven by an assent to creeds, doctrinal and propositional truth, church authority, tradition or sensibility. By this, and for no other reason, the church being destroyed from within.

Our conception of the meaning of the Cross as aligning with a religious concept or doctrine instead of the oracles is part and central to this problem.

The following is an easy commentary by proof text on the meaning of the Cross. Please keep in mind this is only an introduction to my thesis and not meant to be an exhaustive treatment.