The Meaning of the Cross, part 3: Persecution
1. Meaning of the Cross: The Cross in the context of persecution.
The Cross does not first mean “death” or “altar” or “atonement” or “sacrifice.” The meaning of the cross does not principally mean “reconciliation.” It means the messianic oracles, through which these concepts come. A casual look at what the NT speaks as persecution for the cross identifies the precise motivations of those who are being persecuted and those who are persecuting, not the motivations to which we hypocritically ascribe.
Galatians 6:12: As many as desire to make a fair shew in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ.
That is the most direct statement about persecution for the Cross. All real persecution is for the Cross of Christ. The “the Cross of Christ” is almost self-revealing. True persecution, first and foremost for the advancement a doctrine rather than mere cruelty, is that kind where perpetrators understand the gospel and its implications at least subconsciously, not those who do so in complete ignorance. If the persecution of an evangelist is because of the persecutors ignorance, especially if he loses his life over it, this is persecution, but its the kind that no preacher of the gospel wants because it represents a mistake, not an act informed knowledge. The real evangelist accepts bearing up under persecution as God honoring when he accurately gets his message out and he is punished for its understanding, not its misunderstanding. When it is not from this it is spoken of as a tragedy and a senseless loss. When spoken of in terms of the kind that emulates Christ’s, who died at the instigation and hands of the religious intelligentsia, then it is a triumph and an honor for the persecuted and the greatest conceivable sin for the persecutor.
So mentioned is this persecution for the Cross of Christ, appropriately, in the book of Galatians, where the subject is Judaizers going around visiting synagogues and leading people away by a false gospel when they are well aware of the true one, the false gospel obeying the Law of Moses as a part of the faith/salvation cause and effect rather than faith by simply by believing the fulfillment by Jesus of the oracles and confessing from the heart “Jesus is Lord,” with works following.
But consider before I start all this what the phrase “Cross of Christ” means. Does it merely mean the wood upon which was murdered Jesus? Does it mean the horrible form of death that he died? Does it mean the altar of sacrifice upon which he, the offering, was made? Does it mean, I don’t know, the “love” upon which he gave himself to the Father for us?” Go through all the commentaries you can get your hands on and pick one. What they all say like myna birds one way or another is that “Christ” just means the person of “Jesus” and “Cross” just means, in this case, a physical object or a conceptual object, in the best case a result of deliberation over another conclusion of theology. There is nothing about this way we think about this phrase that begs an investigation or shows itself to be one that came out of a divine disclosure of supernatural information, and the way we think about it gives the world no reason to think it as not just another creative religious proposition that we have taken on blind faith as true. But “Cross of Christ” does not mean what we have assigned to it and despite our efforts to mute its power, it’s going to keep shining its light to anyone that cares to see it.
“Christ” of course is the person Jesus, but its a prophetic title, “Messiah.” Before Jesus can be a person that we take seriously as more than a man he has to be Messiah, credentialed by his fulfillment of the oracles. “Cross,” no matter how much we don’t want it to be, is more than a physical or conceptual object of the imagination or theological calculus, it is those supernatural oracles, and those oracles are what Jesus was willingly bound to fulfill, especially those that spoke of his death. Yes, it is an altar, but the altar was also a prophetic type of radically specialized exaltation device, off the earth, upon which the immobilized, promised sacrifice is struck and killed and then given to the priests for consumption. The Altar is the very prophecies of an ultimate atonement through a single divine individual, the same as the Moses staff or his pole in Numbers 21, which I endeavor to expose here. “Cross of Christ” is literally: the prophetic Word of God which Messiah received from the Father, willingly obeyed, and gave himself up for this special and revealed spiritual nourishment and the salvation of the world through faith.
Now, these Jews of Galatians are not ignorant of the oracles, they are experts. The knew that Jesus was the Messiah by the Scriptures, but they wanted to stop there and not take it to its logical conclusion. They knew that honesty about the gospel is honesty about the self-sufficiency of faith, and if there is any faith it must be predicated on the self-sufficiency of these scriptures of the Messiah for a unique prophetic faith and practice. It’s not about “faith,” a general conception, it’s about “prophetic faith,” a specialized one, and the Cross represents that motivation. The Judaizers sound a lot like the church today, do they not?
Real persecution occurs when the religious, philosophical, political doctrines are placed first against the revelation of the Cross, the “Cross,” again, being a symbol of the prophetic fulfillment, first of the Messiah’s death by prophetic obedience. In this instance, Paul is saying that the Galatian Jews are trying to soften and blur the requirements of the New Covenant spiritual Law which Paul preaches by saying that you must keep Moses’s commandments, statutes, ordinances, and judgments or one is not saved or will be. They refused to allow the prophetic implications to modify what they really loved: religion, and religion does not denote anything but spiritual industry out of the natural mind and heart of man.
This makes them allowed to be pious in their cowardice and dodge that one thing about genuine Christianity that they and the world hate to distraction. Faith is not about Jesus’ execution in the most disgusting way imaginable and we feel sorry for him. It’s not about a belief in propitiatory sacrifice or substitutionary atonement. They are true, but only true conclusions, not necessarily premised supernaturally. What God wants is faith in Him expressed only by the motivation of the demonstrated Truth this sacrifice is real, is universally applicable and efficacious. This is what gives life to Christian ideational symbols of faith.
You would think that everyone genuinely wants this, but you would be as wrong as the East is from the West, and because we do not understand this we never will get the Gordian knot of our theology and evangelism untangled. We don’t want clarity, we want mystery and difficulty, because this is what carnality is used to, its the way of the fallen world, and we get a lot of praise for standing up to it and trying to defeat it.
2. Meaning of the Cross: Taking up the Cross.
This does not first mean taking up one’s “death” or any such ideational permutation. It means the taking up of the possibility of one’s persecution and death in emulation of Jesus prophetically fulfilled death, and in fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy that all his followers will suffer persecution. Therefore, the Cross signifying the oracles of Jesus, taking up those oracles is the taking up of the Messiah’s Word as a faith motivation and the consequences that come with it. This puts a very different slant on the verses below, which require no explanation and are consistent through every occurrence, but I’ll offer you some. For example:
- Matthew 10:38: Paraphrase of the chapter: “This is what will happen to someone who believes and my Word, the same that will happen to me for fulfilling my Father’s Word“
- Matthew 16:24: Context in which Jesus explains the meaning of true “bread,” the asks Peter who he thinks he is. Peter replies “you are Messiah the Son of God,” with Jesus answering “upon this Rock I will build my Church”. Tells him this is the Keys of the Kingdom. Prophesies his death in Jerusalem. Jesus predicts persecution for his believers through this key of revelation, ending with another of many prophecies in this chapter: “verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.”
- Mark 8:34: Again, after feeding the five thousand with his supernatural “bread,” the Prophetic Word, and opening the eyes of a blind man in Bethsaida, a figure for illumination by His Prophetic Word, He asks Peter who he says He is. After Peter says “Messiah,” Jesus prophesies: “And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Peter rebukes Him for this, assuming his physical life is worth more than this Word of the Father that must be fulfilled. This is itself a prediction of the Church rejecting the Prophetic Word under the appearance of piety (v.33). Christ prophesies again that those who will believe this fulfilled Word, and fulfill it themselves by faith, are those who have taken it up, who believe it, and have accepted it as the most important thing imaginable.
- Mark 10:21: Jesus tells the rich young ruler how to inherit eternal life:
“Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions.”
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