When we set the Cross in apposition to another concept, have you noticed that the idea paired with it often points to a potential meaning—but not necessarily to a phenomenal, historical ground? For example, we say “the Cross means death,” or “the Cross means sacrifice,” or “propitiation,” or even “the work of Christ.” Each of these—death, sacrifice, propitiation—suggests an outcome or consequence. Yet none of them, in themselves, require belief in a historical miracle. They can function symbolically or morally, without pointing to a real, divine intervention.
But this is precisely the issue: if there was no historical miracle in Jesus’ work on the Cross, then there is no true propitiation for sin, no meaningful death, and no efficacious sacrifice. For atonement to be real, not just illustrative, it must involve a transcendent, divine action—something that bridges the ontological gap between God and humanity. It cannot merely be a symbolic gesture of self-sacrificial love. The one who dies must be shown to be more than an example—he must be a transcendent agent, divinely qualified, whose death actually accomplishes something infinite and holy.
Likewise, the Cross cannot be merely a fulfillment of the Mosaic sacrificial system in an abstract or exemplary sense. It must fulfill the Mosaic sacrifice as a prophetic act—a divine requirement that is historically and miraculously completed in Christ. Only then does the Cross serve both the symbolic and the actual purposes of atonement.
In short, the meaning of the Cross must unite two things: the essential function of the Mosaic sacrifice (as satisfying God’s holy standard for dealing with sin) and the necessity that all true atonement be grounded in a biblical realization—a divine, historical event—not merely a biblical idea
We downgrade the cross in this way, but placing concepts by concepts instead of concepts by a miraculous, historical act, when we talk about the Cross in every which way we can. We want to lock it to immanence our thoughts and products. Consider how, when we use the idea “persecuted for the Cross of Christ.” What kind of “persecution” do we mean? That is, what kind of “persecution,” both in the motivations of who is doing it and receiving it, is biblically meant by this?
The Cross does not first mean “death” or “altar” or “atonement” or “sacrifice.” The meaning of the Cross does not principally mean “reconciliation.” It’s not only a concept. It means the fulfillment of the messianic oracles, by the power of council of God seen, commanded and enacted through the course of time, pertaining to the death of Messiah, through which these concepts come. A casual look at what the NT speaks as persecution for the Cross identifies the precise motivations of those original Christians who are being persecuted and those who are persecuting them, not the motivations to which we falsely ascribe to a general conception of the world as carnality and hypocrisy and the original faith as simply a belief in some doctrinal conclusions about Jesus.
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.
The concept “persecution for the Cross of Christ” concept is self-revealing. True persecution by those persecuting is first and foremost for the advancement of a doctrine that is opposed rather than mere cruelty. Is is that kind where perpetrators understand the gospel and its implications at least subconsciously. Not those persecutors 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 and those that oppose the redemptive plan of God, then it is a triumph and an honor for the persecuted and the greatest conceivable sin for the persecutor.
In the book of Galatians, 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. Their false gospel is that everyone must obey the Law of Moses regardless of the sacrifice of Jesus as its faith, which is essentially a faithlessness in the efficacy of the Messianic atonement. So, what does this “Cross of Christ” mean, which faith secures atonement for sin by faith?
“Cross of Christ.” 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 the 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, despite our efforts to mute its power, and 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 or don’t care that it is, 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 Mosaic 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 through faith, 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? They want everyone to focus on religion, to man’s creative organizations and mental abstractions that can come without God intervening at all in human history. They don’t want their religious franchise to be threatened by something that does not need it for faith. Religion supports, helps faith, it does not make faith. God, as Jesus said, can make make the stones cry out “Jesus is Messiah.”
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 saved. 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.
Persecution for the Cross of Christ is a persecution because of the self-sufficiency of the messianic oracles to rule over all religion, putting thee energies of man on the side as a granted collaborator with this purely transcendent power but not as a maker of it, and that is something that insular religion and subjectivity hates.
2. Meaning of the Cross: Taking up the Cross.
“the phrase “take up the Cross” 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 as He did. Therefore, if the Cross signifies 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:
“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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