“To take up your cross means to associate yourself with Christ and to share His rejection. It means you take a stand for Christ even though people make fun of you, persecute you—or even kill you!”
There’s so much unrest and disunity in our world today. We regularly see religious, political and racial division. It appears to be a short list to discuss the things we do agree on. Many are frustrated, discouraged and even angry wondering what we can do about our country’s lack of unity. We all hope that a quick reminder and trip back to the cross will do us all some good.
Disunity is not just a problem of this century. The work against disunity began centuries ago. As early as the early church which struggled with disunity as congregations were often made up of both Jewish and Gentile Christians. The Jews thought they were the elite group and therefore looked down on the Gentile converts to Christ. Some Jewish converts were pressuring the others to follow a path they wished was right, against the others will. Of course, this would and did cause disunity in the Lord’s church. The apostle Paul reminded both groups that because of the cross there is no longer two groups, Jew and Gentile, but only one in Christ. The little black book your friend carries to church this week says that “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility”
On the Cross Jesus paid for the unity of all mankind by His blood at the cross. Our past, race and financial status matters none since we are all one in Christ. There’s no more “your people” and “my people” there’s no richer and poor, social backgrounds don’t matter. If there is a discrimination that exists among you, it only shows us that the cross hasn’t reached our lives in its complete and truer sense. This season let the truth of the Cross penetrates your heart, let it make amends in your life, let the Cross change you, let it bring Christ in you, let it transform your thinking. Let it bring the change you wish to see in this world, let it be the reason a sense of oneness take birth in us, let it break down walls and let it bring us all a lot closer, the way the Cross intended.
Does the Cross enable you to see everyone the same?