We have arrived at a pivotal moment in the Christian story – it’s the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey as King of Israel, fulfilling prophecy and initiating His week of passion (John 12:13-15).
This man, who was also God, willingly entered the gates of a city whose leaders plotted His death. Jesus knowingly received the praises of people who would, days later, holler, “Crucify him!” He swept through the Temple, flashing His frustration at the way it had become an economic device to take money from worshipers who sought atonement, inciting further disdain from the Jewish institution (Matthew 21:12-13).
This is a day of rejoicing because the Messiah has arrived to accomplish what He came to do.
Die.
His followers’ minds were so focused on Messiah arriving on the scene as a warrior king who would defeat their oppressors that they missed the bigger purpose of His living – and dying. He’d come not to conquer a singular empire but to defeat sin and death once and for all.
Years down the road, Paul emphatically preached about the power of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:17), and in doing so he exhorted believers to remember the cross!*
Because of the confusion that clouded the minds of the Colossians, muddling their ability to stand firm on the gospel of Christ, Paul wrote words intended to awaken them to the fact that they “have already heard the true message of the gospel” (Colossians 1:5). He reminded them of what Jesus accomplished on the cross:
“You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.”
Colossians 2:13-15 NLT
Reorienting the Colossian believers toward the cross – its power and purpose – Paul redirected their own purposes: to pray and proclaim (4:2-4). He implored them to be done with all exploration of alternative methods of achieving spiritual status and, instead, to ground themselves in Christ by devoting themselves to prayer and praises of thanksgiving (v.2). And to pray that the gospel would continue to be proclaimed throughout the world (4:3-4, 1:6).
The lessons of the Colossians are needed, yet again, among believers today. Having allowed cultural beliefs to seep into our churches, we often fail to look and act like the Church. Too often the purity of the gospel fades into far away ideologies that seem ancient and irrelevant. The reality of Christ’s work on the cross can lose its power amidst fiery protestations that sin is the thing with weight and force.
Friends, like the believers of Colossae, we need to be recalibrated to the reality of Jesus’ death and what it did for all believers of all time. And, as we realign ourselves with His truth, we’ll rediscover Christ’s power and our purposes.
The Work of the Cross
Billy Graham preached about the power of the cross, pointing out that Paul “gloried in the cross” – not in his education or religion, his abilities or citizenship, not even in other aspects of Jesus.1 His boasts were solely in the cross (Galatians 6:14). And that tells us much about the cross and Jesus’ willingness to endure its cruelty and shame. When Jesus allowed Himself to be arrested and tried, when He refused to call down angels to save Him, He was surrendering to His purpose – to the work of the cross.
Because Jesus contained within Himself the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Colossians 2:9), He reigned supreme. “He had the power to restore us to the Father.”2 Just as the Romans saw crucifixion as a means to appease debt, Jesus’ death on the cross cancels all of our debts.2 All our mistakes and doubts and sin hung on the cross with Christ. All our sins were heaped onto His shoulders, and the weight of them killed Him. And He knew it would. And He did it anyway.
Jesus stayed on that cross because of His love for us.1
With his last breaths, He cried out, “It is finished” (John 19:30). His work on earth was done. The debt was paid. Sin was defeated. Past tense: It. Is. Finished.
So then, why will I sometimes wallow in worry? Or let shame bury my faith?
Why do we point prideful fingers at each other? Or believe that there’s something we must do before coming to Jesus – as if we could cancel our own debts? Or doubt that Jesus could really want to or have the power to remove our sinful tendencies?
Why do we hole ourselves up behind the walls of our churches? Or make ‘comfort’ our number goal in life?
Why do we hide in our houses instead of gathering with other believers? Or run from those who need Christ’s love so desperately? Or refuse to give the grace that we’ve been so freely given?
Friends, sin has been defeated. Because of His death on the cross, Christ has within Him all the power to overcome everything we fight and face and focus on. The work Jesus accomplished on the cross means all – ALL – sin has already been nailed to the cross.
So what if – what if – we began living out the reality of this truth?
What if we received His forgiveness, believing that Christ is enough?
What if we willingly laid ourselves and our sins at the foot of the cross and trusted that Jesus actually, already atoned for them?
What if we said ‘yes’ to the power offered to us by the Spirit in us and let Jesus’ death defeat the sin in us?
While we will be tempted in this life, God will always give us a way out (1 Corinthians 10:13). While we will slip and slide our way through this journey with Jesus, we are no longer defined by our sin. Those sins do not determine who we are – Jesus does. And by grace, His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:23).
The good news, the gospel, is that the work of the cross is done. As such, we have been made new in the One who died for us. God “has changed us from being dead in our transgressions to alive with Christ.”3
The Work of Believers
Because of the cross, we are forever changed. In the righteousness that Jesus has afforded to us, “we are reconciled to Him through the cross, and we are restored in His image, empowered to live life as He intended.”2
We become vessels of faith and hope as we lift up the situations around us in prayer to the Father. We stand in the gap for the people who need the power of prayer spoken over them and for them. We keep practicing prayer through the dailiness of conversing with God and joining Him in the work He is already doing — not just because we must but because we want to.
We pray!
We become Jesus’ voices meant to proclaim the gospel throughout the world. We become His beacons shining light into the dark. We take what we’ve been given – grace and forgiveness, truth and hope, love and joy – and we talk about it. We tell stories, our stories, about the ways Jesus has met us and changed us and loved us. We share truths about who God is, telling of His character and faithfulness.
We proclaim!
Friends, all followers of Jesus have work to do. We look at Paul and all the pastors and home church leaders and writers and prayer warriors who followed in his stead, in his day. They took up the mantle of purpose in Christ and wore it under the provision and power of Christ.
And so must we.
Jesus got on that small donkey and rode through the ‘hosannas’ and the waving palm branches that long ago day, knowing full well what lay ahead of Him. So no matter what we face — in our “all-out match against sin” — we can trust there will be suffering; just look at “what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed” (Hebrews 12:4 MSG). He is our example:
“Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!”
Hebrews 12:2-3 MSG
Jesus prayed. He proclaimed. He endured the cross. What He suffered, we no longer must – because He’s already taken on the weight of all our sins. He’s already paid them in full. Made new in Christ, we can keep following His lead, trusting in the Father no matter what we feel or face because Jesus is with us, in us, and for us. In Him are hidden all we need to live out our purposes.
We do have individual calls, but it’s when we come together – as a community of believers – that we more fully realize the truth that in Christ “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Just as the Colossians found strength unified together by Christ’s Spirit, we too can trust that, together as the Body of Christ, we can become bridges for humanity, helping people find the One they’ve been seeking all along.
‘The church is not a place into which people escape from the world, but it is God’s bridgehead into the world. Christians are called to live as signposts to the new creation, as the bridge of the Messiah.’
From a lecture given by N. T. Wright on 10 December 2022 at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University
The power of the cross only loses its strength when people fail to gaze upon it and have faith in it. So, as followers of Christ, let’s keep looking to the cross, remembering and rehearsing all that Jesus did by giving up His life for us – and in doing so, we will willingly lay down our sins. Together, we’ll pick up His power and fulfill our purposes.
Father God, saying the words ‘thank you’ always seems so inadequate to capture the depth of our gratitude for what You sacrificed on that cross. We are once again wowed by the fact that the cross was always your plan to redeem the fallen world back to Yourself — and we are humbled. We are eternally grateful. Lord Jesus, the practice of rehearsing all the choices that You willingly made is shaping us. Picturing all that You suffered on our behalf awakens us to the power of the cross. We never want to spend our time on earth doubting your love or power — because the cross has already demonstrated their depths. We want to live for You, praying for all that happens and for all the people in our paths, proclaiming your truth and grace to all who will hear. Holy Spirit, help us remain rooted in Christ’s love so that all we do and say will flow from His heart and by His power. We pray that His perfect love will cast out all our fear — and doubt and shame and pride. We pray that we will constantly admit our sins and then picture them nailed to the cross so that we can live as freely as Jesus intended. “Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the king of Israel!” In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
(inspired by John 3:16; Colossians 2:13-14, 4:2-4; Ephesians 3:17-19; 1 John 1:9, 4:18; John 12:13)
I remember when the movie, The Passion of Christ, came out and how so many conversations swirled around how graphic the torture and crucifixion scenes were. And they are. Because they actually were. As much as most of us are reluctant to sit in the darkness of betrayal and abandonment, of arrest and beatings, and of a gruesome death on a cross, it’s good for us to do so. It reorients us to the high cost Jesus paid for us. It helps us grasp the depth of His love for us. It’s why in every season of Lent, there’s a Good Friday.
Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.
- *To clarify, when speaking about ‘the cross’, I’m referring not only to the wooden structure from which Christ hung but all the work accomplished thereon.
- 1 – Billy Graham sermon, “The Power of the Cross”
- 2 – Aimee Walker’s study on Colossians, Enough, p.27, 46
- 3 – Wake Up Call, “Forever Changed“
- 4 — Jen Pollock Michel’s Surprised by Paradox^ (p.56)
- Just as Chris Tomlin croons in “Here I Am to Worship,” so too will we never know how much it cost to see our sins upon that cross. Yet, just as Brooke Ligertwood and Martin Smith sing in “Lead Me to the Cross,” we step into the practice of coming before Him to quiet our souls and remember Redemption’s hill where His blood was spilled for our ransom. Songs like these are on our Lenten, Hidden in Christ, playlist. As we sing along, may we remember.
- Every week I post, what I call, a “Teacup Video” — because in the videos I invite viewers to sit down and have a cup of tea with me while we “hear some words and give them space to do a work in us.” I always tie the video into the blog post of the week, so it becomes an extension of what we do here. You can find all the videos on my Facebook Author Page and Instagram — and…a brand new YouTube ‘channel’! (I know!! It’s crazy. HAHA)
- The first week of every month, I send out The Abiding Life newsletter. It’s further expands of what we do here — a space where I can share thoughts, offer further resources, and give some arrows (as Emily P Freeman calls them) to continue pointing us forward in the abiding life. You can subscribe for future issues here!
Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is what aids us in our desire to become more Christlike.
- Jen Pollock Michel names “the rebellious impulse of every human being: that we could forget the one to whom we owe all gratitude and worship and obedience.”4 If ever there was a reason to look upon the cross, it’s this one. So, this week, let’s take the time to rehearse the story of Jesus’ passion week, allowing ourselves to feel the hard feelings — and the utter gratitude we have for Him. Let us worship the true High King!
- Finally, as a community, let us not neglect sharing God’s story with others! And, don’t be shy to tell your God-stories, too.
- Lent is a great time to invite a friend to walk through this series with us. Share this site. We don’t want anyone walking through this life alone, lost, or over-burdened and without hope. We can all get ‘hidden’ in Christ together!
Featured Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash. “All the Bits and Pieces” photo by Aleksandra Sapozhnikova on Unsplash.
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