The Glory of the Cross

Day Seventeen

The Glory of the Cross             

Colossians 2:9-15

There is one, final, aspect of the glory that, John says, “we have seen”; it is the greatest. For those who witnessed the life and ministry of the carpenter-rabbi from Galilee, the glory they saw was in the way He reflected the nature of the Father. They saw it in both His holiness and His humility. Most of all, they saw it in the Cross.

Writing, in old age, upon the island prison of Patmos, John, the beloved apostle, looked back across the years to the coming of Christ. The story still moved him. He remembered the strange, charismatic young leader who called him from Gennesaret. He remembered the miracles and the stories – the healing of a man born blind, the feeding of the five thousand in the hills above the lake. He remembered the astonishing claims: “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” “I am the Good Shepherd,” “I am the Door of the Sheepfold, whoever enters through me will be saved.” But, more than anything else, as John looked back upon the One he called Lord, he remembered the Cross. He remembered the glory of the Cross.

To Jesus’ contemporaries the Cross was anything but glorious. In fact, it was an object of shame. No Roman citizen could be put to death upon a cross, no matter how heinous the crime. It was the means of execution reserved for the lowest of the low. Defeated enemies of Rome might sometimes be crucified; those who rebelled against the Empire could expect no better fate. More often than not, it was the common criminal who would die, arms outstretched, as a punishment and a deterrent. It was recognized as the most painful method of execution. The suffocating weight of the body upon the lungs, the struggle to breathe, the heat, the flies, and the excruciating, seemingly unending pain – all of these made the Cross the most feared symbol of imperial might. Better to die honorably, by the sword, if you must, than to suffer the shame of the Cross.

Yet, as John looked back, it was not the shame of the Cross that he remembered, but its glory. “The hour has come,” Jesus had said, “for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). That glory had not been found at the head of a military parade, not in the force of arms nor in the glint of sharpened steel. The glory of the Cross was in this: that the eternal Word had taken human flesh and suffered there for us. At the Cross, Christ satisfied God’s wrath against a rebellious people. He bore the shame. He paid the price. That is glory.

Precious Savior, giving of Yourself for my salvation, stooping low in order to raise me up, Yours is the power, and the dominion, and the authority, and the glory forever. Amen.