The Old Cross
and the New
ALL UNANNOUNCED AND MOSTLY UNDETECTED there
has come
in modern times a new cross into popular evangelical
circles. It is like
the old cross,
but different: the likenesses
are superficial; the differences, fundamental.
From this new cross has sprung a new philosophy
of the Christian life,
and from that new philosophy has come a
new evangelical technique-
a new type of meeting and a new kind
of preaching. This new evangelism
employs the same language as
the old, but its content is not
the same and its emphasis not
as before.
The old cross would have no truck with the
world. For Adam's proud
flesh it meant the end of the journey.
It carried into effect the sentence
imposed by the law of Sinai.
The new cross is not opposed to the
human race; rather, it is
a friendly pal and, if understood aright,
it is the source of
oceans of good clean fun and innocent enjoyment.
It lets Adam
live without interference. His life motivation is unchanged;
he
still lives for his own pleasure, only now he takes delight in
singing
choruses and watching religious movies instead of singing
bawdy
songs and drinking hard liquor. The accent is still on enjoyment,
though the fun is now on a higher plane morally if not intellectually.
The new cross encourages a new and entirely
different evangelistic
approach. The evangelist does not demand
abnegation of the old life
before a new life can be received.
He preaches not contrasts but
similarities. He seeks to key into
public interest by showing that
Christianity makes no unpleasant
demands; rather, it offers
the same thing the world does, only
on a higher level. Whatever
the sin-mad world happens to be clamoring
after at the moment is
cleverly shown to be the very thing the
gospel offers, only the
religious product is better.
The new cross does not slay the sinner,
it redirects him. It gears
him into a cleaner and jollier way
of living and saves his self-respect.
To the self-assertive it
says, "Come and assert yourself for Christ."
To the
egotist it says, "Come and do your boasting in the Lord."
To the thrill seeker it says, "Come and enjoy the thrill of
Christian fellowship." The Christian message is slanted in
the
direction of the current vogue in order to make it
acceptable
to the public.
The philosophy back of this kind of thing
may be sincere but its
sincerity does not save it from being false.
It is false because
it is blind. It misses completely the whole
meaning of the cross.
The old cross is a symbol of death. It stands
for the abrupt, violent
end of a human being. The man in Roman
times who took up his
cross and started down the road had already
said good-by to his
friends. He was not coming back. He was going
out to have it
ended. The cross made no compromise, modified nothing,
spared
nothing; it slew all of the man, completely and for good.
It did not
try to keep on good terms with its victim. It struck
cruel and hard,
and when it had finished its work, the man was
no more.
The race of Adam is under death sentence.
There is no commutation
and no escape. God cannot approve any
of the fruits of sin,
however innocent they may appear or beautiful
to the eyes of men.
God salvages the individual by liquidating
him and then
raising him again to newness of life.
That evangelism which draws friendly parallels
between the
ways of God and the ways of men is false to the Bible
and
cruel to the souls of its hearers. The faith of Christ does
not
parallel the world, it intersects it. In coming to Christ
we do not bring
our old life up onto a higher plane; we leave
it at the cross. The
corn of wheat must fall into the ground and
die.
We who preach the gospel must not think
of ourselves as public
relations agents sent to establish good
will between Christ and the world.
We must not imagine ourselves
commissioned to make Christ
acceptable to big business, the press,
the world of sports or
modern education. We are not diplomats
but prophets, and our
message is not a compromise but an ultimatum.
God offers life, but not an improved old
life. The life He offers is life
out of death. It stands always
on the far side of the cross. Whoever would
possess it must pass
under the rod. He must repudiate himself
and concur in God's just
sentence against him.
What does this mean to the individual, the
condemned man who
would find life in Christ Jesus? How can this
theology be translated
into life? Simply, he must repent and believe.
He must forsake his
sins and then go on to forsake himself. Let
him cover nothing,
defend nothing, excuse nothing. Let him not
seek to make terms with
God, but let him bow his head before the
stroke of God's stern
displeasure and acknowledge himself worthy
to die.
Having done this let him gaze with simple trust upon the risen Saviour,
and from Him will come life and
rebirth and cleansing and power.
The cross that ended the earthly
life of Jesus now puts an end
to the sinner; and the power that
raised Christ from the dead now
raises him to a new life along
with Christ.
To any who may object to this or count it
merely a narrow and
private view of truth, let me say God has
set His hallmark of
approval upon this message from Paul's day
to the present. Whether
stated in these exact words or not, this
has been the content of all
preaching that has brought life and
power to the world through the
centuries. The mystics, the reformers,
the revivalists have put their
emphasis here, and signs and wonders
and mighty operations
of the Holy Ghost gave witness to God's
approval.
Dare we, the heirs of such a legacy of power,
tamper with the truth?
Dare we with our stubby pencils erase the
lines of the blueprint or
alter the pattern shown us in the Mount?
May God forbid. Let us
preach the old cross and we will know the
old power.
(A. W. Tozer, Man, the Dwelling Place of God, 1966)
