The Power of The Cross

It’s the age old trick of deception; using your enemy’s weakness against them.  It was the curiosity of the Trojans, and their greed, which meant that in a time of war, they did not suspect the delivery of a ‘gift horse’, and took it into their courts!  In the same way, the devil and his angels played right into God’s hands.

They did not suspect Jesus when He did not resist crucifixion.  They knew very well who He was, that He was come to save the world.  They thought, if they killed Him, His plan would fail.  But God banked on their wickedness, and used them as pawns in His strategy.  They were blinded by their evil desire and lost their footing, and what looked like a failure for Jesus, was the beginning of the victory for men over the power of sin.

The problem was, they didn’t know the power of the cross.  If they had known, they’d rather have done all they could to tempt Him to enjoy the world and forget about His assignment.  But the fool is blinded by his prize, however small.  He doesn’t know how to strategise.  But Jesus was not a fool.  He knew what He wanted and knew it was worth dying for.  He knew the sacrifice would be great, but the reward took Him to the Cross.

What was the reward?  The souls of men!  You see, when God made the Earth, He created Adam and Eve, and they were made spotless, without sin, in the image of God.  But, the devil possessed a serpent, who tricked Eve (animals could talk then), who then enticed Adam to disobey God.  They ate the forbidden fruit, and humans played into the hand of the enemy of their souls!  The devil who was an angel, cast out for his great pride, was jealous of Adam and the new generation he’d usher in, and desired to separate them from the Lover of their souls.  But God’s love prevailed.  The devil couldn’t and still can’t fathom the depths of this great love.

Jesus truly is the lover of our souls.  He created us, fashioned us in the womb.  He knows too well our potential if we’d tap into and stay connected to His love.  We were made to love Him, and despite our unworthiness, foolishness, wickedness and rebellion, He was determined to restore us to our ‘godly’ potential!!  That is our inheritance, to be called sons and daughters of God.  Earthly fathers and mothers know this love to an extent, even though they only took part in a small way in bringing you to life.  But God who breathed us into being is intimately connected to us.  So that, “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us”.

By His death and resurrection, Jesus broke the power of sin, death and the enemy, and created the only indestructible bridge from eternal death to eternal life.  We were never meant to die.  Being in God’s presence is life sustaining, like the Sun, but much much more.  As long as Adam and Eve were in the Garden, they’d have lived forever (even without eating from the Tree of Life), but being cast out, death became imminent!!  What Jesus did was to repair the damage, the broken bond and reconcile us to the Father, so that we will once again dwell in His presence, where there’s life everlasting and every good and desirable thing.

The Bible calls Jesus the ‘Last Adam’, where Adam means the firstborn.  Jesus is the Firstborn of the sons of God.  Adam was to usher in the generation of Humans on Earth living in paradise, but he failed.  Jesus came to usher in a new generation of humans living in the Kingdom of Heaven, which He says ‘is within you’ (Luke 17:21).  His Kingdom can never fail and has no end.  Though we are no longer in ‘paradise’, but await the dawning of a New Heaven and a New Earth, we have been given a life source within…  That is the Holy Spirit, which comes and makes His home in every believer.  It is our inner light that we must shine forth.  It is our fail switch, so that though we die…yet we live!  Every soul that accepts Jesus, and receives the Holy Spirit, will rise again on the awaited Day of The Resurrection.

The power of the Cross is the power of sacrifice.  Jesus asks us to make the same sacrifice.  That we should learn from His wisdom.  We should forfeit what we cannot keep (our lives, if we reject Jesus), to gain what we cannot lose (eternal life, if we accept Jesus).  To the world, it looks like we are losing, but we WIN.  Everybody makes sacrifices, it’s just that fools make the wrong ones!  We mustn’t be foolish like the devil, or even like Esau, who traded his inheritance for a bowl of soup!  We must see the pearl of great price set before us, which is being offered freely, being already paid for by the blood of Jesus, and snatch it up!  If all it costs is our pride and position in this world, the death of ourselves to this world is better than the death of our souls for eternity.  Jesus made the right choice, will you?