Lent

[HKHaugan]

                                                           The Cross, Mind and Power

                                                           The Way The Truth The Life

                                                                Trust Belief Faith

We apprehend the image of the Cross.
                                                           We comprehend its meaning.
                                                                                                      We contend under its authority.

This is the pattern the Cross gives us to set our daily course. By the Cross we are rescued from the world back to God. In the Cross we find the truth about God and the world. With the Cross we move under God back into the world.

Luke 9:51, “As the time approached for Him to be taken up into Heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” The same verse in the KJV says it this way, “Jesus set His face toward Jerusalem.” There is no question. Jesus saw the Cross ahead of Him.

Look again at the image.

Jesus came from above, conceived by the Holy Spirit (the vertical beam), born of the Virgin Mary He became man (the horizontal beam). He lived obedient to His Father’s will as found in the Scripture and taught what the Father gave Him (vertical direction). He shared everything with His disciples and made them His brothers to be His continuing family to spread His Kingdom in the world (the horizontal beam). He gave His life as a perfect spiritual/physical sacrifice (the vertical beam) bearing and paying the penalty for our sin by dying in our place, giving His perfect life for our hardened hearts (the horizontal beam).

If you look outside at the universe all around you, all its galaxies, its immensity and then shift to the infinite details within it you see the horizontal beam of the Cross. The vertical beam is the mind and heart of its Creator who can be seen in the midst of the smallest cell, in the enormous endless space and in the way it is all connected and functions together.

This magnificent universe in all its complexities, to be able to comprehend it and live within it, carries the image of the Cross. Above, below and sideways, the three-dimensional structure, height, width and breadth, the Mind from above that conceives it, the Heart that desired it; He created images and likenesses of Himself to share it. All bear the impress of the Cross.

The Cross gathers everything together and reveals the heart of the One who gave His all that we might be brought back to Him and to one another to think like Him and to feel like Him. He placed mankind within the universe to be images and likenesses of Himself to rule it, enjoy it and multiply within it. He gave us a mind to understand its origin and manage it. He gave us a heart to relate to Him and to others the way He relates as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

To be able to see the significance of the Cross from God’s perspective is what Paul means when he says in 1Cor.2:16, “We have the mind of Christ.” He has given us, through the Cross, the way to spiritually think about life, death and eternity. He has given us His Holy Spirit to have faith with the heart, believe in the mind and to trust spiritually, all by the power of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead.

Hebrews 4:7 “Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it ‘Today,’ when a long time later He spoke through David, as was said before: Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”

Every day is ‘Today.” This week every day gives us an opportunity to go to the Cross and see what it says to us right where we are. Life for a disciple of Jesus is always about the Cross. God designed it for each of us. One size fits all.