The Cross and Being Right Part 1

[HKHaugan]

People are created by God to be like Him. They are images of God having a mind, a heart and a spirit. They have the ability to believe, trust, have faith and justify why they think, decide and behave the way they do. Belief, trust and faith are what make us human. But, as Adam and Eve have shown, if what makes us human is used apart from God the end is disastrous. They learned the hard way that taking control apart from God and trying to justify why they did just doesn’t work. In fact the lingering reality of being an image of God separated from God didn’t cancel their God given abilities to believe, trust, have faith and the built in need to be right in their use, to be able to say in any circumstance, “It’s OK, you’re doing the right thing.”

This is the subtle nature of sin’s effect; we are just never going to get life right until we’re willing to deal with the reality of sin, the self-centering spiritual disease that separates us from our Creator. No matter what we choose as a focus for our abilities the burden will always rest on us to be right, to try and at least feel right, to rest in knowing we are justified. Sin is what stands in the way of our mind thinking right, our heart trusting right and our spirit having faith right. The need to be right never leaves us. The need to be right will dog us up to the grave. Sin is the reason we refuse to deal with a personal God, the reason we find ourselves alone, the reason our emotions are so skewed, the reason we jump here and there to escape our internal struggle, the reason we look to deny there is a personal reality behind everything and the reason we stubbornly look for a self-centered way to handle that which we can’t handle.

Sin is an internal rebellion not only against the idea of a spiritual, personal and relational God. It is a rebellion against ourselves, our individual uniqueness; against the spiritual, personal and relational reality we are. Sin is a denial of who we are individually in mind, heart and spirit. Sin uses pride to deny our dependence on our Creator and why we exist. Sin denies our personal reality being an image of God created to have a relationship with Him that lasts forever. Sin is a self-inducing prideful rebellion that causes us to feel alone, emotionally defensive and ready to have a victim mentality. Sin encourages us to blame others, to make excuses, to put the heat on others and to look for sympathy.

It is the mind that is under attack as well as the heart and spirit. The mind without directions from the Creator of the mind will seek to justify, make logically right, whatever we do apart from Him. Somehow we believe, or try to tell ourselves we believe, that simply justifying something makes it right. That’s sin in a nutshell. And we never escape it in this world. Here lies the foundation for the reason for the Cross of Jesus. Only He is right in every human detail. Only He is self-justified. Only He has the perfect mind, heart, Spirit and relationships that are right, perfectly right. Only He can justify us and until we open our mind, our heart and spirit to Him we will never be justified but remain separated from Him.

Jesus went to the Cross to bring us the way to be right, the truth for the mind and faith to bring real life for spirit. It is His willingness to take our place to exhibit what a justified life looks like and to die justified for us in our place that removes the power of sin and its instigator the devil, from having power over us. It is faith in Him that justifies us wherever we are.

When we face the fact of sin infecting our daily life, it is our receiving His presence in faith that cancels our sin and we stand justified before Him and others. The dynamic of sin is taking control and thinking we can be right in everything without God.

Three principles bring us into being right with God. First, true justification is from God alone. What begins it is the personal recognition of our rebellion against God and ourselves. Second, it’s saying to God we are sorry for having been an offense to Him and ourselves. Third, it means receiving His forgiveness and letting Him be the focus for controlling what we believe, who we trust and the faith to act. We believe in Him, trust Him and have faith to act in Him. This is what He accomplished for us on the Cross. We are justified by faith. This is the way of the Cross for us.