Being Crucified with Christ

 This Sunday we continued a sermon series entitled "Identity Matters" at EBC, based on the book of Galatians.  The following is some of the main ideas from the third message: "Being Crucified with Chirst."

My wife’s parents lived and worked at a Christian camp for several years.  During the course of that time, they encountered lots of different church groups.  Take the personalities and quirks that you encounter in your own church, multiply that by twenty, and you have the various types of people they had the pleasure of encountering throughout the year.  This created some “interesting” situations from time to time. 

One situation occurred when two ladies from an African American missionary Baptist church came to survey the camp a week before their group was to come for a retreat.  After getting a general tour of the facilities and the places their group would be staying, one of them asked my wife’s father, Mike, if they had a prayer garden she and her sister could go to in order to pray for their group and the week they would experience at the camp.  He said “sure,” and pointed out the way.  He didn’t think much about the two ladies after that, until he ran into them unexpectedly as he was moving from one task to another.  The sweet, soft-spoken church lady he previously talked to had a serious demeanor and a firm scowl on her face.

“You know why you hadn’t had any rain out here?” she asked.  “Um..why?” he asked in a cautionary tone, a little afraid of what she might say.  “Because you got them crosses up in the prayer garden.”  “And…” he said…wondering where the conversation was headed.  “Jesus ain’t on that cross no more!” she told him in an absolute tone.  Mike didn’t really know what to say.  He just stood there for a few seconds in silence with a questioning look on his face.  Finally, she explained: “Crosses are a sign of the curse.  God ain’t going to send you no rain as long as you have those up.”  Then she repeated: “he ain’t on that cross no more” as she and her sister walked away. 

Her comment reflects a sort of “phobia” some Baptists have about crosses.  However, I believe that it is impossible to understand and appreciate the victory of the resurrection without first focusing upon the reality of the crucifixion. 

Catholic churches have crucifixes, which are visual representations of Christ suffering on the cross.  From a Baptist perspective, these are pretty tough images to stomach.  Like the lady at camp, we use similar logic for not displaying crucifixes: “Jesus isn’t on the cross anymore, so why should we look at something like this every day at our church?” we reason. If we give this train of thought credence, we might as well banish crosses from prayer gardens and the walls of our homes.  The reason we do not is because the crucifixion is more than simply a grotesque event to us.  We realize that without the crucifixion, we have no resurrection.  And without the resurrection, we have no life in Jesus.

The point I’m trying to make has nothing to do with what the type of religious symbolism you display.  The point is that the crucifixion is central to understanding our identity in Christ.  Paul says in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”  As teachers came into Galatia preaching a “false Gospel,” Paul combated it by pointing to the crucifixion.  The reason that we do not have to follow a twelve-step program to be acceptable to God is because of this event.  At the same time, it is also the reason that we CAN do good works on God’s behalf.  Being crucified with Christ transforms your identity.

“Jesus ain’t on that cross no more,” but by the grace of God, your identity as a sinner can be.