More Than a Decoration

“But far be it from me to boast

except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,

by which the world is crucified to me,

and I to the world.”

Galatians 6:14

We wear them as necklaces.  We give them as gifts.  We hang them on the walls of our homes.  We place them at the center of our churches.  Has it ever occurred to you that there is something strange about the fact that we use the cross as a decoration?  Think about it.  How many of you would wear hangman’s noose on a necklace?  Would you decorate your home or your church with a guillotine?  Of course you wouldn’t.  Those were instruments of death.  They were used to execute the worst kinds of criminals.  So was the cross.  I wonder how someone from the first century… someone who witnessed a crucifixion would react seeing a cross on the wall of your home.  After all the crucifixion was a cruel, painful way to put someone to death.  The Romans would order the victim flogged just to prepare him for the agony.  Then they would nail his hands and feet to the cross and leave him there to die a slow, agonizing death.  I am told it’s a lot like drowning, only this can take up to three days.   

Why would we use such an instrument of death as a decoration?  Well my hope is that the cross is more than a decoration for you.  I am getting ready to hang this cross on the wall of our home here in Germany.  This was made and given to me by the youth and their adult leaders at Lamb of God.  This was their going away present to me when we left Lamb of God to follow God’s call to Germany..  Each nail was pounded into this cross by one of the students or adults from the youth ministry at Lamb of God. 

To me this cross is more than decoration.  There is so much meaning here.  Yes, each nail represents someone special to me, but that’s not all.  The sheer number of these nails reminds us of how serious and costly sin is.  The price of our sinfulness is high.  God had to give His own Son to pay that price for the sins of the world.  Jesus had to give His own life for the world.  Yet it’s more personal than that.  This is what my sin cost Him!

This cross was given by those students and their leaders to show how much they love me and how much I love them.  Yet this cross is so much more than that.  This cross is a daily reminder to Linda and me that this is how much God loves us…  This is how much Jesus loves us.  “In this is love,” the Bible says, “not that we loved God but that He loved us and gave His Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”  God is so madly in love with this world… so madly in love with me… so madly in love with you that this is the price He willingly paid so that He might have our company for all eternity! 

That’s my prayer for you as Good Friday approaches this week – that you would look at the crosses in your church, on your walls and around your neck… and that you would see more than a decoration.  I pray you would look and be reminded that this is the price Jesus paid to make you His sister or brother… that this is how much God loves you… that you and I would say with St. Paul, “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world is crucified to me, and I to the world.”