Do You Have a Logo?

Galatians 6:14 (ESV)

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

I bet you recognize these corporate logos easily – McDonald's, Nike, Disney, Target, Coke, Pepsi.  These logos do exactly what they are supposed to do.  We see them and immediately we think of the company, what kind of company it is and what that company sells.  These logos are inextricably tied in with the identities of the companies they represent.

That got me to thinking.  If I had a logo, what would it be?  Well believe it or not, the first thing I thought of was my head.   Often times if I am wearing a hat, people who know me will walk right by me without seeing me.  People who have known me all my life will have a hard time picking me out in a crowd or from a distance.  But if I remove my cap, people who know me recognize me almost instantly.  I guess you could say that my bald head is one of my logos.  Shoot one my good friends, when he was in high school gave me the nickname that has stuck with me for years – PB.  It’s a play on my professional initials and my baldness.  PB can stand for Pastor Braun or Pretty Bald.  Strange as that may sound, that seems to be one of my logos.

If you think about it, we Christians are identified by a very strange logo – the cross!  How strange is that? After all, the cross was an instrument of cruel torture and death.  The worst criminals were executed on cross.  Death by crucifixion was a gory, bloody, excruciating way to die. The cross is the ancient version of the electric chair, the gas chamber or the hangman’s noose.  Yet we Christians places crosses at the center of our houses of worship.  We hang various versions of crosses on the walls of our homes.  We wear them as jewelry around our necks and on rings.  And just as people seeing the golden arches think immediately of McDonalds, so when people see a cross they think of Christianity.

When you think of what the cross is, it seems a very strange logo indeed.  Yet when you realize what Jesus did on his cross, this isn’t strange at all. The cross is the perfect logo for our faith.  It tells you a lot about what it means to be a follower of Jesus.  For one thing, the cross reminds us of just how deeply serious the problem of our sin is – so serious that we could never make up for it. We could never pay the debt we owe.  The only way we could be saved is if God paid the price of our sin for us.  That’s what He did – giving His Son Jesus to die for our sins on the cross.  The cross is thus also a tremendous reminder of just how much God loves us.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son…”  That one and only son Jesus “loved us and gave himself up for us” on the cross.  The empty cross reminds us that we “have been given a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  

Yes the cross is the perfect identifying logo for you and me as Christians.  The cross is the most perfect witness to the world of what Christianity offers to everyone that is makes it different from every other religion – A God who knows we can’t make our way back to Him so He comes down to us.  He takes on our flesh and blood, lives the life we fail to live, dies in our place and rises again the third day… A God who stoops down that He might lift us up…   Like the Apostle Paul, this is a logo we should wear gladly for all to see – “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)