11 Brothers, if I am still preaching circumcision, why am I still being persecuted? In that case the offense of the cross has been abolished.
The cross of Jesus is still offensive. The cross is what separates Christianity from religions. The cross means there is a Creator and that we are not accidents; our lives have purpose and that purpose must have a connection to the Creator. People don’t want to hear that there is a bigger purpose to our lives other than pleasure and absence of inconvenience. We want to do what we want, when we want to do it. We don’t want anyone telling us what to do. But the Creator has a design for our lives and we are responsible to Him for carrying out that design. The cross means that our actions have consequences that go beyond this temporal 80 years. There is more to life than the next fashion or football MVP. The choices we make today will be with us for all eternity. When we choose selfishness we are robbing ourselves eternally. We are shaping what kind of existence we will have forever. If we don’t follow the prompting of the Spirit, we subtract part of who we could have been and substitute and empty hole. But if we are obedient then that portion of eternity gets filled with Christ-likeness and it will therefore follow us into eternity. Everyone is going to resemble Swiss cheese to some extent, our lives full of non-faith-motivated acts. But the miracle of the cross is that there is any cheese at all. Apart from Jesus’ death and resurrection our lives were one big hole, one never-ending series of non-faith-filled actions. Our eternity would have been emptiness, devoid of any goodness, absent from God. That is offensively final, isn’t it. Yup! That is the cross, hope for those who believe and offense for those who don’t.
The Arnold Journey 