Missing Half the Cross?
The Following is the Script for this Video:
You’ve seen MISSING posters. But have you ever seen one for a missing half of the cross? In reality, of course, the cross is all there. But often, in the way the cross is taught, one half of its truth gets misplaced. Over time, it gets less and less and less attention.
The half we hear about goes like this: “Christ died for us.” That certainly is true—and we dare not neglect it. This often-heard truth about the cross deals with sin’s penalty against us.
The half that’s so often missing is this: “We died with Christ.” This seldom-taught truth about the cross deals with sin’s power over us.
Does the Bible teach this idea of our co-death with Christ? Yes. Clearly. Here are just three examples among many.
• “we died with Christ”
• “you died with Christ”
• “we died with Christ”
But this second half of the gospel truth too often gets ignored.
Why does it matter when half the truth about the cross goes missing? Isn’t it sufficient just to know that because Jesus went to the cross our sins are forgiven? Well . . . no . . . that’s not enough. Because lacking the other half of the truth, that missing part, so many Christians—even church leaders—are overpowered by the steamroller of sin.
So why does our dying with Jesus get such little attention? Maybe it’s because death is such a repulsive subject—one we’d rather not think about. Or maybe it’s because it seems unreal. Clearly, the bodies of Christians are still very much alive. Confusing? Yes. So let’s unpack this truth step by step.
We’ll begin by letting this circle represent you and me. On our own, apart from Jesus, we were darkened by and enslaved to sin. Because sin was in control, we were “free from the control of righteousness.”
But when we believed the good news of the gospel, God “included us in Christ.” God has not yet finished his working with us, so we’ll leave our circle gray.
As we saw, we were included in Christ. So when he went to the cross, we went with him. As Paul explains, “I have been crucified with Christ.” In another place, he says we were “buried with him through baptism into death.”
Did Jesus leave us dead there on the cross? No. God included us in Christ, so when he came alive out of that tomb, God made us alive with him. This reality, of course, is invisible to our physical eyes. As Colossians 3:3 says, “your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
Although we were once darkness, we are now—in Christ—“light in the Lord.”
The benefit from the first half of the gospel—that Christ died for us—is both welcome and easy to grasp. Because he died for us, those sins that separated us from God are erased. They no longer count against us. Guilt gone.
But then we come to that difficult and often-ignored second half of the cross. How can we claim that our co-death with Christ has broken sin’s power over us? We know real Christians still fall short. If we died with Christ, why do we still sin?
To understand that neglected half of the cross, it helps to recall what our relationship with sin was outside of Christ. The New Testament uses two picture-words to describe that relationship. First, we were slaves to sin. Second, we were prisoners of sin.
When we were apart from Christ, sin acted as our slave master. As Paul explains, “you used to be slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:17). And of himself, he says, “
“left to my own self I am enslaved . . . to sin’s law by my human flesh.” Overpowered by sin, we were not free to do God’s will.
Picture it this way. Sin, like a bully, ordered us around as if it owned us. Sin intimidated and coerced us. We were defenseless against it. We were unable not to sin.
But when we died with Christ, the sin-bully lost its power over us. No matter how long or loudly its barks its orders, sin has no power over a slave who has died.
And so in light of our co-death with Jesus, Paul urges us to “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11). We are now able not to sin.
The other word picturing our relationship with sin is “prisoner.” Before he knew Christ, Paul says he was “a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.” And in
Galatians 3:22, he says, “the Scriptures declare that we are all prisoners of sin.” Prisoners and slaves have this in common—they must do what the slave master or the jailer requires. They have no choice.
Before our co-death with Jesus, our situation as prisoners looks like this. The door of the sin-prison is locked from the outside. We cannot escape. Sin is our habitat. It’s where we live, eat, and sleep.
But prisons don’t keep the dead locked up. So at our co-death with Jesus, the door of the sin-prison swings open. We are no longer held captive. Made newly alive with Jesus, we may walk out, free to follow him wherever he leads.
That open door also explains the reality that Christians still can and do sin. We are free to walk out of the sin-prison. And it’s possible for us to walk back in. If we do, God may discipline us. But we are no longer prisoners in captivity to sin. We may walk back out.
So the full good news of the cross is twofold. Christ died for us—that means forgiveness of sin. And we died and rose again with him—that means freedom from sin. We are now free not to sin.
Of course, we still live in a world filled with shark-like enticements to sin. How do we walk the tightrope in these made-new lives of ours? Paul again explains: “You must calculate yourselves as being dead to sin, and alive to God in the Messiah, Jesus.” We need to count on that reality in everyday life.
The Message paraphrase puts it vividly: “That means you must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don't give it the time of day. . . . Throw yourselves wholeheartedly and full-time — remember, you've been raised from the dead! — into God's way of doing things. Sin can't tell you how to live.”
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