The Cross and Resurretion are to always be together

Written by Pastor Nuckols Friday, 04 March 2011 13:45

God is in humanity, and not beyond what is human.  And Satan is in the affairs of everyday, not outside them.  Therefore, it is the task of the proclamation of the Word to speak about God and His power, as well as, about Satan and his satanic power in such a way that everyone listening can detect the point in his own life at where the battle is being waged, and at where he is enslaved and bound.  Therefore, the Scriptures put Christ’s death and resurrection in the center of man’s daily vocation.

It is important that both Christ’s death and His resurrection be kept together in the proclamation.  If the cross alone dominates preaching, the faith then becomes merely faith in what has happened, what is complete—and is now to be personally applied in an act of faith which only takes a step back in time.  Then, belief in the end times is added on to that as an appendix.  On the other hand, when Christ’s resurrection alone dominates, then God’s act comes sterilely from on high without any connection with human conflict.  Thus, faith mistakes its enemy, which is despair, and instead, it is forced to match itself intellectually against what is no opponent, intellect.

The true significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ cannot be maintained, nor can it remain the Gospel, if it does not come into conflict with man’s death and man’s doubt.  We receive into our heart the message of the resurrection by faith alone, that is to say, we receive death because faith is the death of the self, and outside death there is no resurrection.  To seek to attain theoretical certainty about the resurrection, and to approach the question as purely one of truth, is to seek to have the resurrection without having to die to self.  Always, it is where the Law speaks, where agony and death hold sway, to which the Gospel of Christ’s resurrection speaks.  For Christ’s cross and resurrection belong inseparably together, for the way to resurrection is through death.

The cross and death are in like manner emptied of content and are sentimentalized if they are separated from the resurrection, and merely made out to be objects of pious contemplation.  For the apostolic and catholic faith, the cross is not the end, but it is a way to be trodden, it is a conflict to be waged as a baptized child of God, to the very end.  For the man who listens to it, the Word of the cross strikes down, and is as a destroying power, whose work it is to kill the flesh, to drive out Satan, to crucify sin.  This destroying power can only take place at that point where the hope of heaven dwells, where the promise is alive—that is, in the heart that already tastes the first fruits of the resurrection.

Rejoice, as we begin the journey of Lent to the joyous Feast of Victory in His resurrection.  It shapes us and grows us as His beloved bride, the Church.