Some preachers and teachers are instructing people to not focus on the Cross of Christ because it creates a religious culture of death. That mistaken interpretation and its application is a grave error.

I was recently hiking the trails above our home and stopped to rest while surveying a panoramic vista. When I turned around to rejoin the trail, something caught my eye. Amidst the soft edges of leaves and soil, I saw an angular object. I walked over to take a closer look. It was a small cross about three inches tall with a metal pin running top to bottom. I imagined before it was discarded it would have been used as a decoration on a cake or in a garden. I picked it up and stuck it into the hillside to be on display for other hikers who would hike along the trail.

With Easter on the horizon, it is important to affirm once again the place of the Cross in our redemption. Jesus had to move through the experience of the Cross and Resurrection to get to His throne. The throne was His ultimate destination. 

While the Cross and the Resurrection were one-time events, they were required for Jesus to take His place on His throne. Without those two experiences, He would not be seated in His present place of authority “Far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:21). What is both wonderful and powerful about the Lord taking a seat on His throne at the right hand of the Father is what it means for us, “For He raised us from the dead along with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ Jesus” (2:6). There are other implications regarding the Cross in this life for those of us who follow the enthroned One.

Jesus said, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). The Cross is an experience we carry with us each day when sin and unhealthy ways of thinking attempt to rob us of the ability to live a victorious life of faith. When sin and unrenewed thoughts fog our minds with the enticement of deception and we fall into disobedience we can call upon the power of the Cross through confession and repentance to put those things to death recalibrating our faith and setting us back on the right path.

 Paul said the Cross kept his mission focused and helped him not fall prey to fleshly entertaining methods or resort to clever tactics to present the Gospel, “For Christ didn’t send me to baptize, but to preach the Good News—and not with clever speech, for fear that the cross of Christ would lose its power” (I Corinthians 1:17).  

The Cross also severs our slavery to the world and its opinions keeping us aligned to a higher calling, “But far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). 

While the Cross revealed the depth of the Lord’s suffering, it is so much more. When the importance of the Cross is understood and repositioned on the trail of our faith, it becomes a thing of beauty reminding us of the price He paid as He journeyed toward His ultimate destination – the throne, a place of authority we will share with Him if we choose to die to self and live for Him.