Rev. Colin Dye
EASTER TIME – The ideal Time to Renew our Confidence in the THE CROSS
AS Pentecostal Minister Colin Dye explains
IT’S A PAINFUL TRUTH, FRIENDS, but the blood-soaked cross of Jesus Christ is your cross and my cross also.
That’s why Jesus said, ‘Unless you take up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.’ Jesus lived the life that we should have lived and died the death that we should have died, so that we can live the life that he has given to us by his grace.
And that is how we stand before God. We stand before God in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. It is a blood-stained righteousness; it is purchased by his precious blood.
And it is the blood of Jesus Christ that will he your comfort On your dying day. Plead the precious blood before the throne of the Father And that blood satisfies God’s justice and wrath: it is that blood that binds us in covenant love eternally to the One who, having been crucified, is alive forever more.
We also show the cross, my friends, not just by the public proclamation and biblical explanation of it. but our personal appropriation of the lifestyle of the cross to ourselves - because the heathen would believe much more of what we say about the cross if we showed them more of the cross in our lives.
On Sundays, when we leave church, What do we carry with us? Do we carry with us our self-centred goals, our lives having been that much more expressed; having been to a church service for another week and saying, ‘I have got the religion out of the way, now I am going to live the rest of this week to fulfill my will’? If we do that, we don’t show them the cross, but our flesh.
We are to demonstrate the lifestyle of the Cross. That is what it means to be a Christian: Jesus’ death is effective in you, so that Jesus’ life might be manifested through you. We show the cross and the Resurrection not just by proclamation and Christian teaching and doctrine, but by our lifestyle. So that when they look at us they do not see us, but see Jesus. There is only one way for this, and that is to say, ‘Mote of you in my life, Jesus, and less of me.’ As John the Baptist said, ‘He must increase and I must decrease’.
The cross for us today is like a sharp sword and instrument that cuts into the flesh so that the life of God may be manifested in us. Friends, we have an opportunity this Easter time to show the world that Jesus, the crucified One is living in us; that is, without talk, but by the behaviour and standard of our lives.
That is not saying, ‘Hey, listen how perfect and fantastic we are!’ We all have weaknesses. We all catty the weakness and frailty of damaged personalities. But we are those who ate being healed. And only healed, whole people can show the Cross. It is not about boasting of ourselves. Paul said, ‘Cod forbid that I should boast save in the Cross of Jesus Christ.
In other words, we say to the world, ‘Hey, don’t look at me, but look at Jesus: He is my Saviour; I am nothing and nowhere without him. And when we lay aside the frailty of our flesh and submit to the nail piercing of the will of God that places us in that position of the crucified One, only then, having felt the pain of the pointed nail, do we find the power of his resurrection.
That is what we experience - those torturous hours leading up to the Cross - those hours of agony on the Cross; the shame and humiliation - all of that has been rolled away. Thank God the story ends in the empty tomb that shows that he is not just the crucified One, but the resurrected One. And when the Resurrection comes, and that Resurrection life is manifested in you, you don’t feel the pain any more hut feel the benefit or being said ‘No’ to sin and ‘Yes’ to God. You feel his joy at work in your life. There is a vibrancy that touches you; it is supernatural. It is a supernatural lifestyle.
I want to say, friends, that it is time to get so fully back to the Cross of Jesus Christ that we live in the knowledge that we serve the One who was crucified but who is yet not dead now but is alive forever more. Every other religion says ‘You have got to do this and that in order to be right with God.’ Jesus says, ‘Come as you are.’ And the hymn writer said it so clearly, ‘Just as I am, without one plea; But that Thy blood was shed for me; 0 Lamb of God, I come.
And it is the Cross that calls you to come to Christ just as you are. It is the Cross that tells you that God loves you just as you are. It is the Cross that tells you that God’s love is so strong for you, that once he has got a hold of you he will never let you go.
The Cross of Jesus Christ, rightly understood, will destroy every legalistic spirit and open you up to the free grace of God. God has given to us this powerful capacity to show the cross, and what lies on the other side - New Life in Jesus!
