The gospel of salvation is a message of the cross which invites sinners into the gate of salvation. This message is heard on the radio through songs that are sung, on stickers that declare God loves you, from pulpits all around the world. It is truly the greatest love story we have ever been told. This story of Jesus Christ and His death on the cross for the salvation of my soul radically changed my life 34 years ago and is still changing my life today. The message of the cross is not a one sided message though, it is a message of what Jesus did for me, but it is also a message about how I am called to live for Him.

When only one side of a story is told, we do not get the whole picture, we do not experience all the benefits, we do not understand the why behind the what. The story of the cross has been told over and over again about all that Jesus did for us, but He did not do all that for us so we can just sit and reap all the benefits of His death, burial and resurrection. He did it so we could do something in return for Him. Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5 what our responsibility is, Paul actually gives the whole picture of the cross. “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that they who live might no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf.”

Jesus died for all, so that they (we) who live might no longer live for ourselves. The work on the cross that Jesus did is so that we will no longer live for ourselves. This message of the cross is not preached much at all, so we wonder why the power of the gospel does not manifest in our lives, it is highly possible, because we never stopped living for ourselves. Jesus modeled what it looks like to live for Yahweh even unto death, it was a model He set so we would live the same way. You can’t do what Jesus did if you don’t want to live how Jesus lived. The message of the cross is about living for someone other than yourself. Oh the liberty of living for another. Oh the freedom of living for God. Oh that we would hear and obey the message of the cross as a Church!