Nor is the ‘scandal’ of the cross a stumbling-block only to Jews. There are many today who find it an affront to their pride to hear that on the cross Jesus paid the full price needed to “buy us back from the curse of the law”, and that their own ‘upright’ lives and ‘good’ works can make no contribution to the price that has been paid. The only thing we can contribute to our own salvation, as Archbishop William Temple so memorably said, is the sin from which we need to be saved. For those who are being saved, to paraphrase Paul (1 Cor 1.18), the cross is a suspension bridge spanning the gulf of sin separating us from a holy God; but for those who are perishing it is a stumbling-block which trips them up and turns them back into the darkness.
Thursday, 5 January 2012
SKANDALON 5 (c) the scandal of the cross today
Nor is the ‘scandal’ of the cross a stumbling-block only to Jews. There are many today who find it an affront to their pride to hear that on the cross Jesus paid the full price needed to “buy us back from the curse of the law”, and that their own ‘upright’ lives and ‘good’ works can make no contribution to the price that has been paid. The only thing we can contribute to our own salvation, as Archbishop William Temple so memorably said, is the sin from which we need to be saved. For those who are being saved, to paraphrase Paul (1 Cor 1.18), the cross is a suspension bridge spanning the gulf of sin separating us from a holy God; but for those who are perishing it is a stumbling-block which trips them up and turns them back into the darkness.
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