Source: © Rob Sutherland, Alpinist Photography / Getty
Brutal and inhumane, scary in its stance, the Cross was carved to represent death. It was hewn by human hands to serve punishment and execute wrath upon its victim.
As a child, I didn’t understand the Cross. My young mind could not fathom the level of brutality that would drive nails into the hands and feet of a person while he hung dying a slow death. The gore of the scene I imagined disturbed me and so I would be careful not to conjure the image often. By the time I was a teenager, the Cross became more of an idea, a theological concept, an iconic representation of the Christian faith than it was a testament of the divine sacrifice.
But things change with age. My understanding of my own sinfulness and nothingness outside of Christ steadily becomes more pronounced as I mature. You see, the human propensity and uncanny ability to decline into sin makes us fragile. Our inability to stay the course of righteousness on our own means that we are in need of the bloody atonement that was wrought on the rugged Cross.
Visible to the eyes of the witnesses that day was the broken body of Jesus as He hung bleeding. But unseen was your sin, egregious and obscene, hanging there with Him. What Mary couldn’t see as she stood weeping for her son was my sin, ugly and wicked, hanging there mocking Him. Yet it is the invisible reality of what occurred in the spirit realm that day that still affects all of us today. It is the perpetual efficacy of the Cross of Calvary that ensures our continual victory.
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article courtesy of TheStreamingFaith.com
Daily Devotional: “Heaven’s Altar” was originally published on praisecleveland.com
