What does the cross of Jesus mean to you?

The world has set aside days of the year to recognize the birth and resurrection of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. However, little is known about what these celebrations symbolize in our lives. Many see these days as days off, and some go to church only on these two days in the year.

What does the death and resurrection of Jesus mean to the world? What does the sacrifice of a guiltless man mean to the world? To answer this question, we will have to go back to the book of Genesis and take a look at the first Adam: God gave dominion of the earth to the first Adam when he commanded him in Genesis 1:28 to ...subdue it...have dominion over...that is still God’s plan today. However, man in Adam, gave over the rights to subdue and have dominion on earth to Satan when man disobeyed God and as it is written in Luke 4:6 

“And he said to Him, To You I will give all this power and authority and their glory (all their magnificence, excellence, pre-eminence, dignity, and grace), for it has been turned over to me, and I give it to whomever I will”

So the first Adam lost it to Satan when he disobeyed God, but God’s plan was and still is - for man to reign as kings in this world (Romans 5:17), he (God) had to redeem man back to his rightful position. You know when God commanded that man should subdue and have dominion in the beginning, he meant it and his words never go back to him without yielding fruits/results. In order for God to pay the ransom required to redeem man, he had to sacrifice his only begotten son.

Now, the first Adam was made in the image of God as it is written in Gen 1:27, so, man’s spirit was a reflection of God because God is Spirit and so his image must be spirit and not flesh because man’s body was formed from dust (Gen 2:7) to be a tent for man’s spirit (2 Pet 1:13).  Before the fall, as the image of God, Adam was a son of God (Luke 3:38).  That is why when man ate from the tree God had told him not to eat, he died like God had told him (Gen 2:17) he would if he ate of the tree of good and evil. As we know, the flesh of man did not die that day but his spirit did (became separated from God). Death began to reign in man through the first Adam; as man had children, the children were born as sinners and as his children had children, sin continued to reign (Romans 5:17) because the seed of Adam had been corrupted.

To redeem man, Jesus could not be born of the seed of man because death reigned and the state of death was passed on through the seed of the man. Matthew 1: 18 and Luke 1: 35 explain that Mary became pregnant with Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit, Luke’s account reads:

“Then the angel said to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you [like a shining cloud]; and so the holy (pure, sinless) Thing (Offspring) which shall be born of you will be called the Son of God” (Amplified).

Jesus was born without sin and he never sinned, this made him the perfect sacrifice for the sins of man. A sinless man had to be punished for the sins of the guilty, hence the ransom for man was paid; man was redeemed when Jesus was crucified. In the Old Testament, the sins of man were covered each year with the blood of animals that had no blemish; the blood of animals could not erase (blot out) the transgression of man but the blood of Jesus blotted out our transgression once and for all (Hebrews 10: 1-18). Verse 18 of Hebrews 10 states something very important: 

“Now where there is absolute remission (forgiveness and cancellation of the penalty) of these [sins and lawbreaking], there is no longer any offering made to atone for sin”

Hallelujah! Unlike the Old Testament where sacrifice had to be made year after year, Jesus has paid for our sins once and for all. This also means that we don’t have to punish ourselves or be punished for our sins, he paid it all. When the enemy brings our past to us to make us feel unworthy to approach God or feel guilty, we need to remember that Jesus paid it all and that all sins are forgiven, forgotten and blotted out when we accept the sacrifice that Jesus paid on the cross.

Now, Jesus did not only bear our sins, he bore other things, which were a result of the fall of man. Isaiah 53 explains the sacrifice of Jesus explicitly; verse 4-6 describes an amazing truth:

⁴ Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
      it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
   And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
      a punishment for his own sins!
 ⁵ But he was pierced for our rebellion,
      crushed for our sins.
   He was beaten so we could be whole.
      He was whipped so we could be healed.
 ⁶ All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
      We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
   Yet the Lord laid on him
      the sins of us all. (NLT)

So he took our weakness, sorrows, rebellion, our sins, our infirmities – He made us whole again. All that is needed to be restored to our rightful position is to believe in him as John 1: 12 reads: But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name. This is so because Christ is a life giving spirit as 1 Cor 15:5 (AMP) reads:

"Thus it is written, The first man Adam became a living being (an individual personality); the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving Spirit [restoring the dead to life]"

We are restored back to life, back to son-ship from the state of death by the sacrifice Jesus paid because in him is life (John 1:4).  We are not only sons of God, we are co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17) meaning that whatever Jesus has, we have and all that he did on earth, we can do too. 

1 John 4:17 reads “In this [union and communion with Him] love is brought to completion and attains perfection with us, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment [with assurance and boldness to face Him], because as He is, so are we in this world.”

As He is, so are we in this world? Amazing! As Christ is now, so are we in this world. We are to reign in this world as Christ reigned over everything; we are to live a victorious life. As children of God, we are not hopeless sinners because Christ paid it all for us. We are like him, we have been restored to his image and his likeness, and we are kings. For as death reigned through the trespass of one man, the sacrifice of Christ means a lot more. Romans 5:17 (AMP) reads:

"For if because of one man's trespass (lapse, offense) death reigned through that one, much more surely will those who receive [God's] overflowing grace (unmerited favor) and the free gift of righteousness [putting them into right standing with Himself] reign as kings in life through the one Man Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One)"

As believers it is time to live in the fullness of life that Christ has given us (John 10:10). One thing is certain, to get the results he got, we have to pray, fast, and give ourselves to the Word like he did.  If you have not accepted Jesus as your Lord and saviour; the time is now, he loves you and paid the price for all your sins, invite him into your heart today.

The great commission

Acts 1:8

But you shall receive power (ability, efficiency, and might) when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.

Matthew 28: 19-20

Go then and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you…

The command Christ Jesus gave the church to go into the world and preach the good news was one of his last words before being taken up into heaven. As the last words of a dying man are usually about things that are dear to his heart, I believe this command is very dear to the heart of the Lord. It is a fair assessment to say that though Jesus is coming back soon,  the love of many has waxed cold. The church seems to be occupied by so many things apart from actively obeying this command.  Yes, we feed the poor, cloth the naked and do every other humanitarian activities, which are great, but the world also does all these things. There is one thing the world can’t give: the good news of Jesus Christ and his saving grace that is available to all. All our humanitarian support, though part of what we are to do, can not replace the need to evangelize the lost. 

The enemy of the church is busy finding cares for the church to focus on, so the real deal becomes secondary; the church is now preoccupied with cares of this life that the assignment of the master is often forgotten or neglected. Members of the body of Christ are so focused on what their temporal needs are and forget the eternal need of the World. While we are so busy asking him for this or that, the master is saying if you love me, obey my commandment. The enemy is keeping the church focused on self that all we pray about is about ourselves - what we want, need, desire, anticipate, love... and the list goes on. These are things Jesus has told us in Mathew 6:25-33 that he has got covered.

He did not leave us alone to get it done in anyway we can; he gave us the helper, the Holy Spirit, who leads us into all truth. For some of us, we are afraid of what people’s response will be; you are not alone, the disciples also had to pray for boldness to preach the gospel. Peter actually denied he ever knew the man he had walked with for three and a half years. After the Holy Spirit came into his life, he preached and about three thousand men came to the Lord in a day. I pray the Lord grants us the boldness to reach out to the unbelieving members of our families, our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and the world at large.

The enemy will do anything to distract us from this great commission. We are often occupied with our lives that we neglect such a great duty that the Lord gave to us. We are usually carried away with the doctrine of churches and forget about the ultimate yearning of the heart of the father. The church is full of people back biting, slandering, arguments, hunger for self gratification, lust after various temporal things, talking about one another in the name of wanting to pray for the person; all these are the devices of the enemy to distract us from reaching out to the world. Until the church is in unity with members of his own body, we may never be able to reach out to the people that need the light that we carry. We need to die to self; Paul said “I count my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus as given me; the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace”. We need to get to the point where the desire of the father is top priority. We need to reach out and shine our lights to a world that seems to get darker each and every day. It is time for us, the church, to rise up and reach out. We need to stop beating our own body and reach out to the world that waits in earnest expectation for our manifestation.  

People are dying without having a relationship with God, we need to have a passion for these souls and use whatever way the Spirit leads us to reach out to this world. Do not despise the gift you have; God can use any of our gifts to reach out to the world. We just need to be faithful in the office he has called us to.

Matthew 9:37-38

Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest

Let us reach out every way we can, let us pray to God to bring more laborers to join in. The harvest is ripe, Jesus will be coming back soon, let’s drop everything that easily weighs us down and work the works of him who sent us. He does not want anyone to perish, but the more we keep our faith to ourselves and not reach out, people will perish. We can not convict people of their ways, neither can we change people; that is the work of the Holy Spirit. We can however, tell others about him, we can tell them who he is, why he came, why he died, what he has done for us as individuals and what he can do for them - that he forgives, that he forgets their pasts, that he truly loves regardless.

Lord of the harvest, I pray you send laborers into your harvest in Jesus name.