The Cross

To accept the cross is to deny all you value in life. We are a proud people, sensual and self seeking, desiring for pleasure. The cross tells us we are wrong. The cross says you must take this shape, that you are wrong about what life is and life is...only when it takes the form of the cross. The world lives in hostility to the cross, yet Christ was crucified to the world through the cross and the world to Him. Christians are required to live in the shadow of the cross. "He who does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me". Matt. 10:38 Bonhoeffer said, "when Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die." We have no reason or right to choose a different path than the path God chose for Christ Jesus. The cross is the pattern of our lives. We should place all our desires and egos on the cross. The occupied church will not take this danger on nor risk this call. It is much easier for the occupied church to draw up a list of moral code and attempt to give us security in that instead of Holy security. Our faith, Christianity, cannot be blended with "celebrity". They cannot blend, either you have one or you have another. They do not convert they confirm that the if the church looks like the world it is the world.
But we know there are enemies in the camp and our goal is to convert people to the cross. Jesus did not die at the hands of muggers and rapists, He fell to the well scrubbed hands of lawyers, statesman, professors, societies most respected members. Bonhoeffer says cheap grace is grace without a cross. I say I agree, do you?