The cross. Can you turn any direction without
seeing one? Perched atop a chapel. Carved into a graveyard
headstone. Engraved in a ring or suspended on a chain. The cross is
the universal symbol of Christianity. An odd choice, don't you
think? Strange that a tool of torture would come to embody a
movement of hope. The symbols of other faiths are more upbeat: the
six-pointed star of David, the crescent moon of Islam, a lotus
blossom for Buddhism. Yet a cross for Christianity? An instrument of
execution?
Would you wear a tiny electric chair around your
neck? Suspend a gold-plated hangman's noose on the wall? Would you
print a picture of a firing squad on a business card? Yet we do so
with the cross. Many even make the sign of the cross as they pray.
Would we make the sign of, say, a guillotine? Instead of the
triangular touch on the forehead and shoulders, how about a karate
chop on the palm? Doesn't quite have the same feel, does it?
Why is the cross the symbol of our faith? To find
the answer look no farther than the cross itself. Its design
couldn't be simpler. One beam horizontal--the other vertical. One
reaches out--like God's love. The other reaches up--as does God's
holiness. One represents the width of his love; the other reflects
the height of his holiness. The cross is the intersection. The cross
is where God forgave his children without lowering his standards.
How could he do this? In a sentence: God put our sin on his Son
and punished it there.
"God put on him the wrong who never did anything wrong, so we
could be put right with God" (2 Cor. 5:21 MSG).
