A Cross-Shaped Gospel: Reconciling Heaven and Earth

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION:

FROM THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS

In Holman Hunt’s classic painting, Jesus comes to the end of what appears to be another long workday at His father’s carpentry shop. He is stripped to the waist and stretching, and the light of dusk seeps through the room at such an angle that a shadow appears in the form of a cross on the wall behind Jesus. Even the most unaware observer can’t miss the artist’s point: In His youth, Jesus could never escape the cross—it hovered over Him daily.¹

No other symbol in the history of humanity has become as iconic as the cross. Instantly recognized by millions of people, the cross has inspired hope and courage, and brought new life to untold numbers of people since the scandalous, but necessary, death of Jesus Christ. To Holman Hunt, the cross, the emblem of suffering and shame,² was not just a historical event, or even symbolic of a future hope, but a living reality.

When Jesus instructed His followers to take up their cross and follow Him (Matthew 16:24), He envisioned a whole new way of living. In one of many paradoxical statements, Jesus said that true life could come only through death, the death of the cross. To His disciples Jesus said, And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:38–39). Jesus drew a parallel between the cross and life—a life that doesn’t just begin when I’m buried, but a life that begins in the present, the moment I give my life to Jesus and cling to the old rugged cross.

The two beams of the cross—one vertical, the other horizontal—tell us all we need to know about the gospel.

The gospel and the cross are intertwined, so closely related that you cannot see one without the other. The gospel is the cross. In fact, we need not look far to get a very clear picture of the gospel; just look at its shape. The two beams of the cross—one vertical, the other horizontal—tell us all we need to know about the gospel. The cross-shaped gospel has to do with man being reconciled to God (the vertical beam) and to one another (the horizontal beam) through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Messiah who died in our place and for our sins. Sadly, many times we disconnect the two beams, undermining the power of the gospel. When we disconnect the vertical and horizontal beams, the Christ-follower and the church limp along, not functioning at full capacity.

Oh, but the beauty of the cross-shaped gospel is when both dimensions are lived out through a life that has been justified and growing in Christ-exalting holiness, along with loving and engaging our neighbors and society for the glory of God. Church and life just doesn’t get any better than when we are living the cross-shaped gospel.

Life is at its richest when we are living in close communion with God and loving our neighbors at the same time. When life becomes solely about quiet times and Bible studies, there’s this innate feeling that something is missing, because something is! On the other hand, when life is just about serving and loving others, and it doesn’t flow from deep affections for God, a sense of disequilibrium creeps in as well.

The cross-shaped gospel isn’t ultimately about our enjoyment or living my life to the fullest. These are but by-products of two greater realities—the glory of God and the betterment of our world. My prayer for you, as you begin this book, is that God will be even more glorified in your life,and that your spheres of influence are bettered because you’re living this cross-shaped gospel.

1 THE GOSPEL IN TWO-PART HARMONY

At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out … in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the cross.¹

Tertullian

Albert Einstein was boarding a train one day, clearly preoccupied with something. While the other passengers were settling into their seats and preparing for the journey ahead, Dr. Einstein was frantically scanning the floors, lost in a search. One of the train crew noticed this and asked the brilliant scientist what he was trying to find. Albert responded that he had lost his ticket. The conductor waved the renowned Einstein off, assuring him that he need not look for his ticket because he knew exactly who he was. This was the man, after all, whom Time magazine would eventually label the man of the twentieth century. His discoveries in physics would astound the world and change how we view the universe.

But still, Dr. Albert Einstein continued his quest for the ticket, looking between the seats and down the aisles, ignoring the conductor. Some moments later this same man reiterated that Albert didn’t need to worry about finding his ticket, because again, everyone knew who he was, and surely this world-famous professor and Nobel laureate would not try to scam his way onto a train. Relax, Dr. Einstein, we all know who you are, the conductor said.

With a frustrated sigh, Professor Einstein responded, It’s not that I don’t know who I am, I know exactly who I am. I’m looking for my ticket because I don’t know where I’m going.²

The Who Am I and Where Am I Going Questions

Einstein’s response to the train worker unearths for us two fundamental questions that every human being must face: (1) Who am I? and (2) Where am I going? Identity and direction lie at the core of humanity’s soul. Fail to find the answers to these core questions, and life will be devoid of any possible meaning or satisfaction. Humanity’s problem is not that men and women aren’t looking for the answers to these questions; it’s that most of them will spend their lives filling the blank spaces of their souls with the wrong answers.

So where can the right answers be found? Saul of Tarsus, a devout Jew, realized later in life he had been pursuing the answers for identity and direction in the wrong places. A well-educated man and very religious, he had been proud of his status as being from the same tribe of Israel that birthed her first king. As a religious Pharisee, he no doubt thought his identity could be found in his pedigree, education, and religion. He says so in Philippians 3:4–6. Yet later on Saul realized Jesus was the Christ, and he would become the humble apostle Paul. That brought about a remarkable change in attitude. His identity was no longer in himself. He wrote, But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ (Philippians 3:7–8).

Paul admits that he had spent his life pursuing the wrong answer, yet on a dusty Damascus road one day all of that changed when his life was transformed and revolutionized by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now in Christ he had found identity. That’s why he told the Corinthians that if we are in Christ, we are a new creation (see 2 Corinthians 5:17).

The gospel of Jesus Christ answers all of the questions and longings of our soul. Who am I? I am a child of God in relationship with the creator of the universe (John 1:12) because of the gospel. Where am I going? My direction and aim in life is found in the gospel.

Moving toward the Zoe Life

Since the gospel addresses our most basic needs and essential questions, God is most honored and life becomes alive when we have as our sole operating system the gospel of Jesus Christ—or what we will call in this book, the cross-shaped gospel. This is what Jesus taught His disciples when He announced that He had come that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).

The Greeks had two primary words for life: bios (we get such words as biology from here) and zoe. Bios has to do with pure existence; you know, inhaling and exhaling. Zoe, on the other hand, refers to life on a qualitative level. Zoe describes a life rich with meaning, value, and significance. One of the great tragedies of life is that most people have bios life but not zoe life. According to Jesus, zoe living is found in Him and therefore in the gospel.

Most of us will live longer than the disciples did here on earth. By today’s standards, these men died relatively young. Very few of us, however, will have truly lived like they did, having that zoe life of value and significance. These men whom Jesus handpicked were so consumed by the gospel that they changed cities and their world. Along the way, they established churches that didn’t just exist from season to season but communities of people who were all plugged into the zoe life that the gospel provides. Like their fathers in the faith, these churches would turn the world upside-down for the glory of God. I want this for myself, and I hope you do too.

When it comes to living the cross-shaped gospel—a zoe life of significance that both worships God and helps those around us—most Christians are only halfway there. One part of the church of Jesus Christ has removed the horizontal beam of the cross and focused solely on the vertical—their relationship with God. Others who claim to love Jesus have detached the vertical beam, focusing instead on the horizontal beam—their relationship with others. Like a surgeon with an injured hand, both sides have discovered that their ability to engage their world for the glory of God has been severely impaired.

What we need is a two-part gospel.

We need to serve God and our fellow man.

What we need is a two-part gospel—a holistic gospel, a gospel that loves both the Father and His Son, the Redeemer Jesus, and at the same time declares that love as it seeks the souls of the lost. We need to serve God and our fellow man. We need that two-part harmony!

Where Did We Go Wrong?

If asked to present the gospel, how would you go about that? When I’m asked to give the gospel, someone expects me to give a clear presentation followed by an invitation for people to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Now, I don’t want to diminish this at all. In fact, the apostle Paul says that this is of first importance (1 Corinthians 15:3). Our soul’s deepest longing is to be in relationship with God.

However, what I want to suggest is that this is not all that is meant by the gospel in the Scriptures. Jesus, Paul, and the other apostles knew that the gospel had profound social implications as well, creating bold new paradigms for both how people related to one another and how they engaged their world as well. Yet church history has revealed that the force of the gospel has been severely blunted, and lives negatively impacted when we have divorced the horizontal dimensions of the gospel (our need to love and engage others) from the vertical (our need to love and engage God through His Son, Jesus Christ). Unfortunately, this separation has become the norm. It was Charles Spurgeon who once said that One recurring tragedy of the Christian church … has been the separation of social ministries and spiritual, evangelistic ministries.³

George Whitefield and the Gospel

One of the greatest proclaimers of the gospel in church history was the English evangelist George Whitefield. Before Billy Graham, it can be argued that no one preached the gospel in America and the United Kingdom to more people than Whitefield in the eighteenth century and D. L. Moody in the nineteenth century. Whitefield’s influence on how we view the gospel today is both positive and negative.

Possessed with Spirit-given abilities, Whitefield’s spellbinding dominance over his audience was such that masses of people flocked to hear him. In fact, so many people came that he could no longer preach in church buildings; he had to take to the fields. Over the span of his ministry, it is estimated that he preached over eighteen thousand times⁴ to millions of people. A person of his stature would go down as one of the greatest men God has ever used, but at the same time there was a severe blemish on his earthly record.

George Whitefield owned slaves. To be sure, he was not the only preacher of his time to do so. Jonathan Edwards, a man called America’s greatest theologian, did as well. What makes Whitefield stand out, though, is that it was because of this preacher of the gospel’s influence that Georgia legalized slavery. Using his friendship with General James Oglethorpe, founder of the colony of Georgia, Whitefield lobbied to have slavery legalized. In a letter written to Oglethorpe and the trustees of the Colony of Georgia, Whitefield pleaded his case:

My chief end in writing this, is to inform you … that I am as willing as ever to do all I can for Georgia and the Orphan House, if either a limited use of negroes is approved of, or some more indented servants [are] sent over. If not, I cannot promise to keep any large family, or cultivate the plantation in any considerable manner.⁵

Whitefield’s biographer, Arnold Dallimore, remarks at the close of this letter, Such was Whitefield’s urging of the Trustees to allow slavery in Georgia, and as stated earlier, we can but deplore both his attitude and his action …. In 1750 the British Government submitted to the wishes of the majority of the people of Georgia; Oglethorpe’s slaveless society was done away with and slavery was made a legal practice in the colony.⁶

Tim Keller reminds us that we must always look for the sin beneath the sin, and when we examine George Whitefield’s desire to have slavery legalized in Georgia, we are forced to conclude that racism is not the ultimate issue. No, there’s a far greater problem. What kind of gospel did Whitefield preach that would allow the proclamation of Jesus Christ to millions of people—a man who died because God so loved the world—to coexist with lobbying for the legalization of slavery? Whitefield’s problem was not a race problem; it was a gospel problem. Whatever he may have purported to believe about the gospel, or to have preached, what is obvious for Whitefield is that in practice he understood