The Cross — Understanding Your True Worth

Jesus walked on many roads during his brief time on earth. The roads He walked on led Him through valleys and over hilltops, they brought Him through crowded city streets and quiet villages, they guided Him to people’s homes and festive celebrations, but the road that led Him to the place of crucifixion was the one He was born to travel.

The Father watched from heaven as His Son, beaten and bruised, staggered under the weight of the cross on His way to a place called Golgotha. Jesus knew that this road was the only way that His love could find a place in our hearts. If God would have set a roadblock on this road and said to His Son, “Road closed,” we would never have found our way to Him.

It is Jesus’ journey to the cross and His crucifixion upon Golgotha’s hill that opens our understanding to the meaning of love at its deepest level. Salvation is our free gift that cost Jesus everything—

• His brokenness means that we can be made whole
• His sorrow means that we can have fullness of joy
• His rejection means that we can be accepted; His pain means that we can be healed
• His death means that we can have life everlasting.

The devil has convinced so many people that they are worthless. Each of us needs to stop and remember the cross—at the cross we will discover our true value— for it is here that we discover the price God was willing to pay for us, the depth of His love, and how much we are worth to Him.
—Roy Lessin

Dear Friends of Hillside,
 
The Easter Services on Sunday were delightful.  A beautiful spring day, meaningful sunrise service, excellent breakfast, great Easter egg hunt, and moving worship service honored Jesus Christ, the Living Lord.  The mighty Day of Resurrection has come and gone, but we continue to exist in the time of Eastertide.  We live in the exultation of the glorious hope of resurrection, and the mighty power of daily strength found through the Spirit of Christ to lead to transformed living. 
 
The core of the gospel message is the testimony that Jesus is risen: “God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact” (Acts 2:32). 
 
Indeed, Saint Paul summarizes the gospel by saying: “By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…” (1Cor.15.2-4).
 
I placed my faith in Jesus when I understood that he did indeed rise from the dead.  Once I realized this to be the significant differentiating factor between Jesus of Nazareth and every other religious leader of history, I knew to whom my allegiance belonged.  Mohamed? Dead.  Buddha?  Dead.  Abraham? Dead.  Confucius? Dead.  Moses? Dead.  Peter? Dead.  Paul?  Dead.  Jesus. Resurrected. 
 
To be sure, I am making no judgment about whether any of these great figures will be live forever in some afterlife – God is the judge.  Indeed, I fully expect to meet Moses in heaven.  What I am saying though is that only Jesus was stone cold dead, and then, by the power of God, walked out of the tomb to declare victory over sin and death itself.  There were too many convincing witnesses to make light of this historical reality. 
 
Also to be sure, none of these great religious figures claimed that they were divine, merely that they had heard from God or found enlightenment or discovered a better way of life.  Only Jesus made such ostentatious claims as “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but through me,” or “When you believe in the one whom the Father has sent (Jesus), you have crossed over from death to life.”   Such claims can only be dismissed as lunatic ravings – I have worked psych hospital wards where patients were convinced of their divinity – except for the fact that Jesus after being brutally executed walked out of the tomb.
 
For me, it’s a no brainer.  I am a Christian because of the resurrection.  The resurrection creates the focal deciding point.  If Jesus rose from the dead, then He is the Lord of Lord’s, and in the words of “doubting” Thomas, “My Lord and My God.”  My duty and privilege in life is to follow Jesus and introduce as many people as possible to him – for he offers not merely a way of life, but is life itself.  If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then I can pick and choose from among his teachings, and those of any others I wish to add to my self-made religious longings – or ignore the whole religion thing all together.  As Saul of Tarsus commented, “If the dead are not raised. . . then we [who follow Christ] are to be pitied above all people.”
 
So which is it for you?  Did Jesus rise?  Or not?  And what does that mean to your life?
 
This could be the most important question you ever answer. 
 
Peace be with you  Pastor Mark