The Cross

The cross was Necessary

English Standard Version Chapter 20

3 “You shall have no other gods before me.

4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

when I see a cross embossed on Bibles, wrought out in jewelry or fashioned gold, I cannot but think how contradictory it all seems. The cross, a thing of shame, the instrument of our Lord’s execution by those who abhorred him, and yet worn as an ornament! Surely men might as well wear at their belts the dagger with which their friend was stabbed! Why do not ladies wear a gibbet from their necks? For what more or less is a cross? Such was not the cross which Paul gloried in; he would have despised such idolatry. He gloried in the gospel, which is a spiritual cross.—14.519

Charles Spurgeon