Theology of the Cross vs. Glory

Theology of Glory vs. Theology of the Cross

What is "Theology of Glory" versus the "Theology of the Cross"?

If millions of people are reading a Christian book or watching a Christian television series like The Chosen, God must be at work, right?

Or if 10s of 1000s of people are attending a megachurch with 15 multisite locations, God must be being honored, correct?

If bigger is evidence of God's favor, Jesus must not have been very favored by God.

By the end of Jesus' ministry, He had few followers, He was falsely convicted, and died a bloody death on the cross.

By today's Evangelical definition of success, Jesus was a failure. Jesus' leading disciple, Peter, actually rebuked Christ for saying He was going to suffer and die: "Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You." Matthew 16:22.

Peter had a flawed human perspective of success for Christ, not a perspective that included death on a cross.

Then Christ addressed Peters perspective of success when He responded, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's. Matthew 16:23.

The prevailing Evangelical definition of success can be summarized by the "theology of glory" - bigger audiences, more professions of faith, more acceptable to the culture.

The constrast to this is how Jesus defined God's interest which we'll call, the "theology of the cross," when He said in Matthew 16:24, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me."

The "theology of glory" versus the "theology of the cross." - It apparently originated from Martin Luther back in the time of the Reformation, with a theology of glory being human reasoning, applied to the Christian faith.

Just moments after Peter confesses Christ for who he is, it says, From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised up on the third day. What was Peter's response to this? Verse 22. And Peter took him aside, and begin to rebuke him saying, "Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you."

What was Christ's response? But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hinderance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man."

The theology of glory that Peter had in his own mind that, Oh no, the Christ can never be killed, this shall not happen to you, versus the theology of the cross, which Christ knew he must come to fulfill.

Now, just to be sure, there is nothing wrong with a church or ministry growing larger or working to reach more people or doing ministry in more efficient ways, but God must get the glory.

Focus on the depth. Let God take care of the breath.

Polemics is, according to the dictionary, expressing a strongly critical attack on someone or something.

If there is no polemical aspect to our Christian walk in life, I don't think we're being faithful to Scripture.

If we just see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil, if we just ignore or don't discern false teaching and false teachers, if we think we can just, "keep it positive," we're missing the mark.

On the other hand, if our pattern is a majority polemical, pointing out all the wrong all the time, everything we focus on is about pointing out error, we have missed the mark as well.