Shrinking the Cross

INTRODUCTION

Last week we began our Gospel-Centered Life study.

We talked about how, as Christians, we should want the Cross to be getting bigger in our lives.

At conversion, by faith, we believe that we are sinners and Christ died for that sin on the Cross.

However, that understanding grows as we grow as Christians.

The more we become aware of our sin, the more we become aware of what Jesus really did at Calvary.

The greater awareness we have of our sin, the greater the Savior becomes to us.

The more we realize our sinfulness, the more we will understand our Savior’s sacrifice.

You can see all of this on the chart that is on your handout this evening.

When we are truly believing and walking in the Gospel, we grow in our awareness of God and His holiness (top line).

When we are truly believing and walking in the Gospel, we grow in our awareness of our sin (bottom line).

As we understand these things more and more, the Cross looms larger in our lives.

And that means we will grow in our affection for Christ as we grasp His sacrifice for us more and more.

It means we will have a fuller understanding of His goodness.

It means we will be confessing sin and repenting of it.

It means that new levels of obedience will appear in our lives as we grow in the knowledge and love of Jesus.

Last week we saw how we can be in danger of missing out on this when we are guilty of minimizing our sin.

We get defensive.

We try to fake holiness.

We try to hide.

We exaggerate our goodness.

We blame others for our sin.

We downplay how bad we really are.

These are all ways you can shrink the Cross.

Tonight, we will talk about 2 other major ways that we can halt our growth in the Gospel.

We will see that:

1. We shrink the Cross by pretending.

2. We shrink the Cross by performing.

But to start, we are going to look at Colossians 1:23 and think about why we have to have studies like this.

TEXT—these are the very words of God

Colossians 1:21–23 ESV

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

PRONE TO FORGET

In this passage, we see the Gospel.

We see who we were in v. 21.

Cut off from God.

Hostile towards Him in our minds

Doing evil things with our hands and feet

Separated from God and totally depraved

And then we see what Christ did in v. 22.

He died on the Cross in order to reconcile us to God

Because Christ has paid for our sin, He is able to present us to God as holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.

But notice in v. 23, Paul says, “...if indeed you continue in the faith...”

We know that there are many who claim to be Christians, but they retreat from Christ when the suffering gets too intense or their love for sin overtakes them.

If suffering or sin drags someone out of the church, and they never come back, it proves they did not receive the Gospel on good soil and they never belonged to Christ to begin with.

But those who love Christ will obey Christ.

They will remain in Christ.

Whatever suffering they endure or sin they must battle, they press on and God brings good fruit from their lives.

So we must continue in the faith with stability and steadfastness.

The question is—how do we do that?

Look at what Paul says:

“...not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard..”

The way we press on with stability and steadfastness is to not shift from the hope of the Gospel.

This is exactly what we have been talking about.

To shrink the Cross is to shift from the hope of the Gospel.

It is dangerous business.

And if we find ourselves guilty of it tonight, we should repent and as Jesus to help us keep our eyes on Him—the Christ of the Cross.

Now as I mentioned—we will be talking about two ways that we can be guilty of “shrinking the Cross” or “shifting from the hope of the Gospel”— pretending and performing.

Let’s start with the first.

PRETENDING

1. We shrink the Cross by pretending.

To pretend is to act as if we are righteous because of something other than Jesus.

There are many ways in which we can do this.

Job Righteousness

I am a hard worker in all of my vocation, so God will reward me.

People who are guilty of pretending in this way tend to impose their work standards on others and if others don’t meet their level of “work,” then they look down on them.

Family Righteousness

Because we raise our family right, I am better in God’s eyes than others and I have a right to look down on others who don’t parent the way that I do.

By the way—if you practice alternative Christian education in our home—homeschooling or private Christian education—you are going to be prone to this if you are not on guard.

I can say that with confidence because I am one of you.

Theological Righteousness

I have good theology. God prefers me over those with worse theology.

You can see an example of this in the evangelical world.

When I came to Christ, I really didn’t know anyone who was talking about predestination from the perspective of the Protestant Reformers.

But as I got to college and seminary, guys my age started reading John MacArthur and RC Sproul and Albert Mohler and Charles Spurgeon, and most of us became convinced of Reformed Theology.

Man is totally depraved.

God has unconditionally elected His people to salvation before time.

Christ has died for the church.

The grace of God will win the people of God and draw them all to the Lord.

And those He draws will never be cast out or lose their salvation.

And somehow—those glorious truths led a lot of young men to go around with their nose in the air, looking down on anyone who didn’t agree with them about these things.

It makes no sense.

If studying God’s sovereignty and how He saves sinners who deserve Hell leaves you proud, START OVER.

You did it wrong.

But it is not just young Calvinistic guys who are guilty of this.( Again—I can pick on it because I’ve been a part of the tribe.)

Every theological tradition is going to be prone to finding pretend righteousness in our theological stance.

Everyone must guard against this.

Intellectual Righteousness

These are those who think they are better than others and maybe even loved more by God because they are smart.

I am better read.

I am more articulate.

I am more culturally informed.

This makes me superior.

This is pretend righteousness.

Schedule Righteousness

If you get more done than others because you are self-disciplined and vigilant in your time-management, you may count your maturity as righteousness.

Flexibility Righteousness

In a busy world, those who are always making time for others may look at those with less time as less godly.

If only others were as available as me, the whole church would be better off.

Do you see what you just did?

This church would be better off if it was filled with 270 versions of ME.

Do you see how this has become your righteousness?

Mercy Righteousness

I care about poor and disadvantaged people more than everyone else.

And if you don’t care about them at my level and support my cause—you are less than.

This sort of attitude will quickly create division in a church.

People who think like this will take their pet project and demand everyone else care about it as much as them.

It is just more pretend righteousness.

Legalistic Righteousness

“I don’t drink, I don’t chew, I don’t go with girls that do.”

Those who find a pretend righteousness in legalism, take areas where the Bible is not black and white and leaves room for liberty, and they decide that their conscience will be come everyone’s law.

When you make laws where God has not and then you require everyone else to live to the standard of your conscience, you have become a Pharisee.

We know how Jesus felt about those guys.

So if you think your self-made rules are earning you favor with Jesus, you must go back and read how He spoke with those men.

God may call you to certain things in your conscience.

The Spirit may make a law for YOU.

That doesn’t mean it is for your neighbor.

Financial Righteousness

Some who have more look down on those who have less.

Some who have less look down on those who have more.

Either way, there is no righteousness to be found in what is in your bank account.

Political Righteousness

“If you really love God, you’ll vote for my candidate and you will hold the opinions that I hold.”

There’s an abundance of this these days.

It should be guarded against.

Even if you are certain your political party represents more biblical values than the alternative option, this is not your righteousness before God.

Tolerance Righteousness

In an age of “open-mindedness” and “acceptance,” you could easily fall prey to believing that just going along with what everyone does somehow earns you standing in heaven.

Once again—this is false righteousness.

CONCLUDING PRETENDING

Ultimately, these are just a few examples, but there can be many more.

Anything that gives you a sense of being “good enough” or better than others would be examples of pretend righteousness.

And these sources of functional righteousness cloud sever us from trusting in the power of the Gospel.

They cause us to shift our hopes from the Cross to other things.

They allow us to find righteousness in what we do instead of honestly confronting the depths of our sin and brokenness.

These sources of righteousness become avenues for judging and excluding others and becoming tribalistic.

We use them to elevate ourselves and condemn those who cannot keep up with our pace.

And all the while, we selectively forget about the places in our lives where we are absolutely struggling to live holy.

We must stop pretending.

We must keep pressing into the Cross by faith, seeing that God is holy, we are sinful, and our only hope is the Gospel of the Savior who laid down His life.

PERFORMING

Let’s briefly look to our second teaching point tonight. Let’s move from pretending to it’s nasty tag team partner.

2. We shrink the Cross by performing.

Now, to know whether we are trying to perform, let’s all ask ourselves one question:

As God thinks of you right now, what look do you think is on His face?

Do you picture Him disappointed?

Angry?

Indifferent toward you?

Is He scowling at you as if to say, “Get your act together?”

If He frowning at you as if to say, “Why don’t you do more?”

If you picture Him as anything other than satisfied because of what Jesus has done for you, you have likely fallen into a performance mindset.

You think that your spiritual stats dictate whether or not God wants to own your baseball card.

But you are wounding yourself.

You don’t realize that on the back of every Christian’s baseball card, we have the stats of Jesus.

This is what He has provided for us.

Because of Christ, God is deeply satisfied with you.

In fact, based on what Christ as done, you are a son in His household—guaranteed eternal inheritance.

When we fall away from this reality into a performance mindset, we are going backwards.

We are shifting from the hope of the Gospel by performing.

We imagine if we were better Christians, God would love us more.

In doing this, we are shrinking the Cross.

And not only that, this performance-driven Christianity leaves us minimizing God’s holiness.

We think we can impress God with how we live rightly.

And in doing this, you are transgressing the reality of His holiness.

You are acting as if His standards are as low as your best.

But they aren’t.

The Bible calls us to BE HOLY and GOD IS HOLY.

1 Peter 1:16 ESV

since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

In the Gospel, we see His standard of perfection and we realize we could never meet it.

We turn to Christ who did meet it and we trust in Him for our righteousness.

When we perform, we are saying, “God doesn’t actually require perfection. He will accept my imperfect righteousness and love me more based on my performance.”

No.

He loves you perfectly based on Christ’s performance.

Don’t cheapen that by attempting to acquire righteousness outside of Christ.

Galatians 5:1 ESV

For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

The Galatians submitted to the performance of circumcision and Paul was telling them that by doing this, they returning to the spiritual slavery God saved them from.

Performance-driven Christianity puts chains back on that Christ took off.

This too shrinks the Cross.

CONCLUSION

Let me leave you with Paul’s final words to those same Galatians in his letter to them.

Galatians 6:14 ESV

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

We cannot pretend that we are more righteous than we are on our own.

This is to boast in ourselves.

We cannot perform to get a righteousness greater than what Christ has given us.

This is also to boast in ourselves.

Do not shift from the hope of the Gospel.

Instead, boast in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and see the Cross become the lens through which you see yourself and this world. n