Baptist Fellowship Church

The Messages of the Cross (Part 2)

Colossians 1:13

The importance of the message of the cross must be incorporated in whatever we present. An example was Paul’s excellent message on Mars’ Hill in Acts 17. The sermon was excellent but conversion were few. He then went to Corinth and we see that in 1Cor 2:2, which was the essence of the sermon last week, Paul spoke of the cross.

All too often, when we present the Gospel, we get an acceptance based on Jesus as Lord and saviour without the appropriate repentance. There is no victory over sin. This new found acceptance is exciting for a while, but the underlying sin continues to corrode this new found joy. Until there is victory over sin, there is no true joy.

Is it true that without repentance we have not got rid of the old man and are unable to put on the new man? Is repentance a one-off action on our part or do we repent daily of our sins and take up the cross daily that we may be become Spiritually minded?

Adam, the federal head of the human race, was confronted with the exercise of choice. He yielded to the Devil and sinned, causing that separation from God. Thus, all his descendents manifest this self-will and self-centeredness, instead of God-centred, lives.

Christ crucified as us was presented in the last sermon and is the emphasis in this week’s sermon. While most times we know that Christ was crucified for us and our sins, we have not moved on further in our Christian life by discarding the old man. In this sermon, we look at Christ crucified as us. Romans 6:6 sums up this aspect of the crucifixion, ” knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin”. Just as Adam sinned and caused this self centreness and lost the God centreness, we too must rid ourselves of this self centreness in order that we may no longer be slaves of sin.

When the Spirit rules the flesh, it is right but when the flesh rules, it it is anarchy. In Romans 8:6, “For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace”.

The solution to all these problems is that those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.(Galatians 5:24) And when the flesh is crucified, the Spirit rules. When the Spirit rules, we will walk in the Spirit.

One must distinguish between “flesh” as the controlling element and “flesh” as the neutral human body, otherwise what does the Spirit rule?

To summarise we should ask the question,

what relevance has this to do with our lives?

Everything one should say. This is because as Christians we are faced with the problem of sin as well as the temptations of sin. Having been saved through our repentance and faith in Christ, we are still confronted with our mortal flesh. We are thus grappling constantly with the flesh. We can overcome this dilemma because we also know that we can have the strength to fight this constantly and replace it with a new man. We can let the Spirit rule and with this we will see further transformation. Henceforth, we will see Christ crucified in us in a later development.

Mr and Mrs ET Chua

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Sermons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.