Christian Living

The Cross, Part 2 —Exposing the Problem

by J.W. Phillips
03/08/25
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The Cross, Part 2—Exposing the Problem  

Most people don’t easily identify with this word “wicked,” preferring to see themselves in a more favorable way. Though there are a number of past experiences they’re not proud of; still, despite these negative experiences, they have retained (surprisingly) some very positive impressions about themselves anyway.

By compartmentalizing, by utilizing selective memory, with artificial light and disabled sight, these people imagine, in vain, off-setting good qualities that counterbalance the presence of evil.

By thinking this way, they are quite willing to keep company with self, and aren’t for one moment horrified by its nature.

Sure, they are disappointed sometimes; and they experience shame at other times. Nevertheless, they still have an unjustifiable confidence in self (more than they will admit); and so with optimism they hold on to their hopes of what self, in cooperation with the Lord, will eventually bring.

This optimism would turn into sheer horror, if the cross were allowed to show them what that self they so often consult and so readily accommodate is really like.

Keep in mind that it wasn’t a mob of barbarians that got a hold of Jesus and put him on the cross. Jesus was crucified by the highest expression of moral and religious leaders known to the world. Priests did this. Rabbis did this. The highest court of religious Judaism did this.

These inheritors of the Decalogue and kin to the prophets showed clearly enough what progress had been made in thousands of years of redemption history when they rose up and killed their Messiah. And when they did it, and all the while they did it, the camouflage of religion came off, the mask of morality was flung far to the side, and every pretense to civility was cast down with complete abandon.

Describing what occurred, A.W. Tozer said of these men:

"They employed against Jesus the tactics of the world. They bribed men to tell lies in defense of truth. To defend God they acted like devils. To support the Bible they defied the teachings of the Bible. They scuttled religion to save religion. They gave reign to blind hate in the name of the religion of love … So fierce was this spirit that it never rested until it had put to death the Son of God himself."¹

What the cross magnifies for our viewing is hatred so hideous, and pride so pompous, we shutter in shock by what is revealed. 

This insane hatred—toward a perfect man, mind you!—was so venomous and vile it leaves us aghast. Helmut Thielicke described the scene that day as “masses roused to the pitch of sadism.”² They jeered, they mocked, they beat the Lamb of God without mercy!

Pounding him with their fists, shredding his back with their whips, jamming thorns into his brow, driving nails through his hands, thrusting a spear into his side—their vengeance intoxicated them, and could not be stopped! Each wound excited a drooling desire for more aggression.

All this happened not in a moment, a moment that could have been reversed upon reflection. No, this entire ordeal, contemplated well in advance, lasted for hours!

They stripped him naked, hung him for public shame, spit in his face, told their jokes in contempt, wagged their finger in accusation, mouthed off in defiance, pranced in triumph, and then left the moment he died. Pascal said, “His enemies only ceased to persecute him at the Sepulcher.”³

It is at the cross of Jesus where the self-life is unmasked! James S. Stewart asks, “Did ever malevolence, self-interests, ruthless ambition, and the petty passions of men perpetrate a fouler deed than this?”⁴ Answering his own question, Stewart declared that the cross was “the most unpardonable, desperate deed that ever defaced the pages of history, the most terrifying triumph of sheer, naked evil.”⁵

And just know: The cross was not an anomaly, as we might suppose, a gruesome exception that has nothing to do with us. What happened that day has everything to do with us—not only in its glorious outcome but also in its hideous onset.

We will miss the point entirely if we think the perpetrators of evil that day were rogue men of religion who were the bad apples in the barrel. No, these men were the example—every one of them—and not the exception.

Most of these men, you must remember, were diligent in their study of Scripture and rigorous in their devotion to practice what it says—far more so, for sure, than most other men! There was a reason these religious leaders earned the people’s respect! Their devotion was exemplary!

These leaders had no idea they could ever act as badly as they did—even when they did it, even after they did it. They simply didn’t know their own hearts.

Do you think your self-life is better? If you do, you haven’t seen what the cross reveals. Because this is exactly what the self-life is like once forced to face the judgment of God upon it. The self-life, adroitly and adamantly, refuses this judgment, and therefore will seek to silence the one who brought such judgment!

Bristling at the charges brought against it, seething at any insinuation of impairment, we see the self-life stomping around at Golgotha, defiant and determined in its defense, seeking at all costs its preservation, until finally it unravels at the end to disclose what had been there all along, an intense hatred of God. He, Jesus, will not rule over us!

The cross of Christ reveals what deceives even the religious and the moral, and particularly the religious and the moral.

Why, the very men who killed God were in a hurry to get to the temple that day! Their religious calendar dictated a celebration of worship; and for this they wouldn’t think of being late. The incongruity of killing Jesus so they could attend worship never registered with these deluded men.

But the cross strips away all these delusions and enables us to see it is we who are very much like those plotters of Calvary’s evil. Like them, we appear moral and respectable … most of the time, even to ourselves. And like them, we have high standards we take seriously and a God we supposedly love. But lying underneath all this supposed religiosity, this esteemed respectability, is what got exposed at the cross.

James S. Stewart said, “… the cross was man’s most flagrant crime. It was sin’s crowning horror.” Quoting D.S. Cairns, Dr. Stewart wrote, “It originated in the very slums of the human heart.”⁶

Once we see that, truly see that, a major question then surfaces: How will we view self from now on? Will we still have a willingness to live in harmony with it and do our best to please it?

Never ever! We will be deceived no longer! Knowing now what the self-life is like, we will seek to shut it down completely. We will reject its counsel, despise its very existence, and denounce it at every turn.

Self wants what it wants and is both stupid and stubborn in the way it pursues its desires.

To live life with no plans for factoring self out is to put oneself in league with Satan, that one who first gave evidence of how outrageous the self-life can be. The cross of Christ reveals for the ages how revolting the self-life is when exposed at its deepest core.

To that one who refuses to see this, though, F.J. Huegel said:

"There is no hope for him as long as he refuses to take the Cross’s measure of pride and see the monster with God’s eyes. This is just what the cross makes him do. If he can look squarely at the cross and not learn to hate his pride, he has done something which God himself, so to speak, did not think was possible."⁷ 

So, what say you… about you? Is there going to be another Easter where you still refuse to see what the cross so clearly revealed about you?

Notes:

 1. A.W. Tozer, The Divine Conquest, (Harrisburg, PA., Christian Publications, 1950), p.117.

 2. Helmut Thielicke, Life Can Begin Again, (Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1964), p.53.

 3. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, (New York, Washington Square Press, 1965), p.156.

 4. James S. Stewart, Walking with God, (Vancouver, British Columbia, Regent College Publishing, 2006), p.213.

  5. Ibid., p.213.

 6. James S. Stewart, A Man in Christ, (Vancouver, Regent College Publishing, 2002), p.228.

 7. F.J. Huegel, The Cross of Christ: The Throne of God, (Dixon, Mo. Rare Christian Books, n.d.), pp.54, 55.