Text: Romans 12:12
Grace to you, and peace, from the wonderful God who is our Father, and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
This morning’s text is written in the 12th chapter of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, the 12th verse. Listen carefully to the apostle’s inspired words of encouragement: “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” In the blessed Name of Jesus Christ who is the Source and Giver of all true Life, my dear fellow believers.
Holman Hunt, a prominent British artist at the turn of the 20th century produced a painting of the boy Jesus at work in the Nazareth carpenters shop of his step-father Joseph. The masterpiece was entitled In the Shadow of Death. Joseph’s workshop was depicted in realistic detail, filled with the tools and lumber of the trade. Piles of sawdust and wood chips abounded. The figures of Joseph and Jesus were at the center of the painting, as the skilled hands of the master carpenter guided those of his young son in carefully shaping the wood on their workbench. The painting was surely a masterpiece, but its most striking feature was not the rich detail of the workshop or the powerful depiction of the two central figures. Instead, what immediately catches the observer’s eye is the shadow cast across the entire scene by the afternoon sun streaming through an open window. It is the shadow of a cross. The dark shade of that shadow cross seems to reach out toward Jesus, dominating and demanding, even in this carefree scene from His youth. The artists image conveys powerful theological truth. Christ our Savior was born to die. He was born to die so that by His death He might destroy death’s power once and for all. Truly the shadow of the cross, the instrument of His death and of death’s destruction, loomed over Jesus throughout all the days of His life upon this earth. The cross was His goal. The cross was His divine destiny. The cross was the means of His victory for us over sin, death, and the power of the devil.
We come together today, as the people of God in Christ, to affirm our commitment to Life Under the Cross. Like the Lord whose name we are graciously privileged to bear, Christians do indeed live under the cross. For us, life under the cross is a life lived in submission to the will of God, trusting in the promises of God. Life under the cross is a life lived not on the basis of things as they appear to be or as the world perceives them to be—but on the basis of things as they truly are—that truth revealed once for all in the person of Christ crucified. Who could ever have imagined that God would send His only Son to die in humiliation and pain upon a cross? The cross becomes the emblem of God’s repudiation of all that which the world values and cherishes. That which the world scorns as weakness, the cross reveals as strength. That which the world rejects as foolishness, the cross discloses as the wisdom of God Himself. As St. Paul eloquently declares to Corinthians caught up in the glory of worldly things: For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God … We preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23-24).
This critical insight was at the heart of Martin Luther’s theology, expressed in his distinction between the theology of glory and the theology of the cross. The theology of glory begins with man and his expectations—or perhaps we should say more pertinently—with me and my expectations. It revels in power, success, size, and pleasure. The theology of the cross begins with God, the God who reveals Himself to us in the suffering and death of His Son upon the cross. It clings to the promises of God in the midst of personal suffering, humility, meekness, and pain. To live by the theology of the cross is to trust in God’s “Yes!”, when everything in my life and in my world are shouting “No!”, To live under the cross is to be content to live with the paradox the cross signifies through the struggles and trials of everyday life in a sinful world.
The diametric difference between the way of the world and the way of the cross is revealed in startling clarity by the crucial issues of life and death currently before our society. As Christians, we stand for life in a culture that is obsessed with death. Like moths irresistibly drawn to the fatal flame, sinful human beings are fascinated by the allure of death. We fear and deny it, living as though our lives will go on forever. Still death intrigues and fascinates us. In death we find solutions for our problems and a means of escape from our responsibilities. With ever increasing frequency our society chooses death as its alternative death for the unborn; death for the old and the sick; death for the suffering or the handicapped; death for all those whose lives fail to meet convenient standards of quality as presently defined by the majority. We cloak our obsession in facile euphemisms conveniently provided by the father of lies. We speak of freedom of choice, of death with dignity, of kind or merciful death (euthanasia). But behind all the sweet, gentle verbiage lurks the ugly reality of the Grim Reaper, ready and eager to swing his scythe and gather his harvest. Thus it has always been for the fallen children of Father Adam and Mother Eve. In the Old Testament book of Proverbs, divine Wisdom sets forth the contrast with unmistakable clarity: “Whoever finds Me, finds life … all who hate me love death” (Proverbs 8:35-36).
The nature of American society has been gradually but inexorably transformed in the thirty plus years that have passed since Roe vs. Wade legalized the murder of unborn children in this land. That which was unthinkable four decades ago, inflicted upon our country by what one scholar has aptly termed an act of “raw judicial tyranny” has slowly become socially acceptable. As fifty million little ones have died, we’ve carried on our business as usual and slowly grown accustomed to the killing. In her recent confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer correctly described legalized abortion as established law, based upon more than ample precedent, repeatedly affirmed throughout our judiciary since 1973. This sad truth is just one more example of the fact that our satanic foe is a gradualist. He is willing to wait, taking one tiny step after another, so that his ultimate deadly damnable destination will not be recognized until it is too late. The ugly fact is abortion is a practical necessity in a promiscuous culture where 40 percent of our young people become sexually active in middle school. Where serial polygamy, that is, marriage to multiple spouses—one at a time, after multiple divorce—pervades the culture. The death of the innocent has become the facilitator of our perversion and our lust.
Our culture loves death because it has given up on life. It has given up on life because it has never known real life, life under the cross. Abundant, overflowing, everlasting life can be experienced only by faith in Jesus Christ, the Savior who died upon the cross. Apart from Christ and His cross life is nothing more than empty days filled with meaningless events, moving inexorably toward futile termination. Apart from Christ and His cross, life must be lived for self. Apart from Christ and His cross, power, success, size, and pleasure become our determinative goals by default. We live for them because we have nothing else to live for and without them life is not worth living.
Each of the three phrases in our text serve to highlight one of the hallmarks of life under the cross. First, the apostle encourages us to be joyful in hope. Hope in our everyday conversation is often nothing more than the vague, impotent desire that conditions will somehow improve—“I hope it doesn’t rain again today.” The hope of the Christian, on the other hand, is the confident expectation that God’s Word will be fulfilled and His purpose will be accomplished. There can be no uncertainty or doubt here because God and His Word constitute the basis for our hope. The hymn writer rightly declares: “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. On Christ the solid rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand” (TLH 370). The believer’s hope pertains to that which God has promised but that we have not yet seen or received. In this sense, hope is an integral component of life under the cross. The essence of life under the cross is the faith recognition that real life is more than that which can be seen, that which is here and now. The link between joyfulness and hope in this phrase is no mere coincidence. The joy of the Christian is not contingent upon the circumstances of life but upon the loving promises of God. God promises that “our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). There is more to our lives, under the cross, than presently meets the eye—joy beyond sorrow, life beyond death. That hope enables us to look past the pain of today to the promise of tomorrow. That hope makes it possible for us to rejoice even in the midst of overwhelming grief, for we Christians “sorrow not even as others who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13).
Next, St. Paul encourages us to be patient in affliction. The Bible is an eminently realistic book. It does not promise Christians lives of ease, free from pain, resting comfortably upon beds of roses. Instead, the Christ who suffered for us warns that those who would take up the cross and follow Him will also be called upon to endure suffering in this life. The theology of the cross enables us to view our afflictions in a positive sense as a means of strengthening and renewing our trust in God and our reliance upon Him. Like the great missionary apostle, we would often prefer to be relieved of our various thorns in the flesh. But God’s loving response to Paul applies equally to us: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). Our pains and tribulations here prepare us for eternity, as we are driven again and again into the loving arms of God, and reminded of our absolute dependence upon His grace. Before the cross, what God ordains is always good. As we live under the cross we are able to entrust our lives to His care, confident in His faithful love. We believe that His purpose is always being accomplished, no matter how inscrutable that purpose may be to us in the midst of trial and affliction. To live under the cross is to live by faith, not by sight. That stalwart faith remains unshaken, even in the most dire circumstances of life. God’s prophet Habakkuk affirmed that faith long ago when he declared:
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to go up on the heights (Habakkuk 317-19).
Some years ago, an elderly lady in our congregation was stricken with emphysema. As the disease progressed, Esther found herself in a hospital intensive care unit, struggling for every breath. Her hospital stay lengthened from weeks into months, the struggle growing ever more intense and difficult. Esther had been a widow for many years. She was one of those dear pillars of the church who are always there for every activity. Her faith sustained her through the long ordeal. She was eager and ready to depart to be with Christ. Although patient in her affliction, she wondered why God had not yet called her home. “Why am I still here, pastor?” she would ask; “Why hasn’t the Lord taken me to heaven?” The best answer I could give was the theology of the cross. God loves you so much that He sent His Son to die for you upon the cross. Trust in God’s purpose, even though we cannot perceive that purpose now. Look to the cross and believe in His love. Finally, her long struggle ended and Esther went home to be with Jesus. A few weeks after her death, I was back in the same ICU visiting another member of our church. As I left the unit, a young nurse’s aide stopped me in the hallway. “Are you Esther’s priest?” she asked. Rather than get into the intricacies of denominational nomenclature, I simply replied: “Yes, I am.” The young lady continued: “I want you to know that I am a Christian today because of her. I never had the chance to talk to her but I saw her faith. I saw the way that Jesus loved her and the strength that He gave her and now I am a believer too. I just wanted you to know.” As the young lady walked away, I looked up toward heaven and said, “There’s your answer Esther.” But, of course, Esther already knew that. To live under the cross is to live by faith and not by sight, trusting in the promises and purposes of God. From the world’s point of view, the life of an old woman, racked with pain and struggling for every breath doesn’t seem to be worth much. But for those who live under the cross there is always a purpose and plan, founded in the love of the God who sent His Son to die on the cross for us.
The text’s final encouragement is to be faithful in prayer. These words might literally be translated: in regard to prayer, continuing. Prayer must be a constant reality in life under the cross. All too often we pray only as a last resort, when all else has failed. For the believer, under the cross, prayer should be our starting point, not our last resort. In the act of prayer we acknowledge our dependence upon God and our inability to carry on without Him. Prayer is a trusting response to God’s promise that He will hear and answer our petitions. The humble prayer of the believer, “not my will but Thine be done,” is an acknowledgment of God’s control over our lives and an act of submission to His will. Dependence and trust, these are the great themes of life under the cross.
It is profoundly ironic that the cross—the instrument of brutal execution and death—has been transformed for the believer into the decisive emblem of life. That irony is expressive of the total unexpectedness of that which God has done for us and for our salvation. The Creator God demonstrated the precious value of every human life by the death of His only Son. That is the paradox of the cross. Human life was worth enough to God for Him to give up that which was most precious to Him in all the universe, the life of His beloved Son, Jesus our Redeemer. The cross contradicts every attempt to define the value of human life in terms of size, or health, or age, or pleasure, or race. People may scorn and reject as worthless the life of the old man or woman in a nursing home, the life of the unborn child, the life of the terminally ill, or the life of the physically or mentally handicapped. But the cross decisively demonstrates God’s compelling love for each and all of them. In fact it is people like these, in their weakness, their vulnerability, and their pain who most clearly reveal the remarkable nature of God’s gracious love. That love came in the most unexpected way to people who could never have earned or deserved it—people exactly like us. So, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” Live your life the only way life can truly be lived, under the cross. As a redeemed child of the Lord of Life, stand boldly and confidently in defense of life in our culture of death. By that stand you will not only help to rescue those whose survival is in jeopardy. By that stand, you will affirm the Gospel of Life and glorify the Lord of Life. Amen.
And may the peace of God which far surpasses all the limits of human understanding keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.