The Two Sides of the Cross
“So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified Him ….”
John 19:16–18
The Passion narrative that unfolds between Maundy Thursday until that moment when the stone closes across Jesus’s tomb has spawned reflections aplenty, and even more books that look at the Cross event from all sides. I have added my thoughts in various places in this volume.
One way of understanding the Cross of Christ is to embrace the truth that there are two sides. We almost always, to some degree, live in some sort of tension between these two sides; they spring to life a bit more during any season of serious reflection. What are the two sides? The Good Friday side of the Cross and the Easter side of the Cross.
Everything that happens before Easter is obviously the Good Friday side. Here we meet with the broken areas of our lives: temptations, sins, darkness, or as a friend of mine likes to say, the attachments that need to be released. On this side of the Cross, there is judgment, and we have to come to terms with that. Paul tells an important truth in Romans 3:23: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” All means all — not some, or a few, or even most; all means all.
What put Jesus on that Cross was not an angry mob, an upset religious establishment or Roman soldiers doing their job. It was sin: yours, mine, and ours. As we stand on the Good Friday side, the feeling is morose. A deep desire to be rid of all this mess should be bubbling up. Here we come to terms with it all: we confess that darkness, we hand it over, and with the grace of God we repent and start life anew.
The Easter side of the Cross, promises forgiveness, redemption and salvation both here and in the life eternal, thank God. That forgiveness is freely given as none of us was actually there when Jesus was nailed to the Cross. None of us was there when he made the decision to willingly give himself as a ransom for all people everywhere for all time.[1]
That is the Easter message: We do not have to live on the Good Friday side of the Cross. With the help of God’s grace, we can step from that darkness into the light of resurrection. A resurrection life creeps out in our lives from time to time, but it is really preparing us for life eternal.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran pastor, was executed at an early age by the Nazis only a day or so before the allies liberated his prison. He did more in less than four decades than most could do in four lifetimes. Clearly, he had seen both sides of the Cross. Perhaps that is why he wrote, “Only as someone judged by God can a human being live before God … In the form of the Crucified, we recognize and find ourselves. Accepted by God, judged and reconciled in the cross: That is the reality of humankind.”[2]
Spend some time with the Cross today, perhaps tomorrow as well. By that, I do not mean spending more time bowing as it passes or crossing yourself, but spending time with the Cross. Allow it to judge you. It tells us where the sickness is and where we need the medicine of Christ. When we get a grip on that, then perhaps we can fully appreciate and receive its Easter side.
A Question to Ponder
Close your eyes for a few moments and meditate on the image of the Cross of Christ. What thoughts, feelings, words, or prayers come to mind?
A Prayer
“Forgive them all, O Lord; our sins of omission and our sins of commission; the sins of our youth and the sins of our riper years; the sins of our souls and the sins of our bodies; our secret and our more open sins; our sins of ignorance and surprise, and our more deliberate and presumptuous sins; the sins we have done to please others; the sins we know and remember, and the sins we have forgotten; the sins we have striven to hide from others and the sins by which we have made others offend; forgive them, O Lord, forgive them all for his sake, who died for our sins and rose for our justification, and now stands at the right hand to make intercession for us, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
“Jesus, poor, unknown and despised, have mercy on us, and let us not be ashamed to follow you. Jesus, accused, and wrongfully condemned, teach us to bear insults patiently, and let us not seek our own glory. Jesus, crowned with thorns and hailed in derision; buffeted, overwhelmed with injuries, grief and humiliations; Jesus, hanging on the accursed tree, bowing the head, giving up the ghost, have mercy on us, and conform our whole lives to your spirit. Amen.”
John Wesley, d. 1791
[1] Mark 10:45; 1 Timothy 2:6; Hebrews 9:15.
[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Meditations on the Cross" (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998), 51.
