The Totality of the Cross

When you know Jesus, as He is, and how complete His work actually was, and that His life is present within you, then confidence and security are natural. You do not fear science, you do not fear intellectual thought, you do not fear cultural change. Because your hope is in Christ, your security is in something that is eternal. Where there is security in Christ there is confidence and out of confidence is progress!

Do not mistake the term “know Christ” as being saved. You can be fully and completely saved and loved and headed to Heaven and not fully know what happened at the cross and the reality of his life within you. You can be a Christian and very, very insecure. That was me most of my life. My dad used to say that we start our Christian walk at the finish line. I thought I knew what he meant but it wasn’t till I was in my forties that I even began to understand it. In fact, I’m still getting a grasp of it today.

What I see as the central key to an inward grasping of the person and work of Christ, is the cross. It was the single moment in time when God took upon himself, the death of us all. He became for us the sin and took the wages of it, which was death, that we all were destined for. He fulfilled the requirements of a law that, within humanity, could not be fulfilled, and nailed it all to the cross. He died the death of all humanity. God poured out his love on this world by receiving the consequences of something we had not even been born into yet and He did it so completely that we never have to question its validity. We never have to question the scope of its power. He was raised because it was finished, he was raised because you were justified, He was raised because the job was done. We just simply have to believe it. And by believing, we enter into it. His history becomes ours.

When you believe it, the adventure truly begins. When you believe, you get it all. He took our old life and we get to live from His life. You actually begin the journey with everything you will ever need for life and Godliness. The process is understanding it. It is renewing our mind to the totality of it. It is exercising faith in the reality of it everyday. Putting our hope in it, our confidence in it and out of that is a security so relevant that rest in it, produces progress. Where else can progress be made from resting?

That life within you becomes your reference point in times of fear, that life within you becomes your mental stability in circumstances that are beyond your control. His work so complete and His life so present that greater is He that is within you than what is in this world. It’s not something we have to make true by our faith it is something that already is true so we just put our faith in it. It’s just that simple!

Wynema I Clark