The Transformation of the Cross

“And if a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree:

His body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day; (for he that is hanged is accursed of God;) that thy land be not defiled, which the LORD thy God giveth thee for an inheritance.”-Deuteronomy 21:22-23

It is commonly reported among historians that long before Jesus Christ, crucifixion was a well-known and practiced forum of capital punishment.  It was practiced and perfected by the Romans.  It is also known that before the Romans, the Jews would, according to the old law, hang those that were slain on a tree if they had committed sin worthy of death.  “He that was hanged was accused of God.”  Before Jesus, nowhere in the history of mankind do you find being hung on a cross or anything similar highly esteemed among men; and yet God took this dark symbol and turned it into a beacon of hope.  There has been kings before Jesus and kings after Jesus who sat on thrones of gold in palaces of riches, and their names are lost in the floodtides of time; yet this man, Jesus Christ, who spent his final hour suffering on a tree will forever be remembered.  He is our Savior, The King of kings and Lord of lords.  God took mankind’s chief symbol of evil and turned it into an everlasting force for good. 

  In the time of Christ, the Romans were the most advanced and educated of any people that walked the earth.  Their empire was so large and so vast that consistent effort had to be made to keep their subjects in submission.  There were many different tactics in place that were meant to foster fear and make public examples of those who dared to defy Roman rule.  The principle of which was death by crucifixion.  Let us ponder this for a moment: you are an emperor, and it’s in your best interest to silence any breath of rebellion.  So you put your best and brightest to the task and out of this torture “think tank” comes the institution of the cross.  Its sole purpose was to torture and humiliate any man who dared to defy the Romans.  It was gruesome, it was brutal, and it was public.  This was the express purpose of the cross, an instrument created by evil, for evil, to communicate evil.  Now, if you are a Christian, what does the cross mean to you?  Salvation. Hope. Redemption, and many other good things.  God did that; through Jesus Christ.  When you see a cross atop a church, you think salvation, hope, and deliverance.  When you see a cross, when think of a cross, when hear preaching about The cross; now and forever it will always communicate good.  God in his infinite wisdom took humanity’s (and the devils) best shot at creating an instrument of evil and forever transformed it into his own personal symbol of redemption.  His fulcrum for salvation.  That’s our God.

Now, with this in mind, I ask you: is there a problem in your life?  Do you have a trial, tribulation, or difficulty you are facing?  If so, God can take ANY evil and use it for good.  The cross testifies that to us.  The transformation of the cross is a witness of his might and power; and as with the cross, so with the evil in your life.  You only need Jesus.  It was the “obedience of one that many were made righteous”.  So when we diligently and obediently follow our Savior, God can take the evil in your life and use it for good.              

“Yet on that beautiful terrible cross
You did what only You could
Turning that dark inspired evil of hell
Into our soul's greatest good” –lyrics from Beautiful, Terrible Cross by Selah