What the Cross Means to God

It’s easy to become sentimental about the cross. There are a lot of people who are. There’s a lot of sentiment about the cross, a lot of emotion about the cross, a lot of, I suppose, artificially-induced emotion. There are some people who think you need to sort of sit in a corner and conjure up feeling and conjure up joy and somehow conjure up even sorrow and tears, and have a full emotional bath before you engage in obedience. And if you’re not emotional about the cross, if you’re not swept away by feelings about the cross, somehow your obedience is not legitimate. Somehow something is missing that trivializes your obedience.

I do think that we feel emotional about the cross. We’ve expressed that with all our hearts tonight haven’t we? We’ve felt those emotions and rightly so, but I’m far more concerned that you have a true understanding of the cross than anything you might feel. I want you to feel, but I want your feeling to be generated by a true understanding of the cross. We have a large congregation, a lot of new folks coming into our church. I know in a night like this we have guests and visitors. As I think about what I want to draw to your attention it is simply this: I want you to understand the most important aspect of the cross. The most important aspect of the cross is not about you...