(April 11, 2025) Stuart Reynolds asks some questions, challenging us…

Luke 23:48ISV tells that the mixed crowd who witnessed Jesus Christ’s crucifixion on Calvary’s cross: ‘… beat their chests and left.’ 

Of this J.C. Ryle wrote, ‘Both Jew and Gentile left Calvary that evening heavy-hearted, self-condemned, and ill at ease!’ And William Barclay wrote: ‘[Christ’s] death did what even His life could not do— it broke the hard hearts of men!’

Easter 2025 is next weekend and I’m reminded of the question Alan Redpath asked, ‘In the light of the cross, isn’t it a scandal that you and I live today as we do?’ 

Thousands of people have heard the gospel message of Christianity, the message of our Saviour who paid the price of our sins as He died on that old rugged cross. Like that mixed crowd of that Luke wrote about, they have left too. There are those who have left the cross—

1. Trivialised
‘What have you given up for Lent?’ How often is this question asked every Easter season, with many quick to answer and make their pride-filled confession of self-sacrifice? (I confess that I used to be among them!).

When Lent comes round one prominent U.K. national Christian radio station encourages us to ‘Give Him 5’ (as in five minutes a day)!

I came across a list of the top ten things people give up for Lent: Social media, Netflix, online shopping, video games, fast food and restaurants, coffee, smoking, sleeping in, alcohol, and even chocolate!

Jesus Christ sacrificed His life and in His honour we just ‘give Him 5’— or just give up the like of chocolate?

The blood shed on the cross was the very blood of God the Son; the body that hung there was God in human flesh; in our place, for us; and in recognition we ‘cut back’ on trivialities?

That well-known Bible verse John 3:16 declares, ‘For God so loved the world that He have His one and only Son…’ And we are pressed and prodded, not to mention applauded, over ‘Giving Him 5’ minutes, or giving up some of the list I mention above during the Easter season— as if that is something to be trivialised!

Have you noticed that as year succeeds to year, the clear time and attention even some churches give to Easter has diminished? Palm Sunday can be redundant; the good observances of Holy Week reduced, and Easter Sunday rushed because, like we have done at Christmas we close down our services as our Holy Days have become our holidays! As with those other ‘religious’ ones on that first Easter, we’re so keen to get Jesus off the cross and it all tidied up so we can get on with our… (whatevers)!

The writer to the Hebrews poses a striking question in Hebrews 10:28-9: ‘Anyone who rejected the Law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.  How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace?’

2. Trended
A woman told her pastor of something she had witnessed that, to her, was a sign of the times. She had walked into a jewellery shop looking for a necklace. ‘I’d like a gold cross,’ she said. The man behind the counter looked over the stock in the display case and replied, ‘Do you want a plain one, or one with a little man on it?’

It was C.S. Lewis who pointed out that the crucifixion of Christ did not become commonly depicted in art until the fourth Century A.D. That is, until all who had ever seen a real cross had died and left the scene! Is this not our problem in today?

Back in the Daily Mail in 2013, the Rev. Justin Welby, the recently having-to-resign Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote: ‘Today [the cross] is more commonly seen as a symbol of beauty to hang around your neck… Are we now living with a symbol emptied of power by time and fashion? … A cross that has no weight is not worth carrying. To look through the cross is to seek its weight…’

He was right: For too many the cross has become a fashion icon of fleshly indulgence: fashionably in season. May God forgive us! We do well to be reminded by the apostle Paul of the breath-taking scandal of offense God on the cross always is: ‘And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross!’ (Philippians 2:8).

3. Traded
What is the reason for a cross if there is no need of a Saviour? Why the need of a Saviour if there is no sin to be in guilt over?

We have bartered the cross in favour of promoting Christ as a life-coach; parading Him as ‘BFF’; God All-Matey, not God Almighty; pimped Him as a fun-loving genie of the lamp, flesh-feeder; not a soul-loving God in the flesh, sin forgiver. Whatever happened to Christ as Saviour, sanctifier, Lord and God, who calls us to the self-denial of our own cross as we follow Him; slaying our fleshly sinful desires, not just taming them?

John 12:23-26 records that Jesus said: ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honour the one who serves me.’

B.B. Warfield professor of principal of Princeton Theological Seminary from 1886 to 1902 wrote—
‘A cross-less Christ – no Saviour is for me;
A Christ-less cross – no refuge is for me;
But, oh, Christ-crucified – I rest on Thee!’

4. Troubled
The mixed-crowd of Luke 23:48 ‘… beat their breasts and went away’ evidently troubledin their heart. This inner response is echoed in that old 1899 African-American spiritual  Were You There (When They Crucified My Lord)…  ‘Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble! Tremble! Tremble!’

We have to confess that too often it doesn’t; not like it used to; not like it should!

Troubled hearts may cause floods of tears to suddenly burst from a shallow source, a response from the babbling brook of surface emotions.  But conviction is not conversion! If there is no recognition from deep within the soul it is not enough to just be ‘troubled.’

5. Transformed!
Those who have accepted Jesus Christ as Saviour are never to be the same again! To such the cross is never trivial, trendy, traded or just troubling— it is transforming!

Centuries ago London pastor Isaac Watts (1674 1748) wrote the hymn Alas, and Did My Saviour Bleed.  The first and last verses read:
Alas! and did my Saviour bleed
And did my Sov’reign die?
Would He devote that sacred head
For such a worm as I?
But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love we owe;
Here Lord I give myself away,
Tis all that I can do.

You remember how the apostle Paul put his transformation in accepting the Christ of Calvary’s cross?  Very clearly and pointedly he wrote of his ‘giving himself away’ to Jesus: ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20).

What about you, dear reader… as you reflect on our Saviour Jesus and His cross and Were you There? How will you leave the cross this Easter?

Transformed I trust.

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Stuart Reynolds, Ears 2 Hear Ministries, is an itinerant preacher, teacher in evangelism and revivalism, in the UK and USA.

Stuart’s book On the First Day of the Week is a thoughtful collection of 52 weekly truth-tellers for thinking Christians. A.W. Tozer contended that ‘the problem with most Christians is that they don’t think!’ The purpose of this book is not to push and get the reader to agree with the author’s agenda, but to provoke biblical thinking in regard to the pressing issues around us. While the Bible does not speak about all things, it does speak to all things. GBP£13 ($15), plus postage. Link: reynolds.stuart1@sky.com
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