A Celebration of the Cross
By Thomas Moll
Director of Content & Innovation
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. (1 Peter 2:24 ESV)
On Sept. 14, we celebrate Holy Cross Day with Christians around the world. Many Christian feast days celebrate a person or event. It may seem odd to celebrate an instrument of death. And, indeed, the cross wasn’t used as a Christian symbol for many years after Jesus ascended because of its gruesome use.
Celebrating the cross means celebrating that our God doesn’t offer what the world has to offer. Instead of making us work for our own salvation and to earn our own glory, He did what we could not do. Amid our struggles with managing sin and trying to glorify ourselves, Jesus bore our sins for us on the cross so that we might die to sin.
As the cross was meant to wound and kill, we needed Jesus to suffer and die for us. As much as we want to turn away from our own suffering and pain, the cross is a reminder that God can make meaning out of suffering. Instead of our pain turning us away from God, He can use our struggles to strengthen our faith through patient endurance and trust in Him.
In the Lutheran Church, as well as in many Christian churches, the liturgical color for Holy Cross Day is red. It reminds us of the blood of Jesus Christ that has washed us clean of our sins but also of Christian martyrs who have died in the faith. This martyrdom is another reminder that God can use our suffering as witness to others, connecting our suffering to His.
Through baptism we have been connected to Christ’s sacrifice for us on the cross. We can say that we have died with Him and that He has made us alive through the power of Holy Spirit. May we live every day with the confidence that we can bear our crosses and point to our God who loves us so much that He would suffer all for us.