Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Galatians 6:14 | Date: December 7, 2014 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

Open your Bibles, if you will, please, to Galatians chapter 6 and then also 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Galatians chapter 6 and 1 Corinthians, I’m sorry, chapter 1. We’ll read into chapter 2. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and Galatians 6.

I want to thank you again for your wonderful hospitality each time I’ve been here preaching to you. You’ve been a blessing to me. Your generous hearing of the word is just a marvelous encouragement to any preacher. I think you have evidently been well-taught and well-fed, and it’s a treat for me to come in and preach and just enjoy the time with you and to see your love for the gospel. I appreciate also, again, as I mentioned this morning, your generosity in supporting us for so long. You folks have been a godsend to us with the various complications we’ve had regarding our daughter’s health and the medical bills and various things. You folks have just been a godsend for us. We thank you for that very deeply.

If I would title the message this evening, if you pardon the shock value, I will call it Glory in an Obscenity. Glory in an Obscenity. I think you’ll see why I call it that as we go along.

First of all, let’s begin reading in 1 Corinthians 1, verse 17:

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel. Not with words of eloquent wisdom lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to the Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. For consider your calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. And God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are. so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God has made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, let the one who boasts boast in the Lord. And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom, for I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Back again to verse 2, we’ll be referring to it: “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Now over to Galatians chapter 6. What I will attempt to do this evening is develop the thought of verse 14. I’ll begin with verse 11:

See, as Paul signs off here his letter to the Galatians, see with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. It is these who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law. They desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God.

Again, verse 14: “Far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”

Let’s look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, we thank You for the wonderful message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank You for Your Word which tells us of Him so clearly. And we thank You for Your Spirit whom You have sent to inspire this book and to teach us to understand. We pray that You would open our eyes this evening, give us a greater glimpse of the glory of the cross of our Lord Jesus, that we, like the Apostle, may learn what it is to boast in Him. We pray in His name, Amen.

You don’t have to read the Apostle Paul very long before you realize that he had a very different view of the cross than what most people have today. And even if we speak in terms of Christians, it might not be right to say that he had a different view of the cross than Christians do today, but it’s at least right, I think, to say that he saw something in the cross that we tend to miss or at least not pay enough attention to. And I say that because Paul can scarcely talk about the cross without breaking out into some doxology of some kind. And here he makes it explicit: God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today, in general culture perhaps, the cross is little more than a symbol. A rallying point maybe at times. Even in some traditions, it’s a replica to be worshipped. In other traditions, it’s more of a piece of jewelry to be hung around your neck. Or for that matter, we decorate our church buildings with it. But for Paul, the cross was not only a point of joyful boasting, it was the only point of boasting. There’s nothing else to boast in other than the cross. And in fact, as we saw in 1 Corinthians chapter 2, precisely all that Paul had to say is bound up in this statement: Jesus Christ and Him crucified. That’s all I have to say. Whatever I have to say is bound up in this: Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

The Cross as an Obscenity

Now what makes that especially significant is the life context in which the Apostle Paul ministered and wrote. In that day, and to that audience, the cross was anything but a piece of jewelry. It was anything but a decoration for a building or anything else. In that day, the cross was nothing less than an obscenity. And I don’t want you to think I’m overstating it, that this is just preacher talk, you know, you’re being a little extravagant. In that day and in that culture, the cross—the mention of the cross—was nothing less than an obscenity. It is not something to be introduced into polite conversation. If you are at a polite dinner party and you mention “cross” or the verb “crucified,” at the very least, you’re going to be talked to. This isn’t polite conversation at this table.

In the Roman world, the cross was not a topic for polite conversation. Crucifixion was an ugly, disgusting, cruel, and even appalling event. And that’s why in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, it’s part of the reason Paul can say the preaching of the cross is such an offense both to Jews and to Greeks.

Some archaeologists have helped us understand this a little bit. There’s some background to this that might be a little interesting to you, even if in a crude kind of way. I hope you pardon it. We have, for example, in our culture, various kinds of hand gestures that are insulting. I’m not going to give them. Don’t worry. But we have our hand gestures. If we want to insult someone, they had theirs as well. One of them was this: the Greek letter tau stands for cross. And if they want to tell someone to go somewhere, it’s “go get crucified.” We have some Latin inscriptions that have been recovered, and it’s things like, “let him be hanged on the unlucky cross.” Or we have another one that translates something more colloquially: “at least get crucified.” If we would tell someone where to go, they would just say “get crucified.”

The cross which Paul spoke of was to those who heard him nothing less than an obscenity and an offense. And of course, that is understandable when we take some time to think of what the crucifixion event was. We’re given some of the details in the Gospels. Archaeologists have uncovered many details as well, but we get the picture in the Gospels plainly enough. The victim is not just killed quickly, but there’s a process that goes into it. There’s the whipping, and those Roman whips breaking out into several strands at the end with bits of bone and stone and glass into them, whipped time and again and again. And it’s meant to inflict pain, but yet there’s something of a sadistic art to it. It drew blood and it was a bloody mess, but it was made in such a way as to not draw so much blood that he would lose consciousness. He was meant to endure this.

And then, of course, after the whipping, there’s the crucifixion itself. Often they were made to carry the crossbeam to the place of crucifixion themselves. We find that with Jesus, of course. And then it’s attached. The victim is attached to the cross, in our Lord’s case at least, and we do have record of others as well. Some archaeologists have dug up others like this where the nails are put through the wrist, considered part of the hand, nailed to the cross with hands and feet. And then lifted up and there’s a socket in the ground dug out and the cross dropped into the socket.

And don’t think of these nails as nice 16-penny nails. These are rough-hewn steel. And don’t think of this wood as nice, slick wood, but this is rough-hewn wood, and now his already torn back is sliding down on this cross as he hangs there. And then more suffering begins as, in order to breathe, he’s got to lift himself up to get air into his lungs, and all of the weight is on the nails of his hands and his feet. And there he suffers. We have records of people hanging there for several days. We have records of birds coming and picking at their face. It was a horrible, gruesome, cruel, disgusting event. It was made to shame and disgrace the victim as well as to kill him.

The cross was the extreme form of execution and also of disgrace. As I say, it was cruel, it was shameful, it was grotesque, it was dehumanizing, and it was often called the slave’s punishment, reserved as it was for slaves and rebels and society’s trash. The cross was not an efficient means of execution. A sword would have been much quicker, much easier. But you see, the point was not efficiency. The point was to draw out the shame and the suffering and the agony as something of an object lesson as well as execution.

And so, again, it was ugly, it was offensive, it was disgusting, and you can see then why the word “cross” or the verb “to crucify” was considered such an obscenity. For us, the word “cross” has been so domesticated, particularly in a Christianized world, so associated with the benefits of redemption. At this point in history, the cross can be used as a piece of jewelry or decoration on a building. But to enter into the thinking of that day, we’ve got to go back. And I don’t know that the symbolism is not the same, but to get close, what would we do? Hang a guillotine around our neck for jewelry? How’s that? It’s disgusting. Sit at a meeting of people coming together, and the man stands up to the front and says, “I’ve got nothing to talk to you about. Everything I have to say is a guillotine.” Execution. Capital punishment of the grossest sort.

There are certain words, if you thought of it this way, but there are certain words that have reverberations when you say it. So, for example, those of you who are old enough—whether you admit it or not—those of you who are old enough to remember the 60s, the expression “the 60s” reverberates, doesn’t it? I guess particularly if you’re a cop in those days, as Pastor Tom was. It’s associated with things like rebellion, riot, unrest, chaos, all kinds of social standards changing. Same with the word “Vietnam.” In this day, I suppose if you’re young, it’s just a spot on the map. But for those of us who were alive in the 60s and the early 70s, “Vietnam”—that word just reverberates with all kinds of connotations of unrest, riot.

It’s the same kind of thing with the word “cross.” Living in that day when you would have seen what a crucifixion is, of course, it would have been much more obscene. And to say the word, even, was to inject something into the conversation that was disgusting. In fact, we have a quote by the great Roman orator, Cicero, living in the century before Christ, commenting on crucifixion. And he says, “Let the very name of the cross be far away, not only from the body of the Roman citizen, but even from his thoughts, his eyes, and his ears.” We don’t talk about this. This is not a topic of polite conversation.

And all of that helps to inform us—it’s not the whole story, but it certainly helps to inform us—of Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 1 that we have read, that Christ crucified, this message of the cross and Christ crucified, is an offense and a stumbling block to those who hear. You can imagine then in that day that the apostles are going out with a message to convert the world with a message of something that was so disgusting and repulsive. And “this is what I have to preach.” And now Paul says even “everything I have to say is bound up in this: Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” No, let me say it this way: “God forbid that I should glory in anything else but the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.” That’s just stunning.

A Stumbling Block and Folly

The Jews wanted a sign. We see some of this reflected in the Gospels. They want Jesus to demonstrate for them that He is this powerful Messiah whom they expected would just overthrow the yoke of Roman bondage that they’re chafing under. “Show us a sign.” And for all of the differences that the rabbis might have had in their interpretations about expecting the Messiah and all of that, and there were differences—for all the differences they might have had, they were agreed on one thing. And that is: a crucified Messiah is not only a contradiction in terms, it’s a ridiculous and insulting contradiction in terms.

And this explains for us why the Jews were so upset when Pilate wrote above the head of Jesus, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.” That’s not just an insult. That’s a thumb-in-your-eye kind of insult. “No, write that he said he was the King of the Jews.” “That’s all right. No, what I’ve written, I’ve written.” Sticking it to them in that sense, adding insult.

There’s another dimension to this, a theological dimension that I think is extremely important as well. Not just in its social dimensions and the grotesque character of crucifixion and all of that, but there’s a theological dimension as to why the Jews at least would have just abhorred any idea of a crucified Messiah. Self-contradictory. It’s like “jumbo shrimp.” You know, those two don’t go together. Or “government intelligence” or something like that. These words don’t fit: the crucified Messiah.

But there’s another dimension to it. And that is, well, let’s find it. Back in Deuteronomy. I want you to turn with me to Deuteronomy chapter 21. Here Moses is commanding the people, and he gives this detail regarding capital punishment. Deuteronomy 21, beginning with verse 22:

If a man has committed a crime punishable by death, he is to be put to death and you hang him on a tree. His body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day. For a hanged man… [and here’s the statement] …for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for inheritance.

A hanged man is cursed by God. Now you can just see the Jewish apologists in the early days of the church. In fact, it’s not difficult at all for me to see, to imagine the Apostle Paul going from synagogue to synagogue—well, not the Apostle Paul, Saul of Tarsus—going from synagogue to synagogue, saying, “Brothers, listen, Moses has told us,” and he opens the Torah scroll and he rolls down to Deuteronomy, what we have, chapter 21, verses 22 and 23, “a hanged man is cursed by God. This Jesus, whom they worship, was cursed of God. There you have it. Inspired statement. This man was accursed.” And you can see them going from synagogue to synagogue, decrying this ridiculous new religion that would dare to talk about a crucified Messiah.

As far as the Greeks are concerned, while the whole idea is nuts, it’s foolishness. Crucified Messiah? Christianity is obviously a religion for fools. We have a famous piece of graffiti discovered in Rome, dating from the second century. It’s a crude drawing of a man on a cross with the head of a donkey. And in front of him stands this other man just looking up at him. And then the inscription underneath reads, “Alexamenos worships his God.” This is what this Christian by the name of Alexamenos—this is how he was viewed by his contemporaries. He’s worshiping a jackass. Doesn’t say much for him either then, does it? What a foolish religion to worship a man who’s crucified, and then you have the audacity to call him king.

The Ground of Boasting

Well, it’s in this life context that the Apostle Paul makes this amazing, stunning statement: “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have nothing to preach except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” This is all I have to talk about and this is all I have to glory in.

Now how do you explain that? Well, clearly he is saying that the cross of Christ is that which has freed him. He talks about that here in Galatians chapter 6. What has separated me, verse 14, what has separated me from the world and the world from me is the cross of Jesus Christ. And all through Paul’s writings is his emphasis: the whole explanation for my freedom from sin is the cross of Christ. The whole explanation for my redemption, my fellowship with God and reconciliation, the whole reason God’s wrath toward me has been appeased is because of the cross of Jesus Christ.

This is Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 that we’ve read. They think, the world naturally thinks, that this message of the cross is foolishness. But God is determined to make this world’s wisdom seem, make this world’s seeming wisdom foolish. And he saves by the foolish message of the cross. Paul works that out in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 as we have read.

This is his whole point here in Galatians chapter 6. At the end, we have these who have insisted on keeping the law and they’re adding good works to the gospel. The whole problem in Galatia was not that they are denying the value of Christ; particularly they would have agreed with Paul. “So you’re right, Paul. We are saved by grace through faith, through Christ crucified, and circumcision. You’ve got to keep the law.” And Paul’s whole argument is once you’ve added that word “and”—”I’m saved by grace through faith in Christ crucified, AND…”—whatever it is you put after that word “and” has ruined the gospel entirely. And he says they want to make a boast of what they do and their good works, but far be it from me to boast in anything except the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And this then is an added dimension of the scandal of the cross and the offensiveness of it. To learn now, not only are you lost, and not only are you under the deserving wrath of God, but the only way you can be rescued from the wrath of God is through that—that ugly, offensive cross where this man in weakness and shame was crucified? That’s the only thing that can help me? We, of course, want to add something to make it prettier. But Paul says it is the cross. It is the cross and the cross alone that is my whole ground of boasting before God. And all I have to say, all I have to glory in is that four-letter word, so to speak: cross of Christ.

Now, how do you explain that? How is it the cross could do that much? How is it the cross could be that important? And, of course, the answer is—and I’m sure some of you caught it as we read in Deuteronomy chapter 21—those Jewish apologists, I’m sure, were onto something. “This man’s accursed. This man’s been cursed of God. We know it because he’s been hanged on a tree. Anyone who’s hanged on a tree has been cursed of God.”

And what they did not realize, and what Paul, what Saul of Tarsus came to realize on the Damascus road, is that this takes us to the whole heart and soul of the Gospel. Jesus was cursed by God and died under His judgment in the place of sinners. He had come to take our sin and to bear our curse. And He died under the judgment and curse of God. He went to the cross in complete injustice and died under the just condemnation of God because He stood as the sinner’s substitute, bearing our sin.

This, of course, is precisely the testimony of every single Christian. The factor which has changed me, the factor that defines who I am and what I’m all about, is a cross. Two thousand years ago, a man out on the backside of nowhere in an otherwise obscure area of the Roman Empire died a shameful, awful death on a cross in my place under the judgment of God. And my whole hope, my whole hope is bound up with that.

This is the message that we have to give everyone. Same message, one size fits all. It might be the man who’s grown up in a very proper society, and he’s a very respectable member of society. It might be some degenerate at the other end of the scale. And with them all, we go with the same message: that you’re a sinner under the condemnation of God, and the only way of escape is to find that substitute who can take your place. His name is Jesus, and He died on a cross under the unjust treatment of men, under the just condemnation of God, because He had taken the place of sinners. Here is a Savior perfectly suited for you.

Paul says, “This is my whole message, this is my whole reason for glory, and if you would come to God, this is the only means that you can come.” Isn’t that your testimony? We all have different details how we got there, but all of us have the same testimony and we come to see. When I found peace with God, it was when He brought me to recognize that Jesus Christ had died in my place and that He was a sufficient Savior and I trusted in Him. And so God raised Him from the dead because He had died under a curse for sin and He now had exhausted that curse. And having exhausted the curse, God raised Him. A complete, finished salvation.

And so Paul tells us, understand it well, everything about us—everything about us—rises or falls on an obscenity. A cross. Not a liturgy. Certainly not the good works that we do. Everything about us rises or falls. That which determines our whole standing with God is nothing other and nothing less than the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The only consideration, the only factor, the only event in all of history that has any bearing at all on my reconciliation with God and my glory with Him for eternity: two thousand years ago, a man on the outskirts of the Roman Empire died on a cross in a horrible, horrible, shameful death. And in that great display of weakness and shame, He won my redemption. In a weak Savior, triumphing through weakness.

This is why the older theologians would speak of Christ reigning from the cross. Here is the King obtaining His Kingdom. And through His death, securing the salvation of all of His people. So the only message we have to give—everything I have to say, Paul says—is bound up with this.

Let’s put it to the question. In what are you trusting with regards to your standing with God? Now, you’re a member of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. You’re here in a Sunday evening service. You are the elite of the elect. You know the answer to the question. But I suspect that with most of us, if not all of us, it’s too often that we begin to feel a little safe because we read our Bibles every day this week. We witnessed at work. We were good citizens this week. And on those weeks when we are not those things, we feel a little less safe.

The Apostle Paul will tell us that there is no consideration in all of history that has any bearing on your standing before God except the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is my whole ground of boasting. I am not more safe today because I prayed. I’m not more safe today because I was a good husband or a good father. I am safe today because Jesus Christ died in my place and bore the curse of my sin. And there’s nothing else that I have to boast in.

There’s a scene from Pilgrim’s Progress. I’m going to assume that some of you have read Pilgrim’s Progress, right? I tell our people you can’t be a Christian unless you’ve read Pilgrim’s Progress. My tongue-in-cheek, sort of. There’s a great scene in there, I’m sure if you’ve read it you remember this scene, where Christian, this pilgrim carrying this burden on his back, comes to the hill and he sees the cross on the top of the hill. Now in Bunyan’s own experience, this is not the point of his conversion. The point of his conversion was at the Wicket Gate. But Bunyan’s own experience was he struggled with assurance of salvation for some time after that—and you can read that in his Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, where he tells his story—and struggled and struggled with assurance of salvation, thinking still he didn’t deserve to be saved and how could God accept him? And it was a horrible struggle in his own experience.

And the scene on the hill depicts the experience for him when he came to recognize the value of the cross and what actually transpired there: that there Jesus bore the sin of his people. And because of him, we have now his righteousness given to us. And so the scene in the book is: he walks to the hill and he sees this cross. And as he looks to the cross, the burden on his back falls off and rolls down the hill and falls into the mouth of an empty tomb. Wonderful symbolism.

And then there’s another passage after that where Bunyan reflects on it, and he says, “Then he stood still a while to look and wonder, for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked, therefore, and looked again, even until the springs that were in his head sent waters down his cheeks.” Does that ring a bell? Isn’t that how we feel? We stop, we pause to consider what transpired on that cross.

I realize that there have been many, especially in the Reformed types, who have objected to the supposed sentimentality of the old hymn, “The Old Rugged Cross.” Some have objected that it pays too much attention to the cross and not what transpired there. I’m not sure it gives enough credit to George Bernard, who wrote the hymn using the symbolic language himself, but it seems to me that his stanzas in there reflect solid biblical Pauline thinking when he writes:

Oh, that old rugged cross, so despised by the world, has a wondrous attraction for me; for the dear Lamb of God left His glory above to bear it to dark Calvary. In the old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine, a wondrous beauty I see; for ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died to pardon and sanctify me.

It is not to the cross alone that we look. It is to Christ. But make no mistake about it: it is to the Christ of the cross. It is the Christ crucified, risen, coming again. But it is nonetheless the Christ of the cross who there took our place and bore our sin. And our whole hope rests there.

God forbid that I glory in anything else. Brothers and sisters, we are too likely to pat ourselves on the back when we’ve done well. God forbid that we should glory save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let’s stand and be dismissed in prayer.