My understanding of the cross was expanded recently by Jeremy Treat, who said, “When I look to Scripture, I see that you can’t understand the kingdom apart from the cross and you can’t understand the cross apart from the kingdom. And it’s Christ himself who holds those together. He is the King who goes to the cross in establishing his kingdom and ransoming us into it. In this kingdom, the throne is a cross and the king reigns with mercy and grace.” The cross a throne! Paul wrote of Jesus, “He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” Even death on a cross. We preachers sometimes talk about Jesus having to push his raw and bloodied back up against the rough cross in order to breathe. But notice that the gospel writers did not do this. Though the physical suffering on the cross was extreme, the Bible emphasizes the shame, not the pain. 

The Roman soldiers crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them. Jesus was naked on the cross. And Jesus was mocked on the cross. Passersby wagged their heads at him and said, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” They mocked the King, saying, “Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” The Gospels highlight the shame, because this was a shame and honor culture

In a shame and honor culture, the pinnacle of shame, surely, was to be crucified. Jesus “endured the cross, despising the shame” for you and me. He disregarded the shame and suffering for the future joy of accomplishing our forgiveness. We all, as Paul wrote, “have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That is the shame we are born with and can do nothing about in our own strength. That is the shame that Jesus chose to take upon himself for our sake, so that we might be saved. The cross of humiliation became the throne of the King. Jesus said earlier that week, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Then he said it again, in reference to the cross: “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.” 

The hour Jesus referred to was his death. It was on the cross that Jesus was glorified and given the name above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. I know the disciples did not understand this and were in mourning, or even hiding, after Jesus’ death. But we need not preach it that way anymore. We need not say, as I have been guilty of saying, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming.” As if Jesus had lost the battle but we knew he would win in the end. No, it was on Friday that Jesus was enthroned as King. He cried a victor’s cry: “It is finished!” The word is “tetelestai,” a cry of victory from one who crossed the finish line and won. It was a cry of triumph from the cross. 

Instead of saying that Jesus proved he is King when he was raised from the dead, we should say that the resurrection revealed on Sunday what was true on Friday at 3pm. Jesus defeated the devil. Jesus conquered sin. Jesus reversed the curse for you and me. On the cross. Then he rose again and 40 days later he ascended to heaven. If either of those had not happened, we would have no hope. But they did. If Jesus does not come again to take us to be with him where he is, we have no hope. But he promised to come again and the Lord keeps his promises. We have hope because of his victory on the cross.

Jeremy Treat wrote, “Herein lies the paradox of the gospel. The self-giving love of God transformed an instrument of death into an instrument of life. The cross is the great reversal, where exaltation comes through humiliation, glory is revealed in shame, victory is accomplished through surrender, and the triumph of the kingdom comes through the suffering of the servant.”

Our victory was won on a wooden throne.

The ten commandments are inside-out.  They deal with the heart as much as they deal with actions or words. The sixth commandment, “You shall not murder,” is no different, and it was Jesus who raised the bar. He said this in the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.” 

From that heart-level view, which one of us could honestly say that we have never committed murder? Jesus tells us to look beyond the letter of the law to the spirit of the law. He calls us to examine our hearts and to be honest about what comes out of our hearts through our mouths. You see the progression in Jesus’ example. It starts with a feeling of anger. We get angry at someone; it is an emotion we indulge every day and very rarely could our anger be called “righteous.” If someone pushes their way in front of me when I am waiting to order a cup of coffee, there is not a shred of righteousness in my anger. Jesus said anger can also lead to an insult. Out of the heart, our mouth speaks. I may call the person who cut in line a jerk, which would escalate the emotion to a harmful and potentially dangerous action. If I am really angry, I may resort to calling the person a fool or a term in the modern vernacular that would express my utter contempt for him. That person who would delay my caffeine intake by mere minutes suddenly becomes a person I speak to as though he does not deserve to live. 

This is a pervasive sin even among Christians where the issue may not be coffee but things much more serious. It may be that our hurts are much deeper and our contempt is on slow burn all the time for the person who has wounded us. Dallas Willard wrote, “Contempt is a kind of studied degradation of another…it is never justifiable or good…In contempt, I don’t care if you are hurt or not. Or at least I say so. You are not worth consideration one way or another. We can be angry with someone without denying their worth. But contempt makes it easier for us to hurt them or see them further degraded…The intent and effect of contempt is always to exclude someone, push them away, leave them isolated.”

  What are we to do, then? We should examine our hearts and ask ourselves, “Why am I angry? What provoked me just now?” Or to use the modern term, “What triggered me? And…is this my normal attitude when provoked?” Willard also wrote, “Our exaggerated responses reveal that we did not simply become angry in the instance, but that we carry a supply of pent-up anger with us at all times.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “I am more and more convinced that most people get into trouble in the living of the Christian life because of their molly-coddling of themselves spiritually.” Ouch. We know there is a pattern of sin in our lives but we refuse to do what is necessary to change. We must do the serious heart work of examining, acknowledging, confessing, and renouncing the deadly fires of anger and contempt we see there. Because that would honor Christ. And because these patterns do much damage to our family, friends, church members, and co-workers. 

As I pondered this heart-work, I remembered working in our flower beds at home a few weeks ago, trying to get ahead of the spring explosion of weeds that are coming. I was too late. They were everywhere and in every flower bed: front yard, side yard, and back yard. I kept mumbling to myself, “Uggh! Why did I wait so long to take care of this?” What could have been easy was made much more difficult because I put it off. This matter of the heart, our anger and contempt, is something that we cannot afford to put off. It grows and festers and boils as it damages our own witness and all who are in its path. 

What is the good news in all of this? We have a Savior who drank the cup of God’s wrath on our sins in our place. Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” He drank every drop of the cup that was stored up for you and me. He took the wrath of God on the cross that you and I deserve because of our sin, our anger, our contempt. He kept God’s Word perfectly to pay for the sins of those who break God’s commands every single day. 

And He opens His arms wide and invites us to come to Him and find rest.

The fifth commandment is, “Honor your father and your mother.” Or, as God says in Leviticus, “Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father.” God gets heavy with us in this command. That’s what the Hebrew word for honor means. Heavy. Weighty. It is the same word the Old Testament uses to speak of the glory of God, and of the weight of divine majesty and authority that He has. So to honor father and mother is to give them the weight of respect that is due. But we are also commanded to revere them. That means to reverence them, to esteem them highly. God chose them for us. And as Augustine said, “If anyone fails to honor his parents, is there anyone he will spare?” 

It has always been fascinating to me to read Paul’s list of sins in 2 Timothy 3 that he said we would see in the last days. And we are in the last days! These sinful people include those who are “proud, arrogant, abusive, and brutal.” And sandwiched in that list are those who are “disobedient to parents.” We almost have come to expect this disrespect and dishonor from teenagers, haven’t we? And the culture we live in promotes and seems to celebrate this sin. One magazine aimed at teen girls had this on the cover: “Do you really hate your parents? Like, who doesn’t?” And inside the magazine offered advice on “How to deal with your detestables.” Wow. Put that article up against the penalty in the Old Testament for cursing your parents: “For anyone who curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death.” Again, if we gathered every person who had taken the Lord’s name in vain (the third commandment) and every person who had cursed his father or mother and applied the Old Testament law…well, you get the idea.

 We all had our teenage moments, didn’t we? And we who have raised children to adulthood have had to parent those moments as well. I can relate to Mark Twain’s quote, “When a boy turns 13, put him in a barrel and feed him through a knot hole. When he turns 16, plug up the hole.” And I know I am also writing to some of you who grew up in a very different environment. No parents are perfect, but yours were particularly not. Maybe you had a great mother but your father was not good and kind. Instead, he was abusive and angry. Or maybe it was the other way around: your father was your encourager and it was your mother who deeply wounded you. In those cases, let me plead with you to do these three things. First, remember the people God sent your way to show you a father’s love and a mother’s tenderness. Give thanks for them. Second, ask God to give you grace to forgive your parents. Third, as God for the ability, by His mighty power, to honor them, despite their inadequacies. And know that if you never had parents who loved you and taught you, God stepped in to take their place. The Psalmist wrote, “For my father and mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.” Yes. He does and some of you know that more than I possibly could.

What if your parents were godly and worked hard to lead you, love you, disciple you, and grow you up to become godly adults? You cannot tell them too much or too often that you love them and give God glory for what He did through them. And if you are in this season yet, you probably will be one day, as you will swap roles with the ones who cared for you. You will be your parents’ caregiver as they age and become dependent. What do they say about us as humans? Once a man (or woman), twice a child? 

If we honor our father and mother in their vigor, we certainly must honor them in their infirmity and in their last years.