The Cross Separates Us from the World

 The Cross continues its work beyond the defeat of the three enemies: Satan, Sin, and Self. We now turn to some additional triumphs of the Cross. We noted that when Jesus ascended to heaven He did not take His disciples with Him. He did not instruct them to build their own gated community to keep the world out; on the contrary He sent them into all of the world with the Good News of the Irresistible Kingdom.

The question arises: how will these believers in Jesus keep themselves pure from the world? How will they avoid being contaminated by the world system? May I say that isolating yourself from the world (or your parents as some teaches) is not an option.[Emphasis mine]

Christian churches, Christian schools, Christian businesses, Christian communities designed to keep Christians inside and the rest of the world outside are a bad sign. It seems as though the goal for some Christians is only the nurturing of those who are just like themselves; there is little (if any) effort made to include those outside of their circle. Christians are prone to exclusivity and tend to create a closed group around a unique doctrine, or belief, or leader, or way of doing things.

Behind all this is a preoccupation with resisting worldly temptations; soon religious legalism takes hold. You are told what you should or should not watch; what you should or should not listen to; what you should or should not read; what you should and should not believe or even think; where you should or should not go; what you should or should not say; what you should or should not wear.

We are not making a case for looseness or laxness, but the answer to the problem of how to be in the world without being of the world is not going to be found in religious legalism. The solution is the Cross of Christ. In this Cross the world is crucified to me and I am crucified to the world.

When I am crucified with Christ then I have no more desire for this world or the things of this world, than a dead man does. Now I can be in the world and not worry that I might be contaminated or polluted by "sinners".

I do not need a list of things I should or should not do, or someone to tell me how to dress. Nor do I need to lock myself into a church building, monastery, or wholly Christian environment in order to keep the world at bay. The Cross of Christ is all the protection I need, and it is more than enough to keep me from the things of this world.

To put it differently, when I take up the Cross daily then I am sufficiently inoculated from anything the world may try to infect me with. I can walk among the spiritually diseased without fear of catching their infections; on the contrary, the Cross enables me to be an instrument of healing and reconciliation to anyone who desires it.

Jesus maintained that it is the sick who need a doctor, and not those who are healthy. We are called to go into the world with this Good News. Many times a person is so ravaged by pain and disease that they lash out against anyone who tries to help them. Jesus said that we will have tribulation in the world and we will certainly encounter opposition. But the Cross enables us to overcome the world, instead of being overcome by the world. The Cross can absorb the very worst that the world has to offer and still triumph over it. We need fear nothing of the world so long as we maintain our status as a crucified people.

To be crucified to the world means adopting a death-attitude to the things of this world: the things the world cares about, the things the world values, the things the world seeks after. Those who have spent some time in the world know that it seeks three basic things: money, sex, and power. This unholy trinity drives everything to do with the world. No matter what the worldly institution - government, politics, education, religion, business, banking and finance - everything reeks of self-seeking and self-serving. Unfortunately, the Christian religion is not much different from the rest of the worldly institutions, and in many ways, it exceeds and surpasses its "secular" counterparts.

All this, of course, is contrary to the Cross of Christ. When its work is accomplished in a disciple of Jesus then the love of the world is gone, and the value system is turned upside down. This creates a noticeable chasm between the old life and the new life, and this naturally divides the crucified ones from the uncrucified ones.

An Excerpt from Irresistible Kingdom by Chip Brogden