REFLECTING CHRIST - By Pastor Chuck Ryor

One thing I like about being a small church pastor is that I have the opportunity to do most everything a church does. Megachurch ministers are usually specialists with a narrow focus about what they do for a large group of people. “Mini-church” pastors have to be jacks-of-all-trades for everyone in the congregation. A staff member asked me to build a cross for creative use in our church. Fancying myself a handy man, I went to work.

As I put this cross together a couple things dawned on me. First, we don’t build crosses anymore. We buy little ones that get used as fashion accessories but building large crosses from wood is uncommon. Secondly, real wood crosses aren’t made in one piece. They’re simply too big and oddly shaped to make a Roman era cross out of a single piece of lumber. 

Crosses in Jesus’ time were made of two beams or logs. There was nothing artistic about them, as they were torture devices. A Roman cross had a vertical beam that got dropped into a hole that was dug for stabilizing the apparatus. Before the cross was lifted up, a cross beam was attached to it horizontally. That horizontal beam was the one Jesus Christ carried up the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, as he made his way to the Hill of the Skull to be crucified. 

They laid the cross beam across the vertical beam and nailed those two pieces together. Then the used the same type of spikes to staple Jesus’ hands and feet to the cross. Romans would drive the nails into the part of the hand where it connects to the wrist so the weight of the body wouldn’t tear the hands away from the cross beam. Then the cross, with the Savior on it, was dropped into the hole for the vertical beam. A crucifixion was meant to be a long, painful death. Jesus’ death was just that.

To illustrate the relationship between the work of the Gospel and the message of the Gospel, I use the cross of Jesus. It had two beams (dimensions), a vertical and a horizontal, but they were inseparable. In the same way, Jesus came not just to reconcile us to Himself (vertically), but so we would also be agents of reconciliation to the world (horizontally, in every way that the Scripture mandates us to be). As a Roman cross was also made of two parts, so is the mission of the church. We are to proclaim the good news that Jesus has come to reconcile people to Himself (vertical). We’re also to proclaim that He has come to proclaim good news to the poor and to set the oppressed free (horizontal). It’s not an either/or, but a both/and.

It’s important to recognize that the weight of the horizontal beam is completely supported by the vertical beam. Without the vertical, the horizontal is nothing but a log on the ground. The horizontal cannot and does not support the vertical. It hasn’t the power to do that. This isn’t hair splitting to say that the horizontal aspect of the Gospel mission is completely supported by the vertical and not the other way around. The vertical is the priority and the most important aspect of the cross. 

Granted, as the Apostle James has figuratively said, a cross without a cross beam is no cross at all. It’s a big pole in a hole. Faith without the corresponding evidence of good works is not a real, living faith. A church without a horizontal ministry to the world is not a thorough Gospel Church. Religion that God accepts as pure and faultless is to look after orphans and widows in their distress, keep oneself from being polluted by the world, and watch what we say.  (James 1:26-27)

Our church’s mission is to Revive Believers, Reach Friends and Reflect Christ.  We believe that the reason why we serve God is important. It’s critical that we’re serving humanity in Word and Deed because Jesus has done this for us. On a personal level we are saved by grace through faith in what Jesus has accomplished. In the same way, our motive to do the work of the church is supported and fueled by the grace of God and our faith in Jesus as our Savior.

As EPHESIANS 2:10 says:

“We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God has prepared in advance for us to do.”