Why Three Crosses?
You will notice that I used an image of Three Crosses here. I’m sure you have noticed three Crosses on many Christian Churches, but I wonder if you have ever really thought about why there are three crosses.
If we’re going to talk about the three crosses, we had better start at the beginning: in Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion of Christ.
The Gospel of Luke has the better rendering of the story of the two thieves who were crucified with Jesus. So, let’s look at Luke 23: 32-33, 39-43…
32 And there were also two other, malefactors, led with him to be put to death. 33 And when they were come to the place, which is called Calvary, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.
39 And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying,” If thou be Christ, save thyself and us.” 40 But the other answering rebuked him, saying, ”Dost not thou fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? 41 And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds: but this man hath done nothing amiss.” 42 And he said unto Jesus, “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” 43 And Jesus said unto him, “Verily I say unto thee, today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”
Two criminals were crucified with Jesus that day, one on His right and one on His left. The Bible tells that both men were justly coming to their end, both were deserving of death for what they had done, but that’s where the similarity ends.
One of them railed against Jesus, mocking Him, saying, “If you really are the Christ, then save us as well as yourself.” He was joining in with the crowd of Pharisees who had come out to watch and make sure Jesus was given the full punishment they had cried for. “If you are indeed the Christ, the chosen one of God, then save yourself, come down off that cross and we’ll follow you.”
The Pharisees mocked Him; the soldiers mocked him and gambled for His clothes. And one of the men dying with Him, now also was mocking Him.
Matthew tells us in Chapter 27 verse 44 that both thieves also mocked Him, but I think that if at first they were both mocking Him, that at some point one of the thieves must have seen something in Jesus that caused him to stop and think.
There must have been something in Jesus’ eye and something about the way He was acting that made that one thief stop and really look at Jesus. Did it touch something deep inside him when he heard Jesus say, “Father forgive them, they know not what they are doing.”
At that point did he stop his taunting? Did he remember all the crimes he was guilty of, recognizing that Jesus was guilty of nothing? Nothing that deserved the kind of death He was dying.
How much of what had happened earlier that day were the thieves aware of? Had they heard the crowd calling for Jesus to be crucified? And Pilate claiming he had found nothing deserving of death in Jesus? Had either one of them heard Jesus tell Pilate, “You have no authority over me unless it was given to you from above.”
Had either of them ever heard Jesus speak before they were caught and convicted of their crimes?
We don’t know, we can only guess at what was going on in their minds before we meet them on that hill, nailed to their crosses with Jesus.
But Luke tells us that one of the thieves turns on his partner in crime and says, “Don’t you fear God? We deserve what we are getting, but this man has done nothing.” And then he turns to Jesus and asks Him “Lord, Remember me when you come into your Kingdom.”
Jesus then tells him, “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
It’s an old story that’s told at Easter in just about every Christian Church around the world. But I feel there is a lesson in it we must all think about.
Let’s go over to Matthew 16:13-16…
13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?” 14 And they said, “Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elijah; and others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.” 15 He saith unto them, “But whom say ye that I am?” 16 And Simon Peter answered and said, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
And that’s the question we must all answer, “Who do YOU say that Jesus is?”
One of those thieves dying with Christ recognized who He was and asked to be remembered.
Look at what he said, “We deserve what we are getting.”
In that, we have a confession of sin. And we are all guilty of sin, but we don’t all recognize it and repent of that sin. The thief did. He saw that he was a sinner deserving of death.
And by recognizing Jesus for who he was by saying, “This man has done nothing to deserve this death.” He in fact recognized that Jesus had never sinned.
Then our thief goes one step further. He asks Jesus to, “Remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” He calls Him, “Lord.”
By saying that, he is recognizing Jesus as the King and Lord of Lords that He is.
What does Jesus do next? He in essence forgives the man his sins and tells him that that day, “You will be with ME in Paradise.”
What that thief goes through on his cross is exactly what we must go through.
We must recognize that we are sinners and that we cannot save ourselves.
We must be sorry for our sins.
We must admit that we need a Savior.
We must recognize that Jesus is that Savior.
We must ask Him to forgive us and to be included in His Kingdom.
We must answer the Question Jesus posed to Peter, “Who do you say that I am?”
We must say with Peter, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God.”
The first thief wasn’t sorry for his sins, he was only sorry he got caught.
He mocked Jesus; never knowing who it was who he was deriding. He went to his grave unsaved and lost. He was only looking at his own situation; he was too focused on himself and what was happening to him. He couldn’t see who Jesus was because he could only see himself.
And there you have our two choices.
Either recognize who we are, sinners in need of a savior, and who Jesus is and be saved, or go our own way and die in our sins.
Each of us is presented with these two choices, eternal life or eternal death if you will.
We can live with Jesus, admitting that we need Him and that we can’t save ourselves no matter how we try. We must admit we are sinners. We must repent of those sins and ask for forgiveness from the only one who can forgive those sins.
That is Jesus Christ, the one who died for those sins on that Cross.
Or we can die in our sins, by ourselves and alone, focused on only the world. We can reject Christ and what He did on that Cross as foolishness. We can keep on sinning, going our own way and be lost for all eternity.
That’s our choice, and why there were Three Crosses on that hill.
Jesus is in the center of our world asking us, “Who do you say that I am?”
Sadly, many of us will be like the first thief, rejecting Christ, going our own way.
But some of us, will be like the repentant thief, and admit our sins and our need for a Savior. We will recognize Jesus for who He is and come to Him for forgiveness and Salvation.
There are Three Crosses. The man on the Center Cross can save you, but you have to recognize who He is and ask Him.
Are you like the first thief, mocking Jesus and dying unsaved that day?
Or are you like the repentant thief, who also dies that day, but is now spending eternity in Paradise with Jesus?
The Choice is yours and yours alone to make.
Who do you say that Jesus is?
I stand on the Cross
It seems that every few days or weeks we hear of some so called “Rights” group suing or threatening to sue over the Cross or Prayer at public meetings or symbols of Christmas like Manger displays. And don’t get me started on the whole Ten Commandments argument, that is something that has meaning not only to Christians but to Jewish people and Muslim’s as well and is at the very foundation of our laws. But these people continue to threaten to sue over the display of them anyway.
In almost every one of these suits or threats, the offended party claims the so called “Separation of Church and State” argument.
I for one am sick of it.
Let’s set this separation of Church and State thing straight once and for all. That phrase is NOT in the Constitution and NEVER was. What the 1st Amendment does say is, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
You can argue that the Cross or Prayer in the name of Jesus or a Manger display does recognize one faith over all the others, but it does NOT, in and of itself, establish a religion. A Cross on a hill or a Prayer at a meeting, or the posting of the Ten Commandments does NOT make a law.
Does the sight of a Cross rise to the level of offence to those who do not believe in Jesus, that they are really harmed? Is that Cross threating them or forcing them to believe what we believe?
The Congress has never and never will pass a law establishing one religion over another or one version of Christianity over any other. It’s NOT going to happen. That kind of thing is the very reason why this country was founded. Our Countries founding Families left the Old World for the New so that, among other things, they could worship God in the way they saw fit. And that is why the framers of the Constitution wrote the 1st Amendment the way they did.
And there is one other thing that is NOT in the Constitution, “The Right of a person to NOT be offended.”
To those who are offended by my belief in Jesus, I say that I am offended by you trying to force your beliefs on me and trying to stifle my “free exercise thereof,” so there! Now we are both offended, what are you going to do about it?
It is High time that we as Christians stand up for our “Rights” to worship the God of the Bible, to call on His Name, to see His Cross and His Manger and NOT be shamed into hiding our Love for the Lord who gave us life and who gave His life for us.
God has blessed this country from the start precisely because we allow our people to worship Him in Truth and in Light. No other country in the history of the world has been blessed in quite the same way as the United States of America. We also allow people to believe or not to believe, we don’t force anyone one way or the other. That is God’s way as well, He doesn’t force us to believe, and He gives us freedom to except Him or reject Him.
Because of that, I believe God has protected us and guided us throughout our history. Even through the darkest part, the American Civil War, He kept the country together, sadly at a terrible cost. The seeds of that war were years in coming and I believe the seeds of another division are growing again.
God will not keep protecting this country if we continue to trash His name and His word.
We see the seeds of division almost every day in our News. The poor against the rich, the Black against the White, the haves against the have-nots, it’s all over the News. And even more to the point, those who are against Christ and against those who follow Him.
I have to ask the question, WHY?
What harm does it do to believe in God, in Christ and the Bible?
What harm is caused by believing in Jesus, who tells us to “love our enemy and do good to them?”
What harm to follow someone who tells us to “pray for those who despitefully use us?”
What possible harm is caused by believing in a God who tells us to “Love our neighbor as ourselves?”
As I see it, there is no harm in any of us following Jesus. The only one, who is truly offended, is Satan. He is the one who would destroy anyone who follows Christ. He is the one who will do anything he can to bring down those who believe in Jesus. He is the one who hates everything God has created.
To those atheists who deny the existence of God, I have this to say, “Why is it of such importance to you, why can’t you just let us believe as we what to believe? We allow you to believe what you want to believe. Who is being more tolerant here?”
Why can’t they just say to themselves, “Oh, those poor deluded Christians and their Bible, it’s just so sad that so many believe in fairly tails,” and leave it at that?
If we all worshiped a rabbit and believed that once a year that rabbit brought colored and candied eggs to all the children of the world, don’t you think the rest of the world would pity us, but leave us to our delusion?
Why is it so important to those who do not follow Jesus, to bring down those of us who do?
To my thinking, the very reason why they all think this way, proves the very existence of the God they claim to not believe in.
To me it is silly to waste your life and your energy on trying to deny those who follow Jesus that right, when it really doesn’t do any harm to you and your right to not follow Him.
To fight so hard to deny those of us who believe in God the practice our faith in public, makes no sense.
The only person who is truly offended by Christ and those who follow Him is Satan. It makes no sense for anyone to take such great offence at the sight of the Cross, for example, unless they are letting Satan control their thoughts. And if Satan is behind all this Christian hatred, then there must be a God because if Satan is real, then so is the God he opposes. It is not logical to have such hatred against something that you don’t believe in and don’t think is real, unless something else is controlling your thoughts.
What is wrong with the Cross?
It is the symbol of a belief in Jesus Christ as the son of God who took the sin of the world on His shoulders and died on it. It is the symbol of a risen Lord who lives and reigns both now and forever.
Again, I have to ask, what is so wrong with seeing a Cross, unless you are being controlled by something very deep and dark.
The Christian faith has brought much good into this world. The Bible is at the root of most of our laws and our freedoms, the very freedoms those who don’t believe in God wish to trample underfoot.
The God that I follow will NOT force Himself on anyone. Those who tried to force Christianity down the throats of the unbelieving world were not truly following Christ’s teaching.
The only way to God is through Jesus Christ, His Son, but you must come willingly. You must believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead and except His death on the Cross as payment for your sins.
God wants you to love Him as He loves you. But in order for there to be true love, there must be a choice and that choice is up to you to make.
I can’t force an atheist to believe in God, all I can do is try to tell them why I believe. All I can do is show someone the things that God has done in my life and the things I have witnessed. All I can do is point them to the Bible and other books written to answer the questions they have. After that, it’s up to them to believe or not to believe.
There is a WAR going on and it’s been going on since the beginning of time between God and Satan. I know that God is going to win that war in the end, but Satan still deludes himself and those who follow him into thinking he has a chance. He hates God and everything that God stands for so much that he will do anything, use any trick, to deprive God of those who would follow him.
As Jesus says of Satan, “He is a liar and the father of lies.”
As I said, I can’t make you or anyone believe in God, or follow Jesus and I don’t hate anyone for not believing. I will and we should as Christians, pray for the unbeliever, but I will not, and we should not sit by silently while those who are offended by Christ, trash our Lord and our Savior.
I call on those who believe and follow Jesus to stand up for Him and the Bible, to pray for those who don’t believe; pray that God would open their hearts to the truth.
I also call on those who believe, to stand for the Bible and Jesus in those City Council meetings and School Board meetings, to support those who stand for Jesus with your vote so they can be our voice in the fight to protect our right to believe and to follow and to worship as we see fit. Yes, and to also protect those who follow some other belief and their right to worship or not as they see fit.
I know that there is only one way to God, but I cannot force someone to believe as I do. There are many different religions in this world and many different belief systems, and they can’t all be right. It is up to you to decide what to believe in.
Does the fact of a Cross on public land, violate or establish a law that forces anyone to worship God? Or does it force anyone to worship God in one way over another way?
NO!
But that Cross represents to us who believe, what we believe in and who we believe in.
Jesus Christ.
I stand on the Cross, I stand in the Cross, I stand behind the Cross and I stand with the Cross.
Do You?
Care to comment?