POWER OF GOD

Two thousand years ago a crowd of people, some sympathetic, some gloating, gathered around a place of public execution to watch three men die. They were being executed by crucifixion, which was a particularly violent and vicious means of putting someone to death. It involved public shame, excruciating pain, and increasing and prolonged physical weakness as the strength of the body gradually sapped away. Death, when it came, often did so at the moment of greatest physical weakness.

The man upon the middle cross had a name written and nailed above His head on His cross. It read, simply, ‘This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’. What a way for a king to die! Kings were meant to be honoured, not shamed. Kings were supposed to wield total power, not suffer in apparent weakness. The attentive ear would also have heard voices mocking this King even more, saying, ‘If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross’, Matt. 27. 40. Surely it was remarkable that a King should die in such a way, let alone the Son of God? How could He die in such weakness?

Ah! But the seeming weakness of the cross in the plan of God is its very power, for ‘the weakness of God is stronger than men’, v. 25. It is true that Christ died in apparent weakness, 2 Cor. 13.4. Yet the fact of the death of God’s own Son has proved to be, not the weakness of God, but the very power of God unto salvation. He, who offered up His perfect life to God, became a substitute for sinners as He bore their sins in His own body on the tree. Mankind cannot understand this. But Christ Himself is the power of God to save, and so is the preaching of His cross. Could there be anything more foolish than standing before men proclaiming that God can and will save through this public execution two thousand years ago? Can there be anything more derisory than preaching publicly what men regard as foolishness? You have it wrong! The very proclamation of the gospel and the very lifting up of God’s Son is the effectual power of God to draw those who are called by God and to God. To them that are perishing it is foolishness; but to those who are being saved it is the very power of God. Thank God that it is so.