Radical and extreme cross--many miss its point altogether. Last Sunday I and my dear wife went to the bookstore at SM for some gifts she had to give to a friend in Cebu. While she was choosing what to buy I strolled along the rows of bookshelves at the other end of the store--particularly the shelves where the inspirational books were kept.
I saw this book..."The Radical Cross" by AW Tozer. Tozer is among my favorite authors so I browsed it and bought it. I have come to love the deeper meanings of the cross. The cross is meant to make you radical and extreme like Jesus. It's designed to be born by all true believers, not just to identify ourselves with Christ, but to be destroyed.
The Jesus cross is destruction...destruction of the flesh and all its cravings, accomplishments, trophies, mindset, self-importance, religion, and even church ministries. Churches use it today to attract people who are fond of looking for a church--not looking for God. If you're looking for God, you begin to understand the need to die to self, and allow God to destroy your flesh, your ego, especially the church that the ego built.
The cross of Jesus that he tells you to carry daily cannot but make you radical and extreme. So radical and extreme that you go all the way with God to the desert where no man dares to be or to live and where terrible dangers lurk. You even go to the shadow of the valley of death.
Others just stop at treading on green pastures--they never venture out further with Jesus, the Shepherd, into the wilderness. Jesus dared go with the Father to the wilderness and ended up not just full of the Holy Spirit but in the power of the Holy Spirit. The church only gets as far as being in the fullness of the Spirit and never experience being in the power of the Spirit and defeating Satan in his own territory because it dreads being radical and extreme with Jesus Christ.
The cross means continuing in Jesus even in the face of life adversities. Jesus takes away a lot of things in your life and you still dare go with him deeper into the wilderness. Others enjoy life in this world while you begin to hate life in this world. And sometimes, that can make you wonder why God seems to be "cruel" with you but generous and kind with others, especially the wicked.
Jesus was in the midst of a laughing and mocking multitude who were free from suffering when he cried to the Father, "Why have you forsaken me?" He suffered so radically and to the extreme, and we are called to not just believe in him but also suffer the same radical and extreme cross, not for sin's expiation but as a mark of true Jesus' discipleship.
Yeah, I know all this and more, but sometimes, when the going gets too tough, I'm still inclined to ask what kind of life is this when I hate life because of the things that happen which my mind fails to understand. But I just surrender to God after. Thanks, God, for that sustaining grace.
