The Power of the Cross
By Rev. Dr. Brent Russett – Asbury Free Methodist
February 25, 2024
Romans 8:22-39
According to some articles, Perth is one of the prettiest towns in Ontario. Although I believe that to be true –I am sure you have noticed – we don’t live in heaven. We still live in a world where hatred is real, despondency is rampant, disease is prevalent, grief is all too frequent, and life isn’t always what it should be. We are surrounded by beauty, and yet life is messy. How, then shall we live?
Most of you have come to know Jesus. Most of you would testify to the fact that Jesus has made your life better. But you will also say, my life is not perfect. There are areas of struggle and challenge. Jesus is in us, but he hasn’t fixed all our problems. How, then shall we live?
Last week, I started a Lent series titled “Christus Victor.” Christ is the victor. How is that true when, sometimes, life is hard? That is what we want to look at today.
Let me give you the synopsis of where we were last week.
For the past three or four hundred years, the primary metaphor we have used to understand Christ’s work on the cross was a legal metaphor. We had broken God’s laws, and the penalty for that is spiritual death. But Jesus paid our penalty. He took our place. So, to become a Christian means to ask Christ to forgive your sin, to take your sin away. It’s a good metaphor, although it misses some things.
But for the first thousand years of church history, the primary metaphor for understanding the cross was Christus Victor. Humanity was trapped by evil, held in the grip of death, captured by sin, and enslaved by Satan. But Christ came, and he battled evil, sin, Satan, and death and was victorious over them all through his life, death, and resurrection. Christ conquered. Christus Victor.
The call of the church and the mission of God’s people is to live in light of that victory. We are called to “Partner with Christus Victor to overthrow evil and reconcile and redeem all of Creation.” This, too, is a good way to understand what it means to be a Christian.
The problem we looked at last week is that while we are called to partner in overthrowing evil, we really don’t believe in evil. We looked at how we often sanitize the problems of this world and call them sad or mistakes or dysfunctions – and the list could go on. But the reality is that there is a lot of evil in our hearts; There is a lot of evil in our world; Satan is real, and his job is to promote evil. When we don’t see problems for what they are, we have difficulty dealing with them.
The problem we looked at last week is that we tend not to believe in evil. The problem that I want to look at this week is that when we come to believe in evil, it is very easy to get overwhelmed by it and not believe in Christus Victor. It is easy to see the power of evil as stronger than the power of the cross.
After all, if Christ has conquered evil, why is the Ukraine, or Israel, or Palestine in the state that they are in?
If Christ has conquered evil, why is child abuse, alcoholism, and drug addiction rampant? I was shocked this week when I talked to one of the funeral directors at Blair and Sons, and they told me that 1/3 of the deaths they are seeing right now are from either suicide or drug overdose. How does that happen in a town like ours?
If Christ has conquered evil, why is there so much relational breakdown? What are people feeling so lost, so isolated, so stressed, so disconnected? If Christ has conquered evil, then why is life so hard sometimes?
Come with me to Romans 8. Here, the fight is acknowledged.
Romans 8:22–23 (NLT)
22 For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
Paul tells us that evil is a present reality. All creation is groaning. This world is not what is was meant to be. When you see earthquakes and hurricanes, floods and famine, you are seeing creation groaning. When you see death and destruction you are seeing creation groaning.
The passage goes on to say that even we who are Christians are groaning because life is still a battle. We are waiting, we are hoping, we are longing, we are expecting our deliverance. There is coming a day when we will step into the fullness of our inheritance. Our bodies will be released from sin and suffering, and we will receive a new body that is whole and without disease. But until that day, we groan.
Some of you know what it means to groan. Those of you fighting with depression or anxiety have felt the inward groaning. Those of you who come from dysfunctional families with all the craziness that comes with that, you know what it means to groan. The older I get, I find myself groaning, just standing up. We live in a world that is full of pain.
There are some days when you wake up and see what God saw when he created the world. He looked around and said it was good. There are other times when you look around, and you say, how long Oh lord, how long?
Paul goes on to say we have hope.
Romans 8:23b–25 (NLT)
We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. 24 We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. 25 But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
We hope because it is not a reality yet. We are not in heaven yet. But we have hope.
If you are a Christian, you have hope. A time is coming when we will cease to groan, where you will know the fullness of your salvation. The passage says it is into this hope that you were saved. You were saved. Even though you were saved, you still groan. But there is coming a time when you will be saved even from those things that make you groan.
There is a past, present, and future tense to the Christian life. The Bible says you were saved. Most of you know what it means to have Christ come into your life. He has forgiven your sin and put his life in you. You were saved. Does that mean that you are perfect? Of course not. Work still needs to be done in your heart and life.
But many of you would say I know God is doing some good things in my life right now. The Bible would use language like, you are being saved – present tense. But still, there is an inward groaning. Not everything is as it should be. But God is still at work.
This passage also talks about hope for the future. We will be saved. Heaven is heaven precisely because there is no evil, nor is there anything that has been tainted by evil. Because of what Christ has done, we can go there. But we are not there yet.
So, what do we do in the meantime? Do we just sit around enduring the results of evil until we die and go to heaven? Do we just hunker down and try to get through life as unscathed as possible? Do we just say about this world and about our own hearts, it’s evil, that’s life, live with it?
No. That is not our call. Our call is to live in the present. Our call is to continue to apply the work of Christ to our hearts so they are continually transformed. Our call is to apply the work of Christ to our life situations. Our call is to stand firm against the enemy of our souls.
We live in a world where evil is real. Where the battle is sometimes fierce. And when you get beat up by a bad marriage, when you get hit with unfair work practices, when you are challenged with hatred, it is easy to feel weak. When your anger is consuming, when your tendency towards greed is overwhelming, when the temptation is there to be less than ethical – it is easy to feel weak.
But here is what the bible says.
Romans 8:26–28 (NLT)
26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. We don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. 27 And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. 28 And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.
God understands our weakness and has sent his Spirit to intercede for us. In the middle of this world – God is with us. Notice that we were groaning inwardly because of life, and now the Spirit is groaning on our behalf until the purposes of God are fully formed in us. When it feels like life is pressing in around you, I want you to know that God is with you. He is not just waiting to get you to heaven. He wants to speak into your life right now.
Yes, all of creation is groaning under the strain of evil. Yes, life gets messy. But the message of the cross is that God has come into the middle of this messy world. He knows what it is like to walk in our shoes. And for those of you who would receive the work of Christ into your life, he would say to you I’m on your side. And it makes a difference.
Romans 8:31–39 (NLT)
31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If God is for you in the middle of a world that is filled with evil, who can be against you. He makes a difference now.
Hear Melito of Sardis’ description of the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ.
But he rose from the dead.
and mounted up to the heights of heaven.
When the Lord had clothed himself with humanity,
and suffered for the sake of the sufferer,
and had been bound for the sake of the imprisoned,
and had been judged for the sake of the condemned,
and buried for the sake of the one who was buried,
he rose up from the dead,
and cried with a loud voice:
Who is he that contends with me?
Let him stand in opposition to me.
I set the condemned man free;
I gave the dead man life;
I am raised up though I had been entombed.
Who is my opponent?
I, he says, am the Christ.
I am the one who destroyed death,
and triumphed over the enemy,
and trampled Hades underfoot,
and bound the strong one,
and carried off man to the heights of heaven,
I, he says, am the Christ.
One reason why we are called to identify with Christ in baptism is that we are to identify with his charge on evil. Just as he overthrew the foundations of evil on the cross, the foundations of evil have been overthrown in our lives.
But there is still work to do. For our call is to partner with Christus Victor to overthrow evil in our hearts in our systems and to hinder the work of the enemy. The work is not completed yet. Jesus conquered by his work on the cross, but the call is to apply the work of the cross to all of life.
*****
I love the testimonies that I hear around Asbury because I see a lot of evidence of you applying the work of Jesus to your life.
Some of you were held captive by things that were done to you in your past. You were a prisoner to the evil done against you. But you applied the cross, you learned to forgive, and you watched the Spirit blow new life into your heart. You are no longer a prisoner. Christus Victor, Christ the Conqueror. He has given you victory over the shame of your past.
I have watched others of you who were plagued by harmful tendencies. Addictions, co-dependant relationships, unhealthy responses to stress. But you have applied the work of the cross to your life, and there has been a change. Oh, there are places you can’t go and things you can’t do so that your heart will be safe, but Christ has conquered, and evil doesn’t have the same hold on your heart.
I have watched some of you as you have influenced the systems that you work within. Because of what you have done in your workplace, it is a better place to work. You have spoken out against what is wrong and helped move your workplace in a better direction. That is applying the cross to where you work.
I have watched some of you as you have wrestled spiritually. There were weird things that were happening on a spiritual level. Some of you know what it is like to feel oppression. You know what it is like to sense the presence of something evil. But you have learned to apply the cross to that, and you have won. Christus Victor. Christ is the Conqueror. Christ has given you the victory.
We are not in heaven yet. The battle against evil is still very real. Some would say the battle is growing more intense. We are not in heaven, but neither are we left powerless in the face of evil. Because of the cross, we have the resources by which to fight.
2 Corinthians 10:3–4 (NIV)
3 For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. 4 The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.
Even though we live in a world that is thoroughly saturated with evil, we don’t have to fear. Because we have what we need for the fight. Jesus died and was raised to life again. With his work on the cross, by the power of his Spirit, we have everything we need to fight and fight well.
We will not demolish all evil. We don’t believe in a utopia in this life. We believe in heaven, and we are not there yet.
But we don’t believe that evil must be left unchecked. We don’t believe that evil needs to reign in our lives. Because Christ is the victor, and his desire is that his work be applied to our lives.
*****
Here is where I think we are at as a church. The work has been done on the cross. Christ has conquered. We have been given the power of the cross and invited to carry that power into the world. We have been given spiritual weapons that demolish strongholds. Even the gates of hell can’t stand against the church which knows how to live out the power of the cross.
However, I believe that we need to become much better at applying the power of the cross to the evil around us and in us.
As I look back over recent history, I think the church in North America has been better at applying political power than the power of the cross.
The Church has become adept at renaming evil and then just living with it. Instead of calling it what it is and applying the power of the cross to it.
In my estimation, what is needed is to reclaim the power of the cross in our lives and in our world. That is why we did a Set Free retreat last fall, and we will probably do one again this fall. The power of the cross does amazing things when it is applied.
This is why we do discipleship: so that you can learn to apply the power of the cross.
There is power in the cross. It has the power to demolish evil. You can learn to walk in that power.
Next week, we are going to talk about Christus Victor and our hearts. How can we apply the work of Christ to our hearts? Jesus wants to do his work in you. I would encourage you to come back and see how Jesus works in us to bring about his victory.
Pray.
Sermon Questions – Christus Victor Part 2
Romans 8:22-39
Introduction
1. What are you celebrating this week?
2. What are you praying about this week?
Digging in
3. Do you find it easy to get overwhelmed by the problems you see around you and in the world?
4. Read Romans 8:22-23. If Jesus was victorious on the cross, why do we see so much evil in our world? What does it mean that “creation groans?” How do believers groan?
5. Read verses 23-25. What does this tell us about hope? This passage talks about how we “were saved.” Other scripture talks about how we “are being saved,” and how “we will be saved.” What do each of these phases look like in the Christian life?
6. Read verses 26-28. What does this tell us about what the Holy Spirit is doing and how he does it?
7. Read verses 31-34. What does this tell us about God the Father? What does this tell us about Jesus?
8. Read verses 35 – 39. What is Paul saying about the Christian life?
9. What can we, as the people of God, do to reclaim the power of the cross in our lives?