In the year 178, a Greek scholar named Celsus wrote that anyone who believed this religion was among the most uneducated and vulgar of people. Christianity, he argued, was a lie that preyed on the stupid and the foolish.
He was not the last person to say it. I have read worse in the newspapers. But Celsus had the advantage of saying it early and saying it plainly. In one sense, he was not wrong about how Christianity looked to the world around him.
Paul had already made the same point more than a century earlier. The message of the cross looked like foolishness to those who were perishing. To the Jews, the idea of a crucified Messiah was a scandal and a stumbling block. To the Greeks, it was nonsense. To both, the idea that an executed provincial carpenter was God’s answer to everything was beneath serious discussion.
That has never really changed, and it never will. God deliberately chose what the world considers lowly and insignificant to bring to nothing the things that seem powerful by human standards. The offence is not an unfortunate side effect of the Gospel.
It is part of the Gospel.
Why Does Christianity Refuse to Make Sense?
Because if Christianity could be explained entirely in human terms, it would be a human achievement. The whole point is that it is not. The world’s wisdom looks at the cross and sees defeat dressed up as victory. It looks at a book written over centuries by many different people and sees contradictions. It looks at claims of healing and deliverance and sees superstition.
Those judgments may seem reasonable if you begin from the assumptions of the world. But God said He would frustrate that kind of wisdom and bring it to nothing. Once you take God at His word, you begin to discover that what looked foolish actually has substance. You discover that He does want you well. That He does want you to prosper. That He knows the number of the hairs on your head and considers you worth more than the sparrows He also watches over.
You do not arrive at those things simply by winning an argument. You arrive at them by taking God at His word and finding out that He is telling the truth.
→ The Scandal of the Cross — preached on the Tuesday of Holy Week, on why the offence is the point.
What Was Happening While the Devil Celebrated?
There is an account of that weekend told from below, and I want you to have the picture in your mind. The demons of hell are gathered around Satan because the Son of God is dead. He has died on a cross, and Satan believes the whole thing is finished.
In the story, Satan is celebrating. He believes he has conquered the Son of God. He believes he has won and that he is greater than God. For three days, he celebrates what he thinks is his victory.
What he does not understand is what is happening at the throne of God. The pattern had been established long before. Moses and Aaron had been given the instructions for the Passover: the blood of the lamb was caught in a basin and put on the lintel and the two doorposts. The house marked by that blood was passed over while Egypt suffered the loss of its firstborn.
Israel understood what it meant to be under the blood. On the day Jesus was crucified, His blood became the fulfillment of that pattern. His sacrifice was presented before God as the once-for-all atonement for the sins of the world.
Then, on the third day, the message came: I receive the blood of my Son. The story describes the light beginning to break into the throne room of hell. The demons cannot endure it. Satan is forced to bow before the authority of the Name that is above every name — in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.
Jesus tells him what is coming: his defeat will continue because the authority of that Name is being given to the church as a power of attorney to use against him. Then Jesus takes back the keys that the devil had stolen.
And when He rises, the victory is complete.
→ The Devil Is a Sore Loser tells the story in full and follows it into the garden at dawn.
What Did the Blood Actually Buy?
It was not simply a change in God’s attitude toward us. It was a change in our position. Before the cross, mankind was under a kingdom that had been surrendered in the garden. The titles the enemy claimed were titles that man had given him: prince of the power of the air, god of this world, accuser of the brethren.
The blood of Jesus did not merely improve a bad situation. It transferred us out of that kingdom and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. That is why authority is not presumption. It is why the Name of Jesus works. It is why we can speak to a circumstance instead of simply complaining to God about it.
Everything I teach that may sound bold — praying with expectancy, refusing the accusations of the enemy, standing on a promise when the evidence seems to be against you — rests on something that has already been accomplished.
You and I did not contribute a penny to it. The sacrifice has been accepted at the throne of God. The power of the enemy has been broken. As long as we stand under that cleansing blood, we stand under the authority of God, and the powers of hell cannot ultimately prevail against us.
How Does a Person Actually Come to Christ?
John Wesley preached to crowds of miners who had never been to school, and people were converted while standing there listening to him. They heard sermons that an educated person might have to study carefully to understand, yet the Spirit of God worked through those words in ordinary people.
That has always been one of the things that amazes me about the Gospel. Wesley’s account of how a person comes to Christ is worth considering because it avoids two common mistakes. First, God is already at work in a person before that person has any interest in God. The law does its work by showing us our sin and our need. Repentance follows, and genuine repentance eventually shows itself in the way a person lives.
That is not earning salvation. It is evidence that the sorrow over sin is real. Then comes justification, which is entirely the work of God. And Wesley’s warning at that point is especially important: do not deceive yourself about what faith is. Faith is not merely agreeing that the Bible is true or accepting the articles of the Creed.
As Wesley put it, The devils believe this, as well as I or thou, and yet they are devils still. Real faith is a sure trust in the mercy of God through Jesus Christ. There is a difference between agreeing that a chair will hold your weight and actually sitting down in it.
→ The House of Faith works through Wesley’s steps in full.
Why Does This Have to Be the Foundation?
Because everything else I teach collapses without it. Faith that God will keep His promises rests on a God who kept the greatest promise at the greatest possible cost. Authority in the Name of Jesus rests on the fact that the Name was given to Him by the One who had just given Him all authority in heaven and on earth.
Confidence in prayer rests on the fact that the relationship between God and man was restored, and that restoration was accomplished through blood. Take the cross and the empty tomb out of everything I have said, and what remains is good advice.
Good advice has never changed anybody. The tomb is empty. Death could not swallow Him. The grave could not keep Him. God raised Him from the dead, and He has not lost any of His power in the years since.
That is the ground everything else stands on.
Still to come in this series: Passover of Gladness · My Lord! What a Morning · Because He Lives, I Can Face Tomorrow · He’s Alive · The Road to Emmaus · Hope Comes When We Are Saved at Last · The Impact of Truth. Each will be linked here as it publishes.
