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<\/a><\/p>\nThe Bible says much about crosses:\u00a0 Christ\u2019s cross and the crosses that we bear.\u00a0 And the two are connected.<\/p>\n
I came across another mind-blowing quotation from Luther:<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cross of Christ\u201d does not mean, of course, the wood that Christ carried on his shoulders and to which he then was nailed.\u00a0 No, it refers in general to all the afflictions of all the faithful, whose sufferings are the sufferings of Christ.\u00a0 2 Cor 1:5:\u00a0 \u201cWe share abundantly in Christ\u2019s suffering.\u201d\u00a0 In the same way Christ, our Head, makes our afflictions His own, so that when we, who are his body, suffer, He is affected as though the evils were his own.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nMartin Luther, Lectures on Galatians<\/em> (1535), in LW 27, p. 134.<\/p>\n
Think about it:\u00a0 In faith, we are united to Christ and He is united to us (John 17:20-23).\u00a0 We constitute the Church, which is His body (1 Corinthians 12:12-27).\u00a0 In baptism, we are united to His death, burial, and resurrection (Romans 6:3-5).<\/p>\n
And remember the scope of the great exchange that took place in His atonement.\u00a0 The great prophecy in Isaiah tells us not only that the coming Suffering Servant bears \u201cthe iniquity of us all\u201d(53:6)\u00a0 and was \u201ccrushed for our transgressions\u201d and \u201cbruised for our iniquities,\u201d (53:5) but that He also bears our suffering:<\/p>\n
Surely he has borne our griefs<\/span>
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>and carried our sorrows. (53:4)<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nI have never understood why virtually every Christian discussion of theodicy, the problem of suffering, leaves Christ out of the conversation.\u00a0 They accept the premise of the opposition, that God is looking down from above on a world of suffering, doing nothing about it.\u00a0 They try to explain why<\/em> God looks down from a vast distance and does nothing, but no wonder so few of their argument are convincing.<\/p>\n
They argue\u00a0 as if God had never become Incarnate, as if He did not come down into this world of suffering, taking the world\u2019s evil and sin and griefs and sorrows into Himself, to the point of undergoing death itself.\u00a0 And then He rises again, the first fruits of a universal resurrection and a new Heaven and a New Earth in which every tear will be dried.<\/p>\n
God looks down on suffering?\u00a0 No, He enters into it and bears it.\u00a0 God does nothing?\u00a0 No, He dies for it.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Illustration: \u201cCrucifixion,\u201d by Mathias Gr\u00fcnewald \u2013 The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=152364<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Bible says much about crosses:\u00a0 Christ’s cross and the crosses that we bear.\u00a0 And the two are connected. Our sufferings, said Luther, “are the sufferings of Christ.” And yet most Christian discussions of the problem of suffering leave Christ out of the conversation, as if God had not become incarnate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":53744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,8,10,47],"tags":[234,274,4287,4973,2197,2200],"class_list":["post-53728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apologetics","category-bible","category-christ","category-theology","tag-atonement","tag-bearing-the-cross","tag-christ-centered-theodicy","tag-problem-of-suffering","tag-theodicy","tag-theology-of-the-cross"],"yoast_head":"\n
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