Cruciformity - How does the cross change and shape our lives? How does it connect us with God? - PART 1

* A lot of this post as well as the next 2 was taken from and built around some INCREDIBLE talks by Tim Keller. They are here.

Acts 8:26-39, the conversion of the Ethiopian Eunuch

The cross changes the structure of our identity, through a holistic grasp of substitutionary atonement...

Acts 8 is a vivid climax of the first 8 chapter of the book thus far: Jesus said to go and make disciples of all nations. In Acts 2, the sermon was in every language present, a clear indication that God was saying that no culture or people group had a leg-up... and yet the disciples still struggled with Jewish superiority. In Acts 8, persecution finally pushes them out, and the Spirit takes over. In any other circumstance, Philip would have nothing to do with this black, sexually altered, high-powered man. But the Spirit said, ‘stay with him!’ ... Jesus said that the Spirit would manifest His teaching when it came down. Why does the Spirit keep going after us to connect with others outside of our own people? the Cross. The Cross gives a new identity if you really get the implications of it. When the Spirit moves the very core of yourself to get the cross, then one sign will be that you will want to be with others you would have wanted nothing to do with before.

As different as “conservative” to “liberal”, “religious” to “secular” is, everyone has a works based righteousness system in place. In traditional, religious areas, people build their character on achievement - follow the rules and perform according to what is expected of you. In a secular area, in a relative, no-morality environment, there is enormous pressure to achieve. You have to make something of yourself. You have to show the world that you matter. In both areas, people build their identity on performance.

Everyone has an identity factor.

When you build your identity on something, you have to feel superior to others that don’t have your identity factor. That’s how you get an identity. That’s how you feel good about yourself, that’s how you feel valuable. Even if the way you feel good about yourself is that you are a hard working person. You then look down on others who are lazy. If education is your identity, you look down on those without an education... If religion is your identity, you look down on those without religion.

Conservative v. liberal. One will say, ‘those liberals are ruining my culture’, the other would say ‘those religious conservatives are narrow minded bigots.’

I think -- all identities demonize others who do not have their identity factor. All identities divide the human race.

What if there was another way of building your identity?

What if instead of the religious call of ‘God has given you all of the rules to follow Him into Heaven’... What if instead God has come down, fulfilling all of the requirements for us... Those that actually get this will say: ‘Well then, I am no better then anyone else. I am a sinner saved by God’s mercy.’ THEN this person will realize, ‘since God loves me through Christ (not because of what I have done to prove my worth, BUT what HE HAS DONE) I must change!’

IF the Spirit has really taken the cross so deep inside of you that you know that is why and how you have value, that is who you really are, why you have hope, THEN it removes the need and basis for feeling superior to other people.

The cross renews your identity, because Christianity is not the function of one particular culture. The cross transforms you from within your culture.

“100 years ago 9 percent of Africa was Christian. Today it is roughly 50 percent... How did this happen? The old religions provided rules rewarding good conduct and punishing wrong conduct. But they could not help us change. Christianity answered this historic challenge by a reorientation. People in Africa sensed in their hearts that Jesus did not mock their respect for the sacred, nor their clamor for an invincible savior. And so they beat their sacred drums for Him until the stars skipped and danced in the skies. And after that dance the stars were not little anymore. Christianity made Africans into renewed Africans, not remade Europeans.” -- Lamin Sanneh

What if Africans became secular?

Lamin Sanneh continues: “The idea that there are is no supernatural, no miracles, no demons, no angels, everything has a natural cause was destructive to our Africaness... Christianity says yes there is the supernatural... there are evil forces everywhere, but Jesus Christ on the cross triumphed over those evil forces. When Christianity comes into my Aricaness it does not turn me into a European or an American. I am no longer the African I was, but I am a renewed African. My identity is changed. I have a certain distance to my Africaness, making me look at non-Afircans differently... because I have an unshakable peace, I don’t have to fear the dark anymore. I have an invincible Savior.”

If this is true, then it is almost like every single people, every single culture, every single life, has its own story line, but only in Jesus Christ will the story lines of all these people ever find a happy ending... provided that you don’t just believe in the cross in some general way, but that the Holy Spirit takes it within the very center of your life and being.

How does that happen?

I think the key to real conversion happens when you get a holistic grasp of Jesus' substitutionary sacrificial atonement. Holistic meaning it has to makes sense coherently and it has to be inwardly gripping to you. This is when change can come.

Why was this man a eunuch in Acts 8? He was a high ranking official. If you were a commoner, rising up, working with the royal family, you would not be trusted unless you were sexually altered. If you wanted to be rich and get power, you would then have to say good bye to family and descendants (in a culture where family and descendants were everything!).

In New York City, it is almost impossible to maintain a family while you are on the fast track to the top of any of the high esteemed professions. It is almost impossible to get to the top without committing the same sacrifice the eunuch decided upon.

This eunuch, incredibly lonely and unfulfilled -- An Ethiopian going to Israel to worship! This is so far-fetched that some feel this disproves the accuracy of the Bible. The distance traveled was far!! This had to have been an incredibly long and dangerous trip. The only explanation (if we believe the Bible) for this man to make the trip was that he was spiritually hungry! He must have heard or read about the God of Israel and wanted to worship in His presence.. but he also must have been turned away from the Temple because Old Testament ceremonial law forbid any eunuch from going into the presence of God. He would have gone all that way, desperately seeking connection to the divine, and would have been turned away. He must have felt so deformed, so uncleaned.... But as he is riding back we see that he was reading Isaiah 53. Now if he were reading these ‘servant passages’ in Isaiah he would have certainly read:

Isaiah 56:3-5 -- “Don’t let foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord say, ‘The Lord will never let me be part of his people.’ And don’t let the EUNUCHS say, ‘I’m a dried-up tree with no children and no future.’ For this is what the Lord says: I will bless those EUNUCHS who keep my Sabbath days holy and who choose to do what pleases me and commit their lives to me. I will give them—within the walls of my house—a memorial and a name far greater than sons and daughters could give. For the name I give them is an everlasting one. It will never disappear!”

Just as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Go get that guy!’ to Philip the Eunuch now reads in Isaiah 53 about the one who gets cut off. Somebody who has been excluded, “and who can speak of His descendants?” It seems like this person has been voluntarily cut off, voluntarily excluded. Somebody who has essentially become a eunuch, someone who has essentially become unclean, somebody who has been slain... Who is this?

Just at that moment... Philip is desperately trying to keep up by running along side the carriage:

“It’s Jesus.”

In Jesus Christ, God has come as a leper for the lepers, a eunuch for the eunuchs... He become unclean so that we can become eternally clean. He was cast out so that we can be brought in. He paid the penalty for our sins. He stood as the eunuch for us, so that we do not have to stand as a eunuch anymore in His sight. He took upon Himself our penalty... He took it! So that we can now walk into the presence of God, clothed as and seen as Jesus Christ.

God substitutes Himself for us. He pays the penalty that we deserve. Substitution is at the heart of it all. Once you understand that and it grips you, conversion and change can happen.

In the Tale of Two Cities -- the two main character look alike, but are very different. And in it all they love the same girl. One does not get the girl and the other marries her. At the end of the book, however, the one married is found guilty (the book takes place within the context of the French Revolution) and he is in prison waiting to be executed. He is in a hopeless situation. Except for that the other man sneaks into the prison at night, knocks out his friend in prison, others he was with take his friend away, and this other man puts on his friends clothes, awaiting to be executed. (if you watch, watch the clip to at least 1:40)



“Are you dieing for him?”

“Yes, and for his wife and child.”

“I am really, really frightened, but if I can hold your hand, a brave person like you, I think I will be alright.”

-- goes the dialogue between another waiting for execution and the other man. This man’s substitutionary sacrifice changed her, and it was not even for her! ... and so if this does that, even though it was not even for her, how much could Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice change us. What will it enable us to face? How will it change our ability to handle suffering? How will it change the very structure of our life??? ... IF you see that He did not just die for others, He died for you... for you!

When the substitutionary sacrifice gets to the very bottom of our being, becoming intellectually understandable and emotionally and physically gripping, it will change us. How else do you explain a Jewish man putting his arms around a sexually altered African man and calling him brother? That’s a sign of changed identity. That’s how the cross does it.

The cross will convert you and will keep converting you the rest of your life... to be continued...