"THE CHURCH WHOSE THEOLOGY IS SHAPED BY THE MESSAGE OF THE CROSS MUST ITSELF
TAKE ON A CRUCIFORMED LIFE IF ITS
THEOLOGY IS TO CARRY CREDIBILITY"
- Charles Cousar
Is it safe to say that the church in America today needs a new way of seeing? The cross I believe provides the lens which sharpens and clarifies how God wants us to look at the world and relate to it. Leonard Allen in his The Cruciform Church (ACU Press, 1990) portrays the cross as a lens in which the church is to be cross-shaped or a cruciform community.
Here are three ways that Allen gives in showing us what the cross does:
1. Through the cross we see the heart of God revealed most clearly.
2. Only through the cross can we see the true nature of human sin and the depths of divine grace.
3. The cross provides the model for God's new social order, the messianic community.
"The cross exposes our God-substitutes, our self-serving religiousity, and breaks the illusion that we are masters of our own lives. It challenges the complacency of churches that dare to call themselves by the name of the Crucified One" (p.133).
"The cross thus puts our churches to the test. It exposes our smug elitism, our affluent isolation . . . It shames us for our church fights, for our readiness to call it quits with our sisters and brothers. And when we lazily embrace the spirit of the age, becoming little more than 'Christ clubs,' the cross reawakens us to our first calling (emphasis mine, p.139).
TAKE ON A CRUCIFORMED LIFE IF ITS
THEOLOGY IS TO CARRY CREDIBILITY"
- Charles Cousar
Is it safe to say that the church in America today needs a new way of seeing? The cross I believe provides the lens which sharpens and clarifies how God wants us to look at the world and relate to it. Leonard Allen in his The Cruciform Church (ACU Press, 1990) portrays the cross as a lens in which the church is to be cross-shaped or a cruciform community.
Here are three ways that Allen gives in showing us what the cross does:
1. Through the cross we see the heart of God revealed most clearly.
2. Only through the cross can we see the true nature of human sin and the depths of divine grace.
3. The cross provides the model for God's new social order, the messianic community.
"The cross exposes our God-substitutes, our self-serving religiousity, and breaks the illusion that we are masters of our own lives. It challenges the complacency of churches that dare to call themselves by the name of the Crucified One" (p.133).
"The cross thus puts our churches to the test. It exposes our smug elitism, our affluent isolation . . . It shames us for our church fights, for our readiness to call it quits with our sisters and brothers. And when we lazily embrace the spirit of the age, becoming little more than 'Christ clubs,' the cross reawakens us to our first calling (emphasis mine, p.139).
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