Be Still And Know

Colossians 2:14-15 [Christ] cancelled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. The cross stood right at the centre of Paul’s understanding of the good news. Put simply, if you want to understand Jesus, you have to see him through the lens of the cross. John Stott, in his book [itals]The Cross of Christ[end itals], summed this up when he wrote: “There is then, it is safe to say, no Christianity without the cross. If the cross is not central to our religion, ours is not the religion of Jesus.” For this reason, Paul focused his preaching on the cross even though he was fully aware that the message didn’t always go down well. Jews found it a stumbling block because the law of Moses declared that anyone who hung from a tree was cursed. Meanwhile, non-Jews just found the idea of someone dying on a cross completely foolish. How could anyone find anyt