The cross brings an end to "the glory story"

“The cross is itself in the first instance the attack of God on the old sinner and the sinner’s theology. The cross is the doing of God to us. But that same cross itself, and only the cross, at the same time opens a new and unheard-of possibility over against the sinner’s old self and its theology. That means that a theology of the cross is inevitably quite polemical. It constantly seeks to uncover and expose the ways in which sinners hide their perfidy behind pious facades. The delicate thing about it is that it attacks the best we have to offer, not the worst. This explains why the theology of the cross is generally spoken of in contrast to a theology of glory. The two theologies are always locked in mortal combat. Wherever there is mention of a theology of the cross without indication of this combat, it is not truly the theology of the cross that is being expressed.”

“Thus the cross story claims us. And we should make no mistake. Unless the cross story does claim us and become our story, we shall not escape the clutches of the glory story. It is not a matter of choice, a matter over which we deliberate. One of the decisive questions in the battle between a theology of glory and theology of the cross will always be the question of the will. A theology of glory always leaves the will in control. It must therefore seek to make its theology attractive to the supposed “free will.” A theology of the cross assumes that the will is bound and must be set free. The cross story does that. Either it claims us or it doesn’t If it does, it is the end of the glory story. We see in the death of Jesus our death, and we remember that we are dust. We can begin to take the truth. We learn dying… We live only on the strength of the fact that the Creator breathed his Spirit into the dust and gave us life. We live on ‘borrowed time’ –time lent us by the Creator.”

- Gerhard Forde from On Being A Theologian Of The Cross (pp. 4 & 9)

"Luther's Theology of the Cross"

On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses on the door of the castle church at Wittenberg.

Reflecting on Martin Luther's "theology of the cross" Carl Trueman writes:

The "theologians of glory,"...are those who build their theology in the light of what they expect God to be like—and, surprise, surprise, they make God to look something like themselves. The "theologians of the cross," however, are those who build their theology in the light of God's own revelation of himself in Christ hanging on the cross.

The implications of this position are revolutionary. For a start, Luther is demanding that the entire theological vocabulary be revised in light of the cross. Take for example the word power. When theologians of glory read about divine power in the Bible, or use the term in their own theology, they assume that it is analogous to human power. They suppose that they can arrive at an understanding of divine power by magnifying to an infinite degree the most powerful thing of which they can think. In light of the cross, however, this understanding of divine power is the very opposite of what divine power is all about. Divine power is revealed in the weakness of the cross, for it is in his apparent defeat at the hands of evil powers and corrupt earthly authorities that Jesus shows his divine power in the conquest of death and of all the powers of evil. So when a Christian talks about divine power, or even about church or Christian power, it is to be conceived of in terms of the cross—power hidden in the form of weakness.

For Luther, the same procedure must be applied to other theological terms. For example, God's wisdom is demonstrated in the foolishness of the cross. Who would have thought up the foolish idea of God taking human flesh in order to die a horrendous death on behalf of sinners who had deliberately defied him, or God making sinners pure by himself becoming sin for them, or God himself raising up a people to newness of life by himself submitting to death? We could go on, looking at such terms as life, blessing, holiness, and righteousness. Every single one must be reconceived in the light of the cross. All are important theological concepts; all are susceptible to human beings casting them in their own image; and all must be recast in the light of the cross.

This insight is one of the factors in Luther's thinking that gives his theology an inner logic and coherence. Take, for example, his understanding of justification, whereby God declares the believer to be righteous in his sight, not by virtue of any
intrinsic righteousness (anything that the believer has done or acquired), but on the basis of an alien righteousness, the righteousness of Christ that remains external to the believer. Is this not typical of the strange but wonderful logic of the God of the cross? The person who is really unrighteous, really mired in sin, is actually declared by God to be pure and righteous! Such a truth is incomprehensible to human logic, but makes perfect sense in light of the logic of the cross.

Read the entire article HERE.

What are we waiting for?

I have often joked about my desire to write a book about Heaven entitled "Your Worst Life Now" with a picture of me frowning on the cover. As I study for Sunday's message on Jesus' transfiguration from Luke 9 I cannot help but think that we all have a little bit of Simon Peter in our hearts - We want the glory NOW. "Let's drop all the negative cross talk Jesus and just stay on this mountain!"

Check out this helpful post written by Dan Phillips over at Pyromaniacs.