When the Cross Interrupts the 'Come Up'
We love a good success story. We love the part of our faith journey where the blessings are flowing, the prayers are being answered, and the path ahead looks clear and bright. It is incredibly easy to follow Jesus when He is multiplying the loaves, calming the violent storms, and healing the sick. We want what we might call the 'come up'—that season where the benefits of faith are accruing and everything feels victorious. But what happens when the narrative suddenly shifts? What happens when the path you thought was leading to a crown suddenly leads straight to Golgotha?
Jesus never sold us a sanitized, comfortable version of faith. He didn't promise an uninterrupted climb to the top of the cultural ladder. When He looked at the rich young ruler—a man who had everything going for him, a man experiencing the ultimate 'come up'—He didn't offer him a five-step plan for more prosperity. He loved him too much for that. He loved him enough to tell him the devastating, beautiful truth. He invited him into something deeper, something that required letting go of the illusion of control and stepping into a life of absolute surrender.
To understand the true power of the gospel, we have to stop looking at the cross as just a decorative piece of jewelry. We have to see it as the ultimate disruption to our self-sufficiency. The cross interrupts our pride. It demands our complete surrender. If you are in a season where your plans have shattered, where the success you were building has suddenly turned into a devastating letdown, you are not abandoned. You are standing exactly where Jesus stood. He is inviting you to trade your temporary treasures for eternal freedom.
Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.— Mark 10:21, KJV
The Darkness We Desperately Try to Avoid
I have heard the sermons and watched the movies about Calvary. Sometimes they make you feel incredibly sentimental, and sometimes the sheer brutality of it makes you feel sick. But what really happened beyond the crown of thorns that marked His brow? What happened beyond the sign that Pilate put above Him to mock Him? We have to ask ourselves the hardest question of our faith: exactly why Jesus died in such a visceral, humiliating, and agonizing way.
He didn't just die to be a moral example. He died to rescue us from the absolute darkness of our own human condition. In His final hours, the sky went pitch black from the sixth hour to the ninth hour. That physical darkness over the land was just a mirror of the crushing spiritual weight He was carrying. On the cross, that is where my sin is. On the cross, that is where my mistakes, my secret addictions, and my deepest regrets are nailed. He took the full, unfiltered force of separation from the Father so that you and I would never have to feel the permanence of that void.
If you are sitting in the dark right now, feeling entirely abandoned by God, wondering if your mistakes have finally disqualified you from His grace, listen to the agonizing cry of your Savior. He entered the darkest, most isolated place in the human experience. He felt the crushing, suffocating weight of total abandonment. He didn't shout a triumphant slogan; He screamed a question of pure agony. He knows exactly where you are, and He went into that darkness so He could pull you out of yours.
And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?— Matthew 27:46, KJV
The Insult That Announced Our Victory
The religious leaders of the day stood at the foot of the cross and mocked Him. They wagged their heads, hurled insults, and laughed at His apparent defeat. They shouted, 'He saved others; himself he cannot save.' They thought it was a profound insult, a definitive proof that He was a fraud. But sometimes the insults people will say about you are the greatest compliment they can give you. They were absolutely right: He could not save Himself and save us at the same time. It wasn't the iron nails that kept Him fastened to that wood; it was an unbreakable, relentless love for you.
This is the heartbeat of the gospel. This is the radical, offensive grace that the Apostle Paul later wrote about in Romans 5:8. God didn't wait for us to clean up our act. He didn't wait for us to get our theology straight, our marriages fixed, or our addictions conquered. The scripture says, 'But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' That is the truth that shatters every religious checklist you've ever been handed. The cross is God's definitive, bloody proof that you are loved at your absolute worst.
When Jesus finally breathed His last breath, the religious system of earning your way to God was quite literally torn apart. The veil of the temple—the massive, heavy curtain that separated a holy God from a broken humanity—was violently ripped in two. But notice the detail: it was torn from the top to the bottom. Not from the bottom up, as if mankind had finally earned his way into the presence of God. It was torn from the top down. God broke out. He removed the barrier forever. The access is completely open, and the debt is entirely paid.
And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.— Mark 15:37-38, KJV
The Ripped Veil and the Final Verdict
The cross is not just a tragic event in ancient history; it is a present-day reality that speaks a new verdict over your life right now. It is the place where the impossible becomes undeniably possible. The disciples watched their entire world collapse on a Friday afternoon. They watched their hope bleed out on a Roman execution rack. But they didn't yet know that the grave was only a temporary holding cell. They didn't yet know that the cross was not a symbol of their defeat, but the very instrument of their eternal liberation.
We live on this side of the resurrection, yet we so often still live like we are trapped in the despair of Friday afternoon. We carry the heavy, suffocating burdens of our past. We let our failures, our divorces, and our bankruptcies dictate our future. But the cross demands a different verdict. When the Roman centurion stood watching Jesus die, witnessing the earth-shaking power of His final, yielded breath, he couldn't deny what he was seeing. He saw through the blood, the mocking, and the shame, and he recognized the divine reality in front of him.
Your shame has no authority here anymore. Your past does not get the final word over your destiny. The cross changes everything because it declares that your debt is canceled, your chains are broken, and your life is safely hidden in Christ. You do not have to earn this love. You do not have to perform for it. You just have to stand at the foot of the cross, look up at the Savior who stayed there for you, and let His finished work be enough.
And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.— Mark 15:39, KJV
The cross is not a memorial of a tragedy; it is the birthplace of your freedom. Whatever you are carrying today—whatever grief is heavy on your chest, whatever secret sin is gnawing at your soul, whatever quiet despair wakes you up at 3 AM—bring it to Golgotha. Leave it at the place of a skull. The King of the Jews gave up His ghost so that you could finally breathe. He was numbered with the transgressors so you could be numbered with the saints. The veil is torn. The way is open. Step out of your shame and walk through it.