When the Cross Interrupts the Come Up
We like a comfortable faith. We naturally gravitate toward a faith where the blessings accrue, the success accumulates, and the miracles flow. It is what you might call 'come up' Christianity. We want the Jesus who multiplies the fish and the loaves to feed our hunger. We want the Jesus who stands on the bow of the boat and calms the terrifying storms of our lives. But if we are honest, we don't always know what to do with the Jesus who silently walks up the agonizing hill to Golgotha. The cross interrupts our comfortable narrative. It abruptly stops the 'come up' and forces us to look deeply at the ugly, unvarnished reality of our own brokenness.
When you read the raw Gospel accounts, you see the startling fickleness of human hearts. The very crowds that were shouting 'Hosanna' just days before are suddenly standing around the cross, wagging their heads in disgust. They hurled insults. They mocked His divine authority. They wanted a conquering earthly king who would crush Rome, not a bleeding Savior who would conquer sin. But Jesus wasn't interested in a temporary political victory. He was after the eternal rescue of your soul. He looked right past the mocking, right past the agonizing crown of thorns that pierced His brow, and saw you. He knew that to give you eternal life, He had to walk directly into the valley of the shadow of death.
I think about the rich young ruler who approached Jesus, wanting the kingdom without the sacrifice. He wanted the crown without the cross. We do the exact same thing, don't we? We want the profound peace of God without surrendering our lives to the difficult will of God. But Jesus looked at him, loved him deeply, and gave him the hardest truth he would ever hear. He told him to sell everything, take up his cross, and follow. The cross isn't just a piece of gold jewelry we wear around our necks; it was a brutal instrument of execution. It is the altar where our pride goes to die. You cannot experience the resurrection power of Christ until you are willing to visit the place of a skull and leave your self-sufficiency nailed to the wood.
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 Real Reason Why Jesus Died
Have you ever truly sat in the silence and asked yourself why Jesus died? I don’t mean the sanitized Sunday school answer. I mean the deep, soul-wrestling question of why the spotless Son of God had to be beaten, mocked, stripped, and nailed to a tree. We hear sermons and watch movies about the crucifixion, and sometimes it just makes us feel sentimental or slightly sad. But what happened on that cross goes so far beyond physical agony that a camera could never capture it. From the sixth hour to the ninth hour, a suffocating, terrifying darkness covered the whole land. This wasn't just a weather anomaly. It was the physical manifestation of the spiritual reality taking place. In that darkness, Jesus Christ was drinking the cup of God's righteous wrath against sin.
The religious leaders and the thieves mocked Him, saying, 'He saved others; himself he cannot save. If he be the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him.' They completely missed the point of the Gospel. It wasn't the Roman nails that kept Jesus on that cross. It was His relentless, unstoppable love for you. If He had saved Himself, He could not have saved us. The apostle Paul later captured the staggering beauty of this moment in Romans 5:8, reminding us that God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He didn't wait for us to clean ourselves up. He met us in our darkest, most depraved state.
The absolute heaviest moment of the cross wasn't the piercing of His hands or the bitter vinegar mingled with gall. It was the moment of absolute, terrifying spiritual isolation. For the first time in all of eternity, the Father and the Son experienced a tearing separation. Jesus took on our sin, and a holy God had to turn His face away. That is the true, unspeakable horror of the cross. He was forsaken so that you and I would never, ever have to hear the words, 'Depart from me.' He willingly took the deafening silence of heaven so that we could boldly have the ear of the Father forever.
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 Ultimate Exchange for Your Soul
What actually happens down in your soul when the reality of the cross finally breaks through your stubborn defenses? I'll tell you. The heavy shackles fall off. The paralyzing grip of your past loses its suffocating power. On the cross, that is where your deepest sin is dealt with once and for all. On the cross, that is where your worst mistakes are permanently buried. On the cross, that is where all of your second-guessing, your shame, and your midnight regrets are completely redeemed. The crucifixion wasn't just a tragic end to a beautiful, miraculous life; it was a divine, cosmos-shifting transaction. It was the moment the veil was torn, not just in the earthly temple, but in the heavenly realms.
For centuries, the thick veil in the temple separated the holy presence of God from the brokenness of humanity. Only the high priest could enter, and only once a year, carrying the blood of a temporary sacrifice. It was a constant, heavy reminder that our sin creates an impassable barrier between us and our Creator. But when Jesus breathed His last breath and yielded up the ghost, He didn't just end His earthly suffering—He violently ended our separation. The veil wasn't torn from the bottom up by human hands. It was torn from the top to the bottom by the very hand of God Himself. The message echoing through eternity was loud and clear: Access granted. The way is open. The debt is paid in full.
Even the Roman centurion, a hardened soldier who had likely overseen countless brutal executions, saw how Jesus died and was forced to confess the truth. The cross changes everything because it demands a personal response. You cannot stand at the foot of the cross and remain neutral. You are either the mocker demanding a self-serving sign, or you are the centurion falling to your knees in absolute awe. The cross is the ultimate equalizer of humanity. It doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank, how many terrible mistakes you've made, or how profoundly broken your history is. The ground is completely level at Golgotha.
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 cross still changes everything today because the tomb is undeniably empty tomorrow. Your pain, your secret shame, and your deepest, darkest regrets were nailed to those rough wooden beams so that you could walk out of your own graveyard in the newness of life. You don't have to carry the crushing weight of your past for one more second. Jesus already carried it up the hill. He already paid the ultimate price. Look to the cross, see the Savior who loved you enough to stay there in the dark, and let His finished work be the absolute beginning of your true freedom.