CRUCIFIXION

“God has stripped me of my honor  and removed the crown from my head.” (19:9) Job’s language in Chapter 19 is full of haunting premonitions of Christ’s crucifixion: “[God’s] anger burns against me; he counts me among his enemies” (v. 11); “My friends have forgotten me” (v. 14); “I am loathsome to my own brothers” (v. 17); “Those I love have turned against me” (v. 19); “I am nothing but skin and bones” (v. 20).

Not until fairly late in His ministry did Jesus begin to impart to His disciples the hard message of His impending death. Even then they could not grasp it. While Christians today have little trouble accepting the fact of their Lord’s death on a cross, it remains a tall order for us to let the full impact of that death be felt in our daily lives. This part of the good news we really do not want to hear. In fact we do everything we can to shut our minds against it, and of all our sophisticated defenses, probably the subtlest and most effective is the pretense that we already know all about the cross, when really we have barely glimpsed it.

How else to explain the appalling casualness with which the cross of Christ is treated today? Theologies of all shapes and sizes file reverently before the cross, tipping their hats and paying it lip-service, only to go running on ahead to deal with what they claim to be the “real” issues. Paul wrote, “As I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18). Here he was speaking not of blatant unbelievers but of church people. He was warning the church against the very real danger of “the cross of Christ being emptied of its power” (1 Cor. 1:17).

Paul knew that in the church’s zeal to be relevant and exciting, the cross can get shouldered aside. We can get too accustomed to this frozen icon; we grow anesthetized to it. However, perhaps it is not so easy to shoulder our way past the towering, inscrutable agony of a figure like Job. That the Son of God should be tortured to death as a ransom for all mankind—well, maybe that is God’s business. But that the divine will might also ordain excruciating suffering for a common person such as Job, or for you or for me—this thought is not so easy to theologize our way around.

Naturally it is not wrong to expect faith in Christ to bring us untold blessings and a sense of well-being. But it is wrong to think there can ever be a shortcut to these treasures—that is, that there is any way to fulfillment other than the way of the cross. If we make a concerted effort to avoid all unpleasantness in our lives, it is possible that we might, for a little while, fool ourselves into thinking that we have gained the upper hand over suffering. But really all that has happened is that our pain has gone underground, and it is bound to crop up again in some other form. For the sole route to Heaven is the cross, and if we think we know a shortcut we will only find ourselves going the long way around in the end. Jesus’ parable of the “narrow gate” is really a parable of the “narrow gate and narrow road”: not only is there a gate to be entered, but a road to travel—“the narrow road that leads to life” (Matt. 7:13-14). This narrow road is the via dolorosa, the path of the cross. Jesus did not rise above suffering; He went right through it.

At the onset of his ordeal Job said, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.” His entire ensuing struggle centers around the question of what happens to a person’s faith when the Lord takes away. So: take away material prosperity; take away emotional highs; take away miracles and healing; take away fellowship with other believers; take away church; take away all opportunity for service; take away assurance of salvation; take away the peace and joy of the Holy Spirit . . . Yes! Take it all, all, far, far away. And what is left?

Tragically, for many believers there would be nothing left. For does our faith really go that deep? Or do we, in the final analysis, have a cross-less Christianity? Unless the simple gospel has center-place in our faith, it has no place at all. Unless the cross is everything, it is nothing.

Mason, M. (2002). The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything. Crossway.