A New Creation

Holy Cross Day, Part Two

For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!

— Galatians 6

He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death.

— Philippians 2

Tomorrow is Holy Cross Day, observed each year on September 14. Yesterday we considered one of the great reversals represented by this unusual feast: the Cross was intended as an instrument of humiliation, but after Easter it became an emblem of victory. What appeared to be shame became glory; what appeared to be death became the way to life.

Today's two Epistle readings give us another way of looking at that reversal.

Paul writes to the Galatians, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!” That would have been a startling statement. Circumcision was not some insignificant custom that Paul casually decided had become old-fashioned. It was an ancient sign of God's covenant with Israel. Yet Paul says that the argument over who is circumcised and who isn't has been overtaken by something much bigger.

A new creation is everything.

That helps me when I encounter some of the difficult pictures of God in the Old Testament. There are passages involving warfare, severe punishments, elaborate laws and practices that can seem brutal to twenty-first-century readers. Critics of Christianity sometimes point to these passages and ask how Christians can worship such a God.

It's a fair question. Christians shouldn't pretend those passages aren't there.

But neither should we stop the biblical story there.

Human beings wanted kings, laws, boundaries and systems for deciding who was in and who was out. Much of the biblical story takes place within that very human world. Then comes Christ, and something astonishing happens. Paul doesn't say that none of the old story mattered. He says something bigger has now happened. The categories by which people once defined themselves no longer have the last word.

There is a new creation.

Then Philippians tells us what its King looks like.

“He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death.”

That's quite a King.

Holy Cross Day therefore isn't merely a celebration of an object upon which Jesus died. The Cross tells us something about the character of the new creation. Its Lord does not demonstrate greatness by demanding that everybody else bow while He remains safely above them. He becomes a servant. He humbles Himself. He gives Himself away, even to the point of death.

I've been encountering a lot of religious argument online lately, including some ridicule of Christianity. It's tempting to answer ridicule with ridicule. If someone calls my beliefs foolish, I can immediately begin assembling evidence that the other person's beliefs are even more foolish.

But we've been reading Scripture all week, and by now I ought to know better.

Paul told us to welcome rather than quarrel. Jesus told us to close the ledger and forgive again. And now, on the eve of Holy Cross Day, Philippians points toward Christ and says: Look at Him.

Humility.

That means the question isn't whether Christians can win an argument about which worldview produces the nicest people. Christians fail at humility spectacularly sometimes. I certainly do. The more important question is whether the Christ I claim to follow is producing anything new in me.

Am I becoming more humble? More willing to listen? Less interested in humiliating an opponent? More willing to serve someone who disagrees with me?

Because Christianity makes an extraordinary claim. It says that something genuinely new entered the human story through Christ. Old divisions do not get the final word. Old scores do not have to be settled. Old ways of measuring greatness can be overturned.

Tomorrow we lift up the Cross.

Perhaps before we do, we should remember what kind of victory it represents.

Not the victory of somebody who finally defeated His enemies in an argument.

The victory of One who humbled Himself enough to die for them.

That really would be a new creation.

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