“But seek first the kingdom and His righteousness, all these things shall be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)
The Cross is a beautiful picture of our relationship with God and others. The vertical beam is representative of our relationship with God. It indicates what God has done for us. It pictures God’s supreme love and saving grace, or the unmerited favor of God, that reconciles sinners to Him through Jesus Christ. Relationally, it is to be a continuous flow of communication from God to us and from us back to Him.
The horizontal beam of the cross represents our relationship with each other. Love flowing from us to others, practical living, reminding us to look around and give our lives over to helping and supporting one another.
In Matthew 22:37-39 Jesus gave us the formula for how we are to navigate this thing called life. When asked what the greatest commandment was, He said,
“ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
These two things, loving God, and loving others are inseparably linked, just as the vertical and horizontal beams of the cross. However, if you look at the cross one beam is longer than the other, the vertical. I don’t think this is by accident. It is a visual reminder that we first and foremost need that relationship in place to hold up the other. When it is too short, we fall, even while serving with a heart of compassion and love for others.
Kneeling at the cross, giving our lives over in complete submission to Jesus Christ, is at the centerpiece of our existence as His followers. We must be fervent in prayer (communication with Him) and ever in the Word (God’s Word). But even more than that, we can be in the Word and prayed up, but unless the Word is in us, we are wasting our time. For that to happen, we need the constant filling and transformational power of the Holy Spirit teaching us, convicting us, guiding us…reconstructing who we are. (Romans 12:1-2).
Relationally, possibly some of our issues now at Eastern Hills stem from too much horizontal looking and not enough vertical. That is not to minimize, rationalize, or trivialize what has happened. However, our focus now needs to center on our mutuality at the cross. We have no hope with horizontal relationships if we neglect the vertical! It is vertical first, then horizontal.
In His love,
Pastor Keith