Why do Christians Sing about the Cross?

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,
The emblem of suffering and shame;
And I love that old cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain.

Refrain

So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross,
Till my trophies at last I lay down;
I will cling to the old rugged cross,
And exchange it some day for a crown.

O that old rugged cross, so despised by the world,
Has a wondrous attraction for me;
For the dear Lamb of God left His glory above
To bear it to dark Calvary.

Refrain

In that old rugged cross, stained with blood so divine,
A wondrous beauty I see,
For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died,
To pardon and sanctify me.

Refrain

To the old rugged cross I will ever be true;
Its shame and reproach gladly bear;
Then He’ll call me some day to my home far away,
Where His glory forever I’ll share.

A few weeks ago in morning worship the congregation sang that old favorite hymn, The Old Rugged Cross.  As I was singing I was reminded of the great difference between the world and the Christian in regard to the cross.   To the Christian, the cross is everything: it “has a wondrous attraction,” a “wondrous beauty,” he “loves” it, “cherishes” it, “will cling to” it, “ever be true” to it, and “its shame and reproach gladly bear.”  In contrast, to the world, it is “the emblem of suffering and shame,” “so despised,” and the object of “shame and reproach.”  Why the great difference?   Let’s explore this a little, beginning with the reaction of the world.

There are a number of worldly reactions to the cross, from the superficially sentimental pitying of the poor unjustly treated Jesus to the openly hostile.  Today let us consider the one that is most often mentioned both in scripture and in the hymn: offense.  It is despised and reproached as a thing of shame, giving “offence.”  Let’s face it, the cross is a shameful thing.  It was first of all the excruciating (that is where the word comes from) instrument of execution, presumably the end of a depraved, guilty and worthless life, and designed to demonstrate this to the max.  The person hanging here is cursed by God, condemned by man and worthy of contempt, pain, and death.  From the law of Moses on, “cursed is every man who hangs from a tree,” and no matter what the religion of the district, the Roman cross was well designed to give the impression that here hangs one who is forsaken by his god, stricken, smitten and afflicted” and despised by the state. 

However, the reaction of the world against the cross of Christ, the “offence of the cross,” is something else, for the cross does not say “Christians worship a criminal,” but “here is the great issue between man and his Creator.”  On the one hand, the cross is the rejection of the heaven-given Son, the representative of God.  In it, all mankind says to God, “We will not have this man to rule over us!”  “We reject your Sovereignty, we reject your Lordship. We reject your claim to command and judge us.”  It is the fruit of that depraved resolve voiced in the second Psalm “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.’”  That is what the crucifixion really is from humanity’s side-- a guilt-incurring act of ultimate defiance against the Creator.   We recoil at that, thinking we are not guilty of that, but then we are hit with the even greater offence of the cross when we understand the implication of its true message and purpose from God’s side: the cross says to all men everywhere, “You don’t have what it takes.  You’re not good enough.”  The cross is a proclamation that apart from it, apart from the cross-death of no less than God-incarnate as their substitute, men, even the best of men, the noblest, most altruistic, bravest, most generous, and loving of men deserve to suffer forever in hell.    That is the historic Christian proclamation.  That is the offence of the cross.  The cross proclaims, “You are a sinner.  Your sin, as it is rebellion against your infinitely worthy Creator is such a great, a monstrous, evil that it fully merits eternal damnation.  God knows your heart, your innermost thoughts, your motives, every moment of your life, and here is the execution of His judgement upon it.  You are condemned as guilty and utterly unable to do anything to save yourself.”  That’s what the cross means to the world. 

How, then, can so obscene and so insulting and so condemning a thing be such a “wondrous beauty” to the believer?   To be honest, no brief answer can be given.  It has been the theme of millennia of Psalms and hymns and numberless prayers and sermons, as men have tried to “survey” its wonders and labored to express the inexpressible, but the essence of it is expressed in a few lines of this hymn.  The cross proclaims God’s judgement against my sin—in another!  Here are the wondrous joyful tidings of the gospel: “on that old cross Jesus suffered and died to pardon and sanctify me.”  The cross is nothing less than the intervention of God the Son, who poetically “left His glory above” by uniting Himself with fallen man, taking on genuine human nature, his soul and flesh and blood, in such a wondrous union with His eternal divine person that it can rightly be said that his blood, no different than any other human blood, was the “blood of God,” or, as the song says, “blood so divine.”  In this wondrous person, he lived as man the perfect God-pleasing life, always identifying Himself with a people given to Him by the Father before the world began, “a world of lost sinners,” carrying their sin as the “dear Lamb of God” all His life until  that day when all our ink-black sin and all God’s righteous wrath would meet on “dark Calvary,” and He would offer a sacrifice sufficient to pardon and perfect forever all who by the same grace are brought to see its wondrous beauty and believe.   These, who are inwardly changed, regenerated, so that they see its wondrous beauty, conversely esteem the world’s reproach as nothing, and why they will persevere in faith, being “ever true,” suffering for Christ’s sake, until, as promised, He returns to take them where He is, where they will behold His glory forever. 

This is why the believer glories in that which is despised by the world.  He says, “I am crucified with Christ;” meaning, “With all the damnable sin and God-offensive filth of my soul, my heart, my life—all that is “I”—I have been regarded by God as united with His Son and on the cross the most perfect, strict, unassailable justice of God has been fully executed upon Him on account of me.  The cross leaves nothing left for me to pay—Jesus paid it all.  “Nevertheless I live.”  Now, He who is resurrected from the dead and raised to heaven is my life, indwelling me by His Holy Spirit, mighty to reign in me and over all things in the universe to bring me at last to His glory, conformed to Him, saved by His precious blood.    

That is why I sing about the cross.