Defined as the essential point requiring a resolution or resolving an outcome. Crux is latin for Cross. Every time we use or hear hear this phrase we’re referencing the essential point of God’s plan for the world that demands a resolution from each of us.  

What do you emphasize as the essential point of your spiritual life? When it comes to spirituality there’s a few things I think I’ve made the CRUX instead of the cross:

Human performance. Believing God’s favor and forgiveness can be earned or is merited by human goodness or completing a list of religious deeds. I go to church, put money in the plate, give intellectual assent to the truths of the Bible, help with VBS, AND I don’t cuss, I buy the pastor a Christmas present, don’t watch “R” raided movies unless they’re about God, participate in canned food drives, help with D-Now weekend, give to the building program, participate in Boycotts of stores that support unbiblical agendas. I’ve had similar lists of things that are not bad, but are equal to the best of human GOODNESS. And the religious Pharisees of the New Testament could point to such list. But to rely on and make your list, your performance THE CRUX is to essentially claim that the death of Jesus on the cross was essentially unnecessary or insufficient. That’s what the Pharisees claimed as well.

Here’s the CRUX: If I could do anything to earn my way to God, then Jesus would have never had to die. He died because of our inability to earn or work or perform our way to heaven. The cross stands as a reminder of our inability and the impossibility of getting to God on our own. It speaks to the limitation of human goodness. It’s righteousness that’s required for a relationship with God. And righteousness is made available as a gift from God, because of Christ’s death on the Cross.

“He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” 2 Corinthians 5:21.

Don’t trust anything but Christ and what he accomplished for you at the cross.

Bridge Church is in the midst of a series of sermons on the Cross called The Crux. Gather with us Sunday’s, 10:30am at the West St. Tammany YMCA.