The Cross and Its Message

In a small village stood a chapel upon whose arch were inscribed the words, ‘We preach Christ crucified’, that all who entered the chapel or stood outside might understand the purpose for which the meeting-room had been built. For years, faithful men preached there and presented a Crucified Savior as the only ground of salvation. But as those generations passed, there arose a generation that considered the cross and its Message ‘the gospel of the shambles’ and began to preach salvation by Christ’s example, without the necessity of His sacrificial death on the cross.

Over time, a little vine made its way up the side of the archway and covered the final word of the inscription. Now it read, ‘We preach Christ’ and so they did but not Christ crucified. After some time, some asked why the sermons should be confined to Christ and the teachings of the Bible, so the preachers began to give discourses on the social gospel, politics and moral disarmament without Christ. And the little vine crept along a little further and wiped out the third word of the inscription so that it read simply, ‘We preach’. Man’s philosophies and social conditions had taken the place of Christ’s Gospel.

How jealous we should be of knowing nothing among our hearers but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, 1 Cor. 1:18-24; 2:2.