Calloused About the Cross?

A shoplifter wrote a department store and said, “I’ve just become a Christian, and I can’t sleep at night because I feel guilty. So here’s a $100 I owe you.” He signed his name, and in a little postscript at the bottom he added, “If I still can’t sleep, I’ll send you the rest.”  A healthy conscience, correctly informed and guided by God and His word, plays a powerful role in our lives. 

As someone noted, it may not always prevent you from doing wrong, but it will surely keep you from enjoying the wrong you do. But the conscience can be calloused. Like skin on the heel or ball of the foot, the human conscience and spiritual and moral heart can become hardened to the point there is no feeling. In the words of Scripture, the conscience can be “seared with a hot iron” (1 Timothy 4:2).  The spiritual heart can become “past feeling” (Ephesians 4:18-19). It is a dangerous and frightful thing when the body loses its ability to feel or even hurt. But even more dangerous is when the conscience becomes calloused and past feeling.

Many were calloused about the cross the day Jesus Christ was crucified.  Matthew writes in his account that Roman soldiers brought Jesus to “a place called Golgotha . . . Then they crucified Him, and divided His garments, casting lots . . . Sitting down, they kept watch over Him there” (Matthew 27:33, 35-36). Many sad things happened that day. Let us focus on the soldiers. Especially stunning is the incongruity and absurdity of the soldiers’ actions. 

Besides Jesus, they had nailed two other men on crosses that same day, one on either side of the Lord (vs 38). And while Matthew did not describe in detail all that is packaged in the word “crucified”, you can take it to the bank his original readers understood completely. They needed no explanation of what death on a cross involved or what it stood for – the ultimate emblem of suffering and shame. Unlike today, people never adorned their bodies or religious buildings with a cross. Death by a cross was the most cruel, ruthless, bloody, and horrible way a man could die. Those crucified were viewed as criminals, on the level with trash to be thrown out. There was no concern, that is zero concern, that they be executed painlessly and humanely and in a kind and sterile environment.

 Before we stop, get this. While God in the flesh is writhing in excruciating physical anguish and torture, bleeding to death a few feet away, the soldiers who crucified Jesus sit down at the foot of Jesus’ cross to roll the dice and gamble for His garments! Just another day at the office for these professional death-dealers. Calloused and completely unfeeling to the human let alone Divine drama in which they are playing a part. Apathetic and totally uninterested in Christ and what is happening on the cross.

Their only possible excuse was ignorance of Who and Whose Jesus was.  How could soldiers be so calloused as to gamble at the foot of any cross, let alone the cross that holds the Savior of the world? Even more alarming, how could any Christian be calloused about the cross? Unfeeling and unmoved in worship to Him? Casual and always dry-eyed at the Lord’s Table where He is remembered? Uninterested as His gospel is preached?

Texting, talking, walking the halls and otherwise unplugged in worship.  Satisfied to sit on a pew instead of getting involved in serving? Christians calloused to the cross? May it never be so. 

 –Dan Gulley