“To take up your cross means to associate yourself with Christ and to share His rejection. It means you take a stand for Christ even though people make fun of you, persecute you—or even kill you!”
“God undertook the most dramatic rescue operation in cosmic history. He determined to save the human race from self-destruction, and He sent His Son Jesus Christ to salvage and redeem them. The work of man’s redemption was accomplished at the cross.”
“Two thousand years ago God invited a morally corrupt world to the foot of the cross. There God held your sins and mine to the flames until every last vestige of our guilt was consumed.”
“It was not the people or the Roman soldiers who put [Jesus] on the cross—it was your sins and my sins that made it necessary for Him to volunteer his death.”
“It has been said there was a cross in the heart of God long before the cross was erected at Calvary. As we think about it we will be overwhelmed at the wonder and greatness of His love for us.”
“Great crowds followed our Lord . . . as He healed the sick, raised the dead, and fed the hungry. However, the moment He started talking about the cross . . . “many . . . no longer followed him” (John 6:66 NIV).”
“When Jesus hung on the cross, a great unseen cosmic battle raged in the heavens—and in the end, Christ triumphed over all the forces of evil and death and hell.”
“One-third of Matthew . . . one-third of Mark . . . one-fourth of Luke, and one-half of John are given to [Christ’s] death . . .Jesus came for the express purpose of dying for sinners. When He left heaven, He knew He was going to the cross.”