God’s answer to the chaos and rebellion of the world is the very last thing to which the world would naturally look, namely, the crucified Christ, whose death, by the inscrutable wisdom of God, is life and blessing to the world.

“But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
Galatians 6:14

Three times in this letter Paul speaks of being crucified with Christ. In the first instance, he says that he himself has been crucified with Christ: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (2:20). In the second place, he says that all believers—those who “belong to Christ Jesus”—have “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24). And, finally, in the concluding chapter, he writes that the world itself has been crucified to him through the cross of Jesus Christ, and indeed he to the world: “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14).

The cross, then, stands at the heart of the apostle’s thinking, both with respect to the Christian life at an individual level, but also on a cosmic scale. The cross, in other words, is not a mere abstraction for the apostle Paul; it is not a theological trinket or a dusty relic confined to the realm of hymns and Sunday school lessons. For Paul, the cross stands at the very centre of the world, bridging the gap between heaven and hell, between this “present evil age” (1:4) and the “new creation” now dawning in the death, resurrection, and reign of Jesus Christ (6:15).

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