Being Saved (1Cor 1:18)

We Christians would truly like to be the kind of people for whom the cross is no longer necessary. I mean, wouldn't it be nice if we could simply please God? Shouldn't He have designed things so that, once we believed, we could simply graduate to deeds of love and grace and power, victory upon victory. Long after we've become Jesus-followers, we are still more like the disciples at the beginning of their journey with Jesus--awed by this gifted teacher and miracle worker, willing to follow him, eager to do what he does, but essentially oblivious to the necessity of the cross--than like, say, these same men as we see them in the Books of Acts, who know that everything that had happened was in fact the plan of God. They had watched the good teacher expire on the "scandalous tree," and now they knew why. For these men, the lesson was never lost on them. It never got old or inappropriate.

The learning experience of the disciple is really just this--learning that the cross of Christ is never merely a memento, never simply a landmark event of the past. Instead, it towers over our present moment, eternally relevant, eternally sufficient. Blessed are the poor in spirit, even those that are "saved," for they shall remember that they are still in need of "being saved."