The Dishonesty Of The Crucifix
Because the point of this article is Catholics should not worship the image of Jesus dying on the cross of Calvary, I am not including a picture of it. I am a former Roman Catholic.
This is from a PDF file on LutheranLibrary.org. It was published by The Converted Catholic Magazine which was edited by former Catholic priest Leo Herbert Lehmann.
BETWEEN the two great declarations of the Lord’s death and resurrection is the explicit statement: “He was buried.” From then on we know not Christ after the flesh — “Yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh,” says Paul, “yet now henceforth know we Him no more.” The importance of this is that, if Christ must still be contemplated on the cross, and still in His place of sacrifice, then our sins also remain upon us; Christ’s work is unfinished.
This is what the Roman Catholic church would have us believe, since an unfinished work of Christ is the only excuse for the continuance of its priesthood and the baneful control it exerts over the souls of millions. Priests and the sacrifice they falsely offer daily for the sins of men, it teaches, are necessary to make up for the imperfectness of the redemptive work of Christ. For, if the saving work of Christ is perfect and complete, then the Roman priesthood has no reason for existence.
But the Gospel fact is that He was buried. The body of death is thus forever put out of sight, and with that body of death went all our sins. Only profane and impious men would dare make the sign of death the adored symbol of salvation and life.
How dishonest is the crucifix! It has become an idol and a snare to millions, a fetish and a relic of an apostate Christendom, diverting men’s minds from light to darkness, from life to death. So it happened to the serpent of brass that Moses once lifted up as a promise in the wilderness, but which the great King Hezekiah long after was forced to break in pieces because it, too, had become an idol and a snare to his people.
Christ in glory is the only object of the true Christian’s contemplation, adoration and affection — the victorious, life-giving, all-powerful Saviour and only High Priest: “Who needeth not daily, as those other priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself.” (Heb. 7:27)
By beholding and contemplating, not a dead or dying Christ, but this powerful, living Saviour, we are changed into the same image of Him, from glory unto glory.
