Return to the Cross When the Darkness is Great
For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.
2 Tim. 4:3-4
Sin is selfishness and rebellion caused by our choices and by being a descendant of Adam. Sin turns the world upside down: it says that everyone and everything should revolve around our desires, needs, and wants. Sin releases darkness: a darkness that blankets our soul, spirit, and mind with doubt and discouragement. Sin spreads its darkness beyond ourselves to our families, friends, and associates. Sin affects others making life harder for them to enjoy Christ and trust in his goodness.
The Cross of Christ is the remedy to sin’s darkness. The Cross startles us with sin’s treachery and tragedy, yet the Cross awakens us out of that blackened stupor by stunning our spiritual sensibilities with God’s grace and love. At the Cross, the darkness is rolled back, our sin is forgiven, our spirits are healed, and enabling grace is dispensed for living a holy life.
The Cross of Christ is the light that will illuminate the present darkness. We need a fresh revelation of sin, for it is through sin that we have lost our way, and it is through Christ’s death on the Cross that we are won back and restored to God. See I Peter 3:18, “Christ . . . hath once suffered for sins . . . that He might bring us to God.” The reason why many lose the sense of the sinfulness of sin is that they get away from the reality of Christ’s atoning death, for it is only at the Cross that we get a vision of the depths and misery of sin.
Watchman Nee, “Back to the Cross,” The Old Paths Magazine (Issue 17, July 2007), 3.