Audio

The Pope said the cross was a failure, humanly speaking, and many people are upset. I agree with him, and think there's quite a bit to be learned from this situation.

Transcript

In what way was the cross a failure, if any?

Last week we talked about the fact that the Pope had come to America. He spoke many times while he was here and he got some flack for quite a few of the things he said. However, I think on one of the points that he's been criticized, he's being criticized unfairly. I want us to look at that today because I think there are a lot of good points for us to learn from this whole situation. Here is a quote from Pope Francis, “God sees to the fruits of our labors. And if at times our efforts and works seem to fail and produce no fruit, we need to remember that we are followers of Jesus, and his life, humanly speaking, ended in failure, the failure of the cross.”

Quite a few people have just been open arms at the Pope calling the cross of failure, calling his life, humanly speaking, ending in failure. I think this is a very unfair and uncharitable criticism of the Pope. Now you might be thinking, "Wait a second, weren't you totally criticizing Roman Catholicism last week?" Well, yes I was, for positions they've taken officially in writing that contradict scripture. That's what we did last week. We looked at the official position of the Roman Catholic church and we looked at scripture. There is a large divide there on gospel matters and so many other things that we didn't get into. However, we have to apply the same standard to other people that we apply to ourselves.

We can't just harp on someone and take something they say out of context to try and make a point when there are many other good points to be made about Roman Catholicism. This just simply isn't one of them, because what the Pope said here, understood in context, is correct. Humanly speaking, the cross did end in failure. Think about that for a minute. 

In what way was the cross a failure, humanly speaking (That's an important qualifier that he included)? Well, I think this is exactly what Paul is getting at at 1 Corinthians 1:18 where he says, "The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God."

In verse 22, he says, "For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength." Now some people who have criticized the statement from the Pope have been told of this statement. They say, "Well, foolishness is not the same thing as failure." Well, I think the reason people think it's foolishness is because they think it's a failure. Why are you putting all of your hope in a failure? That is foolishness?

While the Jews and the Gentile comparison here is very specific for a reason we'll look at in a minute, I think this is the case still today. Us talking about the cross comes across as just foolishness. “Why are you putting your trust in something that happened thousands of years ago?” “Why are you putting your faith and basing your life on [as, Bill Nye has recently said] documents that were written thousands of years ago?” That seems like foolishness. We have to remember that there is a very large and important spiritual component to sharing the gospel. I know that generally should go without saying.

But on a podcast about apologetics where we present arguments and information and lines of reasoning, we need to remember that someone can intellectually come to understand the gospel; Th…