This morning I was sitting somewhere, not by my choice, that had a television with a Justin Bieber music video playing.  I couldn’t understand the lyrics, but I could see some of the action of the video.  I knew it was Justin Bieber.  He stood in a gigantic shallow swimming pool, about two and a half feet deep.  He was wearing white shorts, a dark t-shirt.  Behind him were dozens of women, filling the entire pool, wearing tight, tiny shorts and form-fitting halter tops.  They danced in sync with one another, very sexually.

Bieber drew my attention with a cross he wore.  As he moved in his sensual manner, jerking and twisting in the swimming pool, the cross flung and hopped all around, hanging around his neck.  Justin Bieber made the cross, the cross, a feature of his video.  He associated the cross with all the other lurid features of his production.  This typifies modern evangelicalism.

The two words together, “the cross,” appear eighteen times in the New Testament.  Sometimes it speaks of the actual cross, such as Matthew 27:40, “If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross,” which is the Gospel usage in Matthew through John.  Other times, the Apostle Paul often uses it as a symbol, as in 1 Corinthians 1:17-18:

For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.  For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

Paul wraps up his argument for Galatians by using “the cross” in Galatians 6:12 and then verse 14:

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

The Apostle Paul talks about the enemies of the cross of Christ in Philippians 3:18-21:

18 (For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: 19 Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) 20 For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: 21 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.