The cross has long being a symbol of Christianity, in the same way that a giant ‘M’ has being the symbol of burgers. But is this symbolism correct. I can recall very few churches I have visited or attended where there is not a giant wooden cross on the wall, or a wooden cross on stage. But my question here is whether the ‘cross’ symbol warrants all the attention that we give it. The obvious question is ‘no’; the attention should be on Christ who died on the cross; his method of death is irrelevant and merely a means to an end of dying for our sins so that we can undeservedly spend eternal life with God in glory. But what does the bible say about the cross and did its point get blown out of proportion. The first section that mentions the cross, in a symbolic sense, is in the gospels where Jesus says:

Matthew 16:24

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Here Jesus is saying that what we do is going to be painful, as painful as execution upon a cross. When he says this, Jesus is yet to die on the cross, and there’s nothing to indicate that he know that the cross is the method in which he will die. It was culturally relevant that the robbers and thieves and those condemned to die would be paraded through the streets, carrying the cross on their shoulders upon which they would hang. The modern equivalent would be a prisoner being paraded through the streets of the city, carrying the poison which would cause him to die by lethal injection. But the crosses were quite large pieces of wood. Irrelevant of their exact shape (whether a ‘t’ shape or just a single beam), they were not easy to carry. Jesus is saying that the cross is a burden that is not easy to carry, but is something that the disciples, and by extension us as Christians, will need to carry; heavy burdens and afflictions for the sake of the gospel.

The next instances of the cross being used symbolically come in Paul’s epistles. To the church in Corinthians he writes:

1 Corinthians 17-18

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

Here is the first time in the bible that the crucifixion is referred to explicitly as the fulfillment of the gospel. The ‘message of the cross’ is the gospel; the Jesus came down the earth to die in place of our eternal death as a result of our sinful human nature. And so I would guess that this verse is what really cemented the symbol of the cross as the symbol of Christianity, as Christianity is built wholly and solely upon the idea of the gospel, and our need and desire to share the gospel to the ends of the earth. In almost all the contexts in which the ‘cross’ is mentioned in the epistles, it could be replaced with the word ‘gospel’ and have the exact same meaning.

To conclude then, the purpose of the symbol of the cross is to be a reminder of the gospel of Jesus and all he has done, but without this reminder, a cross is just two lines running perpendicular to each other.

It’s not about the cross; It’s not about the tree.
It’s not about the way he died but what he did for me.
It’s all about the cross! And that I’ve been set free!
Now I can live and tell the world; “In glory, I will be!”