Justin Bieber, The Cross, Evangelicalism, and God's Grace

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 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.

Paul gloried only in the cross, not in himself or his works.  He addresses that in Galatians.  Then the cross confronts a different problem in Philippians.  "The enemies of the Christ of Christ" have "their belly" as God, "their shame" is their "glory," and they "mind earthly things."  This is another problem, a kind of left winged legalism.  The cross makes a person at home in heaven, not at home on earth.

 

"The cross" as a symbol of Christianity contrasts with the Judaizers of Galatia and the libertines of Philippi.  It saves and does so by making someone holy.  The cross doesn't ward away vampires, giving a supernatural protection to someone while he sins and promotes sin.  "The cross," the actual cross, with its saving power and holy identification should not hang in the visible cleavage between a woman's breasts. It didn't belong in Bieber's swimming pool with that music, those women, and with him either.  He wraps himself in the cross and so profanes and distorts it.

 

Perhaps someone convinced Bieber or he deceives himself into thinking that the cross accords with his activities.  "Christians can do this; they have the cross."  The grace characterized by the cross defeats the sin problem, not indulges and promotes it.

 

The Apostle Paul also directs attention to the cross in Colossians 2:13-15:

13 And you, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; 14 Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; 15 And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

The cross was a means of separation from sin, the sin nailed to it, spoiling principalities and powers.  The principalities and powers, the forces of Satan as the prince of this world system, want more sinning.   The cross provides triumph over sin, not participation in, cooperation with, and association with sin.  As Revelation 12:11 says, the saints overcome Satan by the blood of the Lamb.  On the cross, He crushed the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15), not assisted the serpent in further temptation and lust.  Those justified through the cross of Christ were buried with Him in His death to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).

 

The activities of Bieber's pool video are not the newness of life.  Old things did not pass away nor all things become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).  The cross in Galatians delivers from the tyranny of the law. The cross in Philippians delivers from both the tyranny of the flesh and of the world.  The tyranny of the flesh and the world, however, badly and sadly harmonizes with contemporary evangelicalism today.  This contradicts the cross.  Many become, as Paul wrote, the enemies of the cross of Christ.