Is the cross a package deal? It certainly is, and people these days really put a lot of emphasis on that. It is said that if you are in Christ, you are a new creation. Plain and simple. Top to bottom. That’s the end of the old you. The problem is, the cross is a really big package, while many these days portray it as a small package we get one day from Fed-Ex laid on our doorstep. It is portrayed as a little package, easy to open, and it brings an end to all things past upon opening.

By experience alone, we can all—if we’re honest—testify that this just isn’t so. I think we can all agree that we serve a God that is infinitely vast. And I think we can all agree that we are in contrast, very limited. Even after we have had our first encounter with the life giving power of the death we taste at the cross. 

Greater Levels Within The Package

This being so, how are we going to, in a moment’s time, taste all the riches of God’s glory? We don’t. We are brought from season to season into one glory, then a greater. How does this happen? Simply put, we lay more and more of ourselves on God’s alter and allow his double edged sword (His Word) to divide our soul and spirit more and more, purifying our souls (mind, will, and emotions) while bringing life to the spirit. All of this after delivering greater blows of death to the flesh.

With each of these occurrences, we die a little deeper carnally, and shine a little brighter spiritually. Curses fall off, demons flee and strongholds crumble. These are all little parts, passages and doorways in this gigantic package we call salvation, or the cross, or Calvary. The work of the cross was meant for far more than just the cleansing of sin. If we think of it as a place of atonement and nothing more, then we are in for a shallow experience. 

It Takes A Life Time

Opening the package Jesus delivered to us at Calvary is a lifetime proposition. We should never be content to languish spiritually when there is always more life to be gained and deeper deaths to be died. In fact, I suspect languishing for very long is really not an option anyway. Either we head one direction or the other. Evil is a restless force. God’s Kingdom is always moving. Neither holds still and we don’t either since we are made to be vessels for one or the other. If we are not discovering new levels in this large package we’ve begun to open, we might lose our appreciation of it altogether, and begin backsliding. 

So let’s embrace this spiritual walk as a journey instead of a sprint. And the package of salvation as being God-sized, not the size of man’s imagination. If we do, we will unlock more treasures than we ever imagined possible. And He will do things beyond all we can ask or imagine.