The Power of the Cross by Casting CrownsSample

Our new song called “The Power of the Cross” depicts two realizations. The first realization is that God has rescued believers from the power of sin. Sin doesn’t control us anymore. God has rescued us from the wages of sin. We no longer face the eternal punishment we deserve for willingly rebelling against a holy God.

This song, this thought, celebrates the sudden realization of freedom that God has broken all our chains. It’s a reality upon which we should meditate and internalize personally. I don’t have to live like a slave anymore, and where I once was dead in my trespasses and sin, now I’m alive because of Him. He canceled the record of debt that stood against me with its eternal legal demands. He set it aside and nailed my record to the cross. This grants me freedom to live for him in the midst of a sinful world.

The song’s second realization is equally as important: People everywhere need Jesus. Through my years of church ministry, I’ve seen that many believers get trapped in a cycle of praying, “Forgive me and help me. Forgive me and help me. Forgive me and help me.” They never look past the mirror to see hurting people all around them.

Rather than dwelling in a sickly self-absorbed existence, we believers should remember that most people around us are still trapped in sin like we once were. Yet we now have a story they need to hear. We now have scars they need to see. May we never shirk from telling our story. We have the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us, and we have hope that we never had before. This is the treasure in jars of clay that the Apostle Paul described in 2 Corinthians 4:7-9. We all need to fulfill our own version of the book of Acts, meaning we answer the question of what we do with the people around us once we’re free. We do it to show that the surpassing power of a renewed life belongs to God and not to us. It is for his glory he saved us. It is for his glory that we live.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John detail the gospel of Jesus Christ. But that revelation of the gospel is followed perfectly by the Book of Acts for a reason. It’s the book of actions: The truth that is now in you should come out of you.

It is how we tell a lost world that Jesus Christ disarmed the forces of evil and put them to an open shame, and now we get to tell the story of how he triumphed over them.