I am convinced we create vocabulary to communicate with insiders.

Have you ever listened to a doctor describe what’s wrong with your body? They naively believe communication is taking place.

“Sure, doc; just last evening I was talking with the guys over coffee about Calcaneovalgus, Talipes Calcaneus, and Talipes Equinovarus.”

Hermeneutics is a professorial inside word to describe a method or principle of Biblical interpretation. Although the word’s first known use was in 1737, I find it an important concept for understanding my Bible and the Church.

My movement heritage is with a group of folks who locked in on a Hermeneutic codified by Thomas Campbell. According to Thomas, Bible readers were to look for direct commands, apostolic examples, and necessary inferences.

The first two seem pretty upfront, while necessary inference basically suggested if you were riding in a chariot, then there must be a horse—even though not mentioned in the Biblical story.

Certainly, I find these principles helpful, but one could follow them and miss Jesus.

At university I learned to look for context, how a subject was treated in the Old Testament, The New Testament, and throughout the history of the church.

Once again, helpful but still it seems to me not to focus in on the heart of God’s message.

There is a more accurate way to interpret Scripture and to apply God’s message to my life. I seldom see it discussed. Simple—yet demanding—there is no greater hermeneutic tool than the cross.

It helps me know how to do life. It shows me how to be the sort of husband and father I want to be. It gives me all of the principles needed to relate to others. With my focus on the cross, I will know how to worship, how to belong to Jesus and His family.

The cross is the focal point of both Scripture and history. To miss it is to miss living while on earth and to miss eternity with the God of creation.

It is through the cross event I find forgiveness, love, healing, sacrifice, obedience, goodness, life, death, and resurrection. By seeing Jesus move toward the cross, relate to His accusers, endure the crucifixion, conquer death, and empower His church, I begin to understand what God wants for me. He wants resurrection to be reality in my life.

I struggle for the vocabulary to express what I see to be the crux of living within the church of Jesus. It has to do with the cross. If we as God’s children could only see life through the cross, criticism would cease, unity would increase, lost people would take notice, joy would increase, and God would receive glory.

I think the Godhead would smile.

Stay tuned. – Gary J. Sorrells – On Cross Church