Resurrection: Saved from Self-Reliance

“For I had decided to be concerned about nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (1 Corinthians 2:2 NET)

“We preach Christ and Christ crucified.”

I’ve said that phrase more times than I can count. I’ve meant it every time. And yet this Easter, something about it keeps stopping me mid-breath. Not because I doubt it, but because I wonder if I’ve been preaching it to everyone except myself. 

I am in a season of resurrection. I can feel it. There are things God is bringing to life in me and around me that I have waited on for a long time, and I am genuinely, deeply grateful. And yet Holy Spirit has been doing something uncomfortable in my conversations with God this Easter: He keeps bringing me back to the cross before He lets me run toward the empty tomb. As if to say, don’t skip this. Don’t let the relief of resurrection make you forget what it cost, and what it ended.

What it ended, for me, is self-sufficiency. The cross is the final and decisive word against the version of me that believes she can hold it all together on her own. “I no longer live” isn’t just a verse I love: it’s the reality I wholeheartedly believe I must inhabit every single day. And if I’m honest, I’ve been longing for resurrection life while still quietly running on the fuel of my own striving. I’ve been proclaiming the empty tomb from the posture of someone who hasn’t fully put down what died there.

Paul’s insistence in 1 Corinthians 2 used to feel like an odd kind of limitation. This brilliant, learned man narrowing his entire message to one thing. But lately it reads to me like freedom. To know nothing except Christ crucified is to be released from the exhausting work of holding everything else together. The cross doesn’t just save me from sin; it saves me from the crushing weight of my own self-reliance.

And that’s what makes resurrection so full. The longing I have for more of what it promises, and I do long for it deeply, can only be received with open hands. Hands that have put down the striving. Hands that have let the cross do its complete work before reaching for what comes after. 

Holy Spirit’s question to me this Easter has been quieter than I expected: “Will you let it be finished before you ask what comes next?” 

And honestly, I’m still sitting with that one. 

Leslie Hall

For Reflection

“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.” (1 Corinthians 1:18 NIVUK)

• What does it mean for you personally to be “concerned about nothing except Christ crucified”? What does that phrase ask you to put down?

• Where are you longing for the fullness of resurrection life? How is God inviting you to receive it with open hands rather than grasp for it?