Philippians 3:18 “For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.”

Our worldview is the set of beliefs through which we interpret and understand reality. For the Christian, nothing influences our worldview more than the cross of Jesus Christ. The cross tells me that I’m a sinner. More than that, I am so lost and helpless in my sin that there is nothing I can do to make it up to God. Nothing I can do will win his approval or restore our broken relationship.

This sin infects everything I do so thoroughly that it taints all my behavior. I have an inbred selfishness so much a part of me that I am generally unaware of its place in my thinking and choosing. The same goes for everyone else as well.

The cross is God’s radical solution for this problem. If I could somehow pay for my own sins, if I could fix myself, I wouldn’t need the cross. But since I can’t, Jesus volunteered to die in my place. He fixed the broken relationship between me and God.

When God miraculously convinced me this was true, it changed me. My inbred sin and selfishness did not disappear. But now they have to compete with a new set of values and desires. These push me toward the same kind of love and sacrifice Jesus showed on the cross.

That’s quite a set of glasses through which to view ourselves, earth’s other residents, and our reality. It explains why social problems like war, poverty, crime, and prejudice don’t go away. You can become an activist and try to fight these social ills, but we will always have them. Jesus said so.

It explains why religious people, even sincere Christians, often behave as badly as everyone else. That’s not to say we defend the bad behavior. But we shouldn’t be shocked when it happens. It is the reason that faithful Christianity isn’t afraid to expose sin, and confront sin, or even use the word sin. Pretending it isn’t there only encourages more of it.

Most of all, the cross is the reason that faithful Christianity has more to say about forgiveness than anything else. The church is not the place where good people become better people. It is the place where deeply flawed and broken people find the forgiveness that makes them children of God and citizens of heaven.

Another worldview exists. Many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. They have no time for such ideas about the human condition. They don’t care about Jesus’ standards of right and wrong. They see no need to be rescued, and aren’t interested in being forgiven, thank you. “Their god is their stomach.” Do they have an appetite? Well, then that is just a natural urge, no matter what it is. Don’t say it’s a perversion. Don’t say it hurts others to satisfy the desire. Their god is my stomach. They worship at the altar of their appetites.

“Their glory is in their shame.” It’s not enough for people to live this way in secret. They take pride in their shame and parade it around for all to see. Some men brag about their sexual conquests. Businessmen and women boast about the gullible people they took advantage of. Crowds take to the streets defending things as rights and choices that ought to make us blush with shame.

“Their mind is on earthly things,” not the cross of Christ. Note again, the issue is not that we are better. Paul, who wrote these things, referred to himself as the chief of sinners. I have my own mountain of impurity, greed, and sinful self-indulgences of which to be ashamed.

But by God’s grace I can now see it for the trash heap it is instead of praising it as a monument to my worth. It is a matter of God’s grace when he lets your sin look like sin to you. More than that, it is his grace when he lets a cross on which a man was tortured to death look like love, forgiveness, life, and salvation. When we see life from heaven’s vantage point, it completely changes our worldview.