Salvation is a back-pocket issue, I was once told by a mainline denominational pastor. Once we believe that Christ’s death is the foundation on which our faith rests, we should merely try to live like Jesus lived as we read in the gospel accounts. I was less than a year into my faith journey, but I knew that wasn’t right. I was spiritually alive as a new person in Christ:

“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” (2 Cor. 5:17)

That was me, and I wasn’t about to put the death of Jesus Christ in my back pocket. What my Lord did for me on the cross, taking my place, was and continues to animate my Christian walk—as it should for all of us.

This truth never got old for the apostle Paul, but he asserted it as the key to Christian living: “Therefore as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him…” (Col. 2:6). I received Christ by believing in Him, as the apostle John wrote, “[A]s many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name” (John 1:12). That’s me; that’s all who believe in Jesus Christ and His substitutionary death on the cross for us.

Sometimes I bemoan the loss of the importance of the cross in our churches, our preaching, and our everyday Christian lives. Christ’s crucifixion is much more than getting us saved; it is the power for living the Christian life. If ever there was someone savvy about how to live a Christlike life, whose teachings are relevant across all generations, all cultures, and all lifestyles, it is the apostle Paul. He explains the reason why he sacrificed so much to live out his mission as a follower of Christ. It was so that …:

[Believers’] hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love, and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Col. 2:2–3)

Did you catch that? The end result of all his teaching (his in-person preaching and his thirteen letters in the NT) was to help us know and understand Christ. This is more than just knowing about Him and what He taught; this is about knowing Him. There is an enormous difference. This is where the “personal” comes into the phrase “having a personal relationship with Christ.” When we know Him, our lives become more about what He has done and is doing for us and less about what we do for Him. But Paul would say loving Jesus only comes because we come to know Him and His love for us. And we grow in knowing Him!

Ponder this. In one of the most practical, relevant NT writings for today, the apostle made the focus of his teaching clear:

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Cor. 1:18)

 In Paul’s estimation, the cross is not a back-pocket truth; it is front and center for “us who are being saved.” It is our power for daily living. Our faith is not in the wooden artifact as though touching a relic, but the cross represents the death of Christ for our sins, God’s grace being poured out to sinners. Power for living comes by continuously circling back to the cross as our focus. This was Paul’s repetitive theme:

[B]ut we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness … (1 Cor. 1:23)

For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. (1 Cor. 2:2)

Everything we know and do in the Christian life is connected to “Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” Yes, He was raised from the dead, and we live in the newness of resurrected life, but our power comes from the growing knowledge of what God has done for us in the death of His Son.

If you want to regain appreciation for what God has done for you, I would encourage you to look at Scripture with a magnifying glass, so to speak. For example, meditate on Ephesians 1:1-23 in detail, let it soak into your mind and soul, and let your spirit bask in its truths. It is a good starting place for understanding what we have in the crucified Christ, “whom He raised from the dead and seated … at His right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:20). It is there that God “has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (Eph. 1:3). This is more than imitating Jesus outwardly; it is joining with Christ in the experience of living a crucified life.

I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. (Gal. 2:20)

Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Gal. 5:24)

No, this doesn’t sound like salvation is a back-pocket truth; salvation is central to all of life for Christians. May the desire of the apostle Paul be ours as well, the central focus of our life’s ambition:

But may it never be that I would boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. (Gal. 6:14)