We each see different things in that image of Jesus crucified, although much will be shared, because at each point in our life our view from that point is different. I wrote yesterday about how we have to experience suffering before Christ's suffering really strikes home in our heart and becomes life-saving. The same applies across all experiences in our life - we are all on a journey, and at different points along the way. This is why the first believers just called their new life with God 'the Way'. Our diversity of experience, of age, of our pasts, of our spiritual maturity, of our reasoning capacity, makes mutual understanding and empathy difficult.
But Piper's theme today is the ground where all believers stand completely undivided from each other, for it is about how the message of the Cross actually gets to work in me by setting me free from the worst tyrant I ever have to face: my own self, my 'ego'. When I venture into this interior territory, I find myself fighting the hardest battles.
But wherever we are along the Way, this work of the Cross, this dying to ourselves, is the practical answer to our misunderstandings, disagreements and antagonisms. It truly enables me "in honour, to prefer one another" (Romans 12:10) because there's no point any longer in asserting myself. God has something far better in store: "Humble yourself under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time" (1 Peter 5:6).
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