GOD WITH US

The meaning of the cross and resurrection—then and now

Rowan Williams

First published in Great Britain in 2017

Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge

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www.spck.org.uk

Copyright © Rowan Williams 2017

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-281-07664-2

eBook ISBN 978-0-281-07665-9

eBook by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong

Contents

Part 1

THE MEANING OF THE CROSS

1 The sign

2 The sacrifice

3 The victory

Part 2

THE MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION

4 Christ’s resurrection—then

5 Christ’s resurrection—now

Epilogue: The beginning of the new creation

Acknowledgements

Part 1

THE MEANING OF THE CROSS

1

The sign

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps. ‘He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.’ When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.

(Peter 2:21–24, nrsv)

When we go into a Christian place of worship, we expect to see a cross. And when crosses are removed from public places, such as crematoria or hospital chapels, we quite reasonably get rather indignant about it. But in the world in which Christianity began, a place of worship was the last place you would expect to see a cross. We can only begin to get some sense of what it might have felt like to encounter the symbol of a cross in the first couple of Christian centuries if we imagine coming into a church and being ...