The Theology of the Cross: Reflections on His Cross and Ours

By Daniel M. Deutschlander

Once you become a Christian, life is good. Your food tastes better, you become more successful at work, your relationships flower and blossom, and financially things start to turn around for you. Hey, you may even get a better golf score because now you have God’s favor!

Of course, this version of Christianity has more to do with pop psychology and the power of positive thinking than Biblical, Christ-centered truth.

In his book, The Theology of the Cross, Professor emeritus Daniel Deutschlander reminds us that true Christianity involves cross-bearing. The God who promises forgiveness, new life, and strength for living, also promises that “in this world you will have trouble” (John 16:33a). Deutschlander takes us back to the words of Jesus, who reminds us, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).

This book clearly identifies self-denial as part and parcel of the Christian life. In fact, Christianity is most often a struggle against self, the idea that me, my own needs, wants, feelings and desires, come first.

Written with clarity and precision, Deutschlander gives each one of us cause to reflect and ask if we have allowed our Christian life to devolve into a kind of self-service that masks itself as altruistic.

Particularly interesting is the 40+ years of professional and pastoral insight Deutschlander gives throughout the book. With the skill of a man “who’s been there and seen that,” he writes about the crosses that are particular to each stage in life—youth, adulthood, and old age.

This book is not for the faint of heart. It will call you to examine yourself and ask, “Have I forgotten that the cross—Christ's cross, and my own, which also comes from God—is an inseparable part of Christianity?”

Yet this book does not leave you without hope. Instead, it allows you to re-center yourself and place your hope right where it needs to be: in Christ, his cross, and the forgiveness which comes from that cross. Again and again, Deutschlander will show you how God uses hardship, difficulty, struggle—yes, the cross—as the place where the good news of “sins forgiven” reveals its true beauty and finds full expression in our lives.

This book is a must read for those who struggle with the call for self-denial.