“Old Rugged Cross”

You are correct in noting that “The Old Rugged Cross” did not appear in The Lutheran Hymnal or Christian Worship.  Does the hymn portray that we are saved by a rugged cross?  One of the verses speaks of loving the “old cross where the dearest and best For a world of lost sinners was slain.”  Another verse states that “’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died To pardon and sanctify me.”  Those verses do speak of the cross as the instrument by which Jesus was put to death and punished for our sins.

Jesus is Savior.  Still, the cross is a beautiful symbol of our salvation and Jesus’ passive obedience.  God’s inspired writers held up the cross of Christ in high regard.  “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18).  “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).  “His [God’s] purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (Ephesians 2:15-16).  God made “peace through his [Jesus’] blood, shed on the cross” (Colossians 1:20).  In word and song there is beauty and meaning in Jesus’ cross.