At the heart of the religion that is available as Christianity are two very important components. The first is historical and the second is mystical. Ignore either of these components of Christianity and one might as well ignore the nature and significance of Christianity. Christ and the cross are both symbolic and historical.
On the historical side, Christ represents an intervention into history of a force that the universe has never before experienced. The intervention is nevertheless very small relative to its impact within the universe.
At the most, it physically represents a life cycle of a human being that creates a cross roads in human affairs. At the least, it conceptually represents a mystery intervention, a thought by an individual human being or a group of human beings that has the power to transform human society and through human thought the universe.
What Christ did was create meaning, and so much meaning that the course of history was changed. He may have only pulled together the ideas of others or expressed the ideas of others, but in terms of what he did, his actions were a spectacular intervention in human affairs by a single individual which would have consequences well beyond that of the individual. In this sense Christ is at the crossroads of human history and represents a significant departure from human business as usual.
Whether one believes that Christ's life, death and resurrection were real or imaginary does not matter except to ones participation in the processes of the intervention. One can choose to opt out or opt in. Christ demands that one opt in showing clearly the rewards of participation. Nevertheless, the process of participating in the consequences of Christian intervention are very abstract and personal.
The personalization of Christ within the hearts and minds of people who know of his intervention whether divine or not, is very real and allows for the interaction of human beings with abstractions that don't really exist in terms of human expectations of what physical life and death are all about. Christ has sent a message that rings true through the ages and it is the communication of this abstract idea about love and self sacrifice that sets an eternal standard for human conduct and experience.
Christian communications now pervade on different levels of society and a vastly different scales, but the challenge is always to recognize that a single human being at a point in history intervened in a significant way.
The relationship that one assumes regarding this fact defines whether or not any individual will maintain a contract with an abstraction, a fact of intervention in human affairs.
In either event of maintaining a personal contract or not, the effect of Christ's intervention is perpetual, irrefutable, and highly effective. At the heart of the Christian message is the notion of self sacrifice in order that love might prevail throughout the many arenas of the universe. One's notion of what that love is may vary over time or between individuals, but the idea of self sacrifice is inherently irreversible.