THE CROSS AND THE GLORY OF CHRIST

1 Corinthians 1: 18; 2: 2; 2 Corinthians 3: 17, 18; 4: 4; 5: 17, 18

The great point in 1 Corinthians is Christ crucified: the apostle speaks of the word of the cross. The great point in 2 Corinthians is Christ glorified, and the testimony there is the gospel of the glory of Christ. The one leads to the other. If we understood the truth of the cross and had it in power in our souls we should find ourselves in the presence of the glory of Christ; in spirit we should enter into a scene of the greatest liberty and delight—a scene filled with light and divine love, where there is no distraction, nothing to hinder our joy in God. There God fills everything, and all things are of God, and everything is in Christ; the first man has no place there, nothing of sin enters that sphere. In the cross we learn how God has removed everything obnoxious to Himself. In Christ glorified we learn what God has established according to His will. By the cross God has cleared the ground for Himself; He has removed all that stood in the way of His coming out in the full revelation of Himself, and working for the building up in Christ that new system which abides for eternity. When we come to what is in Christ, we come to what is entirely new, what is perfect and therefore eternal. On our side, too, the reception of the word of the cross effects a great clearance, we learn how everything in us which was obnoxious to the judgment of God has been met to the glory of God and brought to an end for ever; our sins have been removed in the death of Christ, our old man crucified with Him. In coming into the light of God all that I am is exposed, I take account not only of my sins but of myself, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. When I come to this, what relief to see that man (myself) disposed of by God, removed in the death of Christ, crucified with Him. The reason why many believers do not appreciate the cross is that they have never come to a true experimental knowledge of what the flesh is and what they are in the flesh. They may abhor certain evil workings of the flesh, but they have never abhorred themselves. It is a great point to reach when I can say, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes”, Job 42: 6. Then I appreciate the cross. It is an immense relief to see myself as a man in the flesh judicially ended in the death of Christ that I might live in Him. Then it is “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”. Then there is an end to self-occupation, because I see that all that would necessarily lead to self-occupation has been removed from God’s eye in the death of Christ. What a clearance for the soul when the word of the cross is really and honestly accepted. What a privilege to be entitled to turn away from all that I am, in order to learn what I have in Him, what He is to me from God, 1 Cor 1: 30, 31. When the word of the cross is accepted and maintained practically in self-judgment, then the Spirit is free to engage our minds and affections with Christ, and to unfold to us His glories. “He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you”, John 16: 14. In the presence of the glory of Christ we come as it were into a new world, to a scene where God fills all and where all things are of God, so that it is possible to be outside ourselves to God. It is a sphere where everything is new, nothing of sin or grief or death can enter there, Christ is everything and in all, a new creation in which old things have passed away, and all things have become new. Nothing exists but that which is in Christ, for all that which is of God is in Christ. In Him God establishes all His will. Nothing of the Adam man has any place there. All is of God, in Christ, and therefore absolutely perfect and to the satisfaction and glory of God, and all abides for eternity, these things will never be superseded. Another day they will be universal, when there will be new heavens, and a new earth, and the former things will have passed away, Rev 21. We, according to His promise, look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein righteousness dwells, 2 Pet 3: 13. But in Christ we have come to this order of things already. In the light of His glory we are in the light of the glory of God and of the day of God. The eternal things have become present to us so that we look at them, 2 Cor 4: 18. As of Christ, we are a part of these things in which will be displayed the glory of God, and the glory of Christ. What liberty we find in such a scene, what real satisfaction and rest in the presence of divine love. Truly it is a scene of delights. And we are not only able to look at it, and think about it, but we know that we form part of it, ‘As those that love did call’. Chosen in Christ before the world began, and now in Him, quickened, raised up, and made to sit in heavenly places. The cross is the only way to all this. Christ has entered in by the cross, and we must follow Him in spirit by the same path. This involves the refusal of the flesh and all that is of it, the practical condemnation in ourselves of all that God has condemned in the cross of Christ. Here is where the chief difficulty lies with many of us, we are not prepared for this continual suffering in the flesh, we think we can find more pleasure in the gratification of what we consider the innocent desires of the flesh and the mind than in the things which an ungrieved Spirit would minister to us in connection with the glory of Christ. But in so doing we are spending our labour for that which profiteth not, we are great losers. If we walk in the Spirit we shall find great compensation for all the suffering in the flesh, we shall get in the knowledge of Christ and all that is set forth in Him that which is really bread. It is the spiritual man who discerns the things of God, the natural man cannot receive them. We can only apprehend and enjoy them in the Spirit. If we walk according to the flesh the Spirit is grieved, and then these things become a dead letter to us. If we knew more of the power of the cross, we should be more free to behold the Lord’s glory, and in so doing we should be changed into the same image. The Lord grant to us that the love of Christ may be so known by us that we may be drawn after Him, and be prepared to surrender everything which would hinder us walking in the light of His glory and being in communion with Him in His own things.

From Food for the Faithful vol 6 (1903)