THE CROSS OF JESUS

D. J. Hutson

John 19: 17, 18; Luke 23: 39–43; Galatians 2: 20; 6: 14

I think it would be right to say that the cross of Jesus is a focal point of time and eternity, and it is necessary therefore for every one of us to take our place in relation to it. It was the place of the resolution of every question which had ever entered into the world to mar what God had created for His own pleasure. “By one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death; and thus death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”, Romans 5: 12. How was that great question to be met? It was met at the cross of Jesus. God Himself determined the place where it should be met, that is John’s gospel. “He went out, bearing his cross, to the place called place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew, Golgotha”. I believe that indicates that God Himself has taken the initiative in relation to this great matter, this, may I say, plague, of the human race; He Himself has taken the initiative and determined the place where it should be resolved to His own entire and absolute satisfaction, and that place by the cross of Jesus.

So it says, “they crucified him, and with him two others”, and John the writer of this gospel says, “one on this side, and one on that, and Jesus in the middle”; that is that he placed himself in relation to the cross of Jesus. When he said, “this side”, it was evidently the side that he was on, and I believe what is to be determined in the going out of the glad tidings is the question as to where we stand in relation to the cross of Jesus. Are you on this side or are you on that? John was on this side, he says, “one on this side, and one on that”. As I said it is a focal point and every one of us must take our place in relation to it, and consider who was there, none other than the blessed Son of God Himself, as Paul alludes to Him in Galatians,

“the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me” (Galatians 2: 20). In order that that great question which rests upon you and me, the burden of our sins, the sinful state in which we are, in which we come short of God’s glory, might be resolved to God’s satisfaction. God Himself came into the matter in the Person of Jesus, and, as I said, He determined where and how the matter should be resolved. Now it is for every one of us to determine where we stand in relation to it—“one on this side, and one on that”.

So I read about the two others who were crucified with Him. One of them spoke insultingly to Him, “Art not thou the Christ? save thyself and us”. No appreciation, no recognition of the Person who was there or the work that He was to accomplish; no appreciation of who was there or why He was there. I believe that, speaking simply, we could say that he was on that side. May it be that no one here, may I say no one under the sound of the word tonight, is found on that side, rejecting Christ. It is a feature of the days in which we are, Jude speaks of

it, in the last days shall come mockers (Jude 18), it is the day in which we are. It is something which is very near to us and we have to be guarded against it. If we are anything of that character then we are on that side. But thank God there was not only John, but there was another who was on this side, and I believe that it would indicate in a sense the way that John found his place on this side. And, dear friend, it is the way that you can find your place on this side, on the side of one who could speak of himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved.

Not that the love of Jesus was not in relation to all, it was for sinners Jesus died, but this man recognized the necessity of the fear of God, “Dost thou too not fear God”. What a word that is, in the Scripture, that “each of us: shall give an account concerning himself to God”, Romans 14: 12. Has every one of us here, every one, faced that matter, to give an account to God? Day by day, what account can you give to God? Think of this solemn indictment across the race, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”, Romans 3: 23. What account can you give in relation to it? Does it not cause you to fear God, not only the fear of a Judge, but reverential fear, although it does say He is to judge the living and the dead (see 2 Timothy 4: l)? He has a basis for it in the death of Jesus, because everything has been met to His satisfaction by that blessed One at the cross. So He is about to judge, but the glad tidings are that He is a Saviour God; He does not desire that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.

So he says, “thou that art under the same judgment”. Do you see that Jesus was there under the judgment because that was the judgment that was due to you? Not simply the judgment which man accorded to Him—but there to be under the unsparing, unmitigated judgment of a holy sin-hating

God, because He was to bear the sins of all who put their trust in Him, in His body on the tree. As accepting that in faith that He was there for you, you can come over on to this side, on to the side where there are those who love Jesus, who are conscious of His present love, who have part in that which is here bound together by the Holy Spirit, and which is able to answer to it not only personally but collectively in the light of the assembly. That is what is on this side, and we would plead with any that you might come over to this side by seeing that this blessed Person was there under the judgment that was deserved by you. “Dost thou too not fear God, thou that art under the same judgment? and we indeed justly”. That is where I should have been, banished for ever from the presence of a holy sin-hating God, that is where my sins would put me, but thank God those sins have been laid on Jesus. The reality of it, that He bore them in His body on the tree; it was not anything mystical or ethereal but it was in His body, the real sufferings of Jesus from which the eye of man was shadowed by the darkness, when He endured that unmitigated judgment, when He went under the judgment of God which for me and for you would have involved an eternity of banishment from His presence. Can we ever measure, can we ever have any conception of what it was to Jesus to suffer there? The judgment that was due to you and to me was borne there by Jesus. “For we receive the just recompense of what we have done; but this man has done nothing amiss”. Oh, we want to tell you about this Man. We do not want to occupy you with yourself and your sins and your failings, although you will have to face it, but we want to tell you about this Man, we want to tell you about Jesus, I want to tell you about what He has done. He has died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and He was buried, and raised again the third day according to the Scriptures, and now He is in the glory, a living, glorified Saviour able to save

completely all who come unto God by Him. Oh what a Saviour He is, this Man who has done nothing amiss. He went about doing good, healing all that were under Satan’s power for God was with Him, and yet at the end of that life nothing but hatred was drawn out from the heart of man. Man meted to the sinless One the cross, but thank God, before it, speaks of Him being taken by the hand of lawless men and crucified and slain, it says He was “given up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”, Acts 2: 23. Where man’s inveterate hatred was manifest to the full. God’s love was shown in all its fulness in that great sacrifice.

Oh, what He meant to God! Who can say? What a sacrifice! The life of Jesus in the condition of blood and flesh was in the same condition in which we are but apart from sin. He took part in blood and flesh, something which was not His by nature, but He came into it, being who He is in His Person (see Hebrews 2: 14). Can we conceive what it meant? He who is over all God blessed for ever; He who spake and it was done, commanded and it stood fast, brought worlds into being and upholds them by the word of His power, came into these conditions and came in at the weakest point as a babe in Bethlehem’s manger, and throughout that whole life displayed nothing but what was absolutely pleasurable to His God and Father; the only such life in that condition of blood and flesh; never was there a life like it before, never will there be one like it again. But God, had it for that short period of time, and having had it He has given it up for ever; He will never have it again. But thank God because of that great sacrifice He will have many who will have part in a new life in a new condition, in a new order of things altogether. Oh, what a result!—a result of such a sacrifice, a result in which you can have part by taking your place on this side like this repentant malefactor. You can contribute nothing to that scene, save your sins and your sinful condition and state, but thank God as contributing that and owning it in repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, a present living exalted Saviour, you can come into the joy of what it is to live, like we sometimes sing in the hymn, ‘Made me live and live to God’ (No. 396). Although this dear man only had a few hours to live I suppose.

But the Lord Jesus was not to die as other men die, His death was as much a miracle as His birth, He went into death in power with a loud cry. I take it that normally a crucified man would have been left there to succumb to weakness and starvation and exposure, and to die a lingering death, maybe into days, as such a death it was. But Jesus died in power. He went into death, broke its power, as He invaded that dark domain death had to give way. “What ailed thee, thou sea, that thou fleddest? thou Jordan, that thou turnedst back?”, Psalm 114: 5.

He was in power, so that even that centurion who no doubt had witnessed other such lingering deaths, the cruellest death, it has been said, that ever man has meted out to his fellows, could say, “Truly this man was Son of God”, Matthew 27: 54. That is who was there completing that great work on God’s behalf, so that the gospel might be preached, may I say, in Walton tonight. So that you might be under the sound of it, so that you might have the opportunity of repentance, and taking your stand on this side with John and with all those who love Jesus, all those who acknowledge He died for them.

So he says, “Remember me, Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom”; you see this man came into full salvation, although he had so little time to live. We are left here to live and we need salvation while we live, and salvation for us in this world is found in the same way as this man found it—“if thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God has raised him from among the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart is believed to righteousness; and with the mouth confession made to salvation”, Romans 10: 9, 10. So he confessed with the mouth Jesus as Lord, and he anticipated He would be raised from the dead, and he said, “Remember me, Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom”.

Dear friend, Christianity is not a question of going to heaven when you die, it is not a question of the future, though the future is glorious; no past for the Christian but the cross, no future but the glory, but then there is the present time in which we need salvation, and salvation is found in no other, for there is no other, name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. So although for this dear man it was “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise”, we are left here in the testimony and from a risen and glorified Saviour the Holy Spirit has come so that we might be able to confess Jesus as Lord, and prove that the name of the Lord is a strong tower and the righteous runneth into it and is safe. Oh, what a Saviour He is! able to save completely, as has been said many times, ‘an all-the-way-home Saviour’. Saved from your sins, saved from your sinful state, saved from the man that sinned.

Jesus was buried. He was taken by loving hands and buried; man determined his grave with the wicked but He was with the rich in His death. Think of that dear man, Joseph of Arimathaea, who laid Him in his own new tomb hewn in a rock, and every time he would have gone by and seen that empty tomb, he would have said, ‘that is where I should have been, and that is where He was for me’. Can you say that—that He was there for you? He suffered vicariously and He was buried vicariously to remove from God’s sight the man that in you and me constantly comes short of God’s glory, and in His risen life there is life for us out of

Death in the power of the Spirit, so that we can live for Him in the very scene where He died for us. What a Saviour He is! What a complete salvation, all available to us in the power of the Holy Spirit as putting our trust in Him.

Well, I read in Galatians as to the cross. In a sense I suppose this man that I was speaking of on this side, he could say, “I am crucified with Christ”, literally he was, but “and no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me”. How wonderful that is to have the life of a risen Man; a life that is not related to flesh and blood, a life which is here in the power of an indwelling Spirit that has come from an exalted Christ. So that what comes into expression now is no longer that man that sins and comes short of God’s glory, but what comes into expression is Christ, another Man coming into expression here in testimony where Jesus was. So that the life of Jesus, the life which is beyond death is manifest in our mortal flesh, taking it upon ourselves, as it says, “always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus”, 2 Corinthians 4: 10. We recognize that this is but a scene for us where we are constantly related to the death of Jesus.

No place for Jesus here, no place for me. Can you say that? But then always delivered unto death on account of Jesus. God in His ways with us, in His dealings with us, would bring it to bear upon us, but all with the great end in view that the life also of Jesus, the life of the risen Man, might be manifested in our mortal flesh.

So he says, “Christ lives in me”; but we are still here you see. It is not mystical, we are still here, still in blood and flesh, “but in that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”—live by faith of the Son of God; the Man who is the centre of another world. So we are drawn away from this world and all its attractions and all its allurements because we are living in relation to another Man in another world. That is really what eternal life is, it is life in relation to another Man in another world. Not simply life in another world, but life in relation to another Man in another world who is the Sustainer of life. Think of that title of Joseph, the Sustainer of life, the great Administrator, the One who is administering the blessing at the present time under the hand of God; the One that the Father loves and has given all things to be in His hand, the great Administrator and Sustainer of life. So he says, “I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”.

Well, I read in Galatians 6, because again I think it shows the focal point of the cross. It says, “But far be it from me to boast save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world”. It is as though the cross is there, as it says in John’s gospel, “and Jesus in the middle” (John 19: 18), and on one side there is the believer in Jesus and on the other side is the world. The cross stands between, and there is no way that the one or the other can be put together, the cross is the great dividing line between the believer in Jesus and the world. How oft we sing it, we may sing it again at the end of this meeting, and I trust we may sing it with more fervour and reality perhaps than we have done before, as to the cross and its demands upon us, ‘Demands my soul, my life, my all!’ (Hymn 272). These are the words of one who has taken his place on this side; one who has taken his place like. Paul as saying, “far be it from me to boast save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world”. All the world was exposed there, and John showing it particularly in its religious

character puts the Hebrew first; Luke who has in mind the Gentiles puts the Greek first in the languages that were used in the superscription of Jesus, but John says, Hebrew and Latin and Greek. The religious man—how subtle, how dangerous—is included ‘under the same judgment’, but the cross is there and the world in every form on the one side and the believer in Jesus on the other. May it be that if any still have their links in the world that they come right over, make a clean cut by the cross of Jesus, and take their stand where they can be true and faithful to Him, as I said, to live for Him in the scene where He died for us. For His name’s sake.

Preaching at Walton-on-the-Naze
25 November 1990