THE CROSS OF CHRIST

THE CROSS OF CHRIST

The cross of Christ is owned and believed in by every christian, but peace and practice depend on the extent of the soul’s apprehension of it. It is such an all important doctrine, that there can be no profession of christianity without the acknowledgment of it in some form, and possibly there is no truth which has been so continually and so strangely perverted, or one of which such a very partial and insufficient measure has been accepted.

It is with the hope of awakening souls to its importance, by pointing out how they suffer from these perversions and limitations, that I here attempt to consider the subject, for if what the cross has effected were clearly seen, all the limitations, as well as the perversions of it, would be exposed.

^[p. 96] The cross has two aspects, one with regard to God, the other with reference to the believer. The former necessarily embraces the most, and from overlooking this aspect of it has arisen serious misapprehension of the truth. When the blessed Lord came into the world, John, His witness, looking on Him, said, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”. This was plainly with reference to the altered position in which all things here would be placed by the cross of Christ. Sin had entered on this scene, but the Lamb of God would take away the sin from this order of things, from the world. We can hardly estimate the extent of the work here devolving on the Lamb of God, or the effect of it. It comprises the removal by sacrifice of that which was contrary to God and offensive to Him. It is not that God annihilates everything here and works elsewhere; but that He, through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, can reinstate everything now under judgment, in an entirely new order and degree, and that in righteousness because of the sacrifice. The cross enables Him to continue His creation in a new order.

If there had been no cross, there must be judgment on the creation as it stands; but now, peace having been made by the blood of His cross, God can by Him reconcile all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven. Surely we little apprehend the greatness of the work, or the effect of the cross, unless we see the extent of the judgment, and how everything was involved in it. If the soul grasps the extent and severity of the judgment, with what wonder and satisfaction must the eye rest on the cross, and see judgment so borne there, peace so made, that God can reconcile all things to Himself. If the fall of Adam has occasioned the universal judgment, if from that point one traces the widespread deluge of death and distance from God, with what rapture and praise can we behold the cross, and there see the tide of judgment ^[p. 97] not only rolled back, but exhausted, all its demands met, and God now at liberty in righteousness to reconcile all things to Himself! Do souls really regard the cross in this singular and unparalleled scope? From the moment of Adam’s sin until the cross, there was no rest for God on earth. He did not forsake His people, for His glory ever sought a place among them, but He had not a sabbath here; nor could He, until His Son, our Lord, could say, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do”. How little do we regard the cross in this light! even as that one great moment when God, according to His own mind, is at liberty to deal with the world, so that He can reconcile all things to Himself. In the history of the universe there is nothing so great and admirable as the cross. It stands forth pre-eminently as the dawn of an eternal day to this world. If at Adam’s fall the sun went down at noon-day, at the cross Jesus went down into the depths of blackness and darkness, combated all their strength and despoiled them, and inaugurated for us the endless day of heavenly glory.

But more than this, the cross of Christ has enabled God to reconcile us, who hitherto were alienated and enemies in our mind by wicked works, “yet now has it reconciled”. It is through the cross of Christ that God is enabled to reach the prodigal; for there the distance between God and the sinner was repaired; the judgment resting on man was there borne by the Son of God. He took away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. God Himself rends the veil from the top to the bottom; there is no longer any obstruction to His dealing with man, once under judgment, because, the judgment being borne, grace can reign through righteousness. Who can estimate what the cross has effected for God? So great was the effect that our Lord declared when Judas went out, “Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him”, John 13: 31. God was glorified in the fulness and completeness of the answer ^[p. 98] now rendered in the cross to all His claims. Thus the sin of the world has, through the cross, redounded to the glory of God. The Son of man is glorified in the cross, and God is glorified in Him. He has done the will of God and finished His work. If the ruin be great, the reparation, or the manner in which it has been repaired, is immeasurably greater; the free gift is beyond all comparison greater than the condemnation.

Now let us see what the cross effects for the believer. When Adam sinned, he fell under the judgment of death. Dying, he must die! Nothing can relieve of this judgment but substitution. The judgment must be borne; the righteousness of God requires it. Man, who is under it, cannot be relieved of it but by another bearing it. It cannot be cancelled or overlooked. Righteousness demands judgment, and if man falls under it he cannot or could not rise out of it; and if God recovered him out of it He would compromise the righteousness of His own sentence. Man cannot in righteousness be exonerated but by one not chargeable with his guilt bearing the judgment of it. This Christ did on the cross. He was “made ... sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”. He bore the judgment in His own body on the tree. Our old man was crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed. There was no way of rescuing us but by undergoing the judgment; and this is the cross. Christ would ever have abode alone if He had not died on the cross. The Son of man must be lifted up, otherwise eternal life could never have been given to us. There was only the one way by which we could be saved. Without the cross there could be no escape from judgment, no entrance into life. The blessed Son spent thirty-three years here, and after all He says, in reference to Himself, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone”. He had not up to this brought any one to His own ground before God. There is judgment on ^[p. 99] man, and there can be no righteousness until that is removed. The blessed Son of God goes down into the depths of judgment. The cross opens a way out of the dungeons of eternal torment into the rest of the Father’s house. The cross has not only secured the way of escape for man, but on it has been crucified the old man, that the body of sin might be destroyed. I do not see the cross truly if I only see it as opening a way of escape for me, and yet allowing that in me to escape which has incurred the judgment. This is one of the general limitations in the effect of the cross. The ending of the old man may not be denied, but it is not insisted on as important to the understanding of the cross.

In Romans 7 it is the will of the flesh, the law of it working in the members, that one cries to be delivered from, and not, as is often supposed, the works and sins of the flesh. Both are removed in the cross. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin”. The cross opens the door of escape for me from the state in which I am, but it does not admit the continuance of that state. That state has been judged. What is judged cannot be continued. The moment that I see by faith my escape from judgment, because of the cross of Christ, that moment I am, because of that same cross, set on entirely new ground, even as fruit of Him who died; and I must leave my old man behind, crucified, so that “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me”. If I do not accept this, I have limited the cross, and in fact have assumed that I can be freed by Christ’s work on the cross from the judgment which rests on the old man, and yet be allowed to retain that which caused the offence — in short, that I escape through substitution the penalty for my offence, but that the state in which the offence placed me may continue. In effect, a man may be saved through the intervention of another from the penalty under which he lies — for forgery,

^[p. 100] for instance — and yet he may retain the position acquired by it! Righteousness requires that not only should the full penalty be paid, but that there should be a discontinuance of the state of offence; in fact the offending state must cease. The cross effects all this, and the one who truly understands it can say with the apostle, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world”. Here the question of sin is not alluded to, but everything which was in any degree unsuited to God. The cross had cleared all away, and in this the apostle gloried. Some speak of the cross nowadays as if it were something to allow the offender to remain as he was, as if it were a continual sacrifice, continually answering for an offending state which is not set aside; and thus there is no real peace. Again, others see that the cross has removed their sins before God, and rejoice in it; but they do not see the extent of the action of the cross, either with reference to God or to themselves. Hence in practice, while they would place the cross in faith between themselves and their sins, and know that they must not return to them, and that they are freed for ever from them, yet they can sanction and enjoy many carnal things, and the world, just as if there was no cross at all. And, alas! some — possibly believers — wear the cross as an ornament to decorate that — the old man — for which the Son of God bore it. There is no more painful perversion than this. If Christ died for me, I am bound by every good and right feeling to lay aside that for which He died, and which needed His death. Without that death I could not be delivered from judgment; but how dreadful to retain the condition for which my Saviour was judged! Nay, I must now hate my own life; and I may well do so, since through faith I have the life of the Son of God.

May we increasingly know that the cross of Christ is the power of God, and the wisdom of God.