THE CROSS
David C. Brown
1 Corinthians 1: 18, 22-24; Galatians 2: 20; John 12: 32-33
At the preaching on Lord’s Day the cross of Christ was brought before us. I was thinking of the significance and the importance of the cross. Scripture mentions the cross in a number of ways, and our brother who has just spoken referred to it as the place where we would learn God’s heart. We sing that sometimes,
O the cross of Christ is wondrous!
There I learn God’s heart to me (Hymn 212)
But it is also the place of shame. Galatians refers to “the scandal of the cross”, and from what the apostle says it is important that the scandal of the cross should remain. He says that if he preached circumcision “then the scandal of the cross has been done away”, Gal 5: 11. There is shame related to the cross that has been part of the enemy’s work throughout the dispensation to try to remove. We get gold crosses or ornamented crosses that would take away what belonged to it in a distinctive way in shame. The scripture mentions Jews and Greeks. They had their own ways of execution. They did not use the cross. But when the Lord came to be before the judgment seat, crucifixion was what was demanded. It would be a mark that the Jewish people did not recognise Him even as of their nation. It was not the normal way in which punishment would be inflicted on one of the nation, but their cry was “Crucify, crucify Him”.
There is something that is particularly the answer to man in the flesh, which has been demonstrated on the cross. In the shame and the indignity of it that man is totally condemned in the sight of God. Think of the extremity of what there was in the cross. No-one in natural thinking, Jewish or Greek, would give any place to the cross. It is God’s way, “For the word of the cross is to them that perish foolishness”. You could think of those who surrounded the cross – many categories and characters of persons surrounded the cross – to whom it seemed only an evidence of the foolishness of the One that was there. That is what the Jews would think. That is what the Romans would think as they saw what to them was the end of everything that could he hoped for in that blessed One who was there. To them it was an end, foolishness. But it was in that place that He “bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Pet 2: 24); He took that place. Crucified “on wood” (Acts 5: 30 footnote) refers to the weakness and the indignity of it. We might, according to one way of thinking, the Jewish, religious mind, ask for signs, or from the Greek kind of mind we might ask for wisdom, but they are all ended at the cross. So that “we preach”, Paul says, “Christ crucified”, to our Jewish, religious minds an offence, and to nations, foolishness. There is nothing in it for man unless God has acted in him. The weakness there was, and the degradation, “but to those that are called, both Jews and Greeks” we have one Man, “Christ God’s power and God’s wisdom”. God is able to call persons out and indeed, to make both Jews and Gentiles one by the cross, as Ephesians presents it. So you can see what had been presented in answer to the self-aggrandisement of the saints in Corinth. In the wisdom of God Paul’s ministry prior to all these things coming in was “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2: 2), that character of Man and Him crucified. “For I did not judge it well to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and him crucified”. How wise God had been in providing such a ministry before the decline and before the turning aside that there was in Corinth.
Paul then, in Galatians, relates and applies the cross to himself, and each one of us needs help to do this. God, of course, has condemned sin in the flesh. He has done that, and He has done it at the cross. But that is not only to be a theoretical matter to us. I know I need help in this, “I am crucified with Christ, and no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me”. What there had been, what there was that was according to man and according to flesh ended there, condemned at the cross. So that Paul was not looking for anything of that man to be of any pleasure to God. And not only not of pleasure to God, but not of any good to himself. Nothing positive would come out of that man, the man that had been finished and crucified with Christ, “and no longer live, I, but Christ lives in me”, a risen and a glorified Man lived in him. He could speak with such depth of feeling, “I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me”. How he would value the Son of God who “has loved me and given himself for me” increasingly as he appreciated the effect of the crucifixion, “I am crucified with Christ”. He ends up this epistle by saying, “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”, Gal. 6: 14. He had connections with both the Jewish religiousness and the Greek philosophy. He could have been great in the world, but he says, “the world is crucified to me, and I to the world”. In his mind and his heart he gave the world that extreme treatment that had been meted out to Christ.
But the cross is also the place and area where the Son of Man was glorified. I think that is related to what we read in John 12, “and I, if I be lifted up our of the death, will draw all to me”. In the next chapter, “When therefore he” – that was Judas – “was gone out Jesus says, Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him”, John 13: 31. There was never another man glorified in this way. There is a distinctiveness in the glory of Christ which is seen at the cross, and that is what attracts, “will draw all to me”. It is not drawing what is Jewish or what is Greek, it is drawing what is according to His own mind, a whole new, living order of persons who are drawn to Christ, who have a centre in Him. We have spoken of the scandal of the cross and we have to remember that, but we know what has been said, that it was morally impossible for Him to die on the earth on which He had glorified God. He was lifted up, lifted up out of the earth. He emphasises, “out of the earth”, and in the sufferings and the sustaining of the judgment of God, and the sustaining of all that He had to bear there, there was a distinctiveness of glory that would draw all to Him.
Well, how full and great the cross of Jesus. I can only bring a few thoughts and impressions, but I do so, as feeling for myself the need that the cross should have its full impact upon me. I trust there will be help in it for each one of us. For His Name’s sake.
EDINBURGH
12 June 2001