The Cross
"Who His own self bare
our sins in His own body on the tree." 1 Peter 2:24
"The Cross did not happen to Jesus: He came on purpose for it. He is 'the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.' The whole meaning of the
Incarnation is the Cross. Beware of separating God manifest in the flesh
from the Son becoming sin. The Incarnation was for the purpose of
Redemption. God became incarnate for the purpose of putting away sin; not
for the purpose of Self-realization. The Cross is the centre of Time and of
Eternity, the answer to the enigmas of both.
"The Cross is not the cross of
a man but the Cross of God, and the Cross of God can never be realized in
human experience. The Cross is the exhibition of the nature of God, the
gateway whereby any individual of the human race can enter into union with
God. When we get to the Cross, we do not go through it; we abide in the life
to which the Cross is the gateway.
"The centre of salvation is the Cross
of Jesus, and the reason it is so easy to obtain salvation is because it
cost God so much. " (April 6)
"Death hath no more
dominion over Him . . . in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Likewise
reckon ye also yourselves to be dead
indeed unto sin, but alive unto God." Romans 6:9-11
"Eternal life was the life
which Jesus Christ exhibited on the human plane, and it is the same life,
not a copy of it, which is manifested in our mortal flesh when we are born
of God. Eternal life is not a gift from God, eternal life is the gift of
God. The energy and the power which were manifested in Jesus will be
manifested in us by the sheer sovereign grace of God when once we have made
the moral decision about sin.
“'Ye shall receive the power of the Holy
Ghost'—not power as a gift from the Holy Ghost; the power is the Holy Ghost,
not something which He imparts. The life that was in Jesus is made ours by
means of his Cross when once we make the decision to be identified with Him.
If it is difficult to get right with God, it is because we will not decide
definitely about sin. Immediately we do decide, the full life of God comes
in. Jesus came to give us endless supplies of life: 'that ye might be filled
with all the fullness of God.'... The only source of Life is the Lord Jesus
Christ."
"The weakest saint can experience the power of
the Deity of the Son of God if once he is willing to ‘let go.’ Any strand of
our own energy in ourselves will blur the life of Jesus. We have to keep
letting go, and slowly and surely the great full life of God will invade us
in every part, and men will take knowledge of us that we have been with
Jesus." (April 12)
"I, if I be lifted up, will
draw all men unto Me." John 12:32
"Very few of us have any
understanding of the reason why Jesus Christ died. If sympathy is all that
human beings need, then the Cross of Christ is a farce, there was no need
for it. What the world needs is not ‘a little bit of love,’ but a surgical
operation.
"When you are face to face with a soul in difficulty spiritually, remind
yourself of Jesus Christ on the Cross. If that soul can get to God on any
other line, then the Cross of Jesus Christ is unnecessary. If you can help
others by your sympathy or understanding, you are a traitor to Jesus Christ.
You have to keep your soul rightly related to God and pour out for others on
His line, not pour out on the human line and ignore God. The great note
to-day is amiable religiosity.
"The one thing we have to do is to exhibit
Jesus Christ crucified, to lift Him up all the time. Every doctrine that is
not imbedded in the Cross of Jesus will lead astray. If the worker himself
believes in Jesus Christ and is banking on the Reality of Redemption, the
people he talks to must be concerned. The thing that remains and deepens is
the worker’s simple relationship to Jesus Christ; his usefulness to God
depends on that and that alone." (December 20)
"Wherefore as by one man
sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all
men, for that all have sinned." Romans 5:12
"The Bible does not say that
God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of
sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself, entered into the human race by
one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put
it away (Heb. 9:26)—an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of
sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of
self-realization—I am my own god.
"This disposition may work out in
decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my
claim to my right to myself. ... Sin is a thing I am born with and I cannot
touch it; God touches sin in Redemption.
"In the Cross of Jesus Christ God redeemed
the whole human race from the possibility of damnation through the heredity
of sin. God nowhere holds a man responsible for having the heredity of sin.
The condemnation is not that I am born with a heredity of sin, but if when I
realize Jesus Christ came to deliver me from it, I refuse to let Him do so,
from that moment I begin to get the seal of damnation. “And this is the
judgment” (the critical moment) “that the light is come into the world, and
men loved the darkness rather than the light.” (October 5)
"For by one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified."
Hebrews 10:14
"We trample the blood of the Son of God under foot if we think we are
forgiven because we are sorry for our sins. The only explanation of the
forgiveness of God and of the unfathomable depth of His forgetting, is the
Death of Jesus Christ. Our repentance is merely the outcome of our personal
realization of the Atonement which He has worked out for us. 'Christ Jesus.
. . is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and
redemption.' When we realize that Christ is made all this to us, the
boundless joy of God begins; wherever the joy of God is not present, the
death sentence is at work.
"It does not matter who or what we are,
there is absolute reinstatement into God by the death of Jesus Christ and by
no other way, not because Jesus Christ pleads, but because He died. It is
not earned, but accepted. ... ‘I don’t want to come that way, it is too
humiliating to be received as a sinner.’
“'There is none other Name. . .' The apparent
heartlessness of God is the expression of His real heart, there is boundless
entrance in His way. 'We have forgiveness through His blood.' Identification
with the death of Jesus Christ means identification with Him to the death of
everything that never was in Him." (December 8)
"But God forbid that I
should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Galatians 6:14
"The Gospel of Jesus Christ
always forces an issue of will. Do I accept God’s verdict on sin in the
Cross of Christ? Have I the slightest interest in the death of Jesus?
"Do I want to be identified with His death, to be killed right out to all
interest in sin, in worldliness, in self—to be so identified with Jesus that
I am spoilt for everything else but Him?
"The great privilege of discipleship is that I can sign on under His Cross,
and that means death to sin. Get alone with Jesus and either tell Him that
you do not want sin to die out in you; or else tell Him that at all costs
you want to be identified with His death. Immediately you transact in
confident faith in what Our Lord did on the Cross, a supernatural
identification with His death takes place, and you will know with a
knowledge that passeth knowledge that your ‘old man’ is crucified with
Christ. The proof that your ‘old man’ has been crucified with Christ is in
the amazing ease with which the life of God in you enables you to obey the
voice of Jesus Christ.
"Every now and again, Our Lord lets us see what we would be like if it were
not for Himself; it is a justification of what He said— 'Without Me ye can
do nothing.' That is why the bedrock of Christianity is personal, passionate
devotion to the Lord Jesus." (December 23)
"For He hath made
Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the
righteousness of God in Him." 2 Corinthians 5:21
"Sin is a fundamental relationship; it is not wrong doing, it is wrong
being, deliberate and emphatic independence of God. The Christian religion
bases everything on the positive, radical nature of sin. Other religions
deal with sins; the Bible alone deals with sin. The first thing Jesus Christ
faced in men was the heredity of sin, and it is because we have ignored this
in our presentation of the Gospel that the message of the Gospel has lost
its sting and its blasting power.
"The revelation of the Bible is not that Jesus
Christ took upon Himself our fleshly sins, but that He took upon Himself the
heredity of sin which no man can touch. God made His own Son to be sin that
He might make the sinner a saint. All through the Bible it is revealed that
Our Lord bore the sin of the world by identification, not by sympathy. He
deliberately took upon His own shoulders, and bore in His own Person, the
whole massed sin of the human race— 'He hath made Him to be sin for us, who
knew no sin,' and by so doing He put the whole human race on the basis of
Redemption.
"...anyone can enter into union with God on the
ground of what Our Lord has done on the Cross." (October 7)
"For by one offering
He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." Hebrews 10:14
"Identification with the death of Jesus Christ means identification with Him
to the death of everything that never was in Him. God is justified in saving
bad men only as He makes them good. Our Lord does not pretend we are all
right when we are all wrong. The Atonement is a propitiation whereby God
through the death of Jesus makes an unholy man holy." (December 8)
"Behold, we go up to
Jerusalem." Luke 18:31
"We start with Christ and we
end with Him—'until we all attain to the stature of the manhood of Christ
Jesus,' not to our idea of what the Christian life should be. The aim of the
missionary is to do God’s will, not to be useful, not to win the heathen; he
is useful and he does win the heathen, but that is not his aim. His aim is
to do the will of his Lord.
"...Jerusalem was the place where He reached the
climax of His Father’s will upon the Cross, and unless we go with Jesus
there, we shall have no companionship with Him....
“The disciple is not above his Master.” The same
things will happen to us on our way to our Jerusalem. There will be the
works of God manifested through us, people will get blessed, and one or two
will show gratitude and the rest will show gross ingratitude, but nothing
must deflect us from going up to our Jerusalem.
“'There they crucified Him.' That is what
happened when Our Lord reached Jerusalem, and that happening is the gateway
to our salvation. The saints do not end in crucifixion: by the Lord’s grace
they end in glory. In the meantime our watchword is—I, too, go up to
Jerusalem." (September 23)
"Knowing this, that our old
man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that
henceforth we should not serve sin. Romans 6:6.
"Co-Crucifixion. Have I made
this decision about sin—that it must be killed right out in me? It takes a
long time to come to a moral decision about sin, but it is the great moment
in my life when I do decide that just as Jesus Christ died for the sin of
the world, so sin must die out in me, not be curbed or suppressed or
counteracted, but crucified. ...
"Haul yourself up, take a time alone with God,
make the moral decision and say—‘Lord, identify me with Thy death until I
know that sin is dead in me.’...
"Have I entered into the glorious privilege of
being crucified with Christ until all that is left is the life of Christ in
my flesh and blood?
“I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me.” (April 10)