The Cross of Christ by Andrew Murray
Chapter Index: In-Page Navigation
Please click on the following links to go to each chapter or download the pdf copy.
- 1. The Spirit Leads to the Cross
- 2. Deny Self and Take the Cross
- 3. The Cross the Way to God
- 4. The Triumph of the Cross
- 5. The Crucifixion of the World
- 6. The Daily Cross (Hymn)
1. THE SPIRIT LEADS TO THE CROSS
"the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God."
Heb. 9:14
The cross of Christ is the highest expression of the Spirit of Christ. The cross is His chief characteristic; that which distinguishes Him from all in heaven and earth; that which gives Him His glory as Mediator on the throne through eternity. Until we truly know the Spirit that led Christ to the cross, we neither know it, nor Him.
When we have discovered what the Spirit was that led Christ to the cross, we shall see how this is only one part of the great subject, the Spirit of the cross. We shall see how the Holy Spirit of Pentecost is still the Spirit of the cross! As He led Christ up to the cross, He flows forth from the cross to us as its purchase, and the impartation of its power. And we shall then further find that as He led Christ to the cross, and the cross led to the giving of the Spirit, so the Spirit will always lead back to the cross again, because He alone can reveal its meaning, or communicate its fellowship. The Spirit led Christ to the cross; the cross leads Christ and us to the outpouring of the Spirit; the Spirit leads us back to the cross!
The Cross Our Life
Scripture does not teach that with the bearing of the cross and the atonement, the meaning of the cross is exhausted; that when we trust to its finished work, our only relation to it is that of grateful confidence with what we are to it. No it tells us that in the most intimate spiritual fellowship the cross is to be our life. We are to live as crucified with Christ: we are to walk as those who have crucified the flesh, and can conquer it in no way but by every hour regarding it as crucified. We are day by day to bear the cross and to glory in it, because each moment our relation to the world is to be that of men who are crucified to the world and know and feel the world crucified to us (Galatians 2:20; 5:24; 6:14). If the Spirit of the cross is then to make and mark the only true Christian life-if this is to be our like-mindedness to Jesus-we want to know what it was that made the Spirit of the cross the only power by which Christ could win life for us, or by which we can possess and enjoy life in Him.
The path in which Jesus Christ walked had its value in the first place, not from the amount of suffering, or the actual surrender to death, but from the disposition which animated Him. And that disposition was not something strange or different which came in His last hour, but what animated and inspired Him through the whole course of His earthly life. And it is only as this Spirit becomes the animating principle of the life of the believer, that the thought of being "crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20), can have anything like true meaning. Whence had our Lord this mind which was in Him, and the power to carry it out at any cost? We have the answer in our text: "the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God." (Heb. 9:14).
It was this Eternal Spirit that was in Christ from His birth, that taught Him to say-words that contain the seed of the obedience of the cross - "I must be in the things of my Father" (Luke 2:49). It was this Spirit that led Him in baptism to humble Himself to be treated as a sinner. It was this Spirit with which He was then afresh baptised, to fit Him for the death, to which the baptism had set Him apart. It was this Spirit that led Him into the wilderness, there to resist, and overcome and begin the struggle, that ended on Calvary. It was through this Spirit, that He was led on, step by step, to speak of, and meet, and bear, all He had to suffer. As it had been in the prophets ("the Spirit of Christ which ... testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ," 1 Pet. 1:11), so it was through the Eternal Spirit that all was fulfilled and accomplished. The Spirit of God, dwelling in flesh, leads inevitably and triumphantly to the cross.
The cross is the most perfect expression of the mind of the Spirit; of what He asks and works. God taking possession of human nature to free it from sin and fill it with Himself can do so in no other way but by slaying it. There is in the wide universe no possibility of liberation from the power of sin, but through personal separation from it in entire death to it. What God demands, the Spirit works! He worked in the man Christ Jesus, the spotless Holy One, Who yet in virtue of His union with us, and as our forerunner in the path of life, needed to die to sin. He works it now as the Spirit of Christ in each of His members.
The Crucifixion Spirit
Let us all who desire to be filled with the Spirit, stay and worship here. The Spirit leads to the death of the cross. As He had nothing higher to do for us in Christ, before He quickened Him in the grave, He has no higher work He can do for the believer than to lead him into the perfect fellowship of the cross. Pause and worship here, and pray to know what it means. Have you yielded truly to the Spirit to lead you, as He led Christ, in the path of the cross? In seeking for the fullness of the Spirit, are you in full unity of heart with His one purpose to be in you the crucifixion Spirit, as He was in Christ? To you, as to Christ, this is the sure, the only, path to glory.
2. DENY SELF AND TAKE THE CROSS
"He said to all, "If anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, take up his
cross, and follow me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever will lose his life
for my sake, will save it."
Luke 9:23, 24
In our previous meditation we saw how deep and intimate the relation between the disciple’s taking his cross and his following Christ. Here we have an additional thought suggested. "Let him deny himself" uncovers the deepest root of the cross-bearing and the following. Even while the Christian is striving earnestly to follow Christ, and in some measure to take his cross, there is a secret power that resists and opposes and prevents. The very man who is praying and vowing and struggling to follow fully what desire and will and heart are apparently set on, in his inmost self refuses the cross his Lord has called him to. Self, the real center of his being, the controlling power, refuses to accept. And so Christ teaches Peter, and us, when He for the second time speaks of taking the cross, that it must commence with the total denial of self.
The Cross Means Death
Taking the cross, means the acceptance of and surrender to death; self, the real inner life of the person, must die. The taking up the cross and the following of Jesus will be unceasing failure, unless the beginning is made here: let him deny himself and take up his cross. "He that loseth his life ... shall find it." (Matt. 10:39).
Christ calls me to hate, to lose, my life; to deny that which gives life its proper value, that which I am in my own proper person - to deny myself. And why is this life to be put first under the cross, and then on the cross? And why, if He died for me on the cross, and won life for me, why must I still die, deny myself, and daily take up my cross?
Why the Cross?
The answer is simple, and yet not easy to comprehend. Only to the soul that consents to obey Jesus before fully understanding, will the real spiritual answer be opened up. Through the sin of Adam the life of man fell out of its high estate, where it was a vessel in which God made His power and blessedness to work, and fell under the power of this world, in which the god of this world has his rule and his dominion. And so man has become a creature possessed of a strange, unnatural, worldly life. The will of God, and heaven, and holiness, for which he was created, have become darkened and lost to him. The pleasures of the flesh, and of the world, and of self, which are all the dark accursed workings of the Evil Spirit, have become natural and attractive. Man sees not, knows not, how sinful, wretched and deadly they are-alienated from God, and all bearing within them the very seeds of hell. And this self, this inmost root of man’s life, which he loves so well, is just the concentration of all that is not of God, but of the Evil One. With a great deal of what is naturally beautiful and seemingly good, the power of self and its pride corrupts all and makes it the very seat of sin, and death, and hell.
Once one has consented to this life of the entire denial of self, the cross will be welcomed and loved, as it is the appointed power of God for freeing us of the evil power that is the only hindrance in our way of being fully conformed to the image of God’s Son, loving and serving the Father even as He did. To deny self is the inner spirit, of which taking the cross is the manifestation.
"Let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me," (Luke 9:23). The insight into what the denial of self means makes clear why the cross must be taken up daily. It is not only special trial or suffering that calls to it; in the time of quiet and prosperity the need is still more urgent. Self is the enemy that is ever near, and ever seeking to regain its power. When he came down from the third heavens, Paul was in danger of being "exalted above measure" (2 Cor. 12:17); the denial of self and the bearing of the cross is to be the everyday spirit. When Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ," (Gal. 2:20). "Far be it from me to glory, save in the cross by which I have been crucified to the world," (Gal 6:14), he speaks of himself as living each moment the Crucifixion Life.
You may have seen the symbol of a hand holding a cross, with the motto Teneo et Tenem -"I hold and am held," or to put it more freely, "I bear and am borne." The words used before the cross of Christ was fully known - "Take thy cross" - express the first concept: accept the cross and bear it. The words given by the Holy Spirit after the Crucified One had been glorified and revealed as our life - "crucified with Christ"-point more to the other side: believe that His cross, that He the Crucified One, bears you. Before the work was finished it was only "Take thy cross"; now the finished work is revealed, that is, taken up and transfigured in the higher-crucified with Christ, I bear the cross and am borne. "I am crucified with Christ ... Christ liveth in me." (Gal. 2:20). It is only in the power of being borne that we can bear.
"Take Thy Cross"
Yes, what first was put as a condition we had to fulfill if we were to follow Him, becomes its blessed fruit. When we hear the call, "Follow me," we think chiefly of all it implies to us. It is needful we do so. But it is not the chief thing. A trusted leader takes all the responsibility of the way, and makes every provision. As we think of denying self, and taking the cross daily, we feel how little we know what it all means, how little we are able to perform what we do know. We need to fix our heart upon Jesus, who calls us to take the cross and follow Him. On Calvary He led the way, and opened it for us, even to the throne of God’s power. Let us fix our heart upon Him; as He led His disciples, He will lead us. The cross is a mystery. Taking the cross and being crucified with Christ is a deep mystery of redemption. All the hidden wisdom of God is a mystery. Let us follow Christ with the true desire to come after Him, and live wholly as He to the glory of the Father, and enter through death with Him into fullness of life with Him as our leader.
3. THE CROSS THE WAY TO GOD
"Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he
might bring you to God,"
1 Pet. 3:18
The Cross speaks of Sin: it was only as admitting to the full, and bearing the evil of sin, as hatred against God, that man could come to God. The Cross speaks of Curse: God’s judgment against sin; as long as man did not accept and approve that judgment as righteous, there could be no thought of his being restored to God’s presence. The Cross speaks of Suffering: it is only as, in suffering, the will of God is accepted, and everything given up to it, that there could be union with God. The Cross speaks of Death: it is only as man is ready to part utterly and entirely with his whole present life, to die to it, that he can enter into, or fully receive unto himself, the life and glory of God. All this Christ did. His whole life was animated by the crucifixion spirit.
His bearing the cross, and entering into God’s Holy Presence, was the opening up of a way in which we too could draw near. His death, the bearing of God’s judgment on sin, was the putting away of sin; He made an end of sin. In bearing the condemnation and the curse and death He bore away the sin; He abolished, broke the power of "him that had the power of death," (Heb. 2:14), and set us his prisoners free. The cross, and the blood, and the death of Christ are God’s assurance to the sinner that there is an immediate acquittal to each one who will accept of and entrust himself to this Savior, and an everlasting admission to God’s favor and friendship. All the claims that God’s law had against us; all the power sin and Satan had over us, all are at an end. The death of Jesus was the death of sin and death. The path of the cross is the path Christ has opened for us; in it we have full liberty and power to draw near to God.
The cross is the only way for human nature to come to God. It is the path in which Christ Himself walked; the path which He opened for us; the path in which we too walk; the path in which alone we can lead others.
The Way of the Cross
It was the way in which Jesus as man personally walked His whole life through, that as our Forerunner, He might enter in and appear before God for us. "Having been made perfect [through suffering], he became unto all them that obey him the author of eternal salvation." (Heb. 5:9). For Jesus Himself the cross was the path to God.
If there were no path for Christ to God but through death, the entire giving up of life, how much more must this be the only path in which the sinner can come to be filled with the life of God. And now that Christ’s death is a finished fact, the death and the life we receive in Him is the power of such absolute surrender working in us, with the blessed indwelling to which it leads. It is this faith which enables a man to say joyfully, "I am crucified with Christ. I glory in the cross, by which I am crucified to the world." The crucifixion spirit, with its protest against, and separation from the world, its sacrifice of all self-pleasing, and its absolute surrender to God even to the death, marks the whole life and walk. The cross daily borne and gloried in becomes indeed the path to God.
The Way to Bless
In this path we can win and bless others. For Christ, it was as the Crucified, giving His life for men, that He won the power to bless them. For Peter, it was his full acceptance of the sufferings of Christ on the way to glory, which filled him with boldness to testify for his Lord (1 Peter 1:11; 4:13; 5:1). For Paul, it was the intensity of his desire for perfect conformity to his Lord’s sufferings that gave him his power as an apostle (Philippians 3:10). In the same measure in which the church gives itself to God as a sacrifice for men, will the power of God’s Spirit work through her. It is Christ crucified who saves men; it is Christ crucified, living and breathing in us, who can and will use us for His saving work. And His living and working in us means nothing less than that we, like Him, are ready to give our lives for others. That means to forget ourselves, to sacrifice ourselves, to suffer anything that the lost may be won.
Life Out of Death
When a soul enters into the truth of being crucified with Christ, and bearing about His dying in the body, at first the chief thought and goal is that of personal sanctification. Death to sin, death to the world, and death to self are regarded as the path of life and blessing to the soul. But if these desires truly lead us to trust in Christ as the One in whom alone that death and life out of death is obtained, the very contact we have with Him will open up to us a secret. And that secret is simply that all His obedience to the Father and victory over sin was not for any personal glorification, but for the saving of others around Him. Thus the believer learns that the path of the cross cannot be trod truly by any who are not willing to work and give their life for others. Rather, the only true power to bless others comes when the cross, as death to the world and self, becomes the law of our daily life.
The cross was Christ’s way to God-for Himself and for us. The cross is our way to God-for ourselves and for others: for ourselves that it may be so for others too.
The church is continually speaking of the secret of the power in its ministry of salvation. But how little it is understood that the only power it has over the world comes by being crucified to the world. It is Christ crucified, a stumbling-block and foolishness to men, but gloried in by those who can say "I am crucified with Christ"; and it is the preaching of the cross thus known and gloried in, that is the power of God.
4. THE TRIUMPH OF THE CROSS
"Wiping out the handwriting in ordinances which was against us. He has taken it out of
the way, nailing it to the cross. Having stripped the principalities and the powers, he made a show
of them openly, triumphing over them in it."
Col. 2:14, 15
"Now thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and reveals through us the
sweet aroma of his knowledge in every place."
2 Cor 2:14
When God placed Adam in Paradise that he should not only dress it but "keep it," (Gen. 2:15), it is evident that there must have been some power of evil against which he had to watch and guard it. Since all that God created during the six days was very good, the evil must have already existed. Scripture does not reveal how and whence it came: it is enough to know that it exists, and that it threatens the very center of the new creation, the garden of God and the dwelling of man, with danger and ruin. God seeks to rob this evil of its power, and purposes doing so through the medium of man. No doubt this was at least partly why God made man - to conquer the evil that had existed before him. It is this that makes our world of such importance in the eyes of God and His angels: this is the battlefield where heaven and hell meet in deadly conflict.
The Enemy of the Cross
The terrible history of mankind can never be rightly understood until we allow Scripture to teach us that, even as God overrules all with a purpose, there is also an organized system of opposition, a kingdom that holds rule over men, keeping them in darkness, and using them in its war against the kingdom of God’s Son. On a scale beyond our small conception, through the slow length of ages which God’s patience bears, amid all the liberty of human will and action and what appears nothing but a natural growth and development, there is an unceasing contest going on. Though the outcome is not in doubt, the struggle is long and destructive. In the history of that struggle the cross is the turning point.
In our text we have a wonderful lifting of the veil to show what the redemption of the cross implies. "Having put off from himself the principalities and the powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in (the cross)." (Col. 2:14, 15). In the darkness of the cross the powers of darkness had made their onslaught; together they pressed on Him with everything that is terrible in their power, surrounding Him with the very darkness and misery of hell. They formed a cloud so thick and dark that the very light of God’s face forsook Him. But He put them off from Himself; He beat back the enemies and overcame the temptation. He made a show of them openly; in all the spirit world, before angels and devils, it was known that He conquered.
The very grave gave up its dead. And so He triumphed over them. In the other world the cross is the symbol of victory. He led them in triumph as prisoners: their power forever broken, the gate of the prison-house in which they hold men captive broken open, and liberty is proclaimed to all their prisoners. The Prince of this world is now cast out. He no longer has power to hold in bondage those who long for deliverance. He now only rules over those who consent to be his slaves. There is now a perfect deliverance for all who yield themselves to Christ and His cross.
The Cross Is a Triumph
This is the great lesson of our text. The cross is a triumph, which began when Christ cried out, "It is finished." (John 19:30). It is the beginning of a triumphal procession in which Christ moves on through the world in hidden glory leading captivity captive, leading into liberty His ransomed ones. And the believer can now ever rejoice, "Thanks be unto God, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ," (2 Cor. 2:14). Every thought of the cross, every step under the cross, every proclamation of the cross, ought to be in the tone of a Divine triumph. "Death is swallowed up in victory ... thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ," (1 Cor. 15:54, 57).
Without this, our understanding of the meaning and our experience of the power of the cross will be defective. We will find this both in our personal life and in our labors for others. In our personal life the cross will be counted a burden: the call to bear it, a law hard to obey; the attempt to live the crucifixion life, a failure; the thought of a daily death, a weariness. To crucify the flesh demands such unceasing watchfulness and self-denial that it is given up as a hopeless or fruitless task. It cannot be otherwise, until we know in some measure that the cross is a triumph.
We have not to crucify the flesh: it has been done in Christ. The act of crucifixion on Calvary is a finished transaction; the life and spirit that goes forth from it works unceasing power. The call to us is to believe, to be of good cheer. Nothing less than His death can suffice us; nothing less than His death is at our disposal. "Thanks be unto God, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ."
It is just as important in our service in this world that we believe in the triumph of the cross over the powers of darkness. Nothing less than an insight into this truth can teach us to know the supernatural strength, and the spiritual subtlety of our enemy. Nothing less can teach us what our objective must be as we wrestle "against the world-rulers of this darkness" (Eph. 6:12), - rescuing men away from the world and the power of its prince. Nothing less than this, an insight into the triumph the cross has won and forever given, can make us take our true position as the servants of our conquering King, our one expectation to be led in triumph in Him. And nothing less can keep alive in us the courage and the hope which we in our great weakness need as the mighty power of the enemy ever force themselves on us. Faith must learn to say in all its service and warfare, "Thanks be unto God, which always leadeth us in triumph in Christ." The cross with its foolishness and weakness, its humiliation and shame, is the everlasting signal of the victory Christ has won by weapons not of fleshly warfare. Yes, and of the victory which and every servant of Christ in particular can continually win as he enters more deeply into the spirit of His crucified Lord, and so yields more fully to Him.
5. THE CRUCIFIXION OF THE WORLD
"But far be it from me to boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world."
Gal. 6:14
There is no question of greater interest to the church of our day than that which deals with her relationship to the world. "The world" here simply means mankind in its fallen state, and its alienation from God. Christ regarded it as an organized system or kingdom, the very opposite and the mortal enemy of His kingdom, ruled by a mighty unseen power, "the god of this world," (2 Cor. 4:4), and have a spirit pervading it and giving it strength. He emphasized His own identity, saying, "I am not of the world." (John 17:14, 16). And just as definitely He taught His disciples, "Ye are not of the world," (John 15:19). He warned them that because they were not of the world, the world would hate them as it had hated Him. Of His sufferings He said: "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me," (John 14:30). "This is your hour, and the power of darkness," (Luke 22:53). "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world," (John 16:33). In the hatred that nailed Him to the cross the world revealed its true spirit, under the power of its god. In the cross Christ revealed His Spirit, His rejection of the world with all its threats and promises. The cross is the seal of His word, that His kingdom "is not of this world," (John 18:36). The more we love the cross and live by it, the more we shall know what the world is, and be separate from it.
The difference and antagonism between the two kingdoms is irreconcilable. However much the world be externally changed by Christian influence, its nature remains the same. However close and apparently favorable the alliance between the world and the church, the peace is but hollow and for a time. When the cross is fully preached with its revelation of sin and curse, with its claim to be accepted and borne-then the enmity is speedily seen. And nothing can overcome the world but that which is begotten of God.
Glorying in the Cross
In our text we see how clearly Paul felt and how boldly he proclaimed the enmity between the cross and the world, "[I] glory ... in the cross ... through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world." (Gal. 6:14). He was so identified with the cross that its relation to the world was his. The cross was the separation between them. The cross was the sign of the world’s condemnation of Christ. Paul accepted it; he was crucified by the world and to it. The cross was God’s condemnation of the world. Paul saw the world condemned, and under the curse. The cross was the everlasting separation between himself and the world as it is. The cross alone could be their meeting place and reconciliation. It was for this he gloried in the cross, and preached it as the only power to draw men out of the world to God.
The view many Christians take is the opposite of that of Christ and John and Paul. They speak as if in some way the curse had been taken off the world, and its nature somehow softened. They think of educating and winning the world, by meeting it halfway, with offers of friendship. They regard the work of the church as being to permeate the world with a Christian spirit and take possession of it. They do not see that to a far larger extent, the spirit of the world permeates the church. The offense of the cross is done away with, and the cross is so adorned with the flowers of earth that the world is quite content to give it a place among its idols.
War with the Enemy
In war there is no greater danger than underestimating the power of the enemy. The work of the church is a war, an unceasing battle. "Our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places." (Eph 6:12). The world is sinful humanity. It is not a mere collection of individual men, led on by blind chance in their sin, but they are unconsciously motivated by one organized force, a power of darkness led by one leader, the god of this world. "Aforetime ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience." (Eph. 2:2). Only by fully receiving this truth will the church become capable of understanding the meaning of the cross, and see how its purpose is to draw men out of the world. And only then will it have the courage to believe that nothing but the persistent preaching of the cross in all its Divine incomprehensibility is what can overcome the world and save men out of it. The powers of the other world, "the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places," working here in men can only be conquered and brought into subjection by a higher power, the power of God, by Him Who "having spoiled principalities and powers ... made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in [the cross]." (Col. 2:15). It is the cross - the cross with its sin and curse and death, with its love and life and triumph-which alone is the power of God.
Blinded Minds
The great power of the world consists in its darkness. "The god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving." (2 Cor. 4:4). "Our wrestling is ... against the world-rulers of this darkness." If any part of the spirit of this world be in the believer or the church, to the same extent are they incapable of seeing things in the light of God. They judge of spiritual truth with a heart that is prejudiced by the spirit of the world in them. No honesty of purpose, no earnestness of thought, no power of intellect can understand and receive God’s truth farther than the Spirit of Christ and His cross have indeed expelled the spirit of the world from within. The Holy Spirit, tenderly waited on and yielded to, is the only light that can open the eyes of the heart to see and know what is of the world and what is of God. And we can only truly yield to the Holy Spirit as we take the cross, with its crucifixion of the flesh and of the world, to become the law of our life. The cross and the world are diametrically and unchangeably opposed to each other.
This is the ruin that sin wrought. Man was meant to live on earth in the power of the heavenly life, in fellowship with God and obedience to His will. But when man sinned, he fell under the power of this present invisible world, for the god of this world rules it, and uses it as a means of temptation and sin. Consequently, man’s eyes became blind to spiritual and eternal things, while things of time and sense mastered and ruled him.
Some speak as if the cross of Christ had so taken away the curse and power of sin in the world that the believer is now free to enter into the enjoyment of it without danger. They say that the church has the power, and even duty, of taking possession of the world "for God." This is certainly not what Scripture teaches. The cross removes the curse from the believer, not from the world. Whatever has sin in it, has the curse on it as much as ever. Whatever the believer is to possess of this world and its goods must first be "sanctified by the word of God and by prayer," (1 Tim. 4:5). Nothing but having the evil of the spirit of the world revealed to us by the cross and Spirit of Christ, and His same power animating us and freeing us from it, can keep us so that we can be in the world, but not of it. It cost Christ His agony and blood-sweat, His awful death-struggle, even the sacrifice of His life, to conquer the world by the cross. And nothing less than a full and hearty entrance into fellowship with Him in His crucifixion, can save us from its power.
Crucified with Christ
In the Epistle to the Galatians there are several passages having reference to the cross of Christ. Only one of them speaks definitely of the Atonement: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse ... being made a curse for us." (Gal. 3:13). The others all bear upon the fellowship with the cross, and its relation to our inner life. When Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me" (Gal. 2:20); "they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh" (Gal. 5:24); "I [am crucified] unto the world" (Gal. 6:14) - he speaks of a life, an inward disposition, a spiritual experience, in which the very spirit and power that animated Christ, when He bore the cross, is maintained and manifested. There are many who profess to make their boast in the cross, and count their faith in the righteousness of Christ as our justification before God, as the great proof of their faithfulness to Scripture. And yet, in their wholehearted enjoyment and toleration and participation of what is of the spirit of this world, they prove that the glorying in a cross which crucifies the world has no real place in their religion. The cross that atones, and the world that crucified, are astonishingly at peace. The cross that crucifies the world as an accursed thing, and keeps us crucified to it, is unknown. If the preaching of the cross not only for justification but for sanctification, not only for pardon of sin but for power over the world, and an entire freedom from its spirit, is to take the place in the church that it had with Paul, we must beseech God to reveal what He means by the world, and what He intends by the power of the cross. It is in the lives of men actually and clearly crucified to the world and all that is of it, that the cross will prove its power.
6. THE DAILY CROSS (HYMN)
The Daily Cross by E. Burgess, B.P.H.
- Lord, day by day I view Thy wondrous cross
On Calvary!
And day by day I stretch my hands thereon
And die with Thee. - I "glory in the Cross," most loving Lord,
Because I know
It is the pow’r to save and satisfy,
Where’er I go. - The daily cross becomes the deepest joy,
For just beyond
The cross, I clearly see how cross and crown
Do correspond. - Oh, gracious Lord, how sweet to take from Thee
The daily cross!
And know that I can never separate
Its gain and loss. - The daily cross is daily loss to all
That keeps from Thee;
The daily cross is daily gain of all
Thou art for me.