There is nothing superficial or partial in the work of Christ on the Cross. It is not only the foundation of peace, establishing the ground upon which God can meet the sinner in grace, pardoning all his trespasses, but it effects a new relationship for the child of God.

1. It shows our relation to sin. "How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" "He that is dead is freed [justified] from sin." (Rom. 6:2, 7.) This is the fact:it is for faith to make it practical in our lives. '' Likewise reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 6:2:)

2. The Law is the strength of sin (i Cor. 15:56), not the power nor the rule of holiness. The motions of sin are by the law. Sin takes occasion by the commandment to work the desires of the flesh in us. If we are under the law as a rule of life there can be no holiness,- only bondage. "O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. vii, 5, 8, 24, etc.) But how clearly does the cross separate us from the law! '' Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God." (Rom. 7:4.) How carefully is the truth guarded here from the charge of antinomianism – of permitting sin! Nay, it is that we may be holy that we have become dead to the law.

3. But the cross not only shows our relation to sin and the law:it also marks our connection with the
world. "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world." (Gal. 6:14.) The world is under judgment:it is going on in utter carelessness of its doom. We have anticipated that judgment, and in the person of our substitute have passed through and beyond it. That cross was what the world gave the Lord:His relations with the world were marked by it, and for us as well. How many heart-aches, disappointments, failures, as of Lot, would the people of God be spared did we but realize this truth, and not merely submit, but glory in that wondrous cross.

" Forbid It, Lord, that I should boast,
Save in the cross of Christ, my God.
All the vain things that charm me most,
I'd sacrifice them to His blood."