"The preaching of the cross" is that on which the great truth
of grace depends
"The preaching of the
cross" is that on which the great truth of grace depends. Not the death of
Christ merely, but "the cross." Synonyms are few in Scripture, and a
change of words is not to please fastidious ears but to express a different or
fuller thought. "The preaching of the cross is to them that perish
foolishness" (1 Cor. 1:18). This is not so as to the preaching of the
death of Christ, apart from the truths which cluster round "the
cross." The whole fabric of apostate Christianity is based upon the fact
of that death, and by virtue of it the Scarlet Woman shall yet sit enthroned as
mistress of the world. The Saviour’s death is owned as part of the world’s
philosophy. It is a fact and a doctrine which human wisdom has adopted, and
rejoices in as the highest tribute to human worth. How great and wonderful must
that creature be on whose behalf God has made so marvelous a sacrifice! And
thus God is made to foster man’s pride and sense of self-importance.
As with the world’s philosophy,
so also is it with the world’s religion. The doctrine of the death of Christ,
if separated from "the cross," leaves human nature still a standing
ground. It is consistent with creature claims and class privileges. Sinners of
the better sort can accept it, and be raised morally and intellectually by it.
But the preaching of the cross is "the axe laid to the root of the tree,"
the death-blow to human nature on every ground and in every guise. The great
fact on which redemption depends is not merely that Christ has died but that
death has been brought about in a way and by means which manifest and prove not
only the boundless and causeless love of God to man, but also the wanton and
relentless enmity of man to God, and that death, while it has made it possible
for God in grace to save the guiltiest and worst of Adam’s race, has made it
impossible, even with God, that the worthiest and best could be saved except in
grace. That death also has measured out the moral distance between God and man,
and has left them as far asunder as the throne of heaven and the gate of hell.
If God will now give blessing, He must turn back upon Himself, and find in His
own heart the motive, just as He finds the righteous ground of it in the work
of Christ. There is no salvation now for "the circumcision" as
such—for diligent users of the means of grace (this expression refers to
ceremonial Christendom’s term for baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and so-called
sacraments, Ed.) for earnest seekers, for anxious inquirers, for a privileged
class under any name or guise. If such were granted special favor, then were
"the offence of the cross ceased" (Gal. 5:1.1) and grace would be
dethroned.
Circumcision did not deny the
death of Christ. On the contrary, it betokened covenants and class privileges
granted by virtue of the great sacrifice to which every ordinance in the old
religion pointed. But it utterly denied the cross, and grace as connected with
the cross, for there every covenant was forfeited, every privilege lost. Before
the cross, therefore, circumcision was the outward sign of covenant blessing;
but after the cross, it became the token of apostasy. The cross has shut man up
to grace or judgment. It has broken down all "partition walls," and
left a world of naked sinners trembling on the brink of hell. Every effort to
recover themselves is but a denial of their doom, and a denial too of the grace
of God which stoops to bring them blessing where they are and as they are. The
cross of Christ is the test and touch-stone of all things. Man’s philosophy,
man’s power, man’s religion—behold their work, the Christ of God upon a
gallows! (Religion, power, philosophy:Jerusalem, Rome, Athens:the Jew, the
Roman, and the Greek.)
In distinguishing thus between
the death of Christ and "the cross," let me not be misunderstood. It
is not that God ever separates them thus. On the contrary, "the preaching
of the cross" is the emphasizing and enforcing of the very facts and
truths which the heart of man always struggles to divorce from the doctrine of
redemption, but which God has inseparably connected with it. The idea of
redemption was perfectly familiar to the Jew, and every student knows how
entirely it accords with human philosophy. The Jew and the Greek could shake
hands upon it and set out together to seek the realization of it, but the one
demanded signs of Messiahship, and the passion of the other was wisdom (1 Cor.
1:22). The death and resurrection of the Son of God, if accomplished in a
manner which men would deem worthy of the Son of God, might have satisfied the
one, as it did, in fact, satisfy and charm the other as soon as the cross was
lost sight of. But the cross was a stumbling-block to the religious man, and
folly to the wisdom-lover (1 Cor. 1:23). If human philosophy today adopts and
glories in redemption, as in fact it does, it is just because the cross is
forgotten; and if, in spite of what Christianity is in the world and to the
world, the Jew is still unchristianized, it is just because with him that cross
can never be forgotten.
It is not, I repeat, that God
ever separates them, but that man always does. A gospel that points to the
death of Christ as proof of God’s high estimate of man, and then turns the
doctrine of that death into a syllogism, so that men, in no way losing
self-respect, can calmly reason out their right to blessing by it, will neither
give offence to any one, nor be branded as foolishness. Such a gospel pays due
deference to human nature and satisfies man’s sense of need without hurting in
the least his pride. Such a gospel has, in fact, produced that marvelous
anomaly, a Christian world. Even in Paul’s day "the many" (2 Cor.
2:17) were but hucksters of the Word of God. Their aim was to make their wares
acceptable, to secure a trade, as it were, and so they sought popularity and an
apparent success by corrupting the gospel to make it attractive to their
hearers. (Such is the meaning of the passage. The word "corrupt"
means, first, "to retail," and then, to resort to the malpractices
common with hucksters, to adulterate or corrupt.) "But as of sincerity,
but as of God, in the sight of God," says the apostle in contrast with all
this, "we speak in Christ." The gospel he preached would have created
a Church in the midst of a hostile world. The gospel of "the many"
has constituted the world itself the Church. And the fable of the wolf in
sheep’s clothing finds a strange fulfilment here, though indeed the
metamorphosis is so complete that we are at a loss to distinguish either wolf
or sheep remaining.
Rationalism and Ritualism are
the great enemies of the cross. The First Epistle to the Corinthians touches on
the one; the Epistle to the Galatians deals with the other, A gospel which pays
court either to man’s reason or man’s religion will never fail to be popular.
Well versed, no doubt, in Greek philosophy, and no careless student of human
nature, Paul might have drawn all Corinth after him had he gone there
"with excellency of speech or of wisdom" in announcing the testimony
of God. He did "speak wisdom among them that are perfect," as witness
his letter to the Romans, or indeed his letter to the Corinthians themselves.
His argument for the resurrection . . . would have charmed and won not a few of
the disciples of Plato and the other brilliant men who raised unenlightened
reason to its highest glory at the very time when the voice of revelation was
being hushed amid the sad echoes of Malachi’s wail over the apostasy of
Jehovah’s people. But just because the Greeks were wisdom-worshipers, he turned
from everything that would foster their favorite passion, and became a fool
among them, a man of one idea, who knew nothing "save Jesus Christ, and
Him crucified." The enthronement of Christ on high and the glories of His
return are inseparable from the Christian’s faith, but in Corinth it was the
cross the apostle preached, the cross in all its marvelous attractiveness for
hearts enlightened from on high, in all its intolerable repulsiveness for
unregenerate men (1 Cor. 1:17, 18, 23; 2:1-6).
With the Galatians it was
against the religion of the flesh he had to contend. He testified to them that
if they were circumcised, Christ should profit them nothing (Gal. 5:2). How was
this? Had grace found its limits here, so that if any transgressed in this
respect, they committed a sin beyond the power of Christ to pardon? Grace has
no limits. But there are limits to the sphere in which alone grace can act.
Circumcision in itself was nothing; but it was the mark of, and key to, a
position of privilege under covenant utterly inconsistent with grace. "The
offence of the cross" was that it set aside every position of the kind;
not that it brought redemption through the death upon the tree, but that,
because it so brought redemption, all were shut up to grace. If Paul had so
preached Christ as to pay homage to human nature and to respect and accredit
the vantage ground it claimed by virtue of its religion, persecution would have
ceased, for the cross would have lost its offence (Gal. 5:11; 6:12).
Redemption as preached by
"the many" in apostolic days brought no persecution because it left
man a platform on which "to make a fair show in the flesh," but the
cross set aside the flesh altogether. If the death of Christ be preached as a
means of salvation, not for lost sinners, but for the pious and devout, where
is the offence? But the cross comes in with its mighty power to bring low as
well as to exalt, for it exalts none but those whom first it humbles. It calls
upon the pious worshiper, if indeed he would have blessing, to come out from
the shrine in which he trusts, and take his place in the market square beside
the outcast and the vile. It tells the "earnest seeker" and the
"anxious inquirer" that by their efforts they are only struggling out
of the pit where alone grace can reach them. It proclaims to the worthy
"communicant" of blameless life, whose mind is a treasury of orthodox
doctrines, and whose ways are a pattern of all good, that he must come down and
stand beside the drunkard and the harlot, there to receive salvation from the
grace of God to the glory of God. They who do thus preach the cross can testify
that its offence has not ceased in our day and in our midst.
Redemption is not, first, an
easy way of salvation for the sinner, and then a display of the character of
God. God must be supreme. A man who makes self his chief aim is contemptible,
but in the very nature of things God must be first in everything, else He would
be no longer God. The obedience of Christ was infinitely precious to God apart
altogether from any results accruing to the sinner, and the cross is the
expression of that obedience tried to the utmost. In this light, His death was
but the crowning act of a life yielded up to God. He was "obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross"—the cross, an expression beyond all
else of agony and contempt to the full, and because it was this, an expression,
too, the most complete and most blessed, of perfect love to God and man. That
death was but the climax of His life. It had another character, doubtless, in
which it stands alone, for there divine judgment fell on Him for sin, and He
became the outcast sin-offering. We do well, truly, at times to think thus of Calvary; but we do not well to think only of it thus. The great burnt-offering aspect of
the cross ought ever to be first, and never to be forgotten.
Even as we preach the
sin-offering or the passover, the joy and strength of our own hearts ought to
be the burnt-offering. And thus, whatever may be the results of our testimony,
it will always be itself a continual burnt-offering, "unto God a sweet
savor of Christ" (2 Cor. 2:15). And the burnt-offering could never be
accepted without the accompanying meat-offering. The work of Christ, even in
its highest aspect, must never be separated from the intrinsic perfectness and
majesty of His person. It was the burnt-offering with its meat-offering that
Israel daily sacrificed to God; and this aspect of the cross ought ever to be
before us, and that for its own sake and not because of special need in us.
And how we lower everything! In
the Jewish ritual we find the passover, the dedication of the covenant, and the
sin-offering of the red heifer to be the foundation sacrifices which were
offered once for all. We have further the burnt-offering, the meat-offering,
the peace-offering, and the great yearly sin-offering, besides others still of
which I will make no mention here. Each one of all these many types has found
its antitype in Christ; but what do Christians know of them? The passover alone
would more than satisfy the gospel of today, and even that is humanized and
lowered. Christ has died, and that is everything. How He died is scarcely
thought of, and Who He is who did so die is well-nigh forgotten altogether.
The law of the leper may teach
us a lesson here. Two sparrows were sold for a farthing, and no more was needed
for the leper’s cleansing. A farthing! If price was to be paid at all, could it
possibly be less? It is impossible that the outcast sinner can have high or
worthy thoughts of Christ, nor does God expect it from him. The acknowledgment
of Him suffices, if only it be true, how poor and low soever it may be. The
bitten Israelite who looked upon the brazen serpent lived; "as many as
touched Him were made perfectly whole." It was only the leper’s farthing
offering, but it was enough. And so also now:"whosoever shall call on the
name of the Lord shall be saved," and "they that hear shall
live."
But after the sinner has been
brought nigh to God and found peace and pardon and life, shall the poor
estimate he formed of Christ and of His sacrifice while he was yet an outcast
still be the limit of his gratitude and the measure of his worship? Shall the
farthing gospel that met the banished sinner’s need, satisfy the heart of the
citizen, the saint, the child of God? The two sparrows restored the leper to
the camp, but it then behooved him to bring all the great offerings of the law.
Christ in all His fullness is God’s provision for His people, and nothing less
than this should be the measure of their hearts’ worship (Lev. 14).
Christ has died—that is certain.
Rationalists and Ritualists, Protestants and Romanists, all are agreed that
Christ has died, and that is everything. How He died is or in our Houses of
Parliament, as day by day their sittings are begun in prayer, the death of
Christ is a fact which need not be asserted, for none but an infidel would
question it. But inquire in what way and to what extent sinners are benefited
by that death, and at once the harmony is broken. Upon this every school has
its creed, and every "ism" its theories, and the theme is the signal
for a scramble and a struggle between all the rival banners of Christendom.
Here is a master-stroke of
Satan’s guile. That which God intended should be an impossibility to the
natural mind, he has made the common creed of men. In the wildest fables of
false religions, there is nothing more utterly incredible than the story of the
life and death of the Son of God. For one who knows who Jesus was, and what
"the Christ" means, to believe that Jesus is the Christ is so
entirely beyond the possibilities of human reason that it is proof of a birth
from God (1 John 5:1), He who believes that Jesus is the Son of God is a man
with a supernatural faith, a faith that overcomes the world (1 John 5:5). Yet
just as in Him the carnal eye could find no beauty (Isa. 53:2; Mark 6:3) so in
His gospel the carnal mind can see no wonders. But it behooves the evangelist
so to preach that gospel that the Holy Ghost may own the word to reveal thereby
the mighty mysteries and marvels of redemption, not lowering and humanizing it
to bring it within the reach of the natural man apart from the work of the Holy
Spirit. Some preachers seem to bring Christ to the sinner, but the true
evangelist brings the sinner to Christ; in other words, Christ and not the
sinner is the central object in his testimony.
If Christians are commonplace in
our day, may it not be because the gospel they believe is commonplace? Divine
faith is faith in the Divine. The difference is not in the faith, but in the
object of it. If we have really believed the gospel of God, we have each one of
us received for himself a revelation from on high, a revelation to which flesh
and blood could never reach. Let us remember this. These pages are proof how
much I value clear and scriptural statements of the truth; but it is not on
clearness, or even orthodoxy, that the power depends. The gospel may be so
sifted and simplified that none shall fail to understand it, and yet sinners
may never be brought to God at all. The preaching that is wanted is not
"with enticing words of man’s wisdom," reasoning out salvation) and
cheapening the gospel to suit the condition of the hearers, but "in
demonstration of the Spirit and of power"—preaching that will be "to
them that perish foolishness," but to the saved "the power of
God."
It is one thing to master
Christianity; it is quite another thing to be mastered by it. And it is the
cross that attracts and conquers—the cross, not as an easy way of pardon for
the sinner, not as a "plan of salvation," but as a fact and a
revelation to change a heartless worldling into an adoring worshiper; the
cross, not as the ruling factor in the equation of man’s redemption, but as a
display of the love and righteousness and wrath of God, and the sin of man, to
subdue the hardest heart, and change the whole current of the most selfish and
ungodly life.
The unseen is real to faith and
to those who believe in the cross, "before whose eyes Jesus Christ has
been openly set forth crucified" (Gal. 3:1, R.V.). They have seen that
marred and agonized face. They have been witnesses to the reproach that broke
His heart, the scorn, the derision, and the hate of all the attendant throng.
They have heard "Emmanuel’s orphan cry" when forsaken of His God. And
in gazing thus upon that scene their inmost being has sustained a mighty
change. Till yesterday, the world and self ensnared their hearts, and filled
the whole horizon of their lives. But now the cross has become a power to
divorce themselves from self, and to separate them from that world which
crucified their Lord.
O for power to so preach the
cross of Christ that it shall become a reality to all, whether they accept it
or despise it, that men who never were conscious of a doubt, because they never
really believed, shall see what priests and soldiers and the rabble crowd that
mocked His agonies saw, and seeing, shall exclaim, "It is impossible that
this can be the Son of God!" that some again shall see what John and Mary
witnessed, and gazing shall cry out with broken hearts in mingled love and
grief, "My God, was this for me!" and turn to live devoted lives for
Him who died and rose again.
I conclude in borrowed words,
more worthy than my own:"And if I were to tell you of forgiveness of sins
through His mercy, and leave you there; if I preached to you the results
flowing of necessity from the cross to each believer, but not the cross itself,
or the cross itself as a judicial work, but not the Crucified One, I should
leave you still to self, and I desire to save you from self, as well as from
everlasting shame and contempt. But I preach Christ Jesus the Lord, the Son of
God, the brightness of His glory and express image of Himself, on the cross
made a curse and smitten there by the hand of God judicially for the guilty.
See the dreadfulness of that cross and know Who it is that was lifted up on it,
and for whom and to what end He was lifted up. Look steadily; mark, study,
search into those unsearchable moral riches, and blessing after blessing will
come to you, and so freely, from this one object, in which all truth and all
love are alike declared, and in which you will learn to love, to worship, and
to obey, to abhor wrong, to forget yourself and think of Him, and to ‘count all
things but loss,’ as the apostle says, not for the grace of your deliverance
but ‘for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.’"