_ T\r ■ > _ 1"~- - _ BT 265 , W38 1923 Watt, Gordon, 1865- The meaning of the cross ^ w i Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/meaningofcrossstOOwatt Q ' O' \ !0V 1 7 ^934 /y i < The Meaning of The Cross Studies of the Cross of Christ throughout the Bible Showing the central place of the Cross in salvation, victory, power, and service BY THE REV. GORDON WATT, M. A. PHILADELPHIA THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES COMPANY i COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY THE SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES COMPANY Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS I. The Threefold Aspect of the Cross . 5 II. Our Indebtedness to the Cross . 18 III. The Message of the Cross in the Old Testament 31 IV. The Cross in the Gospels . 45 V. The Cross in the Epistles . 60 VI. The Cross in the Revelation . 74 VII. The Mold of the Cross . 86 VIII. The Imperatives of the Cross . 97 IX. Following the Lamb : The Way of the Cross . 112 These studies of the Cross of Christ were given as daily messages at the Summer Conference of the Victorious Life Testimony held in July, 1922, at Stony Brook, Long Island, New York. In reporting that conference The Sunday School Times said : “At nine o’clock that first Lord’s Day morning the Rev. Gordon Watt, of Scotland, gave the first of his unforgettable series of studies of the Cross of Christ. Each morning of the eight days, and again at the closing service, Mr. Watt brought from the Word of God treasures new and old on the Cross. If one wonders how it were possible to give nine extended addresses to the same audience of Christians and always on the single theme of the Cross, one has yet to gain new blessings from the great central theme of the entire Bible.” THE MEANING OF THE CROSS I THE THREEFOLD ASPECT OF THE CROSS IT IS very essential that we should have a right under¬ standing of the cross, of what the Lord Jesus Christ, through his death, has really accomplished; because vic¬ tory for the daily life depends upon how we enter into the fullest experience of the cross »and stand there in and with Christ. So let us just begin at the very beginning. John 3:7 is the first aspect of the cross: “Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” There is nothing for us unless we have come there. What the Lord calls “the new birth” is just the door into the riches of our inheritance* in* grace. I trust we have all passed through the door. What does the new birth mean ? It means new life, new life whereby we become the children of God, even as by natural birth we are the children of our parents. Now how is that brought about? John 1 : 12, 13, “But as many as received him [the Lord Jesus], to them gave he power [or authority] to become the sons [or children] of God, even to them that believe on his name : which were born, not of blood [we are not born Christians], nor of the will of the flesh [we are not the children of God through any self effort], nor of the will of man [a man is not a Chris¬ tian because some other body says he is a Christian or looks like a Christian or lives like a Christian], but of God.” 5 6 The Meaning of the Cross The new birth becomes an actual experience the moment that we receive the Lord Jesus Christ as our Saviour. By that act, on the ground of the atoning sacrifice of the Son of God, we receive new life, even the life of God; we pass into a new stage, that of spiritual regeneration, regenera¬ tion by the Holy Spirit ; and we enter into a new position, that of being the children of God. Now I dare not and can not emphasize too strongly the necessity of the new birth, simply because the new birth produces the new creation, and the new creation is God’s imperative demand and requirement for new life and for new service. One of our old Scottish preachers once said, “All man¬ kind hangs either at the cradle of Adam or. at the cradle of Christ,” and we have to choose. I venture to say that the ordinary church-goer has little or no idea of the mean¬ ing of that, and yet it is one of the essential facts of the Word of God. The old head of the race was Adam, and Adam failed and fell, and the old creation failed in him and fell with him. It is very important to be quite clear about that. I want to quote from a great Bible teacher: “If man never fell, then the Christ of the Gospels lived and taught and died unnecessarily.” These are words that ought to be placarded abroad to-day : “That man is con¬ sistent who abandons all, rather than he who, professing still to own allegiance to Christ, denies some parts of the whole.” It is a pity that all of our liberal theologians could not read these words. These are words by J. Campbell Morgan in the introduction to the book of Genesis in his Analyzed Bible. Human nature as in Adam has fallen. It is not incap¬ able, mark you, of reaching high levels of nobility and goodness according to human standards, but finds it an utter impossibility to adjust itself to the requirements of God’s holiness. And the fallen nature is the material through which the self life is always manifesting itself. It is on that that Satan is continually working in order to produce failure and weakness and loss in us, and unless The Threefold Aspect of the Cross 7 we come to this point, to which the great apostle Paul was brought by the sheer logic of his own intellect and per¬ sonal experience in the face of sin, we can never be in the position where we can say truthfully, “There is there¬ fore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” That is only possible in its fullest sense for the one who understands what God has done with the old creation. You and I need not wonder at the attempts on the part of the enemy to banish from books, from many sources, and even from some so-called revisions of the Bible, all mention of the truth of the atonement, because the atone¬ ment is the proof of the reality of the foe. And you need not be surprised that he is inciting many men to-day to cover with ridicule and scorn the fact of the fall, because the fall is the proof of the necessity of the atonement. These two things go together, and here throbs the very heart of the Gospel to a lost and ruined race. The old head of the race failed God, and the old creation failed with the head ; but God has a new head, even Christ Jesus, his own Son, and he is getting a new creation. When Christ went to the cross he took the old creation, which was the offspring of the fall, to the cross with him, just because there was no other way by which God could get his new creation and man could experience deliverance and liberty. The old creation, no matter how commendable it may be from human standpoints, — and I grant everything that could be said in its favor, — the old creation is under the curse of God, it is under the sentence of death, it has been condemned in Christ, and the only way in which a man can be set free from the curse is to be born over again, re-made in Christ, identified with Christ in his death, for “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law.” That is the foundation truth of the Gospel. That is the foundation fact for Christian life and for Christian serv¬ ice. That is the first aspect of the cross. 8 The Meaning of the Cross The Second Aspect of the Cross. — Now shall we turn to Romans 6 : 6, which is the second aspect of the Cross : “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.” That came by a revelation to Paul. It will come to you in the same way. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ.” It is very necessary to make this perfectly clear, that God’s plan of salvation embraces no scheme for the betterment of the old man. There is only one place for it and that is the cross, the place of death. That is the starting point of the victorious life, “Know¬ ing this, that our old man is crucified with Christ.” Let us just notice this, that our crucifixion with Christ is as complete a one as Christ’s crucifixion for us. Just as Christ was crucified for us and for our sins, so we have been crucified with- him. Each one of these works is finished. That is a fact of God, eternal, unalterable, on which our faith is to rest for continuous victory and deliverance. The whole secret of victory in the Christian life is simply understanding our attitude to that fact, and asserting our position in relation to that fact, and then maintaining that attitude in the face of every assault* of Satan and every attempt on the part of the old man to reassert its supremacy in our characters and in our lives. Remember it is not sin that dies, it is not self that dies, it is not temptation that dies, it is you who have to die. Their attitude never changes; yours has to. Now what is your attitude? Romans 6:11 speaks of reckoning: '“Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Faith rests on the fact of God and the act of Christ, and reckons that fact to be true because of the act. What does reckoning mean? Reckoning is always just the attitude of the will — taking the place of death to sin, refusing to yield to sin, setting itself continu¬ ally after God, standing with set purpose of heart upon the victory which has been won for us by the Lord Jesus The Threefold Aspect of the Cross 9 Christ, and claiming that victory at every point of the conflict, “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.” And you conquer your sin, not by struggling, not by fighting with it in your own strength, but by dying to it. You conquer your sin by dying to it. When I say that I do not mean there is no more con¬ quering. You and I never can sit down and say “The fight is over.” There is not only a rest of faith to be enjoyed (that is blessedly true), but there is a fight of faith in which we have to be continually engaged, and one of the greatest needs in the Christian life is to recog¬ nize the foe as well as the methods of the foe by which he is determined to reach his end. It is not enough to say, “Let us look to the Lord and he will carry us through.” That is only one half of the truth. One of the weaknesses of many Christians to-day is that they are attempting to ignore the foe, to ignore the presence of a tremendous personality of evil in the world, and that is just about as wise as it would be to try and ignore your¬ self. If you shut your eyes to the existence of the enemy and fail to discern his presence and his power you are putting yourself at as great a disadvantage in spiritual conflict as any general would if he went into a fight with¬ out ever making any use of his intelligence. If you look to the Lord and do not do what the Bible tells you to do, watch, you cannot pray intelligently ; you fail to recognize the movements of the enemy and the methods of the enemy. If you watch these things and do not look to the Lord, then you will get absolutely crushed and depressed by the darkness that is deepening around you and by the awful onrush of the forces of evil. We are required to be alert to-day to evil in all its various forms, also to its source, to its challenge, to its methods, to its objectives ; and you will be wise to give to the enemy just the name that the Bible gives to him. It is this that makes necessary the attitude of constantly act¬ ing upon this eternal fact of God, taking your place with Christ in his death and claiming in your own experience ,10 The Meaning of the Cross the power of that death manifested in the victory won on the cross. It is that which keeps you in touch with Christ to-day in the conflict. It is that which keeps the eye of your mind clear and enables you to see the path and to understand what God means you to do. What is the great secret of maintaining this attitude? Romans 8 : 2, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” Only a law can set us free from a law. If Congress passes a law that proves to be unworkable or unjust it has to pass another law in order to set the country free from that law. That is true here: only a law can set you free from a law. And what is law? It is just the steady pressure of a power. In the spiritual conflict there are always two laws at work, the lower law of the self oper¬ ated on by Satan, by means of which we are dragged ■down, and the higher law of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ operated on by the Spirit of God, by which he is ever seeking to lift us up and bring us into the place o£ freedom and deliverance. It is the law, the higher law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, that makes us free from the lower law of sin and death. Victory in the con¬ flict of Christian life is thus. It is not meeting sin in your own strength, it is not crushing down that temper of yours, it is not making a good resolution at this con¬ ference and saying, “By God’s grace I will never give way again to that thing that has so often brought me low.” God’s way of victory is not fighting in our own strength, it is dying. That is the truth I believe we want to learn. God’s way of victory is dying to sin, and God’s way is always the best way, God’s way is always the surest way to vic¬ tory. God’s way is learning to die to sin and to conquer sin by dying to it, asserting our position of union with Christ in his death, and giving the Holy Spirit the opportu¬ nity to bring in the higher law, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. When the late Andrew Murray of South Africa came The Threefold Aspect of the Cross 11 over to England twenty-seven years ago he met a number of Christian workers in London, and his message to them was simply this: “Two bodies cannot occupy the same place; if one comes in the other goes out. And in the measure in which you go out Christ comes in.” That is vic¬ tory, that is the victorious Christian life. Therefore in the measure in which you yield to the Holy Spirit, the law of the Spirit of life will come into you and drive out the law of sin and death and give you the victory. You con¬ quer by dying. Let us note this, that the decisive factor in the conflict is inside, it is the will. The decisive factor is the will, a surrendered will to co-operate with the Holy Spirit, and- the Holy Spirit can do nothing for you and for me unless he has our co-operation. Frances Ridley Havergal puts it in this way: “There must be full surrender before there can be full blessedness. God admits us by the one into the other.” And where there is this surrender then the scheme of the evil one is foiled. But the solemn thing is that where there is not this surrender the plan of the Holy Spirit is spoiled. Therefore let us not pass that over without thinking seriously about it and asking God to make it mean to us all that it does mean, that the decisive factor in every conflict of the life of the Christian is my will. And when we reach the position where we co-oper¬ ate with the Holy Spirit, there he works into us the power of the cross and makes us know the truth of victory. That is the second aspect of the cross. The Third Aspect of the Cross. — But there is a third aspect. If we are to know the full tide of victory, I am persuaded of this, that we require more and more to recognize that behind all the sin is this great foe to which I have referred, and if we are to win the victory we must occupy the position, the strategic position, which God has revealed to us. Why was it that Joshua received the command utterly to exterminate the Canaanites and those other nations? You will find it in the seventh chapter of Deuteronomy, 12 The Meaning of the Cross those first few verses of the chapter, that tremendous command of God that he was utterly to destroy those nations and not allow one of them to live. Why was it? Because it was necessary for the health of the people and for the carrying out of the purposes of God, just as on certain occasions he has had to act in the same way, and sometimes exterminate a people, and just as govern¬ ments to-day have sometimes to deprive a man of his liberty and of his life because it is for the good of others, because it is for the carrying out of a wider purpose. When Joshua received this command to exterminate the Canaanites it was because of the foe that was behind them. Their religion was a religion of spiritism. It was saturated with Satanic power, and therefore Joshua was sent to war, not so much with those Canaanites as men as with the awful power that was behind them and that was working all this mischief. If we are to know the fullest victory our attitude must be the same as God’s attitude to those powers of evil. At the back of sin, at the back of practically everything that is happening to-day against God and against right¬ eousness is this awful foe of which Paul speaks in the sixth chapter of Ephesians, with this marvelous army, this disciplined army that he directs, the principal¬ ities and powers of evil. Behind the sin which attacks you, behind all this apostasy that is rushing in upon the Church, behind all these methods of other nations that are creating such problems that our statesmen are being completely baffled, and that are bringing about burdens that are breaking men and nations down, stands this implacable foe of God ; and you and I can make the cross a barrier in resisting him, in attacking him, in overcoming him. Now turn to the third aspect of the cross, which is found in Revelation 12 : “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony ; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” Read the book of Revelation and you will find it is a record of war The Threefold Aspect of the Cross 13 between the Lamb and the dragon ; and what is propheti¬ cally true of the future is spiritually true of the present. There is the enemy to-day, more bold, more open, more defiant, more determined than any general, I believe, in the past, has ever had any experience of, and to know that there is an enemy is half the battle. He was no myth to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is no myth in the Bible, and we have no right to leave people in ignorance of him and his workings to-day. There are many causing trouble due directly to Satanic influence, and the very essence of spir¬ itual strategy is to know your enemy, and then to know how to direct the power God gives you upon him at the right spot. Now here, just in a word, is the full Gospel of grace — deliverance from sin, deliverance from self, from the old man, and deliverance from Satan and all his works. How does that deliverance come? “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” “Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out,” said our Lord Jesus on the eve of Calvary. And when he hung there on the cross, crucified in utter weakness, that weak¬ ness became the power of God by which he expelled the devil from his place of sovereignty in the world and stripped his principalities and his authorities of all their power. From that day to this and to the very end Satan is a defeated foe, and the purpose of God is that you and I should be treading him under foot. The truth is that there are many Christians to-day who are being trodden under his feet ; and that is not in God’s program for any one of his children. He is exercising authority in lives to-day to which he has no right because he is defeated, and the Lord Jesus Christ gives to you and to me the right, the authority, the privilege, to tread him under our feet and to know in experience the fulness of the victory of the cross. For remember the victory of the cross is not confined to our salvation from sin or to our victory over self, it embraces the indisputable fact that the prince of this world has been judged and cast out, 14 The Meaning of the Cross and the Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world, gives us now the authority to bruise the serpent's head. How do we overcome him ? That is a wonderful word, the word “overcome” in the Greek. If you were in a court of law it means that you win your case. I fit is in a conflict it means that you have knocked the weapon out of the hand of your adversary. That is the meaning of it. Here they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb., Satan goes into the presence of God to accuse the be¬ liever, and by the blood of the Lamb you win your case at the great court of appeal. Satan attacks you in your per¬ son, through your mind, through the circumstances of life, but by the blood of the Lamb you can knock the weapon out of your adversary’s hand, “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” Remember that is the basis of all God’s dealings with you and with me, and it has to be the basis of all our opposition to Satanic interference in our lives. The fin¬ ished work of Christ on Calvary is the weapon by which you and I can fight the good fight of faith with perfect success. And bear in mind that the cross is the only place where Satan admits defeat. It is the one and only place in the universe of God where the great enemy has been con¬ quered. It is the one and only place where you and I can have victory, and therefore we have got to choose to stand there and resist him and claim the victory. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” “Precious blood, by this we conquer in the fiercest fight, Sin and Satan overcoming by its might.” Then John goes on to tell us something more, that they overcame him by the word of their testimony. That is a great deal more than getting up in a meeting and saying, “Twenty years ago I was saved.” T estimony here means co-operating with the Holy Spirit in his judgment upon Satan. And what is his judgment upon Satan? That he has been defeated and that he has no right to any life. Testimony here means entering into partnership with the The Threefold Aspect of the Cross 15 Holy Spirit to have that fact carried out in actual experi¬ ence. How is it to be made effective? You have got to go back to Romans 6 : 6, and you have got to learn, and I have got to learn, to stand upon that death of Christ and ask the Holy Spirit to make it all that it means, to make it a fact in our experience every moment and every moment. There has to be the perpetual attitude of reckoning myself dead to this and that sin as Satan attacks me every day. Then there has to be the perpetual aggressiveness of the Spirit against him and all his works. You take your sin, the sin you know is your besetting sin, the thing you sometimes call just a failing, an infirm¬ ity. Perhaps you have never yet come to call it a sin. The sooner you begin to give it its right name the better. Take your sin and stand on the death of Jesus Christ against that sin and claim the victory that there is in Calvary for you when joined to the living Christ. Close by faith every avenue into your being against that sin and other sins. Take your environment, take your home, take your business, with all its duties and tests and trials and irri¬ tations, take the circumstances of life; learn to stand there in death union with Christ, and then, by faith through that cross, claim the victory against every foreign power that is seeking to disturb the atmosphere of your home or that is seeking to cripple you or lame you and hinder you in business or through circumstances. That is making Christ Lord of your surroundings. That is entering into co-operation with the Holy Spirit for the deliverance of your life and your home and every¬ thing else. Take your work for Christ, take the meetings, the services ; learn to stand in them on the death of Christ and claim that through the blood of the Lamb you will get victory over everything by which Satan would seek to hinder you in that service, in that meeting. We want to take up this aggressive attitude of spirit in opposition to the evil one and bear our testimony to the 16 The Meaning of the Cross fact that he is defeated and therefore he has no right here, and he has no right in that work, and he has no right in that home and in that life. Therefore, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we can turn upon him and bid him go. Remember the words of God, “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms,” and “He shall thrust out the enemy before you, and destroy him.” In this conflict you will find that there are two things you have constantly to do. You have constantly to come back to First John 1 : 7 and get the cleansing of the blood through faith, and healing for the wounds. Then you have to come back again and again to Romans 6 : 6, and in the face of every attack of the enemy take up this atti¬ tude of death, it is the only bed rock position for the vic¬ torious Christian life. Stand in this spirit, and then trust the Holy Spirit to make it real to you. And lastly, John says, “They loved not their lives unto the death.” That is simply the call to you and to me for the fullest surrender of will and of life in order to give us the fullest measure of victory. Make this surrender each day, at each point of the conflict. Just as the Holy Spirit shows you what God asks, then obey and give God all and he will give you all, and you will overcome and share in his mighty victory. Prayer O God , our Father, we do praise and magnify thy holy name that thou hast given us such a Saviour and such a wonderfid salvation in Jesus Christ. There is not one who is not conscious of his need of that salvation and of knowing that victory. There is not one of us, forgiven by thy grace, redeemed by thy power, who has not a constant battle to fight with the old creation in its continuous asser¬ tion of supremacy, and we praise thee for the way ' of victory. Teach us how to walk in it, how to put it into practise, how to experience it. Our Father, there are some things that are very difficult The Threefold Aspect of the Cross 17 for us to comprehend with our minds. May we put our¬ selves into the hands of the Holy Spirit that he may lead us into the experience, and then we shall know' the vic¬ tory. There is not one of us who is not becoming in¬ creasingly conscious of the tremendous personality of evil that is guiding the world , that is inciting the world, that is keeping the world in a condition of unrest and that is working such havoc in the lives of people to-day. Wilt thou teach us how to win the victory over him as he attacks us. 0 God, our hearts leap out to thee in faith and in praise when we have read these words, uThey overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony ; and they loved not their lives unto the death.” What has been true of others can be true of us. May there be nothing in our lives to hinder the Holy Spirit from leading us in these days into the fullest experience of the life that thou dost bid us live. We ask it in Jesus' name, Amen. II OUR INDEBTEDNESS TO THE CROSS WE SAW, in the threefold aspect of the cross, that the death of the Lord Jesus redeems us from sin and brings us back to the Father; that it deals with the old Adam nature in each one of us, which is the source of our weakness and trouble, and just as we, by faith on the authority of God’s Word, take up the position of death in and through Christ to every form of self life and maintain that attitude hour by hour, we live the life of continuous deliverance and victory. We saw also that the cross is the great weapon which the Lord puts into our hands to defeat the devil and to resist the pressure of the forces of evil, and to scatter the powers of dark¬ ness, to deliver souls and to keep our own feet from falling. “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood,” — this tells us of our indebtedness to the cross, what we owe to the death of the Son of God. I am going to turn to a number of familiar passages which will show us that the riches of all our blessings through time and eternity are in the cross, in that atoning sacri¬ fice of the Son of God on Calvary, the fulness and the wonderfulness of which grow the greater and the clearer as we stand in spirit before the cross and seek the enlight¬ ening grace of the Holy Spirit to understand its meaning and to enter into its experience. 18 Our Indebtedness to the Cross 19 First, the cross marks the purpose of the coming of Christ (1 Tim. 1:15), “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief/’ I do not state that first fact of our indebtedness to the cross simply to remind you that it is an echo of the Saviour’s declara¬ tion when he was on earth, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” ; but that is a fact that requires to-day to be constantly repeated and emphasized in the hearing of men and women, that the Lord Jesus Christ came to die — not to live, not to teach, not to work miracles — he came to die. It was the purpose of his birth and the purpose of his life to die, because he came to deal with sin. I do think that those of us who are preachers and teachers should in these days, when the cross is being slighted and minimized and hidden from the people, take every opportunity that God gives us of thrusting the cross into the vision of the people, as Paul thrust it into the vision of the Roman and the Jew and the Greek whenever he stood before them. The purpose of the coming of Christ was Calvary. Secondly, the cross is the pledge of the return of Christ and the reunion of loved ones who have gone before. In 1 Thess. 4: 14-16, we read these words, they are very im¬ portant: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not go before them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout.” Our faith in the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the cause of our expectation of his coming. A friend of mine was speaking about the coming of the Lord to a prominent minister in one of the great cities of England, and the minister said, “My dear fellow, 20 The Meaning of the Cross it is a beautiful, poetic dream.” But you cannot dismiss such a thing as the coming of the Lord, that occupies such a place in the Word of God, in an airy fashion like that. The argument of the apostle Paul is simply this, if the one coming of the Lord was a deed planned in the love of God and carried out by the power of God, the other coming of the Lord cannot be a dream only — the one hangs by the other, the one is the cause of the other, the one is the ground of the other. The first coming of our Lord and its purpose is the ground of our hope that the second coming of the Lord will be a fact, and that its purpose will be realized. To the denial of the personal coming of the Lord Jesus Christ the answer is the cross. You must do away with the cross if you are going to call the coming of the Lord a mere poetic dream ( I fancy of a few). The cross is the pledge of the return of Christ. Thirdly, and this is what I want to emphasize most of all, the cross is the secret of life, and it has got a double secret for you and me. First, it is the secret of our own personal life (Gal. 2:20), “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” It is the secret of one’s own personal life. The I is the representative of the self life, which has been the cause of all the enmity in the human heart towards God, and the source of all the weakness of human service for God ever since the fall, and that I has to be dealt with by the cross. You will note what the apostle says, it is not self¬ crucifixion that the cross works by, but co-crucifixion. We are crucified with Christ, and that is a fact of God on which our faith is to rest for continuous deliverance and victory. Christ’s cross is my cross. I want to get into the very heart of that and know what it means, for I believe that is the secret of personal life for the Chris¬ tian, — Christ’s cross is my cross. I consent to share Christ’s cross. I consent to share death with Christ through the cross to everything which is opposed to the Our Indebtedness to the Cross 21 Father’s will, that' everything of the Father’s purpose may be accomplished. * When I take up that attitude I find the I dispossessed and Christ living in me. That does not make me a machine ; it makes me a new creature, with my own temperament and disposition and personality, but with a new source for my life, a new spring for my being, out of which flows the life of Christ, and then others see — not me, but Christ living in me. A gentleman was walking down one of the streets of our city, Glasgow, when he saw a crowd at a shop door. Curiosity took him there, to find a man inside the shop selling a beautiful picture. He was describing the merits of the picture to the people before him, pointing them to this corner and to that corner and showing them this, that, and the other thing, and all the time he was speaking of the picture he was never seen, he was behind the picture, and only the picture in its beauty was visible to the people. That is the way to witness for Christ, that is the mark of the crucified life, the life that has entered into the secret of life, it is crucified with Christ. Christ crucified is revealed by it. That is the way to witness for Christ, “Christ liveth in me,” Christ seen through me — I crucified. I want you to read a few words from a Scottish theo¬ logian, Dowdell. I found them in the church vestry of a friend of mine, and if I may venture humbly to say it, I think they are words that every one of us preachers and teachers ought to have continually before us for the service to which God has called us: “No man can bear zvitness to Christ and to himself at the same time. No man can give at once the impression that he himself is clever ^ and Christ mighty to save.” That is the secret of life. That is the mark of the man or the woman who has entered into the great secret of the cross in relation to his or her personal life. The old saints were very fond of mottoes and symbols. One of their favorite symbols was a picture of the face of Christ with a lighted candle before it, and the motto : 22 The Meaning of the Cross “May I waste so I show the face of Christ.” “I am crucified, Christ liveth in me.” Let me carry you on to the second secret. The cross is the secret of life for others in service. Read two verses in 2 Corinthians 4: “For we which live are always de¬ livered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” Life for others only as death works in us. It is that which makes work at all, and which makes preaching fruitful. One of the first principles of God regarding service seems to be to work into you and me the truth which he needs us to proclaim to others. Paul knew that. It began in the street called Straight with him, it deepened and devel¬ oped in the solitudes of Arabia, and Paul went forth know¬ ing a fellowship with Christ in his death that perhaps few have ever known, but that you and I would need to know in these days if our work is to prove fruitful for God and for others. “Death worketh in us, but life in you.” I was once speaking with an Egyptian Christian student, and he told me this, that when the priests of the Coptic church in Egypt are ordaining a man to the priesthood they recite over him the prayers that they recite over the dead, inferring that he is dead to everything of the world and alive only to God. That is exactly what Paul speaks of here, death in us, life for others. You know the substitutionary power of the cross. You may have apprehended your death position in Christ so that you are getting victory over the forms of the self life, but you and I need to enter into a fellowship with Christ in his sufferings, into a conformity with Christ in his death, which brings into us the spirit of the cross, the spirit of Calvary. Death requires to be wrought in us in a real death fellowship which will produce life that ministers to others. Paul strikes here the keynote of such a life, “Always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake.” The Greek word means “handed over,” always handed over, as the Lord Our Indebtedness to the Cross 23 Jesus Christ was handed over, as the Lord handed over himself ; always handed over to death for Jesus’ sake. You will notice that it is we who live who are to be handed over. It is the corn of wheat that has to die, but death means the gate of life, the gate that leads into a richer, fuller, abundant life. As death knocks at the door of that corn of wheat in the ground it breaks open the hard shell and there comes out of it what we see above the ground. Just in the same way as the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, touches in us everything that is against God, everything that belongs to the old creation, which is the material on which Satan is ever working, so that work of the cross breaks open the hard shell of our nature and character and gives an outlet for the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Death working in us, life works in others. Are you and I willing for this? Are we willing to let the Holy Spirit hand us over to death ? Do you know it is as true of me as it is of Christ, “No man taketh my life from me. I have power to lay it down”? And the question is to-day whether you and I will exercise the power that we have. Are we willing to be handed over to death, whatever that may mean for us, in order that there may be life flowing out of us for others and for him who gave himself for us? What will it mean? What will it mean, if we allow the work of the cross to be wrought out in our characters? It may mean for us that we have to be willing to be set aside, slighted, put in the background, when others are being put forward ; willing to be misjudged while others are praised; willing to get no credit in our work while others are getting much credit. For some it might mean to be willing to go to a place in the foreign field or in some land that is being shunned by others ; willing to tread a path that means sacrifice ; willing to receive treat¬ ment that is unpleasant, but receiving it in a Calvary spirit. It may mean no longer asking God to deliver from hard circumstances, but asking him to make those hard 24 The Meaning of the Cross circumstances the instrument, through the cross, that will break open the hard shell of your nature and let the light of Christ flow out. It may mean, it must mean, loving every one with a love that is like the love of Christ and dealing with infinite patience and tenderness with every member of the Body of Christ, that the Body of Christ may grow strong and ready for the coming of the Lord. There is only one way in which you and I can win souls for Christ ; there is only one way in which you and I may have a fruitful service ; it is the way of sacrifice. That is the only way in which the life of Christ can be made mani¬ fest and flow out of us to others. I believe this age is rapidly closing up, and God is need¬ ing men and women filled with such a spirit as that, the spirit of Christ, the spirit of the cross, the spirit of martyrs. Are we willing? Will God find us ready and faithful and obedient? What will be the result if we are willing? Life for others, perhaps revival in the Church, the ingathering of the heathen, the gaining again for many of that which they have lost — the vision of the present Christ, the receiving on the part of many of the assurance of things that are essential ; and above all, glory to him who was handed over to death for you and for me. O beloved men and women, to make others see him and know him, and believe in him and love him, and follow him and go after him, even though it means for you and for me travail of soul and death to self — “so then death worketh in us, but life in you.” That is the secret of service for others, and the cross holds the secret. But oh, how are we to be handed over? Not one of us can do it, but will you turn to Hebrews 9 :14 : “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God”? The same power by which Christ handed himself over to the cross is the power by which you and I can hand our¬ selves over, that life mav be for others. Our Indebtedness to the Cross 25 Oh, thank God for it. The only thing that God needs is a willing heart, that you and I should be willing to tread the path, to choose the life, that he has pictured for us in his Word. And then, when we are willing, the Holy Ghost does what we cannot do, he takes us and hands over us and everything in us that is against God, to the cross, and the moment that he hands that over to the cross, the door opens and the life of Christ finds an outlet, the pitcher gets broken and the light is seen, the light shines out. Fourth, the cross makes possible the gift of the Holy Spirit (Gal. 3:13, 14), “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us : for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree : that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.” The cross makes possible the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Spirit is based upon the work of Christ in his atoning sacrifice. Calvary and Pentecost are inseparable. Calvary always sends a man on to Pentecost ; Pentecost is always sending a man back to Calvary. The man who stops at Calvary arrests the plan of God. That is to say, if a man is satisfied with forgiveness of his sins and wants nothing more, he has an arrested life and the plan of God has come to a stop ; but the man who stays at Pentecost and does not continually go back to Calvary is defeating the purpose of God. Cal¬ vary and Pentecost are always working into each other’s hands. You never can know the power of Pentecost unless the power of the cross is working in you. One of the saintliest men on the Keswick platform in the olden days was Charles Fox, and Charles Fox used to say, “The risen life somehow or other always gravitates back to the cross.” That is a great truth for us to learn. It just means this, that the finished work of Christ on the cross is the basis on which the Holy Spirit operates to bring to fruition the great purpose of God. I know that the believer is filled with the Spirit when he first receives him, but only to the extent of his power to 26 The Meaning of the Cross receive, and his capacity at that moment is small, very small. It can only be enlarged as he apprehends the great fact of the death of Christ and yields himself to the Spirit of God for the purpose of that death to be worked out in him. Near my last church in Scotland was a little village, a favorite summer resort that jutted out into an arm of the North Sea, and the action of the sea was continually silting up the sand at the mouth of the river, preventing the river from doing its work. Therefore the government had to be continually dredging the channel so as to let the river flow. There are things in your lives and in mine that only the cross can deal with, and if the cross is not allowed to deal with those things and touch them with death, why then the channel of our lives is continually getting silted up with these things and blocked. Therefore it is that the Holy Spirit desires to use the cross in order to deepen the channel of our lives and so have the opportunity of filling us with his fulness. Calvary and Pentecost are inseparable and they are in¬ dispensable for the preaching of the Gospel. Calvary creates the preacher and the teacher, and Pentecost equips the preacher and the teacher. Big learning will never make us preachers or teachers, although big learning has its place and a very great place; but there is one theological seminary into which we must go, and from which we must graduate if we are to be preachers and teachers of the Gospel. It is sometimes called Arabia, and Arabia means for you some place where you come face to face with the need in your life and fight it out in the presence of God. If you will do that you will learn what Paul learned in his Arabia, you will learn the meaning of the cross, and you will learn much about the purpose and the power of the Holy Ghost, for Calvary and Pentecost are inseparable. We may stand in pulpits and we may teach classes, and we may organize Christian work, and people may praise us, and we may have outward success, but if we do not know Calvary and we do not know Pentecost except in a Our Indebtedness to the Cross 27 superficial manner, those people we speak to and teach will never have cause to glorify God in us, and see God mighty in and through us as they saw in the apostle Paul. Let me say another thing, a fifth fact. The cross is the source of all victory, and there is a fivefold victory for the Christian to win. First, “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ,” victory over death (1 Cor. 15:57). Second, “I am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave him¬ self for me,” victory over self (Gal. 2:20). Third, “And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the af¬ fections and lusts,” victory over the flesh (Gal. 5:24). Fourth, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world,” victory over the world (Gal. 6:14). Fifth, “And having spoiled principal¬ ities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumph¬ ing over them in it,” victory over Satan (Col. 2 :15). And Satan can be defeated on no ground except that of Calvary. There on the cross the Lord Jesus Christ bruised the ser¬ pent’s head and broke the serpent’s power, and to-day we stand facing a conquered foe. Do not let us forget it. The cross embraces all these things, and gives to you and to me a full and complete victory. I do not think we should ever speak of the tragedy of the cross. There was no tragedy on the cross ; that was below the cross, among the people who only saw in the Son of God some one whom they wanted to put to death. Do not, I pray you, ever speak of the pathos of Christ’s death. There was no pathos in it, there was victory, glory. It was the climax of his life. It was that for which he had come. He came to go to the cross, and the devil, by every possible means in his power, tried to keep him from the cross. If the devil can keep the cross from you and you from the cross, if he can prevent the cross from working out its purpose in you and in me, if he can make us shirk 28 The Meaning of the Cross the cross, he has done his work, he needs to do nothing more. He can let us be as active as we like and as de¬ votional as we like, and as religious as we please, but if he can keep the cross out of our lives he has done his work. He tried to do it with Christ, but Christ went to the cross and bruised the serpent’s head, and on the ground of the victory won there you and I can win victory here. The sixth fact is this : the cross creates the obligation for holiness (1 Peter 1 : 15), “But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation.” You will find that the command in that verse is grounded upon the message in the eighteenth verse: “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers ; but with the precious blood of Christ,” — because Christ died, therefore we belong to him and we are bound in honor to work out the plan of redemption, if we stand upon the redemption position ; but nothing can set us apart for God, nothing can make us holy, except as the cross is working in us, because the cross alone can keep the hindrances to holiness in the place of death. Seventh, the cross becomes the spring of Christian seal (Titus 2:14), “Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” It becomes the spring of Christian zeal. The mark of the crucified life is zeal for good works. I think there is never an idle place in the sphere of the cross-filled and cross-governed life. You will note what Paul says leads up to zeal ; first, re¬ demption, then the readjustment of the life of the re¬ deemed. The aim of the death of Christ is to create the Spirit of Christ in service, “The love of Christ constrain- eth me.” It lays this urge upon us to live henceforth unto him, zealous of good works. But let me just say this one word of caution, zeal is not hot-headedness, it is hot¬ heartedness. True zeal always acts intelligently and wisely under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Will you let me Our Indebtedness to the Cross 29 say this to you very humbly? In your service aim at death. Oh, the weakness of so much of our evangelical work to-day is its superficiality. We clamor for results, we strain our eyes to catch some sign, and when we get the results we become contented with results, with what we see. The Church judges men to-day by results, and what we are needing to do is to aim at death and leave results to God. Oh, let us keep in touch with the cross and hand over our zeal, our natural impulsiveness and our desire to see results, to the cross, in order that we may have only the zeal which is born out of death and is created in us and through us by the Holy Spirit. Zeal is not hot-headedness, it is hot-heartedness. I think Peter would say to you and to me to-day, “Add to your zeal knowledge, and to knowledge common-sense, and to common-sense right judgment, and to right judg¬ ment patience and consideration for others,” and all that grace creates especially for you and for. me. At your leisure read 2 Corinthians 6:1-10, and see the character of the worker and the power of the cross. My last point, the eighth, is this : the cross gives us the assurance of immortality (1 Thess. 5 : 10), “who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him.” So the cross finds us where we are by nature and places us where we shall be by grace. The cross begins life and the cross takes us into the life that is forever. I close with words that are not mine, words that were written by one of the old mystic poets whose poems were so full of the teaching of the cross : There, as knit into the body Every joint and limb, We, his ransomed, his beloved, We are one with Him. All in marvelous completeness Added to the Lord, There to be his crown of glory, His supreme reward. 30 The Meaning of the Cross Wondrous prize of our high calling ! Speed we on to this, Past the cities of the angels Farther into bliss. On into the depths eternal Of the love and song, Where in God the Father’s glory Christ has waited long. There to find that none beside him God’s delight can be, Not beside Him, nay, but in Him, O beloved, are we. Prayer Our Father, we beseech Thee, whatever has been thy word to us, that no one seed of that word may pass from our memories or be taken away by the Wicked One. May nothing be forgotten that in thy purpose we should remem¬ ber. Let thy word do its wondrous work in each one of us, that so this may be the result of our redemption here,