SIR ROBERT ANDERSON
Secret Service
Theologian
THE GOSPEL AND
ITS MINISTRY
CHAPTER III.
THE CROSS.
"THE preaching of the cross." It is on this 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 foolishness to them that perish." Not so 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 marvellous a sacrifice! And thus God is made to
pander to man's pride and sense of self-importance.
And 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. It is not merely that Christ has died - the great fact on which
redemption depends; but that 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; that 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. It 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, for
earnest seekers, for anxious inquirers, for a privileged class under any name
or guise. If such were granted special favour, "then were the offence of the
cross ceased," 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! 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 emphasising 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 realisation
of it. But the one demanded signs of Messiahship, and the passion of the other
was wisdom. 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, as soon as the cross was lost sight of, satisfy and
charm the other. But the cross was a stumbling-block to the religious man, and
folly to the wisdom-lover. 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 unchristianised, 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 in 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 give no 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 marvellous anomaly, a Christian world. Even in Paul's day "the
many" 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. "As of sincerity, 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 the perfect," as
witness his letter to the Romans, or indeed his letter to the Corinthians
themselves. His argument for the resurrection, the germ and pattern of Bishop
Butler's great masterpiece of reasoning, would havee 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-worshippers, he
turned from everything that would pander to their favourite passion, and became
a fool among them, a man of one idea, who knew nothing "save Jesus Christ, even
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 marvellous attractiveness for
hearts enlightened from on high, in all its intolerable repulsiveness for
unregenerate men.
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. 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
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.
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 worshipper, 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, as expressive beyond all else of
agony and contempt to the full; and because it was, this, an expression too,
the completest 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 slxength 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, "a sweet savour
of Christ unto God" (2 Cor. ii. is). .'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.
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; 0 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," "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 yet an outcast, be still the limit of his
gratitude, 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
behoved him to bring all the great offerings of the law. Christ in all His
fulness is God's provision for His people, and nothing less than this should be
the measure of their hearts' worship (Lev. xiv.).
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 - 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 to-day, and even that
is humanised and lowered. Christ has died, and that is everything. How He died
is scarce thought of, and Who He is who did so die is well-nigh forgotten
altogether. Christ has died - that is certain. Rationalists and Ritualists,
Protestants and Romanists, all are agreed that Christ has died. Whether it be
in our Ragged Sunday schools, or in our Houses of Parliament, as day by day
their sittings are begun by 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. He who believes that Jesus
is the Son of God is a man with a supernatural faith, a faith that overcomes
the world. Yet just as in Him the carnal eye could 'find no beauty,' so in His
gospel the carnal mind can see no wonders. But it behoves 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 humanising it to
bring it within the reach of the natural man apart from the work of the Holy
Spirit.
If Christians are commonplace in our day, ma.y it not be because
the gospel they believe is common-place ? 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 persuasive 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 "foolishness to them that perish," 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 worshipper. 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. To
faith the unseen is real; and to those who believe in the cross, "Jesus Christ
has been openly set forth crucified before their eyes." They have seen that
marred and agonised 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. 0 for power so to 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 saw, and the rabble crowd that mocked His agonies, 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: "With the loyal-hearted believer,
there is one master-object which in measure conceals every other by its
surpassing glory; and this is not redemption, which, blessed as it is, is
simply a matter of course, if Christ died by this end, but the CROSS itself,
with its ignominy - the death of the Prince of Life, the crucifixion of the
Lord of Glory; incredible antithesis! Not only the freedom from eternal and
frightful slavery, but the divine price paid for that freedom. And this 'not
silver and gold' (though we were not worth so much as brass), but 'the precious
blood of Christ,'
"And so I would preach to those who hear, and say 'There
is life, there is pardon, there is right-eousness for you-nay, there is worth
for you- and they are all Divine, besides their own integrity; and they are a
free gift to the godless and lost. But I tell you more, and beg you tQ hasten
on; this life, these riches, come to you through His poverty and death; and God
and God's love are revealed to you in this poverty, this death, even the death
of the cross.'
"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 fmm 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, as it is written. 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 your Lord.'"
Chapter Four FAITH.
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