“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” (Gal. vi., 14).
PAUL, in this epistle as elsewhere, contends earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. Jews followed him from city to city to counteract his labours. They clung to the ceremonial law as far as they could. They utterly rejected the Saviour as the Divine Redeemer promised to the fathers. As they were in Paul’s time, so are Jews still as far as in them lies. Present-day Jews have the Old Testament Scriptures and a caricature of the ceremonial law in their religious services. They have not the Redeemer. Their synagogues are synagogues of Satan. Their light is darkness. Their religious system, like that of the Papacy, is an example of spiritual wickedness in high places,—in heavenly things. They pity us Gentiles for glorying in a Man who was crucified. God will yet open their understandings and bring them to see who Christ is, and why He was crucified. In these closing counsels the Apostles restates his ground of glorying. Here we have his good confession, his source of peace, love and his inheritance. This is his strength, his song, his salvation. Here Paul mounts up with wings as an eagle: he runs and is not weary; he marches onward and does not faint. He hears the hosts of witnesses who have come from north, south, east, and west, extolling their God and His Son in the King’s own land, saying — “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.” He hears, as it were, the voice of a great multitude and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, “Alleluia: for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” He longs to be with the cloud of witnesses—”to be with Christ which is far better,” but for their good he records his song—”God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
To remark on this portion, we shall endeavour to point out,
(1) What the Cross here means;
(2) The two-fold effect of glorying in Jesus;
(3) The declaration with its implied appeal.
I. What does the “Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” embrace in its meaning?
The expression has a few meanings in the New Testament. The first, and main meaning, is the death of the Saviour for His Church. He loved her. He loves her and she shall eternally get access to Him and love Him for Himself and for His willing obedience on her behalf. He served a hard servitude for her. How she feels her unworthiness of it! How cold, like lead, and stone, her spirit can be within her, after all she knows of His goodness to her. “Not unto us be the glory, but unto thee, for thou wast slain, and has redeemed us unto God by thy blood.” “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits!”
(a)
In order to value Christ crucified and glorified, the Holy Spirit teaches those who come to Christ in a day of power, their need, guilt, danger, impending woe. He teaches them by the Word. He honours His own Word. There is much in this epistle which He uses to show the soul, who seeks mercy and an eternal interest in Christ, his sinfulness—what assuredly is before him and how unable he is to drink in the peace of God until God help him and call him effectually. We have, as an example, “Cursed is every one who continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the Law to do them.” And in the 5th chapter, we see, and those who are taught of Him know, what sinful streams issue from the human heart. How thankful we should be for the work of the Holy Spirit if He has made us acutely conscious of our need of a Saviour and such a One! And, if we feel groping for the door, knowing that many got in by it, let us ask Him to help us early—not to leave us to wax careless. The Psalmist had to wait — probably often in his spiritual pilgrimage—but “at length” the Lord inclined His ear and heard him. “They shall not be ashamed that wait for thee” (Isa. xlix., 23).
(b)
The Cross is the wonderful remedy for such. It is the balm for the sick — the remedy for the malady. By it—in virtue of Jesus dying on the tree, and entering into Heaven with His own blood, many get pardon, are accepted for ever as righteous in Him, and get new hearts, new dispositions. The lion becomes a lamb. The bitter hater of God and His ways begins to love Him, His grace and His Kingdom. The cause of this is Christ being who He is, and becoming man, holy in His human nature, obeying to the end until He laid down the most glorious, valuable Life that ever was or shall be among the members of the family of man. How precious the soul is. How precious the life of Christ is. One suitable way of handling such a subject is by quoting from the Word of the Master Himself, and also from some of the writings of His servants. Without doing so at present, note the contrast between the sacrifice of the Saviour for His own people and the sacrifice of a soldier for comrade or country. Let us pursue that thought to some extent. We see (1) that the soldier promises to lay down his life if need arise. True, he virtually lays down his life on enlisting. This, by the way, is how the believer is to be. Everyone is not martyred. Every soldier of the faith is virtually a martyr! “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the Morning Star.” Stephen and Donald Cargill and Renwick had the Morning Star in this world and have it in glory,—as army officers and foreign servants of the Crown have the Star of India on their uniform. And the decorations of the better country are lasting! They are of another kind than silver and gold and what Bunyan would call “brave ribands making a brave show.” But the soldier only dies if need be. He takes the risk and hopes to get through with some honourable wounds to enjoy his pension. Christ, however, must die, the agreement is one which must be fulfilled.
(2) A soldier may go over the top for King and Country, or to rescue his comrade and die in vain. The battle may be lost, the war lost, or the comrade be dead before the soldier reach him. Not so the Redeemer. There is no “in vain” in this rescue—ransom work of Him who is mighty to save. Ask of the principalities and powers of darkness? Ask of the grave? Ask of one who truly came beseeching pardon, rolling his case and sins of heart, lip, life—his soul dyed through and through with purple and scarlet sins, whether Jesus died in vain if they hoped in Him? He is able to save to the uttermost all who come. He turned the battle to the gate. He undertook the holy campaign of overthrowing the kingdom of sin and Satan in this world—of fighting for the King of kings that salvation might make the ends of the earth itself a better country—His own Kingdom of Grace. Is not this taking place despite errors, seethings, tumults, and seeming confusion? “I will overturn, until He shall come whose right it is.”
(3) A soldier does not know when or how he may die. The Saviour knew when. “He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem,” and elsewhere, observe how He knew the several steps in the accomplishment of His work. He also knew how He was to accomplish His death outside of Jerusalem.
(4) Note also that no soldier nor mere man can dismiss his own spirit. We speak among ourselves of “self sacrifice.” The word is used permissibly, by accommodation, and by a kind of charity owing to the circumstances. No man can dismiss his spirit. It is in providence taken from him. He lays down his life because he is constrained to face death for a certain cause. He cannot, however, give up his spirit apart from the use of means to separate soul and body.
The death of the Saviour is unique—”I lay down my life.” He dismissed His spirit into the hands of the Father by His own will and power. He cried with a loud voice. Devils were foiled. Men thought they ended that life, and in their intention and to the utmost reach of their power, they did. They got their opportunity. They used it well. They wreaked their vengeance, turning their vessels of malice wilfully upon Him till their vials were, as far as they could, at the time, exhausted of their enmity. You can see how they mocked Him in His person, “If thou be the Son of God”; mocked Him as Prophet, “Prophesy unto us, who smote thee?” mocked Him as Priest, “He saved others, Himself He cannot save”; and mocked Him as King, “The King of the Jews,” and other such sayings. Yet with all their success in getting Him crucified, and being guilty of slaying the Lord of Glory in will and act to the utmost of their power He, nevertheless, in His time and way, as agreed upon eternally, laid down His life. He cried, “Into thine hands I commit my spirit,” and, with a loud noise, gave up the ghost. He was ever Master of all circumstances, although they thought that they did with Him as they listed. He was Master in the hour of death. He ended the curse—and that is a matter—what He suffered in love to her—which the Church can never comprehend—but His bearing away of her curse is her ground of standing in the holiest of all. He died. He rose. He has all she eternally needs. She rose in Him. His fulness is her life. He gives Himself and His crucified-fulness to her. He asks her heart fully, unreservedly, in return. The Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is as to its merit in glory. It meant for Paul, by the grace of God, an end, and it meant a beginning. Christ and His fulness is Paul’s wall of fire about him, and His glory before him for ever. But let us acknowledge and feel in reading or asking the Lord to show us Christ as our salvation how we cannot really understand what the curse meant to the Saviour. His people have peace through His blood, yet do they not feel, “We are of yesterday and know not?” “We speak things we understand not.”
Were we to follow the contrast between the cross of the Saviour and, say, the cross of the malefactor who went to his own place, what lessons we ought to learn! Or the difference between the sacrifice of the Redeemer and the martyr-death of one of His witnesses. The latter then is part of the fruit of the former.
We leave, meanwhile, the other two heads referred to beyond the following remark on each head:—
(1)
When Paul or any convert is united to Christ, such is crucified to the world and its ways, and enters into a new world, a new inheritance. The world of Grace is new, even the world of Providence and one’s lawful calling is new, for the relationship of God to the person is then new. And the soul is crucified to the world. He is in a new state and has a new life. He has the new and eternal inheritance, with God’s temporal blessing now, and, in virtue of his own spiritual renewal, is in a fit condition to relish the principles, ways, revelations, service, company, aims, and, at last, the consummation of the kingdom of grace in glory.
(2)
As to the good confession of Paul, “God forbid,” it not only sets forth his own salvation and desire, but implies an appeal to them. Be not turned to another Gospel, which is not another. Beware of circumcision, and of all that involves practical denial of the one sacrifice of Christ for ever. There is infinite efficacy there. The streams of that fountain are in the promises. Drink in the efficacy daily until you and sin in its remnants and subtle roots part company for ever. Glory in Christ. No less will avail. No more is required. If ye reject Him, there remaineth no more offering for sin. If ye glory in Him and walk according to this rule, then peace be upon you and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.
Ah, unhappy Nazareth! the first refuser and the first refused of the Messiah! —Lightfoot.