John Flavel
Inference 2. Did Christ die the cursed death of the cross for believers? Then though there is much pain, there is no curse in the death of the saints. Death still wears its dart, by which it strikes; but it has lost its sting, by which it hurts and destroys. A serpent that has no sting may hiss and frighten, but we may take him in our hand without danger. Death poured out all its poison and lost its sting in Christ’s side, when He became a curse for us.
But what do I say of the harmlessness of death to believers? It is certainly their friend, their great benefactor. As there is no curse, so there are many blessings in it. “Death is yours” (1 Cor 3:22) – yours as a special privilege and favour. Christ has not only conquered it, but is more than a conqueror; for He has made it very useful to the saints. When Christ was nailed to the tree, then He, as it were, said to death, which came to grapple with Him there: “O death, I will be thy plague; O grave, I will be thy destruction”. And so He was, for He swallowed up death in victory, spoiled it of its power. So, though it may now frighten some weak believers, it cannot hurt them at all.
Inference 3. If Christ died the cursed death of the cross for us, how cheerfully we should submit to, and bear, any cross for Him! He had His cross, and we have ours; but what feathers ours are compared with His? His was a heavy cross indeed, yet how patiently and meekly He bore it! “He endured the cross”; we cannot endure or bear ours, though they are not to be named with His. Three things would marvellously strengthen us to bear the cross of Christ, and bring up a good report upon it in the world: (1.) We shall carry
1An edited extract, containing two of four inferences, from Flavel’s The Fountain of Life, in Works, vol 1. The inferences form the conclusion of a chapter based on Acts 2:23.
it but a little way. (2.) Christ bears the heavier end of it. (3.) Innumerable blessings and mercies grow on it.
(1.) We shall carry it but a little way. It should be enough to me, says a holy man, that it is Christ’s will to have joy and sorrow share the life of the saints, as night and day are natural partners of time; they take it up between them. But if sorrow is the greater part of our days here, I know joy’s day shall dawn and more than recompense all our sad hours.
Let my Lord Jesus – since He wills to do so – weave my short length of time with white and black, well and woe. Let the rose be neighbour with the thorn. When we are over the water, Christ shall cry, Down crosses, and up heaven for evermore; down hell and down death and down sin and down sorrow, and up glory, up life, up joy for evermore. It is true that Christ and His cross are not separable in this life, but Christ and His cross part at heaven’s door, for there is no house room for crosses in heaven. Not one tear, one sigh, one sad heart, one fear, one loss, one thought of trouble can find lodging there. Sorrow and the saints are not married together; or, suppose it is so, heaven shall make a divorce. Life is but short, and therefore crosses cannot be for long. Our sufferings are but for a while (1 Pet 5:10); they are but the sufferings of the present time (Rom 8:18).
(2.) As we shall carry the cross of Christ but a little way, so He bears the heavier end of it. And as someone happily expresses it: Christ says of their crosses, Half mine. He divides sufferings with them and takes the largest share to Himself. “O how sweet a sight is it”, says one sweetly, “to see a cross between Christ and us; to hear our Redeemer say at every sigh, at every blow, and every loss of a believer, Half mine. For they are called the sufferings of Christ and the reproach of Christ (Col 1:24, Heb 11:26). As when two men are partners or owners of a ship, half of the gain and half of the loss belongs to each of the two; so Christ in our sufferings is half gainer and half loser with us; indeed, the heavier end of the black tree lies on your Lord. It falls first upon Him; it but rebounds from Him upon you.” “The reproaches of them that reproached Thee, are fallen upon Me” (Ps 69:9). To speak as the thing is, Christ not only bears half, or the greater part of our cross and burden, but the whole. He bears all, and more than all; for He bears us and our burden too, or else we would quickly sink and faint under it.
(3.) As we do not have far to carry the cross, and Christ carries the heavier part – indeed, all the burden for us: us and our burden too – so it is reviving to think what an innumerable multitude of blessings and mercies are the fruit of a sanctified cross. Since that tree was so richly watered with the blood of Christ, what a store of choice, rich fruits it bears to believers!
Our sufferings, someone says, are washed in the blood of Christ, as well
as our souls. “For Christ’s merits bought a blessing to the crosses of the sons of God. Our troubles owe us a free passage through Him. Devils and men and crosses are our debtors, and death and all storms are our debtors, to blow our poor tossed ship over the water free of freight, and to set the travellers on their own known ground. Therefore we shall die, and yet live. I know no one has a velvet cross, but the cross is made of what God will have it to be. It is not permissible to buy a cross, yet I dare not say, O that I had liberty to sell Christ’s cross, lest therewith also I should sell joy, comfort, a sense of love, patience, and the kind visits of a bridegroom. I have but small experience of sufferings for Christ, but let my Judge and Witness in heaven lay my soul in the balances of justice if I find not a young heaven and a little paradise of glorious comforts and soul-delighting love-kisses of Christ in suffering for Him and His truth.
“My prison is my palace, my sorrow is with child of joy; my losses are rich losses, my pain easy pain, my heavy days are holy days and happy days. I may tell a new tale of Christ to my friends. O what I owe to the file and to the hammer and to the furnace of my Lord Jesus, who has now let me see how good the wheat of Christ is that goes through His mill and His oven, to be made bread for His own table. Grace tried is better than grace, and more than grace; it is glory in its infancy.
“Who knows the truth of grace without a trial? O how little Christ gets from us but what He wins (to speak so) with much toil and pains! And how soon would faith freeze without a cross! Bear your cross therefore with joy.”