Seven Words, Revealing the Mystery of the Cross, by Hugh M Cartwright, published by Etrick Press, hardback, 136 pages, £14.75, may be obtained from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
Here are seven fine sermons, on the statements made by Christ as He suffered on the cross. They were preached in the Spring of 2001 and are now collected together, along with the brief concluding prayer and Psalm following each sermon.
The first sermon is on the Saviour’s petition, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). Mr Cartwright pointed to Peter’s reference, on the Day of Pentecost, to the Jews’ ignorance: “They needed forgiveness although they were ignorant sinners. They did not know what they were doing when they put to death the Lord of glory. They did not know who He was. . . . Their ignorance was a complete ignorance.
“They should have known. God was manifest in the flesh. If they had eyes to see, Christ was very obviously manifesting divine power and divine qualities. He was God. He was perfect. They couldn’t find any fault in Him. . . . They had many evidences of His gracious attitude, His gracious power. Yet such was the darkness and ignorance of sin that was in them, that they did not know what they were doing when they crucified the Lord of glory.
“The fact that you were ignorant of what you were doing is not an excuse for what you were doing – especially when that ignorance was in the face of all the light you had! Ignorance does not excuse sin, when that ignorance itself is culpable.
“That’s the kind of ignorance we have. . . . The heathen who had never heard the gospel . . . were ignorant, but they were wilfully ignorant. They were closing their eyes to all the evidences of God that were round about them in creation and in providence. And how much more was that the case with those who had the presence of Christ among them, and the light of His gospel shining around them!
“The ignorance arises from the enmity that is in the heart against God. That’s why people don’t know God, why people don’t know Christ . . . why they don’t realise that they are sinners against Him. It’s because their attitude to God envelops them in mental and spiritual and moral darkness with regard to these things. Their ignorance is not an excuse for their sin, their ignorance is just another aggravation of their sin. . . . That means that sin, even of ignorance, needs forgiveness. It exposes us to God’s displeasure. . . .
The preacher goes on to ask, “What is involved in forgiveness?” He answers, “We said that what [Christ] was praying for was that [sinners] would experience repentance and be brought to forgiveness. But . . . what is this forgiveness that comes to sinners through the sacrifice and the intercession of Christ? It’s the blotting out of all their transgressions.
‘As far as east is distant from the west, so far hath He
From us removed in His love all our iniquity.’
“It’s casting our sins into the depths of the sea . . . Blotting them out of the reckoning, so that even God cannot find them. When the iniquity of Israel is sought for, it cannot, it shall not, be found. That’s not a defect in the part of God. Our forgetfulness is a defect. But when God says, I will not remember, He is talking about a very positive purpose, not to deal with them according to their sins. The reason being, that He has dealt with Christ in their place. This forgiveness is a complete justification – justification from all things, from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses.”
It is plain speech, but it effectively conveys the central truths of Christianity. Mr Cartwright may here, on occasion, bring some deep doctrine before his hearers, but he does his utmost to speak in terms that are understandable, and he holds one’s attention.
In speaking on the solemn question, “Why hast Thou forsaken Me?” the preacher explains, “It’s this glorious Person (in His human nature) who is being forsaken. . . . It does not mean that there was any breach in the relationship between the Father and the Son. That relationship continued unbroken.
“It does not mean that there was any withdrawal of the Father’s approval, or the Father’s love, or the Father’s favour from His Son, from Christ. Never was He more, if we can say such a thing, the object of the Father’s love and favour than He was when He was crying, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?’ He loved Him still. ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.’ There was no withdrawing of the favour of God from His Son, from the Saviour, who was hanging on the cross of Calvary.
“There was no separation between the divine and the human in the Person of the Saviour. That was not brought about even by death itself. There was a separation between the body and the soul in death, but the soul remained united to the divine Person and the body remained united to the divine Person. This was the first Person death encountered, where it was impossible, really, to break down the person. We are made up of body and soul, and when death comes, they separate. They have no connection any more (except through the Mediator, to whom they are united by grace). . . .
“Also there was no cessation, no ceasing, of the holiness and perfection of Christ. If God really forsakes a sinner and leaves him to himself, that person is given over completely to sin. He can’t do anything else but sin. But when God forsook Christ on the cross of Calvary, Christ continued to be the same holy Person – holy in His divinity and holy in His humanity – as He had always been.
“When God forsook Him, we believe that God withdrew from Him the comfort which He needed more then, than at any other time in His experience. He was left under the weight of His people’s sin, He was left under the weight of His people’s curse, without the slightest comfort from His divinity, or without the slightest comfort from God His Father. He was left to experience, in His own soul, the very essence of what it is to be under the curse of God, and under condemnation as a sinner. He was holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners. There was no sin in Him. Yet He was experiencing how God deals with sinners. The very fact that He was still in union with God, that He was still perfectly holy, that He was full of devotion to the Father, gave to that experience something that can never enter into the experience of a sinner. It was a dreadful thing for the only holy one, the man who is God’s fellow, to experience the curse of God, to experience the wrath of God, to experience the condemnation of God against His sinful people, in His own soul and mind and body on the cross of Calvary.”
This book of sermons preached to Mr Cartwright’s Edinburgh congregation is spiritually profitable and so is well worth reading. It is good to have them available to a much wider audience. A pity about the front cover!