When the Lord Jesus was on earth His disciples expected Him to set up His kingdom, and that they would have part with Him in it, but Jesus left them in no doubt as to what lay before Him, for He said, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify: and the third day He shall rise again” (Matt. 20:18-19). Jesus also forewarned His own as to what they should expect, for He said, “And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27).
Every one knew that a man seen bearing his cross was finished so far as this world was concerned. Nothing but a death of shame lay before him, and for such the things of this present world had no longer any appeal, not its pleasures, or its wealth, or its glory, or its ambitions, or any of the things that naturally attracted the men of this present age. One bearing his cross, and following Jesus, had something far better to fill the heart and mind than the things of this present world. There was the Lord Himself in all His attractiveness, and all that lay beyond the grave in the world to come where he would have part with Him in His kingdom and glory.
The young ruler who came to the Lord desiring to know what he must do to have eternal life was tested by Jesus. After Jesus had spoken to him about keeping the law, which brought out the natural beauty of his character, the Lord said, “One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me” (Mark 10:21). It was a severe test for one who possessed so much of this world’s wealth, and this young man, in spite of having such a lovely character, was not prepared to relinquish present things and follow a rejected Christ in a path of reproach and shame.
It was just at this juncture that Simon Peter said to the Lord, “Lo, we have left all, and have followed Thee,” and the Lord, in His grace, spoke to him and his fellow disciples of the blessings He would give to those who were willing to give up anything for Him (Mark 10:28–31). Simon Peter had a special place of privilege among the disciples of the Lord, and not least among them of literally taking up his cross to follow His Master into death, and into all that lay beyond death (John 21:18-19).
Christ Crucified
When Paul wrote to the saints at Corinth he said, “And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:1-2). As natural men the Corinthians set great value on the wisdom of this world, and Paul well knew that when he preached to them a crucified Christ it would have no natural appeal to them. Those who are saved know that there is divine and saving power in the preaching of the cross, but such preaching is foolishness to them that perish (1 Cor. 1:18).
The wisdom of this world has not been able to bring to men the knowledge of God, or to secure salvation for perishing sinners, but it is in the cross we learn what God is in all the love of His heart, and through faith in the crucified Christ that we obtain God’s salvation. Had the Jews given heed to their Scriptures they would have learned that before Messiah could enter into His glory He must needs suffer and die, even the crucifixion had been plainly predicted in Psalm 22:16.
Israel’s leaders used the ignorant multitude to cry to Pilate for the crucifixion of God’s Son, but their very rejection of Messiah demonstrated how very ignorant they were of the wisdom of God. God’s wisdom was seen in His taking the very occasion of man’s hatred and wickedness in crucifying Jesus to work out in the cross His counsels of love, and to provide salvation for ruined sinners. The princes of this world, the leaders of Israel, Pilate and Herod, knew nothing of God’s wisdom, “for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:7-8). How wonderful it is to apprehend that the very cross which brought to light the wisdom and the power of God revealed the ignorance, foolishness and hatred of the great of this world.
Our Old Man Crucified with Christ
The cross of Christ has not only dealt with the question of our sins, but also with the man that committed the sins. Romans 1–5:11 deals with sins, from 5:12 we learn how God deals with the root that produced the sins. “Our old man” (Rom. 6:6) is the embodiment of all that is produced by the flesh, our old nature received from Adam, and when Christ was crucified God dealt in judgment with the nature that is at the root of all sins. Throughout man’s history, until the cross, man was under trial, but man proved to be incorrigible. Tried in innocency he listened to the voice of Satan rather than to God. Left to himself, he filled the earth with violence and corruption. Under government in Noah, the governor gets drunk, and fails in shame. Under law, which Israel undertook to keep, the law was broken while Moses was yet on the mount with God, man making a golden calf. The final proof was the coming of God’s Son in grace, and man put Him on a malefactor’s cross.
Man could not be improved, he was seen to be thoroughly evil, and beyond restoration. How wonderful is the divine wisdom that puts away our sins in the cross of Christ, and removes from before His face in judgment the man, the old man, that committed the sins. Sin in its totality is annulled in the stroke of divine judgment that fell upon our old man in the cross of Christ. God finished with the old man in the cross, and it is our privilege to view him as gone from our eye as from before the eye of God. In consequence we are no longer to serve sin, for we too have died with Christ, having been baptized unto His death, and we are now to live unto God.
“I am crucified with Christ”
In Romans 6 Paul had written about our being dead with Christ, and in Romans 7 of how the incorrigible nature of the flesh is discovered, and deliverance found in Christ. Here, in Galatians 2 the Apostle shows us how he was himself affected by the truth of the cross. Well he knew that all his sins had been forgiven by the shedding of the precious blood of Jesus, but the reason for our Lord Jesus Christ giving “Himself for our sins” was “that He might deliver us from this present evil world” (Gal. 1:4). The cross of Christ is the means of delivering us from this present evil world.
If, like Paul, we see ourselves crucified with Christ we are not likely to be ensnared by what the world offers. Paul had acquired much of what the religion of this world prided itself in, and he had prized it as a natural man, but when he saw himself crucified with Christ all that he had formerly valued was seen in its worthlessness. All his pride in his achievements, all his self-righteousness, and all that he boasted in as “an Hebrew of the Hebrews” (Phil. 3:5) was exposed in the light of the cross as belonging to a life that had received its judgment from God when Christ died.
Yet if Paul viewed himself as exposed in shame and judgment in the cross of Christ, he nevertheless had a life in which he lived, but it was the life that men endeavoured to bring to an end when they crucified the Lord of glory. Christ, whom men crucified, not only lives in the presence of the Father, but He lives in His saints in this world, and Paul desired that this heavenly life of the glorified Christ should be constantly in evidence in him here below. Paul looked back to the cross to see the end of all that he was as in the flesh, but he looked up to Christ in glory, the attraction and power of the life he lived through faith in God’s Son; and how powerfully the love of Christ, manifested in His death, in His giving of Himself for Paul, and for all His own, influenced the daily walk of and life of the Apostle.
The crucifixion of Christ not only affected the life of Paul, it also coloured his ministry, as already seen in 1 Corinthians 1, 2, and he also applied the truth of the cross to the Galatians in their danger, writing, “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you…before whose eyes Jesus Christ has been evidently set forth, crucified among you?” (Gal. 3:1). The flesh, in which they were seeking to be made perfect (verse 3), had received its death sentence in the cross of Christ, and those under law had been made dead to the law by the body of Christ (Rom. 7:4).
The Flesh Crucified
God had finished with the flesh, having in the death of His own Son “condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3), and those who belong to Christ have accepted the verdict and judgment of God on the flesh, even as the Apostle writes in Galatians 5:24, “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.” Normal believers see the flesh exposed in all its varied features of evil in Christ‘s cross. They see that nothing good is to be expected from it, and they have finished with it, with all its inordinate affections and evil desires.
Viewed in the light of eternity the life of man in this world as lived in present things “profits nothing” (John 6:63), for it is a life in alienation from God, and in which there is nothing for God. All man’s thoughts centre in himself, and his highest thoughts do not reach to God and His things. Man’s life is lived for his own gratification and to bring glory to himself, and to secure this men crucified the Son of God, for they neither wanted Him nor His Father. The cross in which men sought to be rid of God and His Christ is that in which the nature of man has been exposed in all its wickedness, and shows for the Christian what the flesh is.
The World Crucified
Paul not only saw the old man crucified, and the flesh crucified, in the cross of Christ, but he could add, “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. 6:14). The Apostle saw the world as an evil system, stained with the blood of Jesus, and exposed in all its wickedness and hatred of God and of Him in whom he had found the knowledge of God. The corruption of the world’s religion, its bribery, unrighteousness, falsehood and violence, all are to be seen laid bare in what was done to the Christ of God. There is nothing at which this world will stop in its opposition to God, and its hatefulness is manifest for all to see in Christ’s cross.
Paul gloried in the cross because of all that he found there of God’s love to such a wretched sinner as He was, and because of all that it manifested of Christ’s love for him. This made him content, yea anxious, to share the world’s opposition to the Son of God who loved him, and gave Himself for him. If Christ was dishonoured by the world, he also desired to be dishonoured by it; if Christ was hated, so would he also be. He counted it an honour to be associated with Christ as the object of the world’s malice and rejection, for he had seen in the cross what the world truly was.
R. 12.2.69