LS-19-The Attraction Of The Cross

The Attraction Of The Cross And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me.--John 12:32.

"This He said," explains the sacred writer, "signifying what death He should die." "The ’lifting up’ meant the crucifixion. He well knew all that was involved in such a death." "Into such a phrase he crowds the smiting hammers, and the cruel nails, and the thorn-crown, and the purple robe, and the pain, and the shame, and the darkness, and the breaking heart, and the wounds hardly big enough to let death in or to let life out, the slow six hours of dying--all these are just to be ’lifted up.’ My soul! shall we not in this spirit deny our small self-denials and crucify our crucifixions?" (Carey E. Morgan). As surely as any unusual object, elevated above the heads of a crowd becomes the centre of interest to those who are within sight, so the lifted cross has become the centre of attraction for the whole wide world. But not as an object of curiosity. Lifted up as He was upon the cross, He attracted the curious gaze of the idle multitude. But lifted up in a spiritual sense, by all that the cross expressed of self-denying love and vicarious sacrifice, He has drawn to Himself the best elements of devotion and service that the human heart can offer. As surely as iron filings are attracted by the magnet, so the Saviour, by His cross, draws men unto Himself. How the heart is subdued, the conscience roused, the will humbled by the uplifted cross! A missionary in India told the story of a simple village woman who had learned to read, and was asked to tell a Bible story. "There was that simple village woman sitting on the floor, just able to read a few words, and there was I, the college graduate from the West, examining her, and as we sat there side by side on the floor, the village woman began to tell the story of the crucifixion. As she told it, it had a pathos and power and beauty I had never seen in it before, and when the simple woman came to where they drove the nails through Christ’s hands she began to weep, and then she wept aloud, and threw her arms around my neck and said, ’I cannot go any further--it will break my heart." They sat together on the floor, these two women, representatives of the East and West, and wept in each other’s arms, tears of tender sympathy and joyous love, at the thought of the cross of Christ.

"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."