LS-49-The Approach to The Cross
The Approach to The Cross And it came to pass, when the days were well-nigh come that He should be received up, He stedfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.--Luke 9:51.
"When the days were well-nigh come." He knew it was near, and He knew just what it would be. Many a time He had told His disciples about it. The mocking, the scourging, the cross-it was not so uncommon in those days but what every detail of the bitter experience could torture His imagination. And such a death! It would be enveloped in horror and shame. We can hardly imagine it now. The cross today is the sign of peace, and forgiveness, and honour. But then, this punishment was so brutal and dishonouring that Rome would not use it for her meanest citizen--only for the alien, the conquered, the enslaved.
"He stedfastly set His face to go." He told them about it again while they went on their way, and they were amazed and afraid. But He faced it, stedfastly. Do not suppose that it was easy for Him to go this way. There are many indications that He was often sorely tempted to go some other way than the way of the cross. The cup He drained was bitter to Him. Yet He chose it. He could have avoided it. It was not just a resolute facing of the inevitable. No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself, He said.
There is something magnificent in the complete heroism of the cross. Jesus calls upon us to take up the cross and follow Him. There is little in our lives, however, that could be compared to taking up a cross. There have been times when discipleship involved a real cross--sometimes a literal one. Look back to the days of persecution, when bodies were torn asunder, lions were loosed, fires lit, boiling cauldrons received their victims, and actual crosses carried their languishing sufferers. And the resolution which enabled these heroes of the cross to be "faithful unto death," was born at the cross of Christ. The cross puts iron into the blood. It stimulates our noblest impulses, and rebukes our soft comfort and selfish ease.
"When the days were well-nigh come that He should be received up." We have spoken of His Divine fore-knowledge, and of His stern resolution. But these do not tell all the story. What, after all, was it to which He went in Jerusalem? It was to be "received up." Not "delivered up." "Delivered up" meant the cross. "Received up" meant glory. When the time was come that He should be received up, He stedfastly set His face towards what lay between--the city of rejection and death. Think not that He came to the cross with any sense of defeat. He knew it was the path to His glory. He knew He would one day see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied.