28. Christ’s Meaning of the Cross

Christ’s Meaning of the Cross

Third, what does Christ mean by the cross? What is Christ’s own witness in the Gospels to the cross? As you study the Gospels you will find at least a fivefold witness that the Lord Jesus Christ gives to you and to me with regard to His death on the cross. The very first thing that He emphasizes is that it is the secret of all fruitful living. “And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it” (Matthew 10:38-39); “Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:24-25). The word “life” there, in the Greek, is just the word that we translate today into “psychic.” We use it so much these days, psychic or psychical, it is just the natural life. This is the difference between all these false cults of the world today and the message of the Lord Jesus Christ, that they all have to develop the psychic, they are all putting emphasis upon the natural life in man, the natural thing in man, and there is a sort of deification today of this human element in man. But the message of the Lord Jesus Christ is not to develop the psychic, but to send it to the cross. That is the only pathway of safety for you and for me, “Whosoever will save his life, whosoever will develop the psychic or the natural in him [and that is what spiritism and all those things are doing], shall lose it” (Mark 8:35). That means it will come to ruin, and he will find it goes from him and he does not get out of it what God means him to get. “Whosoever will lose his life [whosoever will let these things that are merely human and natural, and that can be worked on by the devil; whosoever will let these things go to the cross, keep the cross between himself and those things] for my sake shall find it.” That means he will discover the place and the purpose and the power of the natural, and he will get out of the natural all that God means him to get.

Let us remember that fruit never comes through the development of the natural in us, but through the development of the spiritual, through the supremacy of the Holy Spirit in life. The source of fruit in the believer’s life is Christ, living in him. When I say that the fruit never comes through the natural I do not mean that God does not use our natural gifts, our minds, our faculties, but fruit never comes through fleshly energy, never comes through soulish power, it never comes through the natural becoming supreme over the spiritual. Fruit is only the result of the Lord Jesus Christ living in you and me, working in you and in me, and putting His power through us, our minds, our gifts, our faculties and everything else.

Therefore, in John 12:24; John 12:32, and you have these gifts by the Lord Jesus Christ, “Verily, Verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,” there is the natural, “it abideth alone,” it brings forth nothing for God, nothing for men, “but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

There is the secret of a fruitful life for you and for me. It is the cross at work in our natures, our characters, doing in us, and for us, and through us, what is done in, and for, and through that grain of wheat as it lies in the grave of the ground. Christ was the first grain of wheat to fall into the ground and die, and out of His death has come everything that we know today of Christian life, Christian faith, Christian power, Christian influence, Christian hope. He says, “Follow me. If anyone will be my disciple let him take up the cross, let him lose His life, and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24).

It is so possible for us to have redeemed lives, with which perhaps little or no fault could be found, and in which little or no fruit can be discovered, simply because there is no death to that which God cannot use—no death to that which Satan is always trying to use. It is possible to save your life and get nothing out of it. It is only as we go in the steps of the Savior that there can go out from us in disposition and service the life that reveals Christ and the life that reproduces the Christ life in all its wondrous power to bear fruit for God and for men.

What does it mean? I wonder if I can make it simple enough. You remember how it is said that Christ poured out His soul unto death. He took His natural life and He laid it down in death. Now the soul is the seat of our senses, is the seat of our personality, the seat of our self-life. That is the source of all the mischief and all the weakness in our lives and in our selves. Think of the forms in which that self-life appears even among Christian people, in pride, in temper, in pettiness, in quickness to take offense, in misjudgment of others, misinterpretation of the words of others, self-love, self-pity, self-preservation, and so on. Oh, the forms are innumerable in which the self-life can appear. The Lord Jesus Christ says that whenever anyone of those forms appears we are not to develop them, but to say, “That is for the cross. That must go to the cross. That goes to the cross. I die to that, I take the position of death to that.” May the blessed Holy Spirit make the victory of Calvary real to you, and the moment that you take up that attitude in your heart and your will you are opening the door for the Holy Spirit to come in with the life of Christ andRomans 8:2 becomes a perfect reality and a blessed experience to you: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2). The moment you take up that attitude of saying, “That is for the cross. I am not going to let self-love get the better of me; I am not going to let temper get the better of me. It goes to the cross, I die to it, I put the cross between that and me, and I ask the Holy Spirit to make the power of the cross real in my experience”—the moment we take up that attitude the Holy Spirit finds the open door into our lives with the life of Christ which produces fruit, and the corn of wheat dies, and the fruit comes for God. That attitude will mean for you and for me just what the death of the Lord Jesus Christ meant for Him. What was that? “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore” (Revelation 1:18). Before He went to the cross He said, “I lay down my life. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” He took it again in resurrection power, and that is the result of your taking up this position of death to sin, it is resurrection life and power.

Paul, in Php 3:10, declared this to be his ambition—that he might know Christ more and more in the power of His resurrection. So as you definitely and deliberately, cost what it may, send the forms of the self-life to the cross you come to know the resurrection of Christ; dying to sin, you are alive unto God.

“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit” (John 12:24). Dying is the gate of life, it is the pathway of power, it is the secret of victory, it is the source of heart rest, it is the secret of all that can make life what God means it to be and what God wants it to be. That is the witness of Christ to the cross. It is the secret of a fruitful life for God and for men.

Take the second thing, which he tells us that the cross binds together. The Lord tells us that the cross binds together forces for the deliverance of souls. Turn to one passage,Matthew 17:20-21, which is a very important passage. In answer to the question of the disciples, Why could not we cast out these demons? “Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting” (Matthew 17:20-21). Our Lord reveals there a threefold power that He means us to use in order to bind the forces of evil and deliver souls from these forces. There is first of all faith, which is the link with the power; there is prayer, which puts the power into action, and then there is what he calls fasting. Now what is fasting for the Christian? It is far more than abstinence from food and drink. For the Christian, the principle underlying fasting is not physical, but spiritual, of that I am quite sure.

You remember that God appointed one great fast for His people, the Day of Atonement, which numbers among them inferred to mean abstinence from food; but God distinctly said, “It is a day for afflicting your souls because of sin.” That Day of Atonement was for taking away everything that had been separating them from God in their worship and in their life. Other fasts were added in time of distress and religious zeal, and they added fasts themselves until, in Christ’s day, the Pharisee could say with tremendous pride, “I fast twice a week,” and brought down upon him the rebuke of Christ for hypocrisy. The idea of fasting is shutting out something, and for the Christian it is just what Paul emphasizes when he bids the Christian give up lawful things that are not expedient, things that are not spiritual, things that become material for Satan to work on; things the possession of which plays into the hands of evil powers; something, perhaps, that keeps you from fellowship with God; something, perhaps, quite lawful, that yet blunts your appetite for the Word of God or for prayer; something, perhaps, of a trifling nature, that takes the time which ought to be devoted to things of a serious nature; something, perhaps, that creates an atmosphere around your life that robs your life of power just at the crucial moment.

Paul says these things have to be given up, we have to fast from them, we have to shut our eyes to them. But it goes very much deeper than that. It means the giving of one’s self, by a definite act of yieldedness, to God. Fasting in a Christian sense is the principle of the renunciation of self as the master force in your life, and the crowning of the Lord Jesus Christ in its place. You close your life against yourself and open your life to God, and then you maintain that attitude of surrender day by day.

Here comes in the work of this threefold force. Prayer becomes the central force for the deliverance of men and women from sin and from powers of evil; for prayer, remember, is more than devotion, is more than communion, is more than mere intercession; prayer is the mightiest weapon that God puts into your hands to smite the power of evil on the ground of victory at Calvary. Therefore prayer becomes more of a work than a word when you come to understand the meaning of it. Prayer is doing business for God in the spiritual realm. Therefore the apostle Paul says, “we wrestle not with flesh and blood” (Ephesians 6:12). How much time we waste wrestling with flesh and blood, trying to get a man to see a truth from our point of view, trying to argue a man around to our opinion of what belief means, of what something else spiritual means. Paul says, “Wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with those spirit forces of evil that are behind flesh and blood.” That is what prayer means, I believe, more than anything else; for we are in a fight, and do not let anyone forget it, a fight that is growing hotter and hotter as the end approaches, and you need to know how to use the weapon of prayer on the ground of the victory of Calvary, if you are going to stand against the forces of darkness that are all round about you and that are driving in upon Christian churches and Christian lives in the most terrible way. Prayer becomes the central force for the deliverance of souls. Faith links us on, faith links the prayer on to that power, and then the fasting, or the cross, is what breaks all the hindrances to that power manifesting itself in service.

Let me put it in this way, fasting takes you toRomans 6:6, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin,” and makes death union with Christ a fact, and then faith takes you to Romans 8:2, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death,” and makes life union through the Holy Spirit a fact; and prayer becomes the force for deliverance on the ground of Calvary, in cooperation with the Spirit of God.

Third, Christ says the cross marks out the path of the true servant, “And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:27-28); “But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not what ye ask: can ye drink of the cup that I drink of. And be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” (Mark 10:38); “But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50); “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” (Luke 24:26); “And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day” (Luke 24:46). I just want you to remember Luke 9:51, “He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem.” That is the path of the true servant. It is not the path of self-pleasing and self-interest, it is not the path that others say is the path for you. Never take a path that others say you ought to take. Only the cross can mark out the path of service for you, and the cross marks out the path of service towards Jerusalem.

What does that mean? God’s chosen path for you in which you are to do His will, even though it means Jerusalem. And Jerusalem for Christ meant loneliness, forsakenness, sacrifice. I want to quote to you a passage from a letter which I was reading the other day with great pleasure, by David Livingstone. New letters have been printed which were written to his brother Charles. When his wife and family left for England on April 23, 1852, this is what he wrote: “My heart is very sore. I shall never see my children again. They will grow out of my knowledge and will all forget me; but I grudge Him nothing who died for me. My tears flow, but He knows that my heart grudges Him nothing of all that I have.”

Now do you see it in a practical form? David Livingstone was the corn of wheat. Do you see it? A corn of wheat, and what fruit has come out of that corn of wheat! He trod the path of a true servant and trod it in a spirit of sacrifice. What the cross is calling for today is lives full of devotion, full of sacrifice, reckless souls is the call of Christ today, reckless souls—not reckless in the flesh, that is no good—but reckless because of union with Christ, reckless in sacrifice, reckless in devotion. The fourth thing I can only mention. The cross gives victory over the powers of evil: “When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils” (Luke 11:21-22); “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you” (Luke 10:19); “Now is the judgment of this world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out” (John 12:31).

I warn you today that the powers of evil are out in full force. Do not shut your eyes to the tremendous developments of evil that are going on in the spiritual realm. These forces of evil are at work in the most subtle, cunning, and insidious way. You will find them in all the cults of the world, these religious cults, and only as you learn to watch, and only as you learn to walk in obedience to the Holy Spirit, only as you let Him work in you the purpose of the cross, are you safe from the powers of evil and the wiles of the devil by which he is deceiving and deluding multitudes.

Turn to Luke 10:19 and read it, and ask God the Holy Spirit to make you know what it means, for Christ has given His children authority to tread upon all the power of the enemy today and stand in victory. There is nothing adverse that you cannot have under your feet, because it is already under His feet.

One word more, the fifth thing that the Lord shows us in the Gospels. The cross opens the way to the indwelling of Christ. “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in Him” (John 6:56); “Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more, but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19-20): compare with Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”

“He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him” (John 6:56). There is a natural union when Christ and I become one, Christ in me and I in Christ. What is the flesh that we are to eat? It is not the flesh of the dead Christ, not the flesh that was nailed to the cross; it is the flesh of the risen Son of God. That is to say this, our worship is not with a dead Christ, and our union is not with a dead Christ. Our fellowship and our union are with the living Son of God. Let that sink into your minds and it will make you understand the blessedness.

Let me come closer to Thee, Jesus;

Oh, closer day by day!

Let me lean harder on Thee, Jesus, Yes, harder all the way. In all my heart and will, O Jesus, Be altogether King!

Make me a loyal subject, Jesus, To Thee in everything.