SUNDAY READING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12272, 16 May 1903, Page 4 (Supplement)

SUNDAY READING.

THE CROSS OF CHRIST.

THE CROSS THE WAY TO GOD.

[BY EEV. ANDREW MURRAY.] " Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God."—l. Peter, iii. 18. Christ came to open up the way, and bring us back to God. It was God created us for

Himself, that He might be our blessedness and we His, that we might have our abode in Him, and Ho in us. It is God we have lost through sin; it is to God Christ would win and take us back. God is more, infinitely more, than salvation, and than heaven: God is the Eternal Life and Eternal Love who longs to live in us, and so fill us with His love and with Himself. For this Christ came; for this He suffered; THAT HE MIGHT BRING US TO GOD. The cross is the only way for human nature to come to God. It is the path in which Christ walked Himself; the path which He opened for us; the path in which we too walk; the path in which alone we can lead others. 1. When our blessed Lord look our human nature with all its burden of sin and curse He submitted to all the conditions of our human feebleness, and gave Himself to be and to do all that a true man needed to be and do as. God's creature. That He might show us what it means to be a creature, and how a creature should act; that He might make it possible for us to live as a creature should, He humbled Himself to live the life of a creature. He not only grew and waxed strong, He not only advanced in stature but in wisdom too, and in- favour with God and man. Through His whole life there was a true human development. In tho gradual oponing up to Him Of the will of God; in His learning obedience, and being made perfect through suffering; in His life of temptation and suffering; in His preparation for His final sacrifice; in all things He became like us. And so the cross was to Him, as Man and Mediator, the only path by which, in our nature, Ho could come to God. The cross speaks of sin: it was only as admitting to the full and bearing the evil of sin, as hatred against God, that man could come to God. The cross speaks of curse— God's judgment against sin; as long a= man did not accept and approve that judgment as righteous there could be no thought of his being restored to God's presence. The cross speaks of suffering: it is only as, in suffering, the will of God is accepted and everything given up to it, that there could be union with God. The cross speaks of death: it is only as man is ready to part utterly and entirely with his whole present life, to die to it, that he can enter into, or fully receive into himself, the life and glory of God. All this Christ did. His whole life was animated by the crucifixion spirit. The cross on Calvary was simply fruit that had been growing and ripening all through His life. All along it had been a protest against man's sin; a witness to the righteousness of God's jdugmont against it: a readiness in everything to give up His will, and bear any suffering, that the Father's honour might be vindicated; a determination to sacrifice life itself as the only way by which our human natura could bo fitted and transformed for the indwelling of God. The way of the cross was the way in which Jesus as man personally walked His whole life through, that, as our Forerunner, He might enter in and appear beforo God for us. "Being made perfect through suffering He became unto all them that obey Him the authoi of eternal salvation." For Jesus Himself the cross was the path to God. 2. All that our Lord was and did as man had an infinite worth. He was not only man but God. As the Son of God and Hei. of all things the world and man had been created by Him, and in Him, and for Him. In virtue of His Divine nature, possessing and filling all things, He became the Second Adam, a new Head here upon earth foi the human race. As such, His bearing tho cross, and entering into God's Holy Presence, was the opening up of a way in which we too could draw nigh. His death, the bearing of God's judgment on sin, was.the putting away of sin; He made an end of sin. In bearing the condemnation and the curse and death He bore away the sin; He abolished, broke the power of him that had tho power of death, and sot us his prisoners free. The cross, and the blood, and the death of Christ are God's assurance to the sinner that there is an immediate acquittal to each one who will accept of and entrust himself to this Saviour, and an everlasting admission to God's favour and .friendship. All the claims -that God's law had against us; all tho power sin. and Satan had over us; all are at an end: the death of Jesus was the death of sin and death. The path. of the cross is the path Christ has opened for us;' in it we have full' liberty and power to draw nigh to God. 3. In that path of the cross we now have to walk if wo are to come to God. The entrance to that path is repentance and faith. As men listen to the charge God's messenger has against them, "This Jesus ye crucified," and yield to it: as with penitent hearts they ask how they are to be delivered, the Gospel tells them that the cross that reveals tho sin has taken it away, and that the Christ against whom they have sinned has in His love won for them pardon and life. The man who learns to know his sin at the cross learns to know his Saviour there too. Faith in the cross, and its perfect redemption, sots a man at once in tho way of life. The path of the cross is the path that brings us to God. Continuance in that path is no less by faith. But a faith that sec- more of the spiritual meaning of the cross, longs for a fuller experience of its redeeming power in victory over sin, yields more completely to its fellowship and dominion, trusts with larger confidence in the completeness of its deliverance from the world and the flesh. I his faith sees how the crucified Christ is indeed tho revelation of all that is holy and lovely before God, and how there is no beauty or blessedness in heaven greater than to have His disposition, to bear the cross after Him and like Him, and to allow His Spirit from heaven to act in us as in Him, as the Spirit of the cross. Above all. this faith learns how the death of Christ is a finished and everlasting redemption, a °fc only as an atonement made once for all but equally as a death once for all to sin, and a life unto God, to be imparted and inwrought in all who desire and believe it. It there were no path for Christ to God but through death, the entire giving up of life, how much more this must be the only path in which the sinner can come to be filled with the life of God. And now that Christ's death is a finished thing the death and the life we receive in Him is the power of such absolute surrender working in us. with tho blessed indwelling to which it leads. It is this faith enables a man to say joyfully, '1 am crucified with Christ. 1 glory in the cross, by which I

am crucified to tho world." The r«„~ic . spirit, with its protest against anT^T tior. from tho world, its sacrifice of $?"£ pleading, and its absolute surrendei to r a even to tho death, marks the who!* l!fL 1 walk. The cross daily borne J tt in becomes indeed the path to God 4. In this path we can win and w others. It was as (he crucified? giyL l^ s life foi mo, that Christ won the Si bless them. It was his full accent™ * to the suffering of Christ on the wafto . ° f of which Peter spekas in his firV J l '*!? which filled him with boldness .2LW e his . Lord. It was the intensity 0 f fe f ? r , desire for, perfect conformity to his lr 'J. sufferings that gave him his power a? * apostle. In the measure in whirh *u tt Church gives itself to Cod. a sae rifii ?" , men, will tho power of Cod's Spirit J°r through her. It is Christ crucified Iwho1who =?* men: it is Christ crucified living and breath ing in us who can, who will use us [IT saving work. And His living , JM? in us means nothing less than that we lifcl Salification, but for the saving of otl. That means—to forget ourselves to s~-ifi ' ourselves, to suffer anything thai the it may bo won. Os » At first when a soul enters into the f,.,iu" of being crucified with Christ and be«W about His dying in the body, the „l- % thought is that of personal "sanctification Death to sin, death to the world, Sft self are regarded as the path of life and blessing to the soul. But these desires ," not lead it in truth to trust in Chris* Him in whom alone the death and the life out of death is known and found without the contact with H;m, opening up the secret that all His obedience to the Fat-he a3 victory over sin was not tor any nerson.l glorification but for the saving* of off around Him. And the believe, learns th»* tho path of flu cross cannot he trod tri-lr by any who are not willing to work anrf give their life for others. And that- en the other hand, the only true power to bW others conies when the cross, as death in the world and sell, becomes the law of cm, daily life. Christ walked in the path 0 tho cross, and there won the powei 'to op £ it to us. Wo walk in it, incur union to Him, -as we look upon our life as some thing to be entirely given away to our fcl - low-men, that the life ot God may do if. work through us. The cross was Christ's way to God—for Himself and foi us- for Himself that it might be for us. The 'cross is our way to God—for ourselve: and for others: fox ourselves that it may bo so for others too.

The Church is continually speaking or the secret of power in its ministry of salvation How little it is understood that its only power over the world is to be crucified to the world. It is Christ crucified, a stumblhi*. block and foolishness to men, gloried in by those- who can say "I am crucified with Christ," it is the preaching of the cross thus known and gloried in that is the power of God. r

GRACE AND GLORY. " The glory which Thou hast given Me 1 have given them."—John xvii. We have been asiced by an intelligent and earnest reader to explain th. word "glory" as it is so often found in the Scriptures. Our blessed Lord tells us here that He has given us the glory which the Father gave Him. " Tho Lord will give grace and glory" was the bright promise of the old dispensation, and Christ has come to bring not only grace but glory too. BUT WHAT IS GLORY? It is something more than grace. It is grace abounding. It is grace running over in redundant fulness. It is grace transfigured, crowned, and glorified. It is the element of the divine, the infinite, and the eternal brought into the finite and human. It is to live in heaven even while wc walk on earth. It is our privilege to live in the glory even here, and LOOK AT EVERYTHING FROM THE HEAVENSIDE. It is possible to be so filled with the spirit of glory and of God that we shall live a transfigured life even on earth, and carry' about us the atmosphere and radiance of the upper world. This is more than joy. It is )' joy unspeakable and full of glory." This is more than patience and longsuffering. It is to " glory in tribulation also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given, us." We have sometimes scon this glory light up the faces of the dying with supernatural beauty. So Stephen's face was seen to shine in the light of the coming: glory. So Moses met tho people as he descended from the mount with the very radiance of the..upper sanctuary streaming from his -countenance.;' So have we seen the dark form of a great cathedral suddenly lighted up from within with many-tinted glory and splendour when all around was dark. The GLORY OF TIIE SAINT IS FROM WITHIN. In the holy tabernacle of old the inner* most chamber represented the glory life. Into that the ancient believer might' not pass, but now Christ has left the veil open, and the glory streams out, and the believer passes in, and we dwell in the heaven!ies> and live in tho glory even here. In the steps of grace marked out by the apostle in the eighth chapter of Romans the whole experience of sanctification is just taken in as part of glorification. "Whom He called; them He also justified : and whom He justified them He also glorified." Here, at a bound, we pass into the glory the moment wo are justified. Surely we should walk as children of the light and heirs of tho glory. Belolved, aro you living in the glory? Have you felt the touch of that rapturous glow which transfigures life and makes all things heavenly? Have you something.* little sweeter than joy, a little larger thai grace; even the earnest of the inheritanc< and the ■

FORETASTE OF TIIE GLORY ALREADY BEOUN? This will lift you above all' life's commonplace and sorrow, and make all your living to be sublime. Let us claim our privilege. Let us appropriate this promise: ''The glory which Thou hast given me 1 have given them." Let us live in the glory unbrokenly.