THE DEATH OF CHRIST
‘Even the death of the Cross.’
Php_2:8
I. The Cross of Christ affords the only justification for an optimist outlook on life.—For the Spirit of God by which Christ was inspired and sustained is the same Spirit which is striving to influence the lives of all men. Whilst then the contemplation of the sufferings of Christ begets within us an increasing horror of sin, it should also beget an unlimited exercise of charity in judging others to whom His sufferings make little appeal. For even in their case the Spirit of God is striving, and not altogether in vain, to reproduce His life. The death of Christ was a crowning proof of the omnipotent power of that Spirit which was given to Him without measure, but which is still an active force in the world and is striving to inspire the lives of all men.
II. The fortitude of Christ is one the most inspiring features of His character. As we gaze with reverent awe upon the scene enacted in Gethsemane we feel that His victory is in a real sense the victory of mankind. When we are brought face to face with a dreaded and threatening future; when the will of God seems so hard to accept that the flesh shrinks in horror from the sacrifice involved; when we are tempted to lose all trust in human friendship, as the sympathy which might with right have been expected fails us at the last; when it seems, in very deed, that this is the ‘hour’ and ‘the power of darkness’; then the knowledge that Christ strove and conquered as a man, under real human limitations, will prevent despair, and will help to explain to us the assurance given to His earliest followers, ‘Be of good cheer; I have overcome.’
III. Christ’s death is not an isolated event to be gazed at from afar.—Even in His death He was very near to us. Although in one sense His death represents a sacrifice which can never be repeated, it is nevertheless true that that unique sacrifice must be reproduced in the sacrifice and offering up to God of every human being for whom it is to be made effective.
IV. His character does not represent for us an unapproachable ideal.—The Spirit which inspired the life of our Saviour is striving to inspire our lives. His fortitude, his confidence in the presence of overmastering evil. His self-surrender and self-sacrifice even unto death, may be reproduced in our own experience.
Rev. Canon C. H. Robinson.
Illustration
‘If we may believe Christ to have possessed any clear foresight of the actions and conduct of those who should become His nominal followers, it becomes hard to place any limit upon the suffering which this foresight must have caused Him.
‘ “Face, loved of little children long ago!
Head, hated by the priests and rulers then!
Say, was not this Thy passion to foreknow
In Thy last hour the deeds of Christian men?” ’
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE WONDROUS CROSS
We are to meditate on the Cross—
‘… the wondrous Cross
On which the Prince of Glory died.’
I. The Cross is an altar.—‘We have an altar,’ says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 13:10). The perfect sacrifice was offered there.
II. The Cross is a lever.—It uplifts souls that lay in the shadow of death.
III. The Cross is a key.—It reveals the very heart of God.
IV. The Cross is a pulpit.—From it Christ preaches to-day as He did on the first Good Friday.
V. The Cross is a throne.—From it He promises Paradise.
VI. The Cross is a bridge.—It brings heaven and earth together. It is the anti-type of Jacob’s ladder.
VII. The Cross is a gathering-place.—For Christ died on the Cross to ‘gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.’
—Rev. F. Harper.
Illustrations
(1) ‘A little child was brought into a London hospital suffering from a most virulent form of diphtheria. It was seen that all hope of saving his life lay in one operation. That was the sucking up, by means of a tube, of the obstruction in the throat. Although he knew that death was a great probability, the physician, Samuel Rabbeth—young, with a brilliant future opening up before him, willingly stooped over the boy, put the tube in his lips, and sucked out the poisoned pus. He paid the penalty. In a day the fell disease appeared in him; in a week he was dead.’
(2) ‘To Christ’s Cross his soldiers are gathered, and from the Cross they go forth to battle against the powers of wrong. There is a beautiful illustration of the latter in Sir Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake. I refer to the passage of the fiery cross. You remember how, when the clan was to be rallied to a certain place in battle for their chieftain’s honour, it was customary that a cross, a rough wooden one, should be first set on fire, and then the blazing cross had the flames extinguished in the blood of a slain kid, and with that blood-stained, charred cross a herald, swift-footed, was sent forth to summon all the clan to battle for their chieftain and for victory.’