The Eloquence of the Cross
Christ was standing, when He spoke these words, on the very margin of His death, with little or nothing beyond except His crucifixion; and then He says, evidently pointing to His suffering, "I will declare Thy name." The declaration could be taken in no other sense than the eloquence of the Cross. For after that, He did not talk much with His disciples, but He left the Cross to stand out and speak alone. And had we but the eye of faith to penetrate that deep mystery, I believe that we might stand beneath the Cross on which the Saviour hung, and in that contemplation we might read more of God, and the reality of God's being, than books can ever contain or words can ever express.
I. The first view of the Father which the Cross presents to the mind is His holiness, His unutterable holiness. Sin was impossible to God. He determines to put sin away from Him; absolutely, irrevocably, eternally, to banish all and every sin, and every phase of sin, and every shade of sin, and every degree of sin, out of His own sight for ever. On His Son He laid the gathered sin of the whole fallen creation.
II. His justice. The original sentence of God against sin was fulfilled to the letter. Not a line was erased, not a syllable weakened. All do die die as it were, eternally; there is no exception. Every man is a sinner, and every sinner dies. Some in themselves; some in Christ. Some in their own undying torments; some in their covenanted Head.
III. His wisdom. He did an act which gives the free pardon of the King of kings to every offender; while, by the same act, He made the law honourable and sin detestable. Who shall dare to trifle with that which went on its unbending way, till it executed the Lord of Life and Glory?
IV. His love. Faithful is it for it came from all eternity, and it stretches on, unchanging, to eternity again. Large it is for it reaches from hell to heaven, and girdles the universe. But still, love is a retiring grace; and the heart that would read love, must make around itself a little sanctuary of deep, still, holy, personal thought; and then, in calm, quiet meditation, you will, by the still teachings of the Holy Ghost, find, in a way that no sermon can preach it, how the Father's love shines in the Cross, and how true it is about it, "I will declare it."
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,2nd series, p. 120.
References: John 17:26. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxviii., No. 1667. Homilist,vol. vii., p. 343. John 18 J. H. Evans, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. xiii., p. 5, etc. John 18:1. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 69; vol. xvi., p. 225; G. T. Coster, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 168. John 18:1-8. Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 280. John 18:1; John 18:2. A. Raleigh, The Way to the City,p. 60. John 18:2-9. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 70; R. C. Trench, Shipwrecks of Faith,p. 59. John 18:4-8. Homilist,vol. iv., p. 326.