The Cross Borne for us and in us.
I. The whole of the Gospel is the doctrine of the Cross, but that twofold: the cross borne for us and the virtue and power of the Cross by the sacraments communicated to us and henceforth to be borne by us. By baptism we are made members of Him who for us was crucified; and our life from baptism to our death should be a practice of the Cross, a learning to be crucified, a crucifixion of our passions, appetites, desires, wills, until one by one they be all nailed, and we have no will but the will of our Father who is in heaven; and in the prospect of each lesser cross, such as are allotted to us, not merely when laid upon us, and we cannot escape them, we, too, should take up our Master's words, "Not My will, but Thine."
II. The ancient Christians followed this example: they shared each other's sufferings; they suffered one for another, the rich the poverty of the poor; they saw Christ in the poor, the prisoners, the captives, the sick, as He bade them and as He had told them, and underwent sufferings for them; they laid down their lives for the brethren. So then they well understood the two parts of the doctrine of the Cross, the cross which was borne for us by Christ and the cross which was to be borne by us, in Christ's strength and for Christ's sake, and this not for a brighter crown merely, but that they might finally be saved.
III. Every shade of self-denial, from the pettiest denial of our appetites to the martyr's mangled and scored human form, is all included in bearing the cross, the least because He has commanded it, and He, for His own love's sake, accepts it. All crosses are preparations for heaven; for though we know not its unspeakable joys or wherein they consist, this we know: that we must learn to do His will on earth as it is done in heaven, to be like the blessed spirits who do His pleasure, swift and instant as the lightning, to count nothing labour, toil, or cross, which is to do His will. This portion of the cross has a blessed privilege, in that it is takenwillingly in obedience, not simply bornewillingly, as the chastisement of disobedience; it is taken in order, in what little way regenerate man is capable of, to be like his Maker; it is taken out of love to Him and to do His commandments.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to" Tracts for the Times"vol. iii., p. 1.
References: Philippians 3:9. Homilist,2nd series, vol. iv., p. 277; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ill., p. 90; J. C. Finlayson, Ibid.,vol. xi., p. 342; T. Jones, Ibid.,vol. xii., p. 118; T. T. Lynch, Three Months' Ministry,p. 97.