“The cross of Christ condemns me to become a saint!” So exclaimed a Bechuana Christian in the enthusiasm of his newly found faith.
The words are emphatic and contain a truth all-important to the spiritual life. They take us straight to the real purpose of the Saviour’s death; they put before us the true object of the Christian’s life. Not the forgiveness of sins, not a title to Heaven, but a holy life- a walk that pleases God.
True, forgiveness of sins must come first; the blessing of free pardon lies at the threshold of the Christian life. We cannot do acceptable service, we cannot yield the first-fruits of the Spirit, the love, joy, peace, which are the unfailing marks of the spiritual nature, unless all servile fear of God, all unworthy desires to propitiate our Heavenly Father and to merit His favour, have been removed by a belief in our full acceptance through the blood of the cross.
We must first learn what the Apostle John taught as an infant lesson to his little children, ” … your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake” (1 John 2: 12). But, after all, this forgiveness of sins is only the means and not the end. A holy life is the only end.
The cross of Christ, while it secures my pardon, condemns me to become a saint. How? Partly out of gratitude. They who have been forgiven much must needs love much (Luke 7:4 7). Christ’s love to us cannot fail to constrain us to live not unto ourselves, but unto Him who died for us and rose again (2 Corinthians 5: 15).
IDENTIFICATION WITH CHRIST
Is this all? What did the Apostle Paul mean when he said, “I am crucified with Christ … ” (Galatians 2:20)? Is not this identification something more than substitution?
Does not this again imply union? Can we accept Christ as our substitute merely, and claim the freedom from sin’s punishment which His death secured? Must we not at the same time become one with Him in a living spiritual union; one with Him in His attitude toward sin; one with Him in His attitude toward God?
The very essence of the atonement lies in the fact, not that so much suffering was borne, so much pain inflicted, but that the only begotten Son, who all through His life had done the Father’s will and had passed through the sinful world unspotted and unstained, took the place of the sinful and rebellious, and ” … put away sin … “, both bearing its curse and manifesting its exceeding sinfulness ” … by the sacrifice of himself” (Hebrews 9:26).
GOD’S ESTIMATE OF SIN
The cross of Christ shows us God’s estimate of sin. To accept the atonement there wrought out by Christ, we must accept God’s view of sin. The cross of Christ preaches with awful eloquence, “No quarter to sin, but war to the very death.” It condemns sin utterly and entirely, and thus condemns us to be holy.”
It is a base slander against the doctrines of free grace to say that assurance of acceptance must lead to carelessness of living. Shame to any whose lives have made this lie to be believed. They cannot surely accept Christ as the propitiation for their sins who do not honestly accept God’s sentence there passed upon sin, who do not view all that is evil in their past mode of living- yes, and every sinful affection and desire of the natural heart sentenced to death. They must learn that” … our old man is crucified with him … ” (Romans 6:6).
The very sacrifice by which alone pardon is secured to us most unmistakably fixes the character of the life that is to follow; it pledges us to holiness and self-sacrifice. The life of holiness, then, is not some high pathway reserved for a few who are peculiarly devoted, for the specialist in religion; there is to be no division made between the secular and the sacred life; all who believe in the old story of the cross, all who hope to be saved thereby, are bound by it to a holy life.
HOLINESS POSSIBLE
But we must go a step further. The cross of Christ not only enforces holiness, but makes holiness possible. The Saviour’s death was not only an atonement for sin, but a triumph over sin. By faith we can view our sins not only on His sacred head for our pardon, but under His pierced feet for our deliverance. To Christ and all who are in Him, the devil is a conquered foe.
The life of the com of wheat which falls into the ground and dies is reproduced in the well-filled ear (John 12:24). The life which was laid down for our ransom is imparted to us for our life and strength. Strange that this blessed truth, to which the Lord’s Supper was meant to be a standing witness, should have been so forgotten; stranger still that so many have been contented with a connection which is only outward and formal, instead of going on to the real living union through faith and the Holy Spirit.
We need to learn the full force of the comparison in Romans 5:10, that compound-proportion sum, so full of meaning: if when enemies, through the imputed death, we are reconciled, how much more as friends, in the imparted life, we shall be saved- delivered, that is, from the bondage and practice and love of sin. Just as the healthy flow of life in the body enables it to resist disease, so the life of Christ, imparted through His death and resurrection, enables the Christian to throw off the pollution of the world, and escape from corruption and sin. The cross of Christ condemns us and empowers us to be holy.
This, then, is the great lesson for us, that goodness has been put within the reach of the vilest sinner through the finished work of Christ. May God teach us the meaning of the cross, and so make us Calvary Christians.