THE ONE TRUE GOSPEL
Meditations in the Letter to the Galatians
THE GLORY OF THE CROSS OF JESUS
"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world is crucified to me, and I to the world."
Galatians 6:14
THE ONE TRUE GOSPEL
Meditations in the Letter to the Galatians
THE GLORY OF THE CROSS OF JESUS"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world is crucified to me, and I to the world."
Galatians 6:14
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THE APOSTLE is rounding off his letter to the Galatians. He has done this by returning to the urgent reason why the latter has been written. In the previous three verses to our text Paul has summarised and exposed the error and false motives of those who had come into Galatia and corrupted the faith of the believers. Now he declares the true Gospel. He does this by declaring from his heart the faith he has and which he has preached and in which he lives. His declaration concerning the cross has been wrung out of him from the pain of the error he has been dealing with, and from the wonder of the gospel that fills his heart. Paul testifies to the Galatians where he stands. He has no other boast than in the cross of Jesus, and wants no other boast because there is no other thing worth boasting about. By this he declares the glory of the Cross. The Cross of Jesus has achieved for sinners that which nothing else has or ever can, and provides for believers complete and utterly secure salvation.
PAUL'S DESIRE
Paul's desire is that he will have no other boast than in the cross of Jesus, but that boast will be the greatest he can give. These false teachers who had come into Galatia upsetting the pure faith of the Galatians in the cross of Jesus, no doubt boasted in their religious perfection and what they claimed to be a more full religion. Paul counters that, what they have been teaching is nothing to boast about, because it destroys the Gospel and takes salvation away rather than confirming it.
Why is Paul so vehement concerning the cross. Firstly because it is spiritual and heavenly whereas all other religion is earthly. The religion being advocated by the false teachers was man produced. This is true of all religion that is not the Gospel revelation in the Bible. Deep inside every human being is a real sense of God, and that God is owed worship from his creatures, even though deep in the heart also is the sense of enmity and alienation from God which motivates people to neglect God and leave him out of life. Yet God must be placated and earthly wisdom sees this in terms of bribing God with religious and moral acts. Seeking God and his favour boils down in human thinking to human effort to please God and move him to be kind and forgiving. All religions, except the Gospel, revolve around this human effort, and is man produced. The Gospel comes from God alone. He provides salvation freely out of his infinite love and grace. The Gospel was conceived in heaven. It was worked by God alone, the three persons of the Trinity, before the foundation of the world. The Gospel was worked out by God alone. Christ alone worked salvation for us. We have no hand in it, and it is because of this that it is so secure and achieves total salvation.
Secondly, the Cross of Jesus does what all man made religions cannot achieve. Every religious person without the Gospel knows the nagging consciousness that with all their religion, there is no certainty that it is achieving the goal for which it is espoused. So all the expressions are of hope without any certainty. The Cross of Jesus is a full sacrifice for the sins of the world. That is Christ satisfied completely, and for all time, the law of God, and because he had no sin himself, his work was vicarious, that is done on behalf of others. So the Cross of Jesus is the means that sinners can receive full forgiveness for all their sins, and have transferred to them a righteousness which fully meets with God's approval. So the Cross of Jesus achieved the impossible of most surely securing the sinners purification and eternal acceptance with God. Because it is worked already by Jesus on the Cross, it can never, once received by faith, ever be lost because what is perfectly complete can't be made incomplete so that its benefits decay. The Cross of Jesus gives absolute certainty for the soul who is resting upon Jesus.
Thirdly, the cross of Jesus is personal. Jesus died for me as well as you. This causes the Apostle to speak of the cross of OUR Lord Jesus Christ. When we believe in Jesus, the efficacy of the cross makes Jesus our personal Saviour and God. He is our Lord and we are his people. We belong together in a loving bond for all eternity. Wesley expressed this in his hymn which he begins "Jesu, lover of my soul, let me to thy bosom fly." Each of us rest in Jesus as our personal Saviour and lover of our souls. The Cross is not so much a blanket of salvation that is shared out amongst all who believe, but rather to each who believe personally, Jesus was dying for them, and all the efficacy of the cross is for them individually. Each believer hides under the full sacrifice which Jesus made for sin on the cross.
THE POWER OF THE CROSS
The power of the cross is expressed by Paul in the words "through which the world is crucified to me, and I to the world." There is an actual happening here which brings a freedom from the world and its dominion which is impossible in any other way.
When we believe in Jesus as Saviour we are united to Jesus in a bond that makes us part of him. We become members of his body. Just as the branch of the vine is a living part of the vine, so that the life of vine and branch are one, so does faith unit us to Christ. Because of this the world is crucified to us. When Jesus was crucified and died, we were in him and the sinner that we were, prisoner to the world and its condemnation and rule of Satan, died also, and so became separated and freed from the world by death. The penalty for sin which is common to all who are under the dominion of the world was carried out on us in Christ. Our sins were atoned for and so the world can have no more dominion over us. We are free from its claims and rule. It is true that while earthly life still continues we are still in the world, but we are not of it or under its hold or dominion.
We have become members of the kingdom of God by regeneration. Being united to Christ, we not only share in his death but share in his resurrection. We are raised to new life. We are not freed from the world to be left homeless and without a place to be, but are born again, raised to new life, in the Kingdom of God. The new life so born is holy and without taint of sin, and totally fit for the kingdom of God. By it we appreciate the heavenly realm and love the things of that realm. This is the power of our living while still in this earthly body. This earthly body has not changed. It is still full of sin and loves sin. But the new holy life that is the real person now, resists that sinful flesh, and will not allow it to dominate, and so the Christian finds power within to overcome sin and temptation, and the wisdom to know the life which God created us for.
When Paul speaks of the world being crucified to him, he speaking not merely of a change of attitude, but an actual death which has severed the world from him, and brought him new born into a heavenly and better kingdom. It is not something he has done, but what God has done for him. It is new birth totally and truly.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CROSS
The love of the world is one great thing that keeps people from God and enslaves the soul. The cross of Jesus has such power that it frees us from the love of the world. Its influence draws us away from the things of the world to love the things of heaven.
Firstly the influence of the cross is in the fact that it brings us into the kingdom of God, so that we see and appreciate this kingdom with all its beauty. We are taught, by this being born into the kingdom of God by the cross, to love God and the things of God. Our souls run after these things and they become precious. Here is the expulsive power of a new affection. With the flesh we still love the world, but with the real new born person that we are, we love the things of God and heaven. Here is the one and only source of real holiness. It is in the influence of the cross of Jesus.
Then secondly, in the cross of Jesus we see such love that causes us to say with the apostle Paul 'I count all things as loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord'. How amazing is the cross. To be found in Christ hiding in the efficacy of the cross, we receive a righteousness not provided by our keeping the law, but as a gift from God. We receive a righteousness that is perfect because it is worked by our Saviour at the cross when he satisfied the law of God for us in every part.
Thirdly the influence of the love of God seen in the cross of Jesus calls us to love in return. How great has God loved us that he sent his one and only Son to suffer the cross. This suffering was not just physical death, awful though the physical sufferings of crucifixion are. It was the sufferings of hell and separation from God. God was torn asunder on the cross. The Son and the Father were separated who were one as divine in so deep a way that we can't comprehend it. God forsook his Son on the Cross as he bore the guilt of our sin. God cast God into hell to atone for our wrong doing. Jesus bore our sins in his body on the cross. On the six hours on the cross and specially in the three hours of darkness the love of God gave Jesus to suffer in condensed form all the suffering due for sin for time and eternity, and all the separation and loss of eternity in hell was condensed down upon Jesus during those hours. The contemplation of hell for us is devastating - how great is the love of God that he offered Jesus to hell in our place. Such love revealed in the cross causes the world with its lusts to be crucified to us. If it was such lusts that so harmed the Saviour, how can we indulge them. If Jesus suffered so to save us from the world with its lust and death, how can we live for the world.
The influence of the cross is that it brings us into the love of God, not in a sentimental way, but in vivid and awesome action. Such love demands my soul, my life, my all.
CONCLUSION
No wonder Paul commends the cross and tells us that it is his one and only boast, and the heart of his life. No wonder Paul speaks so vehemently in this letter against all these false teachings that diminish the cross and take away from it its glory, and the fact that it is the only salvation for sinners. Lets us therefore boast only in the cross. Let us renounce all human effort as our hope for favour with God, and trust only in the cross of Jesus. Let us hold to the cross that the cross may be held before our eyes always to be our comfort and strength, our hope and our security. Let us never never introduce anything to take the place of the cross, or add anything to it.