The Cross and the Person of Christ # 2

Union with God Secured for Man in Christ

Within what we have just said lies the very essence of the significance of Christ. Let us look briefly at that essential content. What is the thing for which Christ stands preeminently in the whole revelation of Scripture? The answer is: Union with God.

That has been the thing for which man has been in quest as long as man has been a sinful creature. In almost countless ways and by as many means he has sought that peace and rest which is to be had alone by oneness with God. Somewhere, somehow (the Bible shows us) a fellowship with God was lost. Three things became the abiding and ever active marks of this rupture of relationships. One - the lie; two - enmity; and three - death.

The Results of the Fall

(a) A Lie Believed

Man has not only believed and accepted a lie; but it has entered into his constitution, and he is a deceived and darkened soul. Of himself he neither knows, nor is capable of knowing or being, the truth. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt; who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9). Man was told that if he took a course contrary to that laid down by God and assumed the right to use his own reason 'independently of God' he would be "as God." He accepted the lie, made his bid for supremacy, enthroned his reason in independence, and was taken charge of by the lie. The outworking of this has been - and is - a tremendous development of human achievement by which man has become a lord in his own right (as he thinks) and blinded to the fact that destruction and distress are an ever-growing fruit of his science. So much is this so that the question has been seriously raised by men in a position to ask it, as to whether science is a greater  benefactor than it is a curse.

It must be remembered that all unemployment, with its many consequent miseries and troubles, is due to science which has supplanted men by machines, and human skill by mass production. The same responsibility lies at the door of science for the ability to destroy men and the earth on such an immense scale as was unthinkable a generation ago. Project the present course and pace into a few more generations, and what sort of a world will it be? Of course, the argument is not that science is in itself necessarily evil. There are very many most helpful and valuable discoveries to hand, e.g. chloroform, radium, antiseptics, etc., but our point is that man believes that he is all the time improving, when, as a matter of fact, there is no moral elevation corresponding to the intellectual development.

This matter is not followed out in any measure, but from the simple indication given it can surely be seen that mankind is riding a lie in the form of a tiger which will tear him to pieces. But the strength of the lie lies in the fact that man does not recognize it, he is blind and in the dark as to its nature and source. This is all the devil's spite against God.

~T. Austin-Sparks~

(continued with # 3 - "(b) Enmity Established")