The Cross of Calvary # 24

The Cross of Calvary # 24

The Preaching of the Cross

"Hath the stumbling-block of the Cross been done away?" (Galatians 5:11).

"I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2).

There is a spirit-given unveiling of Calvary, and all that it meant to the Son of God, and to a dying world, which creates in the believer a passion begotten of the Cross, as a burning fire in the heart - an intense desire that the Man of Calvary should see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied. A desire that becomes the dominating power of the life,and swallows up, so to speak, all personal thought of sacrifice or gain.

Such a passion is revealed in the life and words of the Apostle Paul, and is strikingly emphasized in his letter to the Corinthians, when he writes that he determined to know nothing among them save "Jesus Christ and Him crucified."

What a complete self-effacement this determination meant to him we little understand today, for Christianity has glorified the Cross. In Paul's time the Cross was the "instrument of punishment of the vilest malefactors", it was "associated with all that was most odious, contemptible and horrible ... just as the word "gibbet" means now."

Truly it needed a revelation from God to make a haughty Pharisee glory in the Cross, and not to be ashamed of such a strange gospel. A criminal's gibbet the place of the world's salvation! No wonder they called him mad.

Nevertheless "I determined", he writes to the Corinthians, "not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ - and Him crucified."

Corinth was highly cultured in intellect, but dissolute in morals. It was occupied with philosophy and literature, but it was sunk in sin. Should he adapt his message to the Corinthians, and win a hearing for the gospel by making use of human wisdom and knowledge? must have been the question in the mind of Paul as he pondered over the condition of Corinth and its people.

The Apostle might well have determined to meet the Corinthians with weapons of man's wisdom, for he had studied secular learning at Tarsus, by some considered a better school than Athens, and had been trained in all the Hebrew law in Jerusalem. Added to this he was a Roman citizen, and could have taken a position of authority, and met the cultured Corinthians on their own ground in every point, had he so desired.

Moreover he knew - the sensitive clear-sighted man knew - all that they would say if he failed to do so. The message of the Cross would be considered rank folly, and he himself be counted but a fool.

The Apostle foresees  it all, and in the face of all deliberately elects to put aside reliance upon weapons of the flesh,and determines to proclaim the obnoxious message of a crucified Messiah, casting himself entirely upon the Holy Spirit to make "the word of the Cross" the "power of God," so that all who believed should have their faith anchored, not upon enticing words of man's wisdom, but on the power of God alone.

This decision of the Apostle's shows us how absolutely he sinks himself for his message! How wholly he casts aside all personal self-glory. Such messengers of the Cross are needed today, for at the beginning of the twentieth century, we find ourselves face to face with almost the same conditions as met the Apostle in cultured Corinth; and God's messengers have still to determine whether they will rely on carnal weapons, and on "words which man's wisdom teacheth", or cast themselves on the power of God to bear witness to the message of the Cross - a message still as obnoxious to the natural man as in the days of Paul.

The Preaching of the Cross

"And I, brethren ... came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom ... my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom." (1 Corinthians 2:2, 4).

The Apostle had been describing God's instruments for the fulfillment of His purpose in the world. Foolish, weak, base, despised things, chosen to put to shame the wise and strong: yea, even "things that are not", chosen of God to "bring to nought the things that are!"

"And I, brethren," writes the Apostle, "I came thus to you with no "enticing words", no "persuasive words of wisdom". As one whom men despised, I was "with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling" proclaiming the mystery of God; and to my message was given the witness of God, in the "demonstration of the Spirit and of power."

Unless the proclamation of the Cross is born witness to by the Holy Spirit, it may even become a stumbling block, for without the illumination and convincing power of the Spirit behind the message, carnal reason may reject it to turn to "another gospel which is not another": or the mental light about the Cross may serve as an opiate of conscience, and blinded ones may even materialize the message, and adore the outward symbol of the Cross and rest on an exterior form, for the adversary of the Cross knows well that he can hold souls in his thraldom, under cover of the "sign of the Cross", unless they have learned the true meaning of the Cross by the power of the Holy Spirit.

~Jessie Penn-Lewis~

(continued with # 25)