T. Austin-Sparks · 3 of 11

The Cross and the Person of Christ

It is of far-reaching importance and vital consequence to recognize that the Person of our Lord cannot really be known and understood apart from the Cross. It is equally of consequence to realize that the Cross is only really understood and adequately appreciated when the Person of Christ is discerned. These two work hand-in-hand and are mutually dependent.

Who Jesus Is

In the days of His earthly life His disciples and the people wanted a Crossless Christ. They could see no place for the Cross. It was a contradiction of all their hopes and expectations. Whenever He referred to it a dark shadow crept over them, and they were offended. Indeed, they revolted quite positively against the idea and suggestion.

Running parallel to this inability to discern the meaning and the value of the Cross was, on the one hand, His continual reference to His own essential Person as Son of God, and on the other hand, their total inability to recognise Him. Only in fleeting flashes of illumination did one or two of them see Him as such, and then, it would seem from their behaviour that they lost the realisation, and the general clouds of uncertainty wrapped them around again. The state and position in which we find them when He has been crucified indicates how the reality of His Person had failed to possess their innermost life. But the interesting and significant thing is that the Lord all the time indicated that this twofold inability would be removed when actually the Cross was an accomplished fact. The eighth chapter of John's Gospel is a strong example of this. In it Jesus is concentrating everything upon the question of His Person.

"I am the light of the world.... The therefore said unto Him, Thou bearest witness of Thyself; Thy witness is not true. Jesus answered... My witness is true; for I know I come, and whither I go; but ye know not whence I come, or whither I go. They said... where is Thy Father? Jesus answered... Ye know neither Me, nor My Father; if ye knew Me, ye would know My Father also.... He said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world.... They said therefore unto Him, Who art Thou? Jesus said unto them, Even that which I have also spoken unto you from the beginning" (8:12-25).

Then comes the statement which is the turning point of everything.

"Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then ye shall know that I am He" (8:27). (But read on to the end of the chapter.)

By something more than implication Jesus had laid down the same principle with Nicodemus. Nicodemus was groping in the shadows as to the Person of Christ. "We know that Thou art a teacher come from God..." Jesus pointed out that, in order to "see," something must take place by which a new faculty is obtained; a is necessary. Then He led Nicodemus on to the Cross, using the same phrase as is in chapter eight: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3:14). The law enunciated is that it will be the Cross which discloses Who Jesus is.

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 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?" (Jer. 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 most 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. * [See note at end of chapter.] But the strength of the lie lies in the fact that man does not recognise it, he is blind and in the dark as to its nature and source. This is all the Devil's spite against God.

(b) Enmity Established

The same is true as to the matter of enmity. It is never a far cry from personal interest and self-realisation to war and bloodshed. We do not read of much history between Adam's bid for personal glory and Cain's murder of his brother. The two are one in principle. Whether it be in individual cases, as at the beginning, or in the case of millions locked in deadly destruction of each other, the root is found to be man's desire to acquire. The name Cain means acquisitiveness, or possessiveness. We must be perfectly honest about this. The Christian Church is no exception to this rule. Christians have become divided into thousands of parties, and a very great many of these are antagonistic to each other, or at least distantly suspicious of one another. The enmity amongst believers is taken account of even in the New Testament. It is the Devil's work every time, but even the Devil must have his ground. This he has in the old-creation nature of man. Every division amongst the Lord's people is - in essence - the same as the enmities of the warring Godless world. It is traceable to some old-creation element of self asserting itself. There never was - nor will be - a truly Christly division among Christians. Every such division is somewhere a denial and contradiction of Christ. The apparent cause may not be some flaming fleshliness, but it will nevertheless be other than the way of Christ. Enmity is a mark of interrupted, arrested, or broken oneness with God; there we leave it for the moment.

The third feature of this destroyed union with God is death. If life is the perfect adjustment and harmony of man with God, then man has not got life. The New Testament assumes this, it does not argue it. Death is not - in the Bible sense - cessation of being, nor is it a state of inanimation. It is just a separation from the source of true life, with all the incapacitation which that separation involves. Spiritual death is a powerfully active thing, and in all the things which really relate to God's will it works out in a mighty "cannot."