He who most walks in fellowship with God has the deepest and truest apprehension of Christ. Such a one will love to consider how He who was in the form of God, emptied Himself of His state of pure equality with God; how the Word made flesh, at every step of His humiliation, above all on the cross, made manifest His glory. Of all the works of God, redemption is the greatest. It is only in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ that the perfections of God are fully manifested; and of that Cross we can have no true understanding, save by the Holy Scriptures and by the Holy Spirit of God.
When the Son of God had taken on Him the form of a servant, He could say, “My Father is greater than I;” but His obedience showed Him to be equal with God: obedience unto the death of the Cross was such as only the Son of God could be called unto, and only He could render.
From the sixth to the ninth hour there was darkness over the land; darkness at noon-day. In the proper natural course of the love of God the Father towards His Son, the Father’s countenance must have been ever lifted up on the Lord Jesus; but Christ was the Surety of the better covenant, and God must deal as a sin-revenging judge with His own Son on the cross as our surety and sin-bearer: “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.” The land is a type of Christ; and while from the sixth to the ninth hour, the course of the old creation was suffering, in regard to the land, strange and awful interruption, even thick darkness at noon, thereby was shown forth the greatest work, the greatest event of the new creation; God not sparing His own Son, but delivering Him up for us all; Christ who knew no sin made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him; Christ made a curse for us, to redeem us from the curse of the law. The mind of the Lord Jesus was at every moment one with the mind of God the Father; but the Lord’s obedience grew with growing trial, and according to demand upon Him: it was on the Cross that He obeyed to the uttermost; on the Cross He made manifest to the full His oneness of mind with the Father. Now He dieth no more; as having once been crucified, and as having glorified the Father on the earth, He dwells for ever in the bosom of the Father, in the light of His countenance. By faith we dwell with Christ the Lord, and learn a little of His Cross: at the resurrection we shall learn indeed; yet evermore be learning—and evermore be praising the Lamb that was slain. Be it then ever present with us in our sojourn here, that Christ, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself without spot to God. So shall our hearts be full of the song, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Jehovah of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:3.)
Christ’s work is the light, life, joy, glory, and perfume of heaven.
There is no testimony to God’s hatred of sin like the Cross of Christ. There are testimonies thereto above, around, and beneath us; but in the cross, and that only, we see to the full God’s hatred of sin.
Christ descended lower and lower, even to the depths of the Cross; but in God’s sight it was a perpetual ascent to the throne of glory.
If with godly sorrow we would grieve for sin, we must regard it in fellowship with Christ in the light of the Cross.
The law of nature, the law of Moses, and a corrupted gospel, are so many refuges of lies which men flee to for salvation, instead of coming to the Cross of Christ.
The Cross of Christ is the meeting-place for God and the sinner. It is the meeting-place of God with His people. It is also the meeting-place of saints with one another: it is only as Jesus crucified dwells in the midst of them that they can meet each other to profit.
Mercy to Christ, my Surety, would have been death eternal to me.