AS LONG as we continue our pilgrim journey on earth, “Christ and Him Crucified”, is the sacred parole, the watchword full of mystery, the word of the ages, that inspires us.
Our creed is not a defence of an abstract truth, no propaganda of a barren system, no witness from our lips, to win partisans for ideas and representations; but it is the fruit of faith, of faith in a spiritual reality, which, embodied in a whole series of striking events, appears before us as a world by itself full of light and love and life, and of which sacred story Christ is the one and only center.
We are Christians. Thus what distinguishes us, is not that we believe in God, for Melchizedek too did this; but what marks us is our holy Baptism; and that Baptism is administered unto us in Christ’s name, that as His purchased ones we should confess the Triune God.
Christ, and He alone, makes separation between us and those who are not Christians.
And Christ makes division between them and us, but not as Mahomet distinguished between Mussulmen and those who are called “unbelievers”. Hence it is not because in Him we honor the founder of our religion, nor yet because we hold ourselves to His institutions and make His doctrine our own; but because a mystical, mysterious tie binds us to Christ and unites us with Him in one body.
The holy apostles do not glory, that they are of Christ, because they hold what He commanded, and direct their lives by His oracles, but because they could confess: “I live; yet no more I, but Christ liveth in me” (Gal. 2: 20, Dutch version); in other words because they could glory: He is our Vine, and in Him we are as branches, bearing fruit from what that Vine is to His branches.
They truly never put the Christ before the Father, but yet they can not go to the Father except through Him.
Christ is their Head and King, their Mediator and Avenger, their Prophet and their sympathizing High Priest.
From Him, as the only center, flows all light that shines out towards them, and towards Him radiates back all higher utterance of life from their heart.
There is no name known under heaven, which to the mind of the apostles excels the name of Christ.
And therefore, “Christ and Him crucified” is the sum total of their faith, the summary of their preaching, the beautiful interpretation of what hope quickens in their heart.
That “crucified” must be added to it; for in that Christ is crucified, lies all the tragic-mysteriousness, the tender charm, the soul-touching and heart-captivating power of their preaching.
The disciples, already before Jesus suffered and died, truly followed after Him; joined themselves to Him; loved Him, and were ready to give their lives for Him; but yet only after Golgotha do the scales fall from their eyes, is the veil removed that hid His real greatness from them, and now in retrospect they see a glory become manifest in Him, such as before they had but faintly surmised.
For though they knew before, that He was going to suffer, they still prayed against it, they wanted to prevent it, and could not enter into the thought, that so shameful a death was to come upon Him.
First the suffering had to be there, that suffering had to be endured and fought out to the finish, and only when they faced the fruit, the rich result, the spiritual effect of that suffering, did they perceive the gold that glistened in it, the Divine majesty that lay ensconsed in it, and how only by the cross Christ had truly become the Anointed God, the Object of their worship.
They had thought, that the cross would eclipse the greatness of Jesus. And behold, now that it is past, their eyes open to the fact, that only by the cross is their Savior become great above all else.
Now it is not: Christ Who, alas, has died on the cross, but—Christ without the cross has passed away from them, and Christ with His cross is become to them the Christ in His glory.
And therefore: “Christ and Him crucified”; so from that hour on resounds the language of their glorying.
And it is this language of glorying which has gone out into the world; which has resounded through the ages; and which as a note of victory and triumph has also reached the ear of our soul.
It was the “sacrifice of Himself” in which lay the mystery of redeeming, sanctifying power, and which interprets to us the wondrous power of the cross of Golgotha.
Selfsacrifice the world also had known before the cross. Among all nations heroic courage had shone forth, which for the sake of native land threw itself upon death, or in the devotion of love deemed not life itself too costly a price.
However deep by sin our human nature had sunk, so many a spark of nobler sense still glistened, thanks to common grace, in the breast of the nobility of our race, that among all nations traditions abound with instances of heroic courage and of consecration that spares nothing.
In the quiet retirement of the home there were such notable instances of the same beautiful trait of devotion on the part of wife and mother.
To save his master even a slave sometimes braved death.
All this however was not yet “self-sacrifice”.
This no one of us, no child of man born in sin, could bring; for that “self-sacrifice” must be brought to the altar of God, and on that altar of God nothing can come, that is stained, maimed or impure.
Not the braving of death stamped this surrender of self as a sacrifice. That sacrifice received its stamp only by the completeness of devotion to Him, from Whom is our life and our whole existence, and to Whom therefore to all eternity our whole existence belongs.
That that “self-sacrifice” goes through death, is even incidental. In paradise that self-sacrifice would have remained free from any touch of death, if, by forsaking it himself, the first Adam had not laid that “self-sacrifice” upon the second Adam.
With the angels of God there is “self-sacrifice”, for they know no other aim, than to give themselves to God, to devote themselves to God, and to live for God.
So would “self-sacrifice” have glistened among men, had not sin polluted the offering, and made “sacrifice” impossible on the part of men.
TO be able to offer yourself unto God you must first be pure, your garment must be white as snow and your robe as white wool.
Then, and only then, can your life be a “self-sacrifice” unto God.
Otherwise not.
One single defect, the least spot or wrinkle, makes your person altogether unfit to be an offering to God.
He who, “polluted, covered with guilt and deformed by a thousand sins”, offers himself at the altar of God, is inexorably, irrevocably dismissed.
God tolerates nothing but what is spotless and unpunishably clean, upon His holy altar.
And therefore neither you, nor any other man, could bring the self-sacrifice, and consequently it had never before been brought, and never would have been brought, if Jesus the Holy One had not appeared.
“Conceived by the Holy Ghost”, and therefore “separate from sinners”, that is His honorary title, the only honorary title by which Jesus became enabled to offer up that still unknown, ever demanded, but never brought “self-sacrifice” unto God.
When He appeared at the altar of God, He was not turned away; for He was pure.
Pure, not alone when men tested Him, but also when He was tested by the holy eye of His God.
However much tried like gold, there appeared of Him nothing, save what in holiness was equal to the very fine gold of Ophir.
Had it now been for His own sake alone, that He appeared, then Jesus also, even as the angels of God in heaven, would have brought His self-sacrifice in His life on earth, and by His life alone.
That death was added thereto, was by our doing, and for our sake.
It is because of our guilt, it is for our sins, that this offering of perfect consecration to God, this self-sacrifice, had to be sealed by His blood.
For Jesus had no fellowship with death save for our sakes.
Death is from sin, and as our Savior stood outside of sin, so also did He stand outside of all death and over against all death. And only when He took our sin upon Himself, did He, as aftermath of that sin, also draw our terrible death upon Himself.
So has His “self-sacrifice” become our offering; and he who by faith may lose himself in that cross, sink away in that cross, be altogether wrapped up in the cross, he when Christ died has died in and with Him, and he has made a perfect offering, when in that self-sacrifice of Christ he has also presented himself to God.
Wondrous mystery!
And more wondrous still, that this self-sacrifice of Christ, even while you yet retain your spots and your defilements, places you pure and spotless before your God, so that, reconciled in Christ, justified in Christ, and sanctified in Christ, according to the holy word of the apostle, you can likewise present yourself as a holy offering well pleasing unto a holy God.
Your “self-sacrifice” as fruit of the self-sacrifice of your Savior.
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