Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3451
“But God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Galatians 6:14.
WITH that, “God forbid,” Paul makes a clean sweep of every other ground of boasting and casts himself upon the one only chosen object of his soul’s glorying. And yet, if you will think of it, Paul had, after the fashion of other men, many things in which he might have gloried. If it had so pleased him, he might have boasted of his pedigree, for he was “a Hebrew of the Hebrews.” He could trace his genealogy, as the pure Hebrews could, up to that great fountain of nobility—Abraham himself! If he had pleased, he might have boasted in the precision of the former ritual which he had practiced, for he could say that as touching the Law of God, he had been a Pharisee—a man observant of the minutest points of the very letter of the Law, careful for its doctrinal tittles, not allowing even the gnat to escape him, but straining after it with care. And yet the Apostle did not care to boast, either of his pedigree or of his ritualism. He casts them both aside and though he had once gloried in them, he now counted them but dross, that he might win Christ and be found in Him! Surely, if the Apostle had wished it, he might have gloried in his martyr life. He did once give a list of what he had suffered, and he added, “I have become a fool in glorying; you have compelled me.” Had he not been beaten with rods, shipwrecked, subject to perils from robbers, perils from false brethren, imprisonment and stones? And yet you never hear him glory in that wonderful martyr life of his! Among the Apostles, he was no less than the chief in that which he suffered, and yet he says, “God forbid that I should glory in it.” He might have gloried in the Revelation which he received. Who among us has ever seen or heard what Paul was made to see and hear when he was caught up into the third heavens to hear things which it is not lawful for a man to utter? He might, if he had chosen to boast, have boasted in this Revelation, but he did not do so. “God forbid,” said he, “that I should glory,” and that, “God forbid,” includes even that Revelation! Among scholars Paul might have taken an eminent position. He was well qualified to speak in the Areopagus, for even there, in that profound assembly, was probably not one with greater knowledge and of more subtle mind than he, who was once called, “Saul of Tarsus.” Read the Epistles, Brothers and Sisters! Why, the Apostle has the instinct of Bacon and the insight of Sir Isaac Newton! The man seems to have looked through a question, where others would have looked round about it and have seen nothing. Yet, though he must have felt a human delight in the talents which God had given him—and must have known that he possessed them—he still says concerning them, “God forbid that I should glory.” He seems to take all that he had, all that he did, and all that he was, and put it all away—and come forward with no other theme upon his lips, and no greater love in his heart, except this—Jesus Crucified for the sons of men. Jesus to be great among the nations. Jesus, the slaughtered Lamb, to be made unto men their life from the dead, their salvation from going down into the Pit. “God forbid,” he says—that memorable speech, that eloquent declaration, that glorious self-denying, yet exalting resolve—“God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ!” We shall be brief upon each point at this time, but the first enquiry must naturally be—
I. What Is This Cross in Which Paul Resolved to Glory?
You need not to be told, my Brothers and Sisters, that Paul set no store by the material cross, or by the “sign of the cross.” You know that the making of the sign of the cross, and the paying of religious reverence to that, is as great a superstition as the belief in witches and, perhaps, as men come to be enlightened, they will wonder how it is that some men could have thought that there could be more sanctity about a cross than about a circle or the parallelogram, for really
there is no holiness in the sign of the cross, and I sometimes wish that some Christians would not countenance that emblem, since it seems to imply a superstitious reverence to that kind of thing. Paul meant no such thing. He would have abandoned in contempt any superstitious use of the cross or the crucifix, and he would do so now if he were here and I hope the result would be that, as at Ephesus they burned their conjuring hosts, so now men would put their chasubles, their albs and all their fripperies and upholstery together and burn them in one glorious pile as the result of the preaching of the true Cross of Christ!
What did the Apostle mean, then? He meant, in a single word, the great Doctrine of the Atonement offered for sin by the Son of God upon Mount Calvary. “The Cross” is the short term for “substitutionary suffering,” for “vicarious Sacrifice,” for the offering up of the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. The Apostle was never cloudy about this matter. Wherever he went, he preached that God was in Christ reconciling the world with Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. His declarations were always clear. “Him has God set forth to be a propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins, only, but for the sins of the whole world.” He was always saying that Jesus Christ took our sins and bore them in His own body on the tree—that He was punished instead of us, that the claims of Divine Justice were met by the death of the Redeemer, that He was made a curse for us that we might be enriched and blessed of God in Him—that He made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Paul’s great master-point was that Jesus actually suffered to vindicate the Divine Justice by enduring, instead of us, the punishment due to our sins!
And he also meant by it that Gospel which springs out of the Cross, and which is contained in these few words, “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.” “He that believes on Him is not condemned.” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.” Paul told the people that the Son of God was made Man and suffered in human form to take away human guilt, and that whoever, the wide world over, would come and rest in what Christ had done, would be saved. This was the Gospel which he proclaimed in every place. For barbarian and Scythian, this was the Gospel! For the Greek and the Jew, the same! For the illiterate, for the learned, for the king and for the peasant, it was always his one theme—a bleeding Savior and a sinner looking to Him—a living Christ dying, that a dying world might live! This is that Gospel which we preach from Sabbath to Sabbath, which will save your souls, and which you delight to sing of in words like these—
“There is a fountain filled with blood Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins! And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains.”
This was “the Cross” which Paul resolved to glory in!