The Practicalness of Christ’s Cross
‘2 Corinthians iv. 10 v.
“Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body.”
What an unhealthy state of mind! you say — to be ever fondling the idea of death. How can it manifest life to bear death in my body? Will it not sap my energy? Will it not make me a dreamer? Will I not lose all interest in the present world, if I am always thinking of passing from earth to heaven? Yes j but this is no common death of which the apostle speaks; it is the dying of the Lord Jesus. The dying of the Lord Jesus was not the passing from earth to heaven; it was the passing from heaven to earth. Every step of His dying was a step downwards. He took the servant’s form. He took the human likeness. He took the fleeting fashion of a man. He took the image of the humblest man. He went down deeper than humility. He lost
His personality in love. He became one with the poor, the outcast, the erring. He felt the pains that dwelt in other bodies, the griefs that lived in other souls, the sins that slept in other hearts. At last He touched the lowest ground, and, therefore, the common ground — He completed His dying in the Cross. It was the final stage of His union with man. It brought Him into the heart of the world. It made Him in the deepest sense a citizen of time.
Say not, then, oh, my soul, that to bear Christ’s dying within thee is to lose thy hold of earth; it is to double that hold. It is to come from high thought into menial action. It is to empty thyself into the commonplace. It is to descend into what men call reality. It is to leave the green fields of speculation for the thorny paths of practice. It is to give up thy poetry for other people’s prose, to resign thy sunlight for thy weak brother’s candle. Art thou prepared for this sacrifice, oh, my soul? It wants not less but more love of the world. When Jesus died he went to Galilee. Only in death did He touch the uttermost earth. If thou wouldst bear in thy body His dying, thou must love not death but life. Nothing but the preciousness of life could prompt the dying of the Lord Jesus, or prompt thee to follow that dying. Thou canst not reach it by dreaming; thou must put away thy dream. Thine eye must be fixed on the rude multitude. Thine ear must be caught by the ciy of sorrow. Thy hand must be held by the clasp of pain. Thou must dismiss the thought of delectable mountains, or of harps on the glassy sea. Thou must consider the sea that is not glassy, the mountains that are not delectable, the sounds that are not music. Thine must be the love of the prosaic present. If thou wouldst long to depart and be with Christ, it must be, like Him, to get nearer to the earth, closer to the wants of man. To leave the world that is beyond for the world of the passing day — that is the dying of the Lord Jesus.