"My Sins Are Sometimes Crucified but They Are Never in This World Mortified"

Rucifixion was an all but universal method of capital punishment among the ancient Egyptians and among the ancient Assyrians and among the ancient Greeks and

Romans. So much so that an ancient author tells us how Alexander the Great crucified some two thousand of the captured inhabitants of Tyre in one day. And Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that after the fall of Jerusalem the Romans crucified so many of the defenders of that city that the forests of Judea failed at last to supply trees enough for crosses, such was the vengeance and such was the savagery of the Roman commander against the Godforgotten Jews.

When a great malefactor, or the unhappy victim of a commander’s vengeance was condemned to be crucified, he was taken by his executioners and was nailed by his hands and his feet to the cross. And then he was left hanging on his cross till he died of loss of blood and of starvation. After which the wild birds of the air and the wild beasts of the field would gather around his dead carcase. Now all that rose most powerfully and most experimentally before Paul’s imagination when he was penning his Epistle to the Galatians and when he said to them that all they who are the true followers of Jesus Christ have so crucified themselves with all their evil affections and evil works and evil ways. As also when he was writing to the Romans and when he said to them, ‘ Knowing that our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.’ Now, what exactly would it be for any of those Galatian or Roman Christians and for any of ourselves so to crucify any of our remaining sins? What exactly does the Apostle mean us to do when he appeals to us that if we would indeed be Christ’s we must continue every day and all our life long to crucify our flesh with its affections and its lusts?

Well, let us take some of those sins that the Apostle specially denounces to the cross, and let us clearly see what it is he would have us do to those sins of ours. Take hatred, for instance, that besetting sin of ours which he so often denounces. Now there are times of temptation to us all when our hearts are as full as they can hold of hatred and malice and ill-will against such and such men. So much so that we could kill them if it were only safe for us to do so. Well at that murderous moment we are commanded to arrest and to condemn that wicked passion and nail it to its cross. As soon as any hatred to any man stirs in our hearts we are to denounce it in the name of Christ crucified and we are to crucify it that moment as upon His Cross. And then with the nails hammered into its hands and its feet, and with the sword of God through its heart, we are to watch it on its cross till it is stone dead so as never to hate God or man any more. And so must it be with all our variance and with all our wrath and with all our envy, as the Apostle goes on to tell us. And to all that we make answer, O Holy and Sweet Spirit of all brotherly love! Come in Thy love and power and enable us to condemn to the cross this hell-born spirit of envy and ill-will. Come and assist us to crucify every hand and every foot of our so indwelling and so besetting sin! Arrest every movement of grudging and grieving in our hearts at our neighbour’s good! Cast us not away in loathing from Thy presence, O God, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from us! Vainglory is another sinful affection of ours, against which the Apostle shows as much bitterness as if it had been his own besetting sin. That is to say, all our hungering for, and hunting after, the approval and the applause of men. And those men among us whose lives are so weakened and whose hearts are so enslaved by this miserable mind, they will thank the Apostle for every honest and noble word of his concerning their special case. Up! then, all of you who depend for your happiness and for your usefulness on the puffingup praises of mortal men! Up and shake off this ignoble weakness of yours. Up and simply crucify to death your so self-seeking heart. Nail up your vain mind to the outcast and shameful cross of your Saviour. Starve your vain heart of its inflating food till it dies of sheer starvation. Refuse to read or to hear any of the sweet things with which you have been wont to feed and indulge its contemptible life. For, unless you simply crucify your secret love of flattery and adulation, it will come to this that you will not be able to live without your daily dose of it, Your love of flattery and adulation is like your dram-drinking — you must have it administered stronger and stronger, and oftener and oftener, till you die for want of it. ‘If we live in the Spirit, let us walk in the Spirit. Let us not any more be desirous of vainglory: provoking one another, envying one another.’

But so bent is the great Apostle on our full salvation from all our sins that their mere crucifixion does not satisfy him. Nothing will satisfy him short of their full mortification. For crucifixion after all is only crucifixion. But mortification is more; mortification is death. Mortification is absolute death: it is complete, and final, and everlasting death. A crucified man may continue to live for hours and even for days after he has been nailed to his cross. But after he is dead, he is forever dead. And so is it with a sin. A sin may continue to live, and as a matter of fact it does continue to live for days and weeks and months and years after it has been crucified. But, when once it is dead, it is for ever dead. Nailing a sin to its cross; denying it all its former freedom of action and all its former food and keeping it nailed on its cross, so that it cannot rob or murder any more — that is its crucifixion. But all the time so to crucify a sin is not yet to mortify it, as Paul himself knew to his cost. For, if ever any man’s sins were crucified, it was the Apostle’s sins. But at the same time if ever any man’s sins were still alive and unmortified, to his unspeakable wretchedness, it was Paul’s sins. In that great crucifixion chapter of his which in some respects is the greatest chapter the Apostle ever wrote, we see this great distinction fully and clearly taken between the true crucifixion of sin and its full mortification. We see so as never to forget that great distinction in every sigh and sob and agonising cry that rises to heaven out of every verse of the seventh of the Romans. And besides, in that great experimental chapter as in all the Apostle’s corresponding chapters, we are taught that while every saint’s self-crucifixion is his own immediate and ever-urgent duty, at the same time the full and final mortification of all crucified sin is the proper work of Almighty God alone. And more than that, this great work of

Almighty God within us will only be fully finished when we awake at last in His holy likeness: when, as our hymn has it, ‘Time and sin together cease.’ For then and then only shall we be for ever dead to sin and for ever alive unto God; like as, and as much as, Jesus Christ Himself. And so shall we be for ever like Him, and for ever with Him.

Now, from all that, every man here at all in earnest about his salvation from his sin will see that he must make up his mind and lay out his life to crucify all his several sins and to keep them crucified, till God has time to have them for ever mortified. For,if a malefactor was once arrested and was crucified and was kept crucified till at last he died upon his cross, in that case his days of robbery and murder were at an end. But let the watching soldiers fall asleep, or let them become drunken, and let that crucified criminal’s old companions come and take him down from his cross, as sometimes happened, and that rescued malefactor would immediately return to his former crimes and even worse than before. And so will it be with those robbers and murderers who are still alive and unmortified in our own unsanctified hearts. ‘They may be really and truly crucified and their days of open and outward transgression may seem to be at an end. But cease watching them; cease for so much as a day or an hour from keeping them crucified, and they will be back that very hour at all their former evil works. Yes, communicants, watch well from this communion-day all your to-day crucified sins and set a special watch over them all after this communion season is over. For those bosom sins and those so besetting sins of yours that are to-day nailed to their cross and are silent and motionless and shamming death, unless you watch with all your watchfulness they will be down from their cross and will be back again at all their evil ways as soon as this crucifixion week is over. Wherefore watch and pray as never before.

And then, if that is your determined and sworn resolution to-day, take home with you this great evangelical comfort upon which Paul also lived and died. This great evangelical comfort that all truly crucified sin is already forgiven sin: it is wholly forgiven even where it is not yet wholly mortified. Paul’s own indwelling sins were very far from being wholly mortified as yet. But while that was so he was enabled to say, and that with the fullest assurance of faith, I thank God, through Jesus Christ my Lord, that there is to me now no more condemnation. And not to me only, but there is no condemnation to any one who like me walks not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Come, he says to all his readers who have a good conscience concerning crucified sins — come and let us reason together. For who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, and who is at the right hand of God making continual intercession for all those who are crucified on His cross and in His strength. Who then shall separate even the chief of sinners from the love of God? Shall tribulation, or distress, or perseculion, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Or sin? Augustine added to Paul, to which bold addition let this only be added: No sin shall separate us from the love of God, if only it is truly crucified and is kept crucified till God the Holy Ghost has had it for ever mortified. Wherefore comfort your hearts with that apostolical and evangelical comfort, all of you who are the sin-assaulted and sin-tortured children of God. For, if you suffer with Christ crucified now, one day soon you shall also reign with Him. I shall be satisfied, said the psalmist, when I awake with His likeness. But come for a moment and step softly into Thomas Shepard’s sickroom and listen to the last words of that great pilgrim father. ‘O my sinful heart!’ he is still exclaiming as we enter his room. ‘O my often-crucified but never wholly mortified sinfulness! O my life-long damage and my daily shame,’ he still cries after his own manner and in his own words that we know so well. ‘O my indwelling and so besetting sins,’ he exclaims, ‘ your evil dominion is over now! It is now within an hour or two of my final and everlasting release! For I am authoritatively assured that by to-morrow morning I shall have entered into my eternal rest! And then, O my ransomed soul, one hour in heaven will make me forget all my hell upon earth!’ So felt and so spake Thomas Shepard with his last breath in this world. And even so had Paul felt and spoken on the morning of his martyrdom, and thus of his final mortification from all his exceeding sinfulness. And so shall you and I feel and say some morning before very long. For:

Hark the glad sound, the Saviour comes! The Saviour promised long;

Let every heart exult with joy,
And every voice be song!

He comes the prisoners to relieve,
In Satan’s bondage held;

The gates of brass before Him burst,
The iron fetters yield.

He comes! the broken hearts to bind,
The bleeding souls to cure;

And with the treasures of His grace
To enrich the humble poor.