CHAPTER 5
The Triumph of the Cross
“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 KJV)
Also we have been studying this great verse, we have seen that for the Christian, the cross is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened, and it is very important that we should be clear about this. Let me put it in this way. The Christian church, very rightly, has always referred to the day on which our Lord’s death is commemorated as Good Friday.
I remember a man coming to me once who said, ‘You know, I cannot understand why you call this Good Friday.’ And when I asked what we should call it, he said, ‘You should call it Bad Friday. It was the day on which that terrible thing happened. Why do you call it Good Friday?’ And thereby of course the poor man revealed to me that he had never really understood the meaning of the cross.
He had never understood what happened there. A man who objects to calling it ‘Good Friday’ is one who is admitting that he has never gloried in the cross. It is Good Friday because of the wonderful thing that happened there. It is a good Friday because it was the Friday on which the Son of God did that without which none of us could ever be saved. Without that, none of us could ever come to a knowledge of God.
Now, that is just another way of saying that we glory in it, in Good Friday, the best day that has ever happened in the history of the human race. I realize that the moment I say that, I am testing the view of everybody who is at this moment considering these words on the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you do not end by seeing that it was good, glorious, wonderful, the best thing that has ever happened anywhere, you are misunderstanding it, and you are misinterpreting it.
But the Apostle glories in it. And we have seen something of why he does. And that is what we are going to continue doing now. It is the thing, he says, by which we are saved, delivered from our great enemy, the world. It is the thing in which one really sees fully the person and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is also the place, the act, in which one sees the glory of God the Father—the truth concerning the Father. And I am sure that the trouble with most of us is that we have never seen the greatness, the grandeur, and the extent of the cross.
I am sure that the trouble with most of us is that we have never seen the greatness, the grandeur, and the extent of the cross.
So then, we must continue with this survey of the cross. It fulfills all the things we have been dealing with, but now I want to call attention to another aspect. We want to look at the cross now to see in it the way in which it delivers us from the power of the devil. I wonder how often you have thought of the cross like that?
The cross is a great victory. It is the final move, as it were, here on earth in a great battle, a great conflict, a great crusade. I want to call your attention now, therefore to the cross as it displays to us the Lord Jesus Christ as a victor, as a conqueror. We sometimes sing a hymn, ‘Oh Jesus, King most wonderful, thou conqueror renowned…’ I wonder how often we have considered it from that aspect? When you think of the cross what do you instinctively see there? What do you find? Do you find all these things there?
So, then, I want us to look at this aspect of the matter, and in this connection there is a passage in Colossians 2:15, where Paul put the matter very clearly. He writes, “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (KJV). That is what was happening, he says, on the cross.
He has been saying that what happened there was that the Lord blotted out “the handwriting of ordinances that was against us [which was contrary to us] and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross” (Colossians 2:14 KJV). We have considered that. “And having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a show of them openly”—he has ridiculed them—”Triumphing over them in it”—through it or by it. The cross is a marvelous exposition of the triumph of the Son of God over the devil and all his forces and powers.
Let us look at it like this. This subject follows on very logically, and indeed quite inevitably, for those who believe the Bible, from the matter that we were considering earlier. The Apostle says that he glories in the cross because it is by the cross that the world has been crucified to him and he to the world, and we have seen what that meant.
We have seen, too, that all our troubles in our personal lives, and in the whole life of the world today, are due to the fact that the world is what it is. This outlook, this way that man thinks apart from God, that is the cause of wars, it is the cause of every trouble. I think I have been able to prove that to you. Yes, but we cannot leave it at that; we are bound to ask another question.
Why is the world as it is? Why should the world be like that? Now, that, I suggest to you, is one of the most profound questions that we can ever put. And it is the question that is always put by the Bible, for the Bible is the profoundest book in the world today. There are clever people who do not go to places of worship—that is true of about 90% of the people of this country.
How do they spend their Sunday? Well, they have been reading the Sunday newspapers. I do not mean now necessarily the reports of the law courts or the police courts. I am thinking of the sophisticated, clever people who have been reading the articles—those by the great thinkers—and the reviews of the learned books on philosophy and history and various other matters. These men who, because of their learning and their knowledge, have long since given up considering Christianity. These men who are really concerned about doing something about this world and putting it right.
Now, all I have to say about them is that the trouble with all that is that it is so indescribably superficial. That is why it never comes to anything. That is why all civilization is not affected. That is why, in spite of all the effort of the centuries, we were in this terrible predicament as a world today. And the trouble is entirely due to the fact that these people have never really faced the problem of the condition of men and of the world in a profound manner.
It is all so superficial. This is all most alarming, and it is still going on. Not a week passes but that we find that some new royal commission or some process of investigation is to be set up. They are going to tackle the problems, the juvenile delinquency and all these other things. But they have been doing it all before, this is nothing new. It is all because they have never asked the fundamental question. And the fundamental question is this: why is the condition what it is? Why is the world as it is? Why is there this worldly outlook? That is the profound question, and it is the question which, I claim, is raised and answered only by the Bible.