Human religion never gives to the cross the place which God gives to it. How many go on year after year without ever having turned to Calvary, saying, " I know nothing connected with this world that I could possibly boast in, save the cross of that Nazarene who died on it at Calvary." Yes; and the only thing I have in the world to glory in, is that cross. What is there in that cross which enables me to glory in it? It is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The mind shrinks from the thought of death as a penalty; what was there to make this less startling in connection with that death on the cross? There is One now seated at the right hand of God, One who has the most absolute power, all power, and it is His cross: He is Lord of all, our Lord Jesus Christ, His second title, " Jehovah," His third "the anointed Son of man," and it is His cross. And when I turn to that cross, why do I boast in it? Why? but because I should have been eternally lost if He had not died on it. Why do I boast, why am I proud of that scene? but because I believe that He died there for me, and I am saved by it. Ah! if I see that dark scene with such bright light shining behind it, and know that but for that death I should have been eternally lost, is there not good reason why I should glory in it? why I should think that there are no two pieces of wood in all the world like that cross! Ah, what is it that sets the heart free to glory in the cross? Can you say that Calvary is the scene which shows God has punished sin? Can you say that there all your sin was put away? Then you can glory with me.
God has presented His wisdom and His power in the cross. How does His power come out, not only in the effect of the cross, but in the cross itself! It never shone out" so bright. Not the creation of a new heaven and earth could be such an expression of His power as that cross. That the infinite God, He who is the Almighty God, should have been down here on that cross! That no one less than the God who created all things, who had but to speak and it was done,-that that Almighty God should become a man! What had Almighty God to do there upon that cross between two thieves, tied and bound to it, not by circumstances—the nails could not keep Him there-but by something stronger than all fetters, something that He cannot break through: " Lo, I come to do Thy will, 0 God." The Son of God had become the servant of God. He, the very One by whom God had created all things, there was He, with power to put everything down, fettered, absolutely fettered as servant to the will of God, whose servant He had pledged Himself to be. Where did God's power ever shine out as it did there? Not only-I repeat it-the expression of Divine power in the fruits of the cross, but in the cross itself, that cross where He leaves Himself and everything in God's hands, to turn everything to His own glory. I know nothing like the moral glory shining out in connection with the cross. We hear of moral glory in the actions of different individuals. In Christ it was perfect. Because the power of God brought Him down to weakness, He gives up His spirit in perfect obedience; but God alone could do it. A man's life is not his own to give; but the Lord could give His life.