The crucifixion puts shame upon man and upon the flesh more than any other thing. The effect of Christ's death, simply, does not give me man made nothing of and the utter worthlessness of human nature as before God. When the Apostle wants to show the absolute separation of the Christian from the world, he says, "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."
Now it is plain that this is a much graver and more forcible way of putting the case. There is nothing the world counted so foolish as the cross. Philosophers scorned the notion that a divine person should thus die: It was something that seemed so weak and objectless. They had no just sense of the horribleness of sin, of man's positive enmity to God, and of His solemn, eternal judgment. The cross is the means of bringing it all out.
But more than that: The cross not merely shows what the flesh is, and the world, but it also proves the hopelessness of looking to the law to bring in blessing, save in a negative way. There is such a thing as the power of the law to kill, but not to quicken; Christ alone does this. [9]