“The Meaning of the Cross”

The Editor’s Private Corner

“Why is it that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin’? Why could not God save men without Christ dying?”

With this question you have touched the very core of the Gospel, and, in fact, the work of the creation, the secret of all existence. It is a sad fact, yet it is a fact, that few professed Christians know the true principles, the foundation truths, of the Gospel. I do not mean by this that they do not know anything about the Gospel; that they have never to any extent become acquainted with the Lord and learned to draw strength from Him; I mean that to many there is a vagueness, a dimness, in the Gospel, and it seems to them a complicated affair, when it is simplicity itself. We spend the most of our lives going backward to the beginning. It is necessary that we begin at the beginning, and so we have the paradox, that to go back to the beginning is the only way to make real advancement. But it takes the most of us so long to get back to the beginning, to begin as little children, to learn the alphabet of Christianity, that comparatively few have ever appreciated the absolute simplicity of the Gospel, and the marvelous fullness that there is in that simplicity; for there is one glorious truth: then we have really come to the beginning and have the whole; for he who is the beginning is also the end. In Christ are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

THE CROSS THE REVELATION OF GOD

If I were to answer your question offering in my own words, I should say that Christ shed His blood because He couldn’t do otherwise and be Himself. It was in His very nature of things that He should die by Giving—the giving of life—is the law of the universe. By that means the whole creation came into existence, and by the same means it is upheld. The cross is not a unique thing, standing apart by itself, but is the expression of all law of life. It was not a thing devised by God after the fall of man, but the continuation of that by which man was created. It was not an afterthought, but God’s original thought, and the fullness of His thought from everlasting to everlasting. The events of Calvary are an object lesson, to show mankind what God is continually doing for His creatures; in it we find the Fatherhood of God revealed.