Luke 9:23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. That the faith of Christ does in sober truth involve a daily cross-bearing; and that it is agreeable to reason and the Divine nature that thus it should be — this is the proposition which we have to establish. I. The words of Christ are of a nature which, it is probable, the disciples by no means appreciated to the full at the time when they were uttered. Since the crucifixion of the Son of God, the Cross has to us associations of the most affecting kind. We cannot hear of taking up a cross without having our thoughts drawn back to the scenes of the last Passover — the street of grief — the fainting Redeemer — Simon the Cyrenian — the hill of Calvary. To take up a cross is to fulfil the spirit of His sacred life in the lowest depth of His humiliation. Let us consider how it fares with man's intellect when he adopts the religion of the Crucified. It is sometimes the custom to assert that everything is easy and plain in the gospel system; that the heart and the conscience respond at once to its revelations and commandments; that the words of Christ do so awake an echo in the human soul that he who has heard can no more doubt than he can doubt his own existence. We believe all this to be quite wrong. Rather do we believe that there are vast difficulties in the way of a thorough and complete adoption of the truth in Jesus. The Bible represents that such would be the case. This is the meaning of all those passages which speak of the Cross of Christ as "being to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness." This is the explanation of the fact, again and again dwelt on by St. Paul, that "not many wise men after the flesh are called." This is the ground of that mysterious confession of the Saviour himself — "I thank Thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes." The fact is, the deeper we reflect upon the revelation of God, the more shall we find to baffle and confound. Be ye well assured, that if in your system of religion there is nothing out of your grasp; if everything is according to reason, and nothing beyond it; if you are never called upon to accept upon trust, to believe without sight, then is your system not that of God. It is against reason that this should be. Reason herself cries out that she ought to be baffled in measuring God, that she ought to be shipwrecked on the ocean of His perfection, lost in the profundity of His counsels. It is against revelation, for revelation ever speaks of mortification and self-denial, as requisite in those who accept her. Let Christ be God, acknowledge Him, with St. Peter, to be the Son of the Blessed, and reason echoes His answer, and sets to her seal that it is true. "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me. II. But we turn for a brief moment to other illustrations of the text. Vie consider it indeed, as a verse calculated in an especial degree for the age in which we live: viewed not only with reference to matters of faith, but of practice. This is not peculiarly an age of cruelty, or rapine, or licentiousness; but it is, we think, preeminently an age when men dream only of pleasing themselves. To be prosperous is to win applause. "So long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak good unto thee," was the proverb of the Psalmist, and it has met with a complete fulfilment in our generation. And very expedient therefore do we reckon it, that we should occasionally turn aside to contemplate a severer model; and remember that it is not the highest law of our being to please ourselves; that even when it involves no positive crime, self-pleasing is not the noblest or safest rule of man. Who are they who stand forth in the dimness of vanished years — landmarks in the wilderness of time, giant rocks by which we cross the ocean of the past? They are not the men who looked to themselves alone, and followed the impulse of the moment, alike in their serious pursuits and in their sports. These selfish ones have no record among posterity; there is none that remembereth, nor any that regardeth. The living men; they who being dead yet speak, are the men who thought first of others and last of themselves; who were ready to abandon country, and kinsfolk, and friends, to help the poor out of the dust and the feeble out of the mire. But why, amongst Christian people, linger here upon the threshold? deeper and holier thoughts lie beyond. If we are not falsely called, if our whole profession is not a lie, we are followers of Christ. And what of Him our Master and Example, says the apostle? "Even Christ also pleased not Himself." And if in other things, then in this let us walk according as He walked. We cannot be like Him if we are always in pleasure and never in pain: not like Him if we indulge ourselves in every wish that rises within, in every taste and fancy. More. over, to leave undone that which we cannot do, this is not self-denial; not to buy what we cannot pay for, this is not self-denial; not to labour when otherwise we must starve, is not self-denial. These are crosses laid upon us by God's providence, not crosses which we ourselves take up. Of our own free will we must forego pleasant things, and perform disagreeable tasks, leaving undone for His sake what we might have done, and doing in His name what none could make us do, if we would be like Him who bowed the heavens and came down. So act, young and old, and we tell you not that thus acting ye become shadows in the world of the Son of God Himself; that ye perpetuate His life upon earth; nay, more, we tell you that without so acting, without this self-restraint and selfdiscipline, it is but a false confidence of peace here and hereafter on which ye build. (Bishop Woodford.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. |
    |