“Let us be thankful to God for a crucified Redeemer.
There is nothing in heaven or earth that is such an amazing wonder as this, nothing can vie with it for excellence.
All love and thankfulness is due to God, who hath given us His Son, not only to live, but to die for us a death so shameful, a death so accursed, a death so sharp, that we might be repossessed of the happiness we had lost.
All love and thankfulness is due to Christ, who did not only pay a small sum for us as our surety, but bowed his soul to death to raise us to life, was numbered among transgressors, that we might have a room among the blessed.
Our crimes merited our sufferings, but His own heart of mercy made Him a sufferer for us:
For us He sweat those drops of blood, for us He trod the wine-press alone, for us He assuaged the rigor of divine justice, for us, who were not only miserable but offending creatures, and overwhelmed with more sins to be hated than with misery to be pitied.
He was crucified for us (by His love) who deserved to die by His power, and laid the highest obligation upon us who had laid the highest disobligements upon Him.
This death is the ground of all our good, whatever we have is a fruit that grew upon the cross.
Had he not suffered, we would had been rejected forever from the throne of God. Salvation would had never appeared but by those groans and agonies.
By this alone was God pleased, and our souls forever pleasured; without it He had been forever displeased with us, we had been odious and abominable in His sight, and could never have seen His face.
Nothing is such an evidence of His love as His cross.
The miracles He wrought, and the cures He performed in the time of His life, were nothing to the kindness of His death, wherein He was willing to be accounted worse than a murderer in His punishment, that He might thereby effect our deliverance.
If He had given us the riches of this world and a greater world, had He given us the honor of angels, and made us barons of heaven, without exposing Himself to the cross to accomplish it, it had been a testimony of His affection, but destitute of so endearing an emphasis.
The manner of procuring is more than a bare kindness in bestowing it.
He testified His resolution not only to give us glory, but to give it us whatsoever it should cost Him.
The angels in heaven, in their glistering luster, are the monuments of His liberality, but not of so supreme an affection as is engravened on the body of his cross.
Let us delight in the knowledge of Christ crucified, and be often in the thoughts and study of Him. Study Christ, not only as living, but dying; not as breathing in our air, but suffering in our stead; know Him as a victim, which is the way to know Him as a conqueror.
Christ as crucified is the great object of faith. All the passages of His life, from His nativity to His death, are passed over in the Creed without reciting, because, though they are things to be believed, yet the belief of them is not sufficient without the belief of the cross: in that alone was our redemption wrought.
Had He only lived, He had not been a Saviour. If our faith stop in His life, and do not fasten upon His blood, it will not be a justifying faith.
His miracles, which prepared the world for His doctrine, His holiness, which fitted Himself for His suffering, had been insufficient for as without the addition of the cross.
Without the cross, we had been under the demerit of our crimes, the venom of our natures, the slavery of our sins, and the tyranny of the devil.
Without the cross, we should forever have had God for our enemy, and Satan for our executioner.
Without the cross, we had lain groaning under the punishment of our transgressions, and despaired of any smile from heaven.
It was this death which as a sacrifice appeased God, and as a price redeemed us.
Nothing is so strong to encourage us, nothing so powerful to purify us. How can we be without thinking of it!
The world we live in had fallen upon our heads, had it not been upheld by the pillar of the cross, had not Christ stepped in and promised a satisfaction for the sin of man.
By this all things consist. Not a blessing we enjoy but may put us in mind of it. They were all forfeited by our sins, but merited by his precious blood.
If we study it well, we shall be sensible how God hated sin and loved a world; how much he would part with to restore a fallen creature.
He showed an irresistible love to us.”
–Stephen Charnock, “The Knowledge of Christ Crucified,” The Works of Stephen Charnock, Volume 4 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1865/2010), 4: 503-504.
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