Christ, in His death, bore all the wrath that I deserved. In a word, He bore death for everything, for judgment was on everything. His Cross is that by which, through Him, all things are alone reconcilable to God, whether things in heaven or things on earth; all in me the contrary to God is judged there, and through it only am I reconcilable to God. It is not my sins merely, but everything under judgment from which the Cross frees me. People will admit that nothing but the Cross could free them from their sins, and place them in reconciliation with God; but everything here is under judgment, and there is no other way for everything else to be reconciled but in the same way as I—a sinner, have been. If everything here is reconcilable through. the Cross, it is evident that everything needed reconciliation; and no reconciliation could be effected but through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which you and I ought to say, “the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” (Gal. 6:1414But 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. (Galatians 6:14).) Nay, make it our boast, “God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is evident that the apostle is not here speaking of his sins. He is speaking of all the things under judgment; and he is glorying before God in his own position through it—not grieving that he has to give up the world, or trying to keep as much of it as he can without losing the peace of his conscience, but that he is absolutely severed from it all through the cross of Christ; the world crucified to him and he unto the world.
If you felt that judgment was on everything, you would like to be relieved from it; you know what a relief it is to you to put the Cross between you and your sins, or rather to know that God has done so. Now, you would not revert to your sins—you would not neutralize the efficacy of the Cross and return to the responsibility of your sins. You rejoice that it has forever, in God’s sight, severed you from your sins. You glory in it, and rightly so, for it is God’s doing, and you glorify Him as you exult in it and enjoy it.
Now, if you could feel about everything in the world as you do about your sins, you would rejoice that by His same cross, “by him I say,” you are crucified to the world, and the world to you, as it is through it only, through Him, there is reconciliation for everything contrary to God.
It determines the question at once between what is of man and what is divine. Everything connected with the first Adam, or with which he was connected, is judged in the death of Christ; all the judged things stand on one side of His death; all the unjudged things on the other side. When His life has reached us, or we have reached it, and everything according to God, am I sorry then to lose anything judged in His death? Nay, I am rejoiced, when loyal in heart, to Him, to find that in the same moment, and by the same act, I am freed from my sins and all around me not of God, which is under judgment. Everything not reconciled through the cross, by Him who bore it, is under judgment. How cheering to my heart to realize that I am through the cross of Christ entirely out of it, “and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:2020I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20).)
It is important to see all that the Cross embraces, and that the death of Christ separates me from everything here unto Himself. His death alone connects me with anything here. I remember Him in His death, and announce it till He comes. What else does the scene tell me of? It required His death to effect reconciliation for me and for everything that I see. Could this very earth be reconciled without His death? We know it could not! Can I look at it, or admire it, without recalling the price of reconciliation-or rather, is not every article on earth, as it were, labeled with it? His death is the only agreeable association, solemn and momentous as it is, that you can have on earth. Everything else that you see, and yourself, alas! required it. You are in the place and scene for it, and you ought to be thankful that it has secured you in God’s sight absolutely, as a new man, entirely apart from the scene, though while in it, this is your only association-your only admissible contact with it, for if you had not His death how should you find a place of escape from it; and, therefore, it (His death) becomes the true and most grateful remembrance of your heart towards Him,, while you are on the earth. You do not like to remember Hint in any other place here; you like to remember Him where He ended everything against God—everything of the old man—and brought in everything according to the heart of God. Is it not simple? Is it not natural?
You cannot go too much into the haunts of men seeking for the silver piece, but you must go there as a widow of this world, (not as a worldling “of the world,” but as Christ,) sweeping the house, and seeking diligently for the silver piece. The evangelist is not for the world, he is for the Church, but to the world.