'From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto His
disciples, how that He must go unto Jerusalem, and
suffer many things of the elders and chief priests
and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the
third day.'--MATT. xvi. 21.
The 'time' referred to in the text was probably a little more than
six months before the Crucifixion, when Jesus was just on the point
of finally leaving Galilee, and travelling towards Jerusalem. It was
an epoch in His ministry. The hostility of the priestly party in the
capital had become more pronounced, and simultaneously the fickle
enthusiasm of the Galilean crowds, which had been cooled by His
discouragement, had died down into apathy. He and His followers are
about to leave familiar scenes and faces, and to plunge into
perilous and intrude paths. He is resolved that, if they will
'come after Him,' as He bids them in a subsequent verse, it shall be
with their eyes open, and as knowing that to come after Him now
means to cut themselves loose from old moorings, and to put out into
the storm. They shall be abundantly certified that their journeying
to Jerusalem is not a triumphal procession to a crown, but a march
to a cross.
So, this new epoch in His life is attended with a new development of
His teaching. My text sums up the result of many interviews in
which, by slow degrees, He sought to put the disciples in possession
of this unwelcome truth. It was prepared for, by the previous
conversation in which His question elicited from Peter, as the
mouthpiece of the apostles, the great confession of His Messiahship
and Divinity. Settled in their belief of these truths, however
imperfect their intellectual grasp of them, they might perhaps be
able to receive the mournful mystery of His passion.
I. We have here set forth in the first place our Lord's anticipation
of the Cross.
Mark the tone of the language, the minuteness of the detail, the
absolute certainty of the prevision. That is not the language of a
man who simply is calculating that the course which he is pursuing
is likely to end in his martyrdom; but the thing lies there before
Him, a definite, fixed certainty; every detail known, the scene, the
instruments, the non-participation of these in the final act of His
death, His resurrection, and its date,--all manifested and mapped
out in His sight, and all absolutely certain.
Now this was by no means the first time that the certainty of the
Cross was plain to Christ. It was not even the first time that it
had been announced in His teaching. Veiled hints; allusions, brief
but pregnant, had been scattered through His earlier ministry--such,
for instance, as the enigmatical word at its very beginning,
'Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up'; or as
the profound word to the rabbi that sought Him by night, 'As Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be
lifted up'; or as the passing hint, dropped to the people, in
symbolical language, about the 'sign of the prophet Jonas'; or as
the grief foreshadowed dimly to the apostles, of the withdrawal of
the Bridegroom, and their 'fasting in those days.' These hints, and
no doubt others unrecorded, had cropped to the surface before; and
what we have to do with here, is neither the dawning of an
expectation in Christ, nor the first utterance of the certainty of
the Cross, but simply the beginning of a continuous and
unenigmatical teaching of it, as an element in His instructions to
His disciples.
So then, we have to recognise the fact that our Lord's prevision of
the end--shone, I was going to say, perhaps it might be truer to
say, darkened,--all the path along which He had to travel.
I think that people dogmatise a great deal too glibly as to what
they know very little about, the interaction of the divine and the
human elements in Christ, and on the one side are far too certain in
their affirmation that His humanity possessed in some reflected
fashion the divine gift of omniscience; and on the other hand, that
His manhood, passing through the process of human development, and
increasing in wisdom, was necessarily in its earlier stages void of
the consciousness of His Messianic mission. I dare not affirm either
'yes' or 'no' about that matter; but this I am sure of, that if ever
there was a time in the development of the Manhood of Jesus Christ
when He began to know Himself as the Messias, at that same time He
began to be certain of the Cross. For His Messianic work required
the Cross, and the divine thing that was in Him was born into the
world for a double purpose, to minister and to die.
So, dear friends, putting aside mere metaphysics, which are
superficial after all, we have to recognise this as the fact, that
all through His career there arose before our Lord the certainty of
that death, and that it did not assume to Him the aspect which such
a prospect might have assumed to others as a possible result of a
mission that failed, but it assumed to Him the aspect of the certain
result of a work that was accomplished. He began His career with no
illusions, such as other teachers, reformers, philanthropists, men
that have moved society, have always begun with. Moses might
'suppose his brethren would have understood how that God by His hand
would deliver them,' but Christ had no such illusion. He knew from
the beginning that He came to be rejected and to die. And so He
'trod life's common way,' with that grim certainty rising ever
before Him. I suppose that He did not, as you and I do, forget the
death that awaits us, and find the non-remembrance of it the
condition of much of our energy, but that it was perpetually in His
sight.
Now I do not think that we sufficiently dwell upon that fact as an
element in the human experience of our Lord. What beauty it gives to
His gentleness, to the leisureliness of heart with which He was ready
to make everybody's sorrow His own, and to lay a healing and a loving
finger upon every wound! With this certainty before Him, there was
yet no strain manifest upon His spirit, no self-absorption, no
shutting Himself out from other people's burdens because He had so
heavy ones of His own to carry; but He was ready for every joy, ready
for all sympathy, ready for every help; and if we cannot say that,
'in cheerful godliness,' as I think we may, at least we can say that
with solemn joy and untroubled readiness, He journeyed towards that
Cross. This Isaac was under no illusions as to who the Lamb for the
offering was, but knowing it, He patiently carried the wood and
climbed the hill, ready for the Father's will.
II. That brings me to notice the second point here, our Lord's
recognition of the necessity of His suffering.
Mark that He does not say that He _shall_ suffer. Certainty is
not all that He proclaims here, however absolute that certainty
might be, but it is '_He must_.' He is speaking not only of the
historical fact, but of the need, deep in the nature of things, for
His sufferings that were to follow.
And though these were wrought out by His own willing submission on
the one hand, and by the unfettered play of the evil passions of the
worst of men on the other, yet over all that apparent chaos of
unbridled devildom there ruled the unalterable purpose of God; and
the 'must' was wrought out through the passions of evil-doers and
the voluntary submission of the innocent sufferer; thus setting
before us, in the central fact of the history of humanity, viz. the
Cross and passion of Jesus Christ, the eminent example of that great
mystery how the absolute freedom of the human will, and the
responsibility of the guilt of human wrong-doers, are congruous with
the fixed purpose of an all-determining and all-ruling Providence.
But that is apart from my purpose. Mark then, that our Lord's
recognition of this necessity for His suffering is, on the first and
plainest aspect of it, His recognition that His suffering was
necessary on the ground of filial obedience. All through His life we
hear that 'must' echoing, and His whole spirit bowed to it. As He
says Himself, 'The Son can do nothing of Himself.' As was said for
Him of old: 'Lo, I come. In the volume of the book it is written of
Me, I delight to do Thy will, and Thy law is within My heart.' So
the Father's will is the Son's law; and the Father's 'Thou shalt' is
answered by the Son's 'I must.'
But yet that necessity grounded on filial obedience was no mere
external necessity determined solely by the divine will. God so
willed it, because it must be so; that it must be so was not because
God so willed it. That is to say, the work to which Christ had set
His hand was a work that demanded the Cross, nor could it be
accomplished without it. For it was the work of redeeming the world,
and required more than a beautiful life, more than a divine
gentleness of heart, more than the homely and yet deep wisdom of His
teachings, it required the sacrifice that He offered on the Cross.
So, dear friends, Christ's 'must' is but this: 'My work is not
accomplished except I die.' And remember that the connection between
our Lord's work and our Lord's death is not that which subsists
between the works and the deaths of great teachers, or heroic
martyrs, or philanthropists and benefactors, who will gladly pay the
price of life in order to carry out their loving or their wise
designs. It is no mere appendage to His work, nor the price that He
paid for having done it, but it is His very work in its vital
centre.
I pray you to consider if there is any theory of the meaning and power
of the death of Jesus Christ which adequately explains this 'must,'
except the one that He died a sacrifice for the sins of the world. On
any other hypothesis, as it seems to me, of what His death meant, it
is surplusage, over and above His work: not adding much, either to His
teaching or to the beauty of His example, and having no absolute
stringent necessity impressed upon it. There is one doctrine--that
when He died He bare the sins of the whole world--which makes His
death a necessity; and I ask you, Is there any other doctrine which
does? Take care of a Christianity which would not be much impoverished
if the Cross were struck out of it altogether.
There is a deeper question, on which, as I believe, it does not
become us to enter, and that is, What is the necessity for the
necessity? Why must it be that He, who is the Redeemer of the world,
must needs be the Sacrifice for the world? We do not know enough
about the depths of the divine nature and the divine government to
speak very wisely or reverently upon that subject, and I, for one,
abjure the attempt, which seems to me to be presumptuous--the
attempt to explain why there was needed a sacrifice for sin in order
to the forgiveness of sin. If I knew all about God, I could tell
you; and nobody, that does not, can. But we can see, as far as
concerns us, that, as the history of all religions tells us, for the
forgiveness and acceptance of sinful men a pure sacrifice is needed;
and that for teaching us the love of God, the hideousness and wages
of sin, for our emancipation from evil, for the quieting of our
consciences, for a foothold for faith, for an adequate motive of
self-surrender and obedience, his sacrificial death is needful. The
life and death of Jesus Christ, regarded as God's sacrifice for the
world's sin, _does_ all this. The life and death of Jesus
Christ, regarded in any other aspect, does not do this. Historically
speaking, mutilated forms of Christianity, which have not known what
to do with the Cross of Christ, have lost their constraining,
purifying, and aggressive power. For us sinful men, if we are to be
delivered from evil and become sons of God, He _must_ suffer
many things, and be killed, and rise again the third day.
III. Now note further, how we have here also our Lord's willing
acceptance of the necessity.
It is one thing to recognise, and another thing to accept, a needs-be.
This 'must' was no unwelcome obligation laid upon Him against His will,
but one to which His whole nature responded and which He accepted. No
doubt there was in Him the innocent instinctive physical shrinking
from death. No doubt the Cross, in so far, was pain and suffering. No
doubt we are to trace the reality of a temptation in Peter's rash words
which follow, as indicated to us by the severity and almost vehemence
of the action with which Christ puts it away. No doubt there is a
profound meaning in that answer of His, 'Thou art a _stumbling-block_
to Me.' The 'Rock' is turned into a stone of stumbling, and Peter's
suggestion appeals to something in Him which responded to it.
That shrinking might be a shrinking of nature, but it was not a
recoil of will. The ship may toss in dreadful billows, but the
needle points to the pole. The train may rock upon the line, but it
never leaves the rails. Christ felt that the Cross was an evil, but
that feeling never made Him falter in His determination to bear it.
His willing acceptance of the necessity was owing to His full
resolve to save the world. He must die because He would redeem, and
He would redeem because He could not but love. 'He saved others,'
and therefore 'Himself He cannot save.' So the 'must' was not an
iron chain that fastened Him to His Cross. Like some of the heroic
martyrs of old, who refused to be bound to the funeral pile, He
stood there chained to it by nothing but His own will and loving
purpose to save the world.
And, brethren, in that loving purpose, each of us may be sure that
we had an individual and a personal share. Whatever the interaction
between the divinity and the humanity, this at all events is
certain, that every soul of man has his distinct and definite place
in Christ's knowledge and in Christ's love. Each of us all may be
sure that one strand of the cords of love which fastened Him to the
Cross was His love for me; and each of us may say--He must die,
because 'He loved me, and gave Himself for me.'
IV. Lastly, notice here our Lord's teaching the necessity of His
death.
This announcement was preceded, as I remarked, by that conversation
which led to the crystallising of the half-formed convictions of the
apostles in a definite creed, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God.' But that was not all that they needed to know and
believe and trust to. That was the first volume of their lesson-book.
The second volume was this, that 'Christ must suffer.' And so let us
learn the central place which the Cross holds in Christ's teaching.
They tell us that the doctrine of Christ as the Sacrifice for the
world is not in the Gospels. Where are the eyes that read the Gospels
and do not see it? The theory of it is not there; the announcements
of it are. And in this latest section of our Lord's ministry, they
are fuller and more frequent than in the earlier, for the plain
reason which is implied by the preparation through which He passed
these disciples, ere He ventured to communicate the mournful and the
bewildering fact. There must be, first, the grasp of His Messiahship,
and some recognition that He is the Son of God, ere it is possible
to go on to speak of the Cross, the full message concerning which
could not be spoken until after the Resurrection and the Ascension.
But note, you do not understand Christ's Cross unless you bring to
it the faith in Christ's Messiahship and the belief in some measure
that He is the Son of God. Neither the pathos nor the power of His
death is intelligible if it be simply like other deaths--the dying
of a man who is born subject to the law of mortality, and who yields
to it by natural process. Unless you and I take upon our lips,
though with far deeper meaning, the words with which the heathen
centurion gazed upon the dying Christ, and say, 'Truly this was the
Son of God!' His Cross is common and trivial and insignificant; but
if we can thus speak, then it stands before us as the crown of all
God's manifestations in the world,' the wisdom of God and the power
of God.'
And then note, still further, how, without the Cross, these other
truths are not the whole gospel. There were disciples then, as there
have been disciples since, and as there are to-day, who were willing
to accept, 'Thou art the Christ'; and willing in some sense to say
'Thou art the Son of God,' but stumbled when He said, 'The Son of
Man must suffer.' Brethren, I venture to urge that the gospel of the
Incarnation, precious as it is, is not the whole gospel, and that
the full-orbed truth about Jesus Christ is that He is the Christ,
and that He died for our sins, and rose again to live for ever, our
Priest and King.
We need a whole Christ. For our soul's salvation, for the quieting
of our consciences, the forgiveness of our sins, for new life, for
peace, purity, obedience, love, joy, hope, our faith must grasp
'Christ, and Him crucified.' A half Christ is no Christ, and unless
we have as sinful men laid hold of the one Sacrifice for sins for
ever, which He offered, we do not understand even the preciousness
of the half Christ whom we perceive, nor know the full beauty of His
example, the depth of His teaching, nor the tenderness of His heart.
I beseech you, ask yourselves, _What_ Christ can do for me the
things which I need to have done, except 'the Christ that died, yea,
rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God,
who also maketh intercession for us'?