But though this be our starting-point, it is no more than a starting-point.
If Jesus was only a brave man, paying with His life the penalty
of His bravery in the streets of Jerusalem, it is wasting words to call
Him "the Saviour of the world." If His death were only a martyrdom,
then, though we may honour Him as we honour Socrates, and many another
name in the long roll of "the noble army of martyrs," yet He can no more
be our Redeemer than can any one of them. But it was not so that Christ
thought of His death. The martyr dies because he must; Christ died
because He would. The strong hands of violent men snatch away the
martyr's life from him; but no man had power to take away Christ's life
from Him: "I lay it down of Myself," He said. The Son of Man _gave_ His
life. He was not dragged as an unwilling victim to the sacrifice and
bound upon the altar. He was both Priest and Victim; as the apostle puts
it, "He gave Himself up." True, the element of necessity was there--"the
Son of Man _must_ be lifted up"; but it was the "must" of His own love,
not of another's constraint. Not Roman nails or Roman thongs held Him to
the Cross, but His own loving will. It is important to emphasize this
fact of the _voluntariness_ of our Lord's death, because at once it sets
the Cross in a clearer light. It changes martyrdom into sacrifice; and
Christ's death, instead of being merely a fate which He suffered,
becomes now, as Principal Fairbairn says, a work which He
achieved--_the_ work which He came into the world to do: "The Son of Man
came ... to give His life."[20]