THE BOOK OF THE CROSS
If the central feature of the Scriptures is their idea of God, and if
the climax of the biblical revelation is Christ, the greatest fact
about Christ from the point of view of the Bible is his cross. We say
_fact_ advisedly, for we are not dealing with the theories that have
sprung up to interpret the meaning of the cross. We are trying to deal
solely with the direct impressions which seem to have been made upon
the scriptural writers as to the place of the cross in the revealing
movement.
We said in the last chapter that the Scriptures reach their climax in
the doctrine that God is in Christ. The cross of Christ carries to most
effective revelation the Christlike character of God. While we are not
treating now the various creedal dogmas as to the person of Christ, we
must not forget that those dogmas have essayed as part of their task
the bringing of God close to men. The truth embodied in the text that
the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world is essential to
knowing the Scriptures. We have seen that even as a warrior Jehovah was
thought of as willing to bear his part of the burdens of the chosen
people. We have seen growing the idea that Jehovah was under moral
obligation to carry through the uplifting work which he had begun. We
have seen prophets attain to glimpses of the meaning of suffering for
the divine life, and we have beheld the culmination in the suffering of
Christ. In those perplexing phrases of the creeds like, "Very God of
very God," the aim of the church has been perfectly clear--to guard the
scriptural idea that God was so truly in Christ that the sufferings of
Christ were the sufferings of God. Even when least intelligible the
pain of men becomes more easily borne if men can believe that in some
real sense their pain is also the pain of God. That God is Christlike
in capacity to suffer is in itself a revelation of no small consequence.
In the cross of Christ we see exalted with surpassing power the belief
that God acts out of righteousness in his relation to the universe and
to men. It must needs be that Christ suffer. The writers seem unable to
escape the conviction that they are beholding the working of divinely
inevitable moral necessities. These moral obligations are not to be
conceived of as external to God or imposed on him from outside of
himself. In the Scriptures they seem, rather, to be expressions of his
own nature. When the writers of theories about the cross lay stress on
those profound obligations of God toward moral law which must be
discharged in the work of redemption, the Scriptural basis underneath
such theories is the implication that God, by the very fact of what he
is, must act righteously. His power is not his own in such sense that
he can act from arbitrary or self-centered motives. The Judge of all
the earth must do right, at whatever cost to himself. The Scriptures
keep close to the thought of God as a supremely powerful Being under
supreme responsibility in the use of his power. If we can believe the
Scripture that in Christ we see God, and that the bearing, of Christ
during his suffering reveals really and uniquely the bearing of God
himself, we have a revelation of the grasp with which moral
responsibility holds the Almighty against even any momentary slip into
arbitrariness. Sometimes we hear the sufferings of Christ preached as a
pattern of nonresistance for men. It is permissible thus to interpret
the cross within limitations; but this is not the essential aspect of
the cross, as explaining its hold on men. The all-important doctrine as
to the use of power is hinted at in the Master's word that he had but
to call for legions of angels if he so chose. Under most extreme
provocation the forces of the Almighty held to their appointed task. If
the Almighty had been conceived of as a Despot or an Egotist, he would
have been expected to resort at once to revengeful violence in the
presence of such insults as those of the persecutors of the Son of God.
The Source of all activity can hardly be conceived of as passive; but
the passivity of the Christ of the cross suggests that no outrage by
men can divert the almighty power from its moral purpose. This is
really a gathering together and lifting on high of the doctrine of the
Sermon on the Mount, that God maketh the sun to shine upon the just and
the unjust, and causeth his rain to fall on the evil and the good. That
is to say, while the Bible thinks of the cross as laying bare the
Almighty's reaction against evil, it also thinks of that cross as
showing a God who will not be disturbed by any merely "personal"
considerations. We behold the Almighty's use of power for the advance
of a moral kingdom. The Almighty is set before us as exerting all his
power for the relief of men. The cross makes the profoundest revelation
of the moral fixedness and self-control of God so long as we hold to
the scriptural representation. It is to be regretted that many
theological theories break away from the Scripture basis and build upon
assumptions which are artificial, not to say unmoral: or, rather, in
their striving after system they get away from the atmosphere of moral
suggestiveness with which the Gospels and Epistles surround the cross.
That God will do his part in the redemption of men is set before us in
the cross. That part can be nothing short of making men yearn to be
like Christ and of aiding them in their struggle for the Christlike
character. It will be remembered that in the last chapter we called
attention to the hopelessness of the Christian ideal viewed as an ideal
in itself without a dynamic to help men to realize the ideal. If Christ
is only to reveal to us the character toward which men are to strive,
we are in despair. That one man has reached such perfection is in
itself no promise that other men may reach that perfection. Moreover,
the excellence of Christ is not only a moral excellence; or if it is
moral excellence, that excellence involves a balance of intellectual
attributes which is for us practically out of reach. Now, Christ is the
ideal, but the ideal is one toward which we not only labor in our own
strength, but one whose attainment by us is an object of solicitude for
God himself. And so we see in the cross a patience which will bear with
men to the utmost, and which will reenforce them as they press toward
the goal. The glory of Christianity is largely hi the paradox that it
sets before men an unattainable ideal and then commands them to attain
the ideal. If the cross is nothing but a revelation of an ideal for
men, this paradox is insoluble and intolerable. In the scriptural light
of the cross, however, we catch the glory not of an abstract ideal, but
of a Father's love for his children--not of the commands of conscience
in the abstract, but of the desires of a personal Friend who will lift
men as they stumble and fall. The ground for this patience seems as we
read to be in the very nature of God himself. God has brought men into
this world without consulting them, he has dowered them with the
terrific boon of freedom, he has set them in hard places; but he has
done this out of a moral and loving purpose. He therefore makes more
allowances for men than exacting men ever can make for themselves. He
puts at the service of men so much of his power as they can appropriate
by their moral effort. The Christ of the cross is taught as the truth
about God--the God who is at once the supremely real and the supremely
ideal places his powers at the service of men who would make their
Christ-ideal progressively real in themselves.
The power of the Bible over men centers around the teaching that the
cross not only reveals God as morally bound to redeem men, but that it
also shows us the divine aim in redemption. Men are to be redeemed by
seeking for forgiveness in the name of the moral life set on high by
the cross, but the repentant soul is to show its sincerity by devotion
to the task and spirit of cross-bearing. The aim of the cross is to
bring men together into a fellowship of the cross, in a fellowship of
suffering for the sake of the moral triumph to be won at the end. We
are accustomed to think of suffering as implying the possibility of
joy. The man who can feel keen sorrow can feel keen joy; they who have
the power to weep have also the power to laugh. In the final kingdom
the weeping shall be turned into joy. But, according to the Scriptures,
it is not necessary for the disciples to wait until the consummation
before entering into the joy of their Lord. There is an entrance to the
divine mind through bearing the cross. Those who desired to learn of
Christ as true disciples were expected to take up the cross and carry
it daily. The Master also declared that the disciples were to think of
themselves as blessed when they endured persecution for righteousness'
sake, for men had persecuted the prophets in all ages. The implication
is that knowledge of and sympathy with the prophets came out of
cross-bearing like that of the prophets. To use a simple illustration:
a student of the careers of the leaders of any reform might gather a
mass of information about the reformers in an outside kind of fashion,
as by the study of books, or by visits to the scenes of their
struggles. Such a student, however, could not master the inner spirit
of a reformer's life until he himself had battled for some cause at
risk to himself. So the man who seeks to bear the cross of Christ is on
the path to sympathetic inner knowledge of the spirit of Christ. In our
second chapter we called attention to the truth that approach to
knowledge of God is through the doing of the will of God. Doing of the
will, according to Jesus, means much more than just a round of good
deeds. It means carrying the burdens which are inevitable in
cross-bearing. There is good reason for believing that the very highest
step in spiritual learning is taken only through the willingness to
bear the cross. In our modern educational systems we lay varying
degrees of stress upon the importance of different methods of acquiring
knowledge. There is at the bottom of the scale the method of mastering
the instruction of the teacher by attention and reflection. There is,
next, the method of learning through one's own experiment--through
using microscope or telescope or textbook for oneself. There are,
further, the social aids to the quickening of the mind as groups of
students study and discuss together. But the deepest knowledge comes as
the student feels his sympathy and feeling involved. If he must pay
himself out for the acquisition of the truth, or if he must defend his
conclusions at great cost to himself, this experience which involves
the feeling involves also the sharpening of the intellect. The eyes of
the soul are opened to the subtler intuitions. Thus it is in the
revelations of the divine purpose in the Scriptures. It is hard to make
out how anybody can hope to master a revelation of a cross-bearing God
without himself being a cross-bearer. In the New Testament narratives
of Passion Week the Master is reported as winning his surest
convictions of the presence of God and of the victory of his truth at
the very instant when he entered into the extreme depths of suffering.
In the after days it was when the saints faced stoning that they saw
the heavens opening; it was the apostle who had suffered hardships
almost too numerous to mention who got the most positive conviction of
the reward which awaited him. In the school of Christ the very heaviest
stress must fall upon the indispensability of cross-bearing as a means
to understanding.
Not only does the biblical revelation see in the cross of Christ the
culminating manifestation of the character of God, and of the purpose
of God in redemption, but it also shows to us the divine method in
helping men. We have spoken of those who dwell upon the Master's
nonresistance as a model of passivity in the presence of evil. The
example of Christ when thus treated is in danger of being
misinterpreted. The Christ of the cross was passive so far as physical
force was concerned; but he was never more intensely active in the
higher ranges of his faculties--in self-control and in alertness to the
finer whisperings of the spirit. The Christ's non-resistance to the
physical might of evil is not to be interpreted as acquiescence on the
part of the Divine toward the ravages of evil, but, rather, as the
divine method of thwarting evil by allowing it to reveal itself. No
amount of preaching about the nature of evil can equal in eloquence the
self-revelations of that nature as it works itself out into expression.
While in a degree the self-revelation of evil put forth against Christ
was unique, yet we must remember that the sins which put Christ to
death are just those commonest in all time. Judas was disappointed. He
carried spite no more tenaciously than the ordinary heart is capable of
treasuring it. Caiaphas desired simply to hold his own position and
preserve the peace of his nation. Very likely the type of opinion in
the midst of which Caiaphas moved would have pronounced that he
rendered a disagreeable, but nevertheless necessary patriotic service
in his condemnation of Christ. Pilate too meant well, but was afraid of
the crowd. His friends may have commended his administrative wisdom in
allowing the people to have their own way. It was the play of just such
ordinary forces of sin against an extraordinary holiness that made it
impossible for the mightiest revelation ever vouchsafed to man to work
through the earthly activity of Jesus for more than a few months. The
Scripture does not have much to do with abstract sins; with concrete
sins of men as we actually find them, it has much to do.
The Scriptures make it very clear that there is something which
satisfies God himself in the work of redemption. God acts out of moral
obligation, out of self-respect, out of love. But he acts always in
respect for men as free moral beings. The cross appeals to the free
spirit of men to behold the nature of evil, and to flee from that evil
toward their redeeming God. If the redemption is to be a moral
redemption, the last detail of the method must be moral. The power of
the Almighty must not be used to break down freedom of men. It would be
theoretically possible for an almighty power to bring to bear such
pressures upon human wills as to crush them, but the strongest
representation of the power of God in the New Testament does not go to
the length of hinting at interference with the freedom of men. Men are
to be saved as free men or not at all. We might conceivably imagine the
Almighty as granting such indubitable vision of the material rewards of
righteousness and the material loss of unrighteousness as would
irresistibly draw masses of a certain grade of men into the Kingdom
without a morally free consent to righteousness. Or we might conceive
of the Almighty as so weighing this or that factor of environment as to
diminish almost to the vanishing point the free choice of men. This
kind of compulsion would not be moral. The only compulsions of the
cross are those of a moral God splendidly attractive on his own account.
It will have occurred to some readers by this time that we have said
very little about the love of God in our discussion of the Scriptures,
whereas that love is the outstanding feature of the biblical
revelation. Our reply is that we have been trying to be true to the
impression made by the Scriptures as to the kind of love which we must
think of as expressing the deepest fact in God's life. We would not in
the least minimize the truth that love is the last word of the
scriptural revelation; but in our modern life we are apt to get away
from the quality of the love revealed in the Bible. The love of the
cross is built upon the righteousness which runs through the Sacred
Book from the beginning to the end. A god of indifferent moral quality
might love. The old Greek gods had favorites upon whom they lavished
their affections. A god might be conceived of as an amiable and
well-wishing father, foolishly indulgent toward his children. The love
of the New Testament, however, is the love of a Father who dares to
appeal to the children to make heroic response; and who shows his own
love for them in the lengths to which he will go for them. Moral love
will go the full length of heroic self-sacrifice. We cannot help
believing that it is the quality of God's love, rather than the mere
fact of that love, which is the explanation of the power of the
biblical teaching.
A friend of mine many years ago wrote a book which he called The Hero
God. The publishers objected to the title because they saw in it a
touch of sensationalism. No title, however, could have more adequately
set forth the biblical God. God is the hero of the Bible. His heroism
appears in growing revelation from the beginning. It shows itself
superbly in his willingness to bear the burdens of mankind and in the
appeals which he makes for response from men. The picture is of a God
who dares to believe in men and who dares to call on them for the
extremes of self-sacrificing devotion, not to himself as an arbitrary
Person, but to himself as the center of the moral life which is above
all other life worth while. It is open to anyone to object that this
biblical picture does not necessarily hold good for God; but it is
hardly possible to object that the picture is not biblical. The picture
stands in its own right and makes its own appeal. The only way to test
it in life is to yield to its appeal.
If we are asked to account for the power of the Bible, we are at a loss
for any one single statement. The most compendious reply is the
magnetism of the love of God as revealed in Christ. This is so broad,
however, that it may not make a direct and vivid impression. We may
say, then, that one element of the magnetism of the biblical revelation
is the magnetism of the appeal to the heroic. Whatever else the Bible
may or may not be, it is not a book of soft and easy things. Breaths of
the most rigorous life blow across every page. It is made for man in
that it calls men to the service of the highest and best. The religious
systems which make the fewest and least demands upon their followers
most speedily fall away; those that call for the utmost are most likely
to meet the enthusiastic response. There is a frank honesty about the
biblical appeal which holds a charm for all men in whom there are any
sparks of real manhood. The severities of the Christian life are
nowhere disguised. Men are never lured on by false pretenses. The path
is the path of cross-bearing, and the reward is the comradeship between
God and man as they together work toward the highest goal, a
comradeship which of itself brings relief to men burdened with the
mystery of the universe and agonized by remorse over sin. This essay
is quite as significant for what it has not said as for what it has
said. In our omissions we have tried to keep clear the main outlines of
scriptural revelation. We have sought to hold fast to principles rather
than to discuss details. We have done this because we have believed
that there is more value for religious understanding in pointing out
the loftier biblical peaks which give the direction of the whole range
than in tracing out pathways through detailed passages. Moreover, we
have been afraid to employ many theoretical terms lest we blur the
quick moral impressions made by the Scripture phrasings. For example,
it may be objected that our treatment of the character of God is
altogether inadequate. We have not thus far said a word about the
Trinity, for example, or about atonement. The reason is that we believe
that any theories about God must base themselves upon the moral
suggestions of the Scriptures; and our business is with these rather
than with the theories. The received revelation concerning God would
warrant us in fashioning any theory as to the richness of his inner
constitution which might even measurably satisfy our minds. The
scriptural atmosphere as to the moral life in God must, however, be
kept in the chief place in all of our theological theories. Atonement
must be interpreted chiefly in terms of ethical steadiness if it is to
build on a biblical foundation. But the instant we use formal terms
like "Trinity" and "atonement" we have taken at least one step away
from the Scriptures. Again, we have said nothing about Divine
Providence. The Bible is full of instances of providences, but here
also we have preferred to let the fundamental moral character of the
biblical God speak for itself. We may have our own belief that there is
no scriptural warrant for that separation which obtains in much
theology between the processes of God and the processes of nature. We
may admit that the Hebrew had no very systematically framed theory of
the processes of nature, but he deemed God to be in such close touch
with nature as easily to control its forces for a good end. In two
accounts of the crossing of the Red Sea by the Israelites we have an
apparent contradiction which is at bottom not a contradiction. In one
account God seems to cause the waters to wall up on both sides of the
Israelites in defiance of the laws of nature. In another God
accomplishes the drying of the path through the blowing of a strong
east wind. The Hebrew would not have troubled himself much with the
apparent contradiction, for he would have conceived of God as the chief
factor in either event, and of his purpose as having the right of way.
There is thus no great value in discussing specific instances as long
as the care of God for his children is the animating purpose of the
entire biblical content. So with answers to prayer--the God who is
willing to go for men to the lengths revealed in the cross will surely
answer any prayer worth answering. The essential is to lift prayer up
into harmony with the entire revealing and redeeming movement, and to
conceive of it as a fitting of the whole life into the purposes of a
moral God. Certain general requirements would always have to be met.
Prayer would have really to deal with what is best for the individual,
best for those around him, and most in harmony with the character of
God himself. So, again, with the progress of the kingdom of God on
earth--the God of whose nature the cross is the final revelation can be
trusted to do the best possible for the Kingdom here and now. Much
debate about the second coming of Christ misses the great moral
principles which are the heart of the Christian revelation and loses
itself in the incidental forms in which those principles were declared.
The best preparation for the coming of the kingdom of Christ is
absorption in the principles of Christ and in the spirit of Christ. To
get away from these in our search for external and material conditions
which are the mere vehicle of the biblical thought is not only to
pursue a will-o'-the-wisp, but to injure true spiritual progress. Jesus
has given us the spiritual principles which must control the destiny of
any society here and now. In the light of the Christ-faith revealed in
the cross we must not despair of the redemption of men by the city-full
and by the nation-full, for the greatest confidence ever placed in men
is the implied trust of the cross of Christ. The Almighty at the
beginning paid an immense tribute to the human race when he flung it
out into the gale of this existence. In the light of the cross we
cannot believe that He expected the race to sink. In the cross the
Christ who revealed God's own mind showed the length he was willing to
go in confidence that men would finally turn to him with all the powers
of their lives. To throw up our hands and say that the world is getting
worse and we can do nothing without a speedy physical return of the
Christ is to overlook the spiritual forces of the cross.
We have said nothing about immortality. What the Scriptures themselves
say is largely incidental. The Master did not allow himself to be drawn
into any extended conversation about the details of a future life, but
he did give us the God of the cross. In the presence of that cross we
can profess the utmost confidence in the eternal life of the sons of
God, while at the same time acknowledging the utmost ignorance as to
any of the material conditions of the future life. It is commonly
assumed that the resurrection of Christ proves that we shall likewise
rise, but the rising of Christ does not of itself prove that others
shall rise. The cross, however--showing the extent to which the Divine
is willing to go for men--is the ground of our hope. God will not leave
his loved ones to see corruption. In a word, the cross of Christ
gathers up all the biblical truth. It is a revelation of God's own
character, of his hope for men, of the methods by which he seeks to win
men, and of the ground of our faith in a right outcome for men and for
society.
We may be permitted to summarize by saying that scientific and
historical biblical study is a preparation for the knowledge of the
Scriptures; that it is exceedingly important that the student approach
with the correct preliminary point of view. The revelation of the inner
significance, however, does not dawn until there is recognition of the
need of obedience to the principles laid down in the Scriptures. And
this obedience must be broad enough to include zeal for the uplift of
our fellow men in all phases of their lives. Out of righteous living
the devoted life, we believe, will see that the greatest fact of the
Bible is God; that the greatest fact of God is Christ; that the
greatest fact of Christ is the cross.
End of Project Gutenberg's Understanding the Scriptures, by Francis McConnell