Some Thoughts on The Cross

I don’t have “The Blessing of Hunger, Part 2” ready for you yet, but this is the week in which we especially remember Christ’s suffering and death on our behalf.  In honor of that, I wanted to share some of my favorite quotes about the Cross.

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You have not the making of your own cross, although unbelief is a master carpenter at cross-making; neither are you permitted to choose your own cross, although self-will would fain be lord and master; but your cross is prepared and appointed for you by divine love, and you are cheerfully to accept it.

 

Jesus was a cross-bearer; he leads the way in the path of sorrow.  Surely you could not desire a better guide!  And if he carried a cross, what nobler burden would you desire?

Beloved, the cross is not made of feathers, or lined with velvet, it is heavy and galling to disobedient shoulders; but it is not an iron cross, though your fears have painted it with iron colours, it is a wooden cross, and a man can carry it, for the Man of sorrows tried the load. Take up your cross, and by the power of the Spirit of God you will soon be so in love with it, that like Moses, you would not exchange the reproach of Christ for all the treasures of Egypt. Remember that Jesus carried it, and it will smell sweetly; remember that it will soon be followed by the crown, and the thought of the coming weight of glory will greatly lighten the present heaviness of trouble. The Lord help you to bow your spirit in submission to the divine will ere you fall asleep this night, that waking with to-morrow’s sun, you may go forth to the day’s cross with the holy and submissive spirit which becomes a follower of the Crucified.

Spurgeon

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It is not necessary for any man to make a cross; it is our part simply to take up that which God has laid down for us.  The cross is the constant refusal to gratify our self-life; the perpetual dying to pride and self-indulgence, in order to follow Christ.  When we live only to save ourselves, to build warm nests, to avoid every discomfort and annoyance, to make money entirely for our own use and enjoyment, to invent schemes for our own pleasure, we become the most discontented and miserable of mankind.  How many there are who have given themselves up to a life of selfishness and pleasure-seeking, only to find their capacity for joy has shriveled, and their lives have plunged into gloom and despair.  They have lost their souls!

F. B. Meyer

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You will never fathom the bravery of Christ unless you bear in mind that Christ was sinless. For sin is always coarsening and deadening—"it hardens all within and petrifies the feeling." And it is when we think that Jesus Christ was sinless, and being sinless was exquisitely sensitive, that we come to realize the matchless fortitude that carried Him without a falter to the cross.

G. H. Morrison

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