THE CROSS WITHOUT CHRIST

Suppose we are stingy. Well, we have to make sacrifices for the cause of God, and so we know we must give something. We grown over it, and shrink from it, but finally by dint of hard work, will manage to give something. Then we think afterwards of what a hard cross we have borne.CRCH 2.1

Or take the Sabbath as a typical case. To keep the Lord Sabbath is very inconvenient for our business, and we perhaps stumble over that cross a long time. But there it is plainly before us: “The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” If we do not keep the Sabbath, we are afraid we shall be lost. So in order to save ourselves from destruction, we agree to keep the Sabbath. It is a weekly cross, and we are always thinking of the inconvenience and hardship. Surely it must be we shall get credit for that because it is so hard to do. Not so; when we take it that way it is our own cross, with Christ left out; and there is no salvation except in the cross of Christ.CRCH 2.2

With a thousand other things it is the same. We mourn over them, and it is only by will power that we force ourselves up to the rack, and take the bitter medicine, consoling ourselves with the thought that by and by all this will be ended. We shall not have such hard times when we get into the kingdom.CRCH 3.1

Possibly we put this rather strongly and yet this is the idea of the Christian life with a great many people who profess to be Christians. We sing of the “resting by and by,” and of joys to come, giving the world the idea that there is no joy in the present. The idea is so commonly is that the harder the cross is, the more joy there will be when it is done with.CRCH 3.2