A Jot from John
Christ was not the first man to die upon a cross. Neither was he to be the last to suffer the horrors of the Roman Cross. However, it was he who has placed the cross into the glory of his matchless love for the fallen sons and daughters of Adam’s race. By dying upon the tree as a sin offering, he has transformed the ignominious cross into the great and glorious symbol of his love for the lost. How is it that when we see a picture of the cross, our thoughts turn to Jesus and to Jesus only as the one who died thereupon? We are not led to think of either of the thieves who shared his fate on the hill of Golgotha. We do not picture any of the ones who died before Him on the cross or those who met a similar fate afterwards. The cross is suggestive only of Jesus. Had he been an imposter or a deceiver, he would have shared the same fate as the other unfortunate victims of a Roman cross. He could only raise the infamy of the cross to a glorious height by his being the Son of God who gave his life as a ransom for sinful men.
To make these thoughts more impressive, consider the following ways in which other leaders of men have died and yet, the instruments of their deaths have not become glorious. Four or five centuries before the birth of Christ, Socrates lived and carried on his work as a teacher. By any educator’s standard Socrates must be placed as one of the master teachers of all time. He, Plato and Aristotle have long formed the “Big Three” among ancient Greek teachers. Socrates met his death by drinking a cup of poison. He had been condemned by his own generation to this form of execution as Jesus was later to be condemned by his own generation to the cross. Yet, the hemlock cup of poison has not been made into a glorious symbol of Socrates’ death. Why? He was not the divine Son of God. His death in no way was an atonement of man’s sins.
John Brown was a religious leader of the mid-nineteenth century. He possessed a driving desire to free the Southern Blacks from slavery. In 1859 he led an attack upon a Federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry in Virginia. It was hoped that this would arouse the Southern slaves to rise up and cast off their fetters. Shortly after this raid he was captured, found guilty of treason and was hanged. Many viewed his death as martyrdom. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that Brown’s death would make “the gallows glorious as the cross.” We live today over 160 years after the death of Brown and the gallows have never been nor will they ever be “glorious as the cross.”
Other leaders of renown have met death in a variety of ways. A sword removed the Apostle James from the apostolic stage of action. John the Baptist was beheaded. A bullet from the gun of an assassin took Lincoln from the political arena. Others had met death by violent methods but the instruments of their deaths and those killed by them are not to be compared with the cross and the Christ who died there upon.
The words of Paul come to mind: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” (Gal. 6:4.) Our conclusion can perhaps be best written by reference to the stanza of John Bowring’s great hymn, “In The Cross Of Christ I Glory.”
Onward Rejoicing, John B. Daniels, Associate Minister
