The Cross and the Saint

F. J. Huegel served as a chaplain in World War I and was a missionary in Mexico for over twenty-five years. Much of his time was devoted to evangelistic work in prisons. He was also on the teaching staff of Union Seminary in Mexico City. The following is taken from his book The Cross of Christ--The Throne of God:

"Paul recognized the perils of the doctrine of justification by faith which its enemies have never ceased to harp upon. But as he points out in the first verse of chapter vi of his Epistle to the Romans, these perils only exist where adherence is to a dissected Cross. They utterly disappear when we adhere to the full-orbed Cross of Christ. They only crop out and produce their nefarious brood where a decapitated gospel is operative.

"'Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?' (Rom. v1. 1). A failure to grasp all the implications of Calvary inevitably leads to this very thing.

"'How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?' (Rom. vi. 2). Whereupon follows Paul's amazing exposition of the doctrine of the Christian's identification with the Cross of Christ. 'We have been planted together in the likeness of his death.' 'We share his tomb' (Weymouth's translation). 'Our old man is crucified with Christ.' This marvelous doctrine is the very soul of Paul's theology. To the Colossians he writes, 'Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God.' To the Galatians, 'They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts.' To Timothy, 'It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him we shall also live with him.' To the Corinthians, . . . 'If one died for all, then all [not were dead] died.' (In the Greek it is 'died.')

"If the Cross of Christ is the supreme objective of the entire body of divine revelation, it ought not surprise us that it should be the soul of the Christian life, in its highest development of sainthood as well as in its glorious beginnings, fragrant with forgiveness.

"Now when we look squarely at our Redeemer's Cross, unafraid and eager to abide in all its implications, we are not long in discerning that Christ could not die for us except that our judicial standing be one of death in Him. During the civil war a lad volunteered to take the place of a father who in spite of a large family had been drafted. The young man was accepted, and marched out to battle in his father's place. Not long after the volunteer fell wounded and died. Months later representatives of the Government came again to this same father to draft him for the purpose of war. He resisted. When the officers asked him why he refused to obey, he said: 'I have died.' This naturally provoked a smile. The officers thought that the man had lost his reason; but he persisted in his attitude, begging them to consult the Government's war records if they were in any doubt. This they did, only to find that said father according to the official records had indeed died on the field of battle. Needless to say he was molested no more. To all intents and purposes his judicial standing before the claims of his Government was that of one who had died in the fulfillment of his duty. He was free. He had died in the person of his representative.

"Sin makes its claims. The world would sweep us into the maelstrom of its filth. The 'flesh' would still enslave us. With Paul we cry: 'O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?'

"The hundred-headed monster, Sin, is king in spite of all our efforts. Pride as a veritable demon still enflames our souls with its hellish fire. What are we to do? We have agonized. We have prayed. We have fought like Trojans. But all to no avail. We have wondered at times if Christ is really able to save. We have been at the brink of despair.

"The trouble is that we are simply proceeding upon a wrong basis. Mere resistance on the part of the above-mentioned father would have been absolutely of no avail. He would have been carried away by force. What did avail? An appeal to his judicial standing as one who had died in the death of his representative. 'Self' cannot overcome 'Self.' Sin is too much the soul of our very 'make-up' to be overcome by 'self-effort.' We become proud of our imagined humility. Our very victories--we no sooner have them than they plunge us into deeper defeat. It is like pulling one's self up by one's bootstraps.

"Christ has provided something infinitely better. The redemption He wrought out on Calvary is no blind alley. It really leads to full-orbed victory. But we must not stop in mid-stream. 'Self-effort' will not avail, but a recognition of our judicial standing before God as those who have died to sin in the death of our Great Elder Brother, will bring victory. This is faith. 'Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord' (Rom. vi. 11). This is the gospel. The Cross must be at the heart of the Christian life, otherwise it is not the true Christian life.

"When we take our stand by simple faith as those who have died in Christ's death, which before God, before sin, before men, and before angels, is our true judicial status, victory over sin becomes a simple matter. The bands of pride are severed--how? By the death of the Son of God. The strength of the 'flesh-life' is broken--how? By the Cross of the Lord of life. We are cut off from the filthy stream of the world's life--how? By co-crucifixion.

"It was my humanity which in the Person of Him who has now become my life, was subjected to the awful fires of Calvary . . . It is an ardent appropriation on the part of the Christian, of a crucified humanity which has been raised up in newness of life. Let us never forget that the life which our Redeemer imparts to us issues from a Cross. It is a life from which, under the awful testings of Golgotha, the possibility of a false 'self-life' has been eliminated for ever. Jesus not only died for sin but unto sin. (See Rom. vi. 10.) He placed between my humanity and sin the immeasurable depths of Calvary's annihilations. He did not simply loosen sin's bands or untie the knots. He severed the cords by the terrible rendings of Golgotha. He did not simply weaken the attractions of 'the world.' He severed the tie by the awful break with the world's pride effected on Calvary. I cannot truly receive Christ without receiving His death, which is an ever-living force. I cannot truly receive Christ without there being consummated in me the awful break with the pride of man effected on Calvary.

"That is why the Cross of Christ saves. It is not by Divine magic. The Cross is not a fetish. It is not a cold mechanical imputation of merits. It is not an artificial transference of sin. True, the Saviour bore my sins in His body on the Tree . . . Christ bore my sins, but in assuming my humanity, without which He could not have borne my sins, He made me one with Himself. I am vitally involved in that death. It is my judicial standing. From it issues the life I live--a life of death unto sin and oneness with God . . . It is from Calvary's throne that God creates a new humanity. It is from this throne He reigns. Any other rule would be contrary to the principles of His kingdom and contrary to the highest interests of the moral nature of man.

"All this was once beautifully illustrated to me by the experience of a young lady who confessed that her life was a veritable 'inferno' because of a terrible pride which ruled her heart. She said that in spite of all her efforts to overcome, this thing had reached such a degree that she felt herself getting angry when she saw others happy. What was she to do? I said to her, 'I am a German. Let us suppose that I no longer wish to be a German, but a Frenchman. I struggle, I imitate. I agonize over the role. How far will it get me? Will I ever become a Frenchman? Of course not. Bet let us suppose: I die and am reborn of a French mother. How different. French attitudes are easy now. Well,' I explained, 'that is how Christ takes the pride out of us. He doesn't simply tame the monster and then call him humility. He takes our humanity to the Cross. It is true wicked men put Him to death. But He turned the tables on them. They see their sins--having reached the colossal dimensions revealed in the awful crime of Golgotha. It couldn't be otherwise. They recoil. They cry out for forgiveness. By the infinite wisdom of God they find their forgiveness in and through the very one they crucified. They come to His feet in broken-hearted repentance, and accept Him as their Lord and their life. In so doing they die; the Cross upon which they slew their Lord, by an inevitable process of moral chemistry, slays them. They dethrone the monster pride, not because God compels them. They must. The 'must' springs from their own wills. The Redeemer imparts to them a crucified life over which pride has no more power than a flea would have over a tiger, a life to which pride is as foreign as pansies to polar ice-sheets. They are reborn. Christ now lives in them--they are participants of the Resurrection life of their Lord.'

"'I am crucified with Christ,' was not simply a personal eccentricity of Paul. It is the amazing heritage of every Christian. No Christian, except he be involved in an infamous betrayal of his Lord, except he become to a degree implicated in the very principles of selfishness and pride which precipitated the heinous crucifixion of the One he claims to love--no Christian, I repeat, can stand at the foot of the Cross without signing his own death sentence. I must die, for in me there are principles at work which crucify Christ. The Jews were proud. So am I. The Jews were greedy. So am I. The Jews were addicted to self-aggrandizement. So am I. If this is what sin leads to, I will have no more of it. Heaven is my witness. But how to be free, that is the question.

"Christ has the key. 'Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.' Can a heavier burden be found than that which 'self' creates? 'Come, sink down into My heart and die,' the Redeemer says in effect. Until Christ works out in you an inner crucifixion which will cut you off from self-infatuation and unite you to God, a thousand Heavens would not give you peace.

"'Take my yoke [what is His yoke if it is not His Cross?] and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.'

"'For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.' (Matt. xi. 28-30.)"