65. The Insult Supreme

The Insult Supreme This certainly must be sin’s complete uncovering. There surely can be nothing beyond this that it can move men to do. But wait! The hidden source of such unspeakable outrage is yet to be uncovered in the most unblushing effrontery of which men blinded in sin are capable. Before we have time to turn away from the cross, behold, men come and stand in the presence of that scene, and with inconceivable insult, seek to make it minister to their pride! They welcome the word that Christ died for men, but they wholly ignore the fact that He died by the hand of men. They stand in the presence of that supreme crime and say: Behold man’s native greatness and innate nobility. His ethical dignity and moral capacity are so great that the “moral influence” of that sacrifice will win them back from their “mistakes” into the highway of moral goodness and heavenly achievement. Man is morally and spiritually capable, but ignorant and wrongly influenced; it only needs the influence of this Man through such a self-sacrificing deed as this to win men everywhere to walk “in His steps.”

Sons of a ruined race, haven’t men sinned enough when they have mauled and murdered the Son of God! Must they stand before that ultimate uncovering of sin and pile such insult mountain high upon such injury! Must they actually force their own unspeakable crime of murder to bring forth for them the sorry and sickening compliments of self-gratulation, in their shameless and insufferable pride! When God points to the death of Christ, He confronts us with the cross by which men slew Him and says: Behold the unshakable proof that the choice of the creature’s will, instead of the Creator’s, has made man so sodden in sin that he drives from his presence infinite purity, holiness and love, even though he has to become the murderer of God to do it! And you who read these lines, if you are living in the choice of your own will instead of God’s, are standing at this moment with that crowd of murderers. For they put Him as far out of His universe as they could get Him, and you are doing the same thing in keeping Him out of your heart. This is not said to deny that there is greatness in man, but to magnify the greatness of his sin. Man’s capability must be great to have the capacity to sin against God. But what have we in greatness, much or little, that we have not received from the very God against whom it is pitted? It is the monstrous climax of man’s God-given greatness, given over to sin, that causes him to stand before that cross and assume a pose of commendable nobility by actually seeking to explain away his sin and diminish his guilt, thus degrading his greatness to its lowest limit.