30. Chapter 5: The Cross in the Epistles
The Cross in the Epistles
Chapter 5
We turn to the Cross in the Epistles. As an illustration of the teaching of the cross in the epistles I would turn your attention to the First Epistle of Peter. In1 Peter 5:12you will get the reason for writing the epistle: “By Silvanus, a faithful brother unto you, as I suppose, I have written briefly, exhorting, and testifying that this is the true grace of God wherein ye stand.” The Jewish Christians were living in difficult days. Persecution made it very easy to yield to the temptation to fall away, and the apostle therefore speaks to his readers here of their standing ground in the true grace of God and exhorts them to stand fast.
Peter’s purpose in writing this epistle is to bring to our knowledge this fact: that in the Old Testament and in the New Testament alike the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ are the center of the world’s history.
If you will turn to 1 Peter 1 you will find three things there asserted by the apostle. In 1 Peter 1:10-11 (“Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow”), that the sufferings of Christ were the substance of prophecy; in 1 Peter 1:12 (“Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into”), that they were the theme of the Gospel, and also in that verse the study of the angels. The substance of the Old Testament prophecy is the death of Christ, the sufferings of Christ (1 Peter 1:10-11); then in the next verse (1 Peter 1:12) you find it is the theme of the Gospel and the study of the angels.
You will note that where Paul speaks of the death or the cross of Christ, Peter always speaks of the sufferings. Seven times, I think, in his epistle, he refers to this word “suffering.” He tells us in 1 Peter 5:1 verse that he was a witness of the sufferings of his Master; and the fact of them, and the thought of them, and the meaning of them was so deeply impressed upon the mind of the apostle Peter that he fills his epistle with the story of those sufferings and their practical outcome; and you cannot read this epistle without seeing that he wishes to convince his readers that the Christian life can only be viewed rightly as light from the cross streams upon it, and can only be lived perfectly as the sufferings of Christ are having an effective result in spirit and mind and will.
It is very interesting to note the ideas suggested to the mind of the apostle as a practical outcome of the death of Christ. You will find that each one is introduced by the word “that,” “Christ suffered that” such and such a thing should happen (1 Peter 2:2; 1 Peter 3:18; 1 Peter 4:13).