01.24. Lessons from Crucifixion

Chapter 24 LESSONS FROM CRUCIFIXION. When Paul said that he was crucified with Christ, he evidently referred to a religious experience very different from, and profounder as a work of grace than regeneration. That he was speaking of the second and subsequent work is evident from the figure he uses, and that which it stands for. In the first place it is well to recollect that the Word of God calls regeneration a birth. If it is a spiritual birth as Christ distinctly affirms it to be, then it cannot be a crucifixion for several reasons.

One is the striking difference in the two figures. We could never understand spiritual things if God likened what is called our conversion, to such widely dissimilar and hopelessly irreconcilable occurrences as a birth and a death. A cradle and a cross are very different objects indeed to look upon; and the sensations born of the two are about as wide apart as it is possible to conceive. Moreover, we do not remember ever to have seen a man get in a cradle, nor has any one on earth ever beheld a baby nailed to a cross. The cradle is too small for the man. The cross is too large for the child. A second reason for seeing the distinctive teaching of the figure, is, that a human being has to be born before he can be crucified. The Spirit calculated on our using the minds God gave us, and that we would remember that birth precedes death, and so, when he was speaking of regeneration or the new life, he was referring to one thing, and when he was dwelling upon crucifixion, that most fearful of deaths, that he was teaching another and very different thing.

Evidently the Spirit was presenting two very dissimilar spiritual facts and occurrences, when he made John say, "To them gave he power to become the sons of God, which were born," etc., etc., and later inspires Paul to write, "I am crucified with Christ." A third fact confirming the thought advanced in this chapter is seen in the peculiar suffering spoken of in the verse when the Apostle says he is crucified. The hasty reader sees the reference to pain, recalls certain moments of anguish and grief that he experienced in seeking pardon or salvation, and hastily concludes that it is another allusion to or description of regeneration and goes on his way. But let this be settled forever by the facts that regeneration or the New Birth are attended with birth throes, but the suffering Paul mentions in Galatians 2:20, are death agonies. There is a vast difference between birth pains and death pangs. The very character of the suffering is different. Then in one, a life is coming in, and in the other a life is going out of the world. Still again, with the birth of the child the suffering is mainly with the mother. And in harmony with this fact, the Bible declares that when Zion travails, sons and daughters will be born unto God. When it comes to death, the dying man has all the pain to himself. Crucifixion puts its every pang undivided on the crucified. Some who are invincibly opposed to a second instantaneous work of grace making the heart pure and holy, have endeavored to find proof of the growth theory, or a gradual work, in the fact that crucifixion itself is not a sudden, but a slow mode of death. Our first reply to this is that if they insist on this feature of the death of the cross, then we insist on their adhering to the figure throughout, and not be longer than six hours, or three days dying on the cross, or obtaining the blessing of holiness. Our second answer is that crucifixion in the sense of being nailed on the wood is one thing, and crucified in the sense of hanging dead on the ghastly tree is another. One has reference to a process, the other to the end. One is beheld in the present tense, the other in the past. The process was over with Paul, and he says, "I am crucified."

Mr. Wesley said that sanctification was a gradual and an instantaneous work. He did not mean to say that some obtained the grace by growth, over against another class who received it in a moment. Indeed, he said he never knew one to obtain the blessing by the first method. He simply taught that man’s part in the matter was a gradual approach, but the work itself, the divine part was instantaneous.

So, just as in crucifixion, there is a dying, and then a death; the limp, unconscious form hanging on the cross declaring that the work is over and done; so in sanctification we behold on the man’s side a painful progress, coming to and ending at last in a moment where God meets the perfectly devoted and consecrated soul, the fire falls, the pangs end, the old man hangs dead, and the blessed and blissful Christian can cry, "I am crucified"

Just as we behold the victim nailed to the cross writhing and twisting in agony for hours, and then suddenly cease from all motion and suffering, having entered upon the rest of death; so we can see, and do see around us today in our meetings, Christians passing through anguish analogous to that of crucifixion, and then suddenly at the altar or elsewhere find an instantaneous relief and deliverance, as sweet as it was sudden, and as abiding as it is profound. groans cease, tears are wiped away, the cramped, kneeling posture is given up, while with a leap of joy they are on their feet with shining face and lips overflowing with happy laughter or shouts of joy. The long, weary struggle is over, and they have entered into the rest that remaineth for the people of God.

These things being so, how perfectly unphilosophical, unnatural and unscriptural it is to hear preachers and teachers declaring to sanctified people that there are other deaths and "deeper deaths" awaiting them. He who proclaims so unreasonable and absurd a doctrine can never have known the crucifixion that Paul speaks of in Galatians, or the death of the old man that so many of God’s people feel to have taken place in their own individual case at the end of a perfect consecration, and implicit faith in the Blood of Christ to cleanse from all sin.

We suspect that such teachers never knew the death of the cross. They were hung up on gum elastic bands and not on nails. They were tied to the beams with ribbons and not transfixed with spikes. They had soothing touches on the head and not thorns driven in the brow. They had sparkling water given at every sigh, and not vinegar and then gall in the midst of bitter cries. The cross was not upright with them, but slanted so as to keep the weight of the whole man off from the suffering members. In fact, the cross must have been a lounge. And the old man did not die, but had a fit. This being so, of course such people must teach a deeper death, for they still feel something tremendously alive in them. But how they discount the blessing of sanctification in doing this. How in addition to that, do they take the old-time attractiveness from it as the perfect rest, the peace that passeth understanding, the joy unutterable and full of glory, the sweet perfection to which we were urged to come as the culminating as well as the ultimate grace of the child of God in this life. With such a pure heart filled with perfect love we were told we were in condition to see God. We had the white garment for the wedding, we even rested on the word that "it is appointed unto men once to die," and that in the destruction of inbred sin, the sting of death itself was gone, and our own personal demise would rather be a happy departure than a painful dissolution. When lo! these teachers tell us that sanctification is a series of deaths; that there are "deeper deaths" all along the Christian journey until the last breath is drawn, and the gates of the tomb receive us.

Such a view makes the holiness evangelist the most remarkable of all undertakers, as he is engaged in repeated burials of the same man. It makes sanctification the most unattractive and undesirable of experiences, as it introduces us to undying death agonies, and deaths that cannot be counted, and each one "deeper" than its predecessor.

It is true that Paul said, "I die daily;" but a mere glance at the chapter in which the words occur, show that he was making no reference whatever to sin. He was speaking of a martyrdom that might happen to him any day. He taught that the sin nature could and should die once for all, while he Paul through the power of such men as Herod, Felix, Festus and Caesar might die any day. The same Paul also wrote that he kept his body under and brought it into subjection. But he did not say that he kept the body of sin in subjection. There is a vast difference between a human body that God made, and "the body of sin" that the devil manufactured. The former is to be kept under; the latter is to be destroyed. The apostle is perfectly clear in his presentation of these two utterly distinct facts. So all these thoughts strengthen the conclusion that there cannot be a "deeper death" in the spiritual life unless we go to hell.

After the blessing of entire sanctification, we may die daily in the sense of humiliations, mortifications, affronts, revilings, slanders and all kinds of private cuts and public shame, but the old man of sin dies once. Not by section and piecemeal, but all over. The real crucifixion is a marvelous quieter, settler and deadener. He who can say with Paul, "I am crucified," makes no announcement for future funerals of the old man.

* * * * * * *