2.03.08. No cross, no crown

VIII. NO CROSS, NO CROWN. The sufferings unto Christ, and the glories after these.’’ — 1 Peter 1:11

MARK now the junction of the second link with the third, — the relation between “the sufferings unto Christ” and “the glories after these.” The connection here is as deep and as significant as in the other case. There are many glories in heaven and earth not specially connected with the sufierings of Christ. “ There is a glory of the sun, and a glory of the moon, and a glory of the stars.” The various gradations and tribes of living creatures, with their members and faculties, wonderfully made, are evidences of the Creators wisdom and power. But none of these have any place here. This is a glory of a dififerent kind displayed on another sphere, — a glory that excelleth. The distinguishing characteristic of this glory is that it springs from the sufferings of Christ, as flowers and fruit spring from the root of a living tree. Peter deals here exclusively with those glories thai “ follow “ the sufferings of Christ. No cross, no crown.

Although there had been no cross, there would have been a gloiy to God from a fallen world. Righteous judgment consuming all the guilty would have been a glory of its kind, but not the specific glory that springs from the atoning death of Christ. The honour to God that results from destroying the works of the devil, and redeeming the fallen family — magnifying the law, and yet setting free the transgressors — cannot come before the cross, cannot come without the cross.

It is fitted at once to inspire us with awe and to fill us with gladness, to observe how great a place the suffering of an innocent substitute holds in the Scriptures from their commencement to their close. In the Old Testament mainly by symbol, in the New mainly by direct revelation, this one theme pervades the whole Bible. Take this away, and you leave the book like a web when the warp-threads have all been drawn out,— not a web at all, but a heap of tangled threads. Those who cling to Christianity but reject the cross, labour in vain. They can extract no glory from its precepts and its examples if they take away the “ redemption by his blood; “ for all the precepts and examples are built on that one foundation.

Among the apostles, Peter was peculiarly qualified to teach this doctrine. He received it in an extraordinary way.

Besides the ordinary method of instruction by his own word, the Lord burnt this truth into his heart by the most terrible rebuke that he ever addressed to friend or to foe. When Peter, under the influence of true human tenderness, indeed, but also of carnal human pride, ventured to deprecate the dying of the substitute, saying, “ Far be this from thee, Lord,” the Master, not content to show him his mistake as on other occasions of error, flashed in his disciple’s face that flaming fire of reproof, ’’Get thee behind me, Satan.” It was thus that he was moved with indignation when any one, either from open enmity or mistaken love proposed to take away the cross, and so make impossible the crown. Seeing the end from the b inning, the Lord kept in the covenanted course — strove lawfully, that he might win. “For the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross;*’ knowing that if the cross were not endured, the glory could not follow. On another occasion he gave his own suffering the same fundamental place, although circumstances rendered the expression more gentle. When two of his disciples proposed to introduce him to some Greeks, he declined; and explained the reason why he would not consent to the interview. The cultured Greeks, hearing of his fame, would consent to be taught by the prophet of Nazareth, and carry light from him to their own classic shores. But, like their representatives in modern times, they would accept the teaching of this prophet, and count it enough. On these terms he refused to speak. His answer — sent at secondhand — was, “ Except a comof wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it fall into the ground and die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” This is precisely the lesson that Peter teaches in our text. The fruit must spring from the dying of the seed; the glories must follow the sufferings of Christ. That song of white-robed worshippers around the throne is a glory to God in the highest; but the glory sprang from the cross, for these are they that have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. The offence of the cross has not yet ceased. The extraordinary fulness with which the atonement is taught in Scripture, in connection with the persistent rejection of it by the wisdom of this world, constitutes the evidence of inspiration. The architect who laid the foundations of that harbour-wall so deep and so broad — deeper and broader than any passer-by would have deemed needful — must have known the strength of the currents below and tempests above to which, at certain seasons, his structure would be exposed. The sufferings of the innocent substitute in the room of the guilty occupy a place for depth and breadth in the Scriptures corresponding to the strength of the wild current that rushes against them in modern times.