I have used this passage by Oswald before, but I feel it is one that needs to be read more than once. Not only read, but ingested that the fragrance of Christ may fill us so entirely that we might grasp the enormity of what the cross was really about. If you follow a crossless gospel or your church is taking you the way of a crossless gospel, run far away as far as you can from it – it cannot and will not bring you salvation dear reader. There is only one way for salvation under the heavens and it is God’s way alone for His glory alone.
1 Corinthians 1:18
[ Christ the Power and Wisdom of God ] For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
THE COLLISION OF GOD AND SIN
Oswald Chambers – My Utmost for His Highest“Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” 1 Peter 2:24
The Cross of Jesus is the revelation of God’s judgment on sin. Never tolerate the idea of martyrdom about the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross was a superb triumph in which the foundations of hell were shaken. There is nothing more certain in Time or Eternity than what Jesus Christ did on the Cross: He switched the whole of the human race back into a right relationship with God. He made Redemption the basis of human life, that is, He made a way for every son of man to get into communion with God.
The Cross did not happen to Jesus: He came on purpose for it. He is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The whole meaning of the Incarnation is the Cross. Beware of separating God manifest in the flesh from the Son becoming sin. The Incarnation was for the purpose of Redemption. God became incarnate for the purpose of putting away sin; not for the purpose of Self-realization. The Cross is the centre of Time and of Eternity, the answer to the enigmas of both.
The Cross is not the cross of a man but the Cross of God, and the Cross of God can never be realized in human experience. The Cross is the exhibition of the nature of God, the gateway whereby any individual of the human race can enter into union with God. When we get to the Cross, we do not go through it; we abide in the life to which the Cross is the gateway.
The centre of salvation is the Cross of Jesus, and the reason it is so easy to obtain salvation is because it cost God so much. The Cross is the point where God and sinful man merge with a crash and the way to life is opened – but the crash is on the heart of God
How gloriously true these words are and how sad that we so often preach a crossless salvation. I think of how often we have robbed God of His glory by preaching another gospel. A gospel in which the son of man need not have been crucified at all. A gospel where man’s inner goodness earns His salvation, a gospel without a cross.
As I read these words I am mysteriously drawn to the wonder of God, and His majesty and grace once again.
Bless you..
Tim