Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 159, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 July 1915 — The Shame of the Cross [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Shame of the Cross

By REV. WM WALLACE KETCHUM Diraaot .i A. PMjul Work Com M-dy BUe laMtute of Chicaao

TEXT—He endured the cross, despising the shame.—Heb. 12:2. The cross, which Christ endured and the shame of which he despised, was

not the idealized and sentimentalized cross of which we hear much today. It was a cross made of roug h- h ewn sticks of timber; an instrument, like the gall .-a s, upon which criminals were executed. . And yet, Christ, we are told; notwithstanding this, despised its shame. What shame? The

shame of being put to death as a common criminal. For it was as such, you will recall, he was condemned to death, and as such he died in the eyes of the law; though he did nothing worthy of death, and Pilate his judge found in him no fault at all. When we apprehend that Jesus Christ, the Holy One of God, suffered the reproach, the dishonor, the contempt, the infamy and ignominy of a common criminal’s execution, we begin to know a little of the shame of the cross. We understand something of what Paul means when, speaking of Christ becoming obedient unto death, he adds, “even the death of the cross.” But there is a deeper shame than that of which we have spoken. It is the shame that came to him thiough dying; his death identified him with the. result of sin, for death is a consequent of sin. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” So, while Christ suffered the shame of dying the death of a common criminal, it was greater shame for him, the Son of God, in whom was no sin, to die at all. The teaching of the philosophers that death is natural to man, is not the teaching of the Bible. The body is not the prison-house of the soul from which escape is desirable. The body and soul united constitute the complete man. This does not mean that when the dissolution of soul and body takes place, the soul does not survive the body. The Scriptures teach it does; but they also teach that man’s complete personality consists* in the union of both soul and body, and that this will be realized at the resurrection of the just. Death then is not natural, but unnatural. It is the resultant of sin, and so for Christ to die was a disgrace, a reproach, a shame. Death had no dominion over Christ; no claim upon him for he was without sin. “No man,” he said, speaking of his death, “taketh my life from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” He alone of all men could say this. Other men die because they must, for "death has passed upon all men.” He became obedient unto death; he yielded up his spirit; that is, he allowed death, the great conqueror of mankind, to overcome him. He suffered its shame. But deep as this shame was, the shame of the cross was still deeper. It was the shame of our sin. For there on the cross, “He bore our sins in his own body;’ - there,- “the Lord laid on hi-m the iniquity of us all;” there, “he suffered for our sin, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God;” there, the holy spotless lamb of God “died for the ungodly.” Thus, "the one who knew no sin,” became identified, not only with the result of sin by death, but with sin, being “made sin for us." It was this, more than anything else, that constituted the shame of the cross of our Lord. Its baseness and dishonor was your sin and mine, which he there put put aWay by the sacrifice of himself. Was it for crimes that I have done. He groaned upon the tree. Amazing pity, grace unknown. And Love beyond degree! I wish we might catch the picture given us of our Lord in the two words “despised” and “endured.” The first word shows him so far above the Rhame of the cross that he, as it were, looked down upon it Literally, the word means “to think down upon;" that is, to think lightly of it. What a wonderful Christ! Because of the joy set before him, he could think lightly of the awful shame of the cross. Truly, our master “came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many.” The other word, “endured,” pictures him as voluntarily, patiently, suffering on the accursed cross. We see him held there, not by the cruel nails that pierced his hands and feet, but .by his own indomitable will and supreme love for us. Human hands placed him there, but divine love kept him there. Surely, his crucifixion from the human side was murder, for with wicked handa they slew him, but on the divine side it was sacrifice, God giving his son to be the savior of the world and the son giving himself that we might have life through him.