BYM ONLINE DESK Blessing English Emagazine April 2019 | Page 7

April 2019 | www.bymonline.org
page 7
Keep Near The Cross
Horatius Bonar
He who would be holy or useful must keep
near the Cross of Christ. The cross is the secret of power, and
the pledge of victory. With it, we fight and overcome. No
weapon can prosper against it, nor enemy prevail. With it,
we meet the fightings without as well as the fears within.
With it we war the good warfare, we wrestle with
principalities and powers, we “withstand” and we “stand”
(Eph. 6:12-13). We fight the good fight, we finish the
course, we keep the faith (2 Tim. 4:7).
Standing by the cross, we become imitators
of the crucified One. We seek to be like Him, men who
please not themselves (Rom. 15:3), who do the Father's will,
counting not our own life dear to us; who love our neighbors
as ourselves and the brethren as He loved us; who pray for
our enemies; who revile not again when reviled; who
threaten not when we suffer but commit ourselves to Him
that judges righteously; who live not to ourselves and who
die not to ourselves; who are willing to be of “no
reputation” (Phil. 2:7), but to “suffer shame for His name”
(Acts 5:41), to take the place and name of “servant,” to
count “the reproach of Christ greater riches than the
treasures in Egypt” (Heb 11:26).
“Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh,
arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever
has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin,” (has “died to
sin,” as in Romans 6:10), “so as to live for the rest of the
time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the
will of God” (1 Pet 4:1-2).
Standing by the cross, we realize the meaning of such a
text as this: “We know that our old self was crucified with
him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing,
so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom 6:6).
The crucifixion of our old man, the destruction of the body
of sin, and deliverance from the bondage of sin, are
strikingly linked to one another, and all of them linked to the
Cross of Christ. Or we read the meaning of another: “I have
been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I
live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me.” (Gal 2:20). Here Paul speaks as completely
identified with Christ and His cross.
As Abraham would, after the strange Moriah
transaction (Gen 22:1-14), look on Isaac as given back from
the dead, so would Jehovah reckon and treat this Paul as a
risen man! Paul is the same Paul and yet not the same. He has
passed through something which alters his state legally, and
his character morally. He is new!
Standing by the cross we realize the death of
the surety and discover more truly the meaning of passages
such as these:
*“For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in
God” (Col 3:3).
*“If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the
world...” (Col 2:20).
*“...that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he
died for all, that those who live might no longer live for