"To compel the criminal to bear the wood upon
which he was to be impaled, was one of the severest elements of
degradation in the Roman punishment of crucifixion. To this our Lord was
subjected, "And He, bearing His cross, went forth." Little did they dream,
as they bound the fatal wood upon His shoulder, by whose power that tree
was made to grow, and from whom the beings who bore Him to the death drew
their existence. So completely was Jesus bent upon saving sinners by the
sacrifice of Himself, He created the tree upon which He was to die, and
nurtured from infancy the men who were to nail Him to the accursed wood.
Oh the depth of Jesus's love to sinners!"
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"Your Lord knew what it was to droop beneath the cross, and do you
think that He has no regard, no compassion, no sympathy with you at this
moment, as, weary, exhausted, and faint, you bear the load God has laid
upon you, carry the cross Christ has imposed, toiling on in obedience,
suffering, and service?" The Foot Of The Cross
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"Every view of our Lord's humiliation is a view
of His love." The Foot Of The Cross
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"When our blessed Lord traveled to Calvary, weary and faint beneath
the cross, there was a sorrow in His heart, a moral crucifixion of the
soul, greater and severer far than this- the sorrow and the weight which
the transfer of all His people's transgressions to Him, as their
Substitute and Surety, involved... The sorrow had not been His by
experience- had not the sin been His by imputation. Thus our Lord endured,
not the punishment only, but the actual sins of His people."
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"What injustice would there be in punishing the
innocent for the guilty, had not the innocent party stood in the place of
the guilty party. This our Lord did. Substitution is the great doctrine of
the gospel- the substitution of the innocent for the guilty."
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"The teaching of the Bible is not, as some suppose, that we lay our
sins upon Christ- that were a difficult, an impossible act, but the
teaching is, that Jehovah laid our sins upon Him. "The Lord [JEHOVAH] has
laid upon Him the iniquity of us all." The Father did this in His
everlasting love, from all eternity. In the eternal purpose of the Triune
God the sins of the elect were laid upon Jesus, and He undertook to bear
and die for them. If God the Father had not laid our sins upon God the
Son, no power of ours had ever prevailed to effect the task. In
accomplishing our reconciliation, Christ acted for God on the one part,
and for man on the other. And if God had not consented that His people's
transgressions should all meet upon Christ, actually binding upon the
sacrificial victim with His own hands the burden, there had been no
reconciliation. Hence our salvation, with all the blessings that flow from
it- Jehovah the Father laying upon Jehovah the Son His Church's sins."
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"Behold in faith the sinless, spotless Lamb of
God as having already borne that weight, as having suffered for those
sins, as having died for those transgressions, and accept the precious
truth that it was God's eternal love that laid them all on Jesus, and that
nothing is left for you to do but to believe in Jesus, that He saves to
the uttermost all that come unto God by Him."
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"If God has laid your sins upon the Son of His love, you may rest
assured that He will never lay them a second time upon you; since, if
Christ has borne them and atoned for them to Divine justice, they never
again can be found."
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"God will not save the sinner at the expense of
His honor, or exercise mercy at the sacrifice of justice."
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"God the Father so loved that He gave His Son- God the Son so loved
that He gave Himself- and God the Spirit so loves that He takes of the
things of Jesus and shows them to us."
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"Christ was not crucified in secret, but openly
in the sight of heaven and earth; and His true disciples, not ashamed of
Him and His cross, of His truth and of His people, but coming out of the
world, separating themselves from its worldliness and its religion, are
openly, manfully, and meekly to take up His cross and follow Him; not
ashamed to own themselves the disciples of that Savior whose life was
poverty, whose kingdom was not of this world, whose first apostles were
fishermen, and whose death was that of a Roman slave upon the cross."
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"The religion of Jesus involves the bearing of a cross."
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"Persuaded, as we are, that the foot of the
cross is the nearest spot to Heaven, that Heaven's choicest blessings are
found only there; that, beneath its warm sunshine the holy fruit of the
Spirit ripens, and that under its sacred shade the sweetest repose is
found; that, never is the believing soul so near to God, in such intimate
fellowship with Christ, more really under the direct teaching of the Holy
Spirit, as when there, we would sincerely employ every scriptural argument
and put forth every persuasive motive to allure the reader to this
hallowed spot, assured that, once he finds himself in believing, loving
adoration at the foot of Christ's cross, he has found himself at the focus
of all divine glory, and at the confluence of all spiritual blessing."
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"Standing by the cross! -- it is the privileged position of the few
and not the many." The Foot Of The Cross
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"Jesus is not known, His cross is not
recognized, His love is not felt in the walks of worldly gaiety and in the
haunts of carnal pleasure." The Foot Of The Cross
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"You cannot, my reader, mingle with the world and maintain at the same
time spiritual nearness to the cross. The cross is the crucifier of the
world, the death of sin. Beneath its awful shadow, brought to its sacred
foot, the world's glory pales, sin's power is paralyzed, and Satan, the
arch-tempter, recoiling from its brightness and writhing beneath its
death-bruise, relinquishes his victim, and retires, defeated and
dishonored, to his own place." The Foot Of The Cross
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