Stay on the Cross

            “Come down from the cross” (Matt. 27:40)

            With these words a sneering crowd taunted Jesus.  But Jesus did not answer.  He took the dare and refused to be moved from His course.

            After all, for Him the cross represented an accomplishment, not frustration and failure.  “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straightened until it be accomplished!” (Luke 12:50)

            With set face Jesus traveled toward Jerusalem and with unhesitating step He marched to the cross.  Not indeed because he disregarded or loved suffering and death, but because of the the joy of the resurrection and ascension, Pentecost and the spread of the church.  Ahead He saw the final victory of the Church and the welcoming of the bride into the New Jerusalem.  These glories so filled His soul that He could endure the cross and despise its shame!

            The Man on the cross had “saved others.”  He had lifted burdens from the weary, given a song to the sad, spoken peace to the troubled and given hope to those whose years were no better than tattered rags.  He had saved the conspirator Barabbas from the cross but He refused to come down.  He clung to the cross because He knew that only by His suffering could come our healing.

            The crowd asked that he demonstrate His faith by descending from the cross.  He proved His faith by staying on the cross.  Only one whose faith is in God and in eternal things can see the gain in the cross.

            There’s only one way to leave the cross; that is to “Come down.”  Christians on the cross prick the world today.  There demonstrations of meekness, self-surrender, of sacrifice for God—all these irritate the world.  The cry about us today is to leave the cross, to join the crowd.  But if we do, fellow believers, will lose the “savor” from the salt; our lives will be unredemptive.  Oh, let us not shrink from the cross; let us rather embrace it, “its shame and reproach gladly bear.”

--George E. Failing