Nature hasn't wanted to hide its secret. But for thousands of years sinful man trod the soil of this planet without seeing the most simple and elemental secret written there—the way of the cross.
The farmer cast seed into the ground to produce his daily food without realizing the lesson each seed would teach him: that fruitful life comes only through surrender of life to death, so a new creature can come forth.
When at last a sinless Youth trod our soil, day after day He knelt upon it to pray to His Father for strength and wisdom to bring to man the answers to our questions: How can the problem of death be solved? I low can the human race be redeemed from extinction? How can bad people become good?
His amazing discovery
As creator, Jesus had written the book of nature with His own hands. Now, as a man, he sought to understand it, to draw from its mysteries a lesson that would point others to the only way of life—the way of the cross.
Later, when visitors from Greece asked to see Jesus, he answered them: "The hour has come that the Son of man should be glorified. ... Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it; and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life." "I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to myself. This he said, signifying by what death he would die." (John 12L23-25, 32, 33)
The seed that seeks "security" laid up in a vessel on a shelf comes to nothing because in cherishing its precious "self" it "remains alone". Though without fault, only that seed conquers death that finds a lonely grave within the darkened earth. Only by dying can it bring forth "much fruit".
A tiny seed teaches a powerful lesson!
To the sinless Youth seeking to discern the mystery, each flowering petal, each towering forest tree, bespoke a Gethsemane-like sacrifice for some little seed that died alone in the earth. What glory out of all proportion to its sacrifice does the tiny grape seed attain in the heavy vines laden with purple clusters of fruit! So, the Son of God knew, would his sacrifice become the means of "bringing many sons to glory" (Hebrew 2:10).
Through his young soul surged a mighty commitment: He would count Himself a "seed" and cast His security and all that was precious to Him forever into the "soil" to die. Thus He drew from nature the elemental principle, previously undiscerned, that led to His wondrous cross, the secret weapon that vanquishes death.
It doesn't matter whether Jesus as a boy fully understood that His sacrificial death would assume the form of a Roman crucifixion. What is important is that this ancient criminal death, the most shameful and spectacular, was the best way for the whole world to "see" the demonstration of his sacrificial love. For him, to "fall into the ground and die" as a "seed" was more painful and bitter than enduring a mere physical death. The apostle Paul suggests a great contrast between "the death on the cross" and ordinary death (Philippians 2:8). The full measure of ultimate death, the real thing that is infinitely more than the "sleep" we think of as death, is despair and shame to the uttermost. Jesus' cross embraced that full measure.
But today the cross means little to us, because history has secured an almost complete reversal of values. Once suggesting the most ignominious and degrading torture a human being could endure, a death almost too terrible for even a demon to merit, the cross is now the world's most honored emblem.
The reason for such a transformation in value lies deeper than a mere fortune of history.
No hero worship centered in a martyr's death could secure the awesome appreciation multitudes of intelligent people feel for Christ's cross. To discover the reason for this appreciation is the purpose of this book.
The cross touches the tender nerve of our deepest, inmost need
Whether or not we profess to be religious, we need only a glimpse of its significance in order to be aware that there is something within the depths of our being which responds. The truth of the cross awakens strange overtones of appreciation, chords within human nature that nothing else can touch. History points to its own climax and objective when this truth shall at last penetrate the awakened conscience of every human being on earth.
Everyone knows that a tender tie binds his soul to Calvary because the One who died there is so close to him as to be almost himself. There can be no sympathy with anyone else on earth so close as his sympathy with us and our sympathy with him while he hangs on his cross. Since Christ died for all, "they all share in his death" (2 Corinthians 5:14). The truth-seeker knows this, and the truth-evader cannot avoid a confrontation with the truth he or she seeks to reject.
Believer or unbeliever, everyone will likewise ultimately know the power revealed at the cross. "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to myself", says the Crucified One. We may choose to resist this "drawing" felt within our souls, but before any of us can possibly suffer the pain of being lost, we will be obliged persistently to resist. Rejecting love, "all those who hate me love death", Christ says (Proverbs 8:36).
But if we choose not to resist, we are "drawn" to Christ through his cross
A million devils, opposing through all the circumstances of life, are as powerless to counteract this drawing as is a thread to restrain a surging battleship. Jesus' words to the inquiring Greeks can be understood only as a claim to universal power over the hearts of all people through the uplifting of his cross. No, it is not a claim that all will be saved, but that all will feel in some measure the drawing power of the cross, some to yield, and others perversely to resist.
There is an almost irresistible charm in Christ's cross
That is it? Something invests Christ's cross with an appeal to the one who pauses to contemplate its meaning. If its Victim were a fanatical zealot or deranged mystic with a pitiable delusion that he was divine, or if he were merely a good man tragically murdered, his death would make no more lasting impression on recurring generations than a martyr dying or the assassination of a statesman. Mankind would soon forget. The Victim's claim to be God is what accounts for the timeless appeal of His death.
But how can we know that he is divine? Is our faith rooted merely in tradition or superstition? Is our desire for eternal reward so strong that we are willing to assume the incredible in order to escape from the hard world in which we live?
A glimpse of the cross is better than all the labored arguments employed to prove that Jesus is divine. Once discern the nature of the love (agape) revealed there, and the Victim stands out clearly as none other than the Son of God. Only "God is love (agape)." (1 John 4:8) Human love alone could never stage or invent the demonstration we see there. The quality of love revealed is self-emptying, infinitely beyond our calculating, self-centered human love which easily fails test. Every one's heart convicts him that such agape must come from God alone, and that the hostility which murdered the Victim there was in essence our own "enmity against God" (Romans 8:7). Jesus' agape carries its own built-in witness to prove its credentials are divine. That love was unearthly. No philosopher, poet, playwright, in thousands of years had dreamed of such a love.
This love sends the appeal of the cross home to human hearts in the awareness that the One who died thereon is every person's truest and closest relative, the unfailing Friend or Elder Brother who has always loved us when we were most inclined to hate ourselves, the Companion who has remained with us in our shadows and believed in us when we doubted and disowned ourselves.
Every person has at times been faintly conscious of this brightest of all hopes—that Someone trusted him and believed in him while knowing the fullness of all his guilty secrets. Sweeter than the words "I love you" is the assurance, "I believe in you; I trust you all the way; I risk everything on your future."
No merely human voice could speak such assurance to us!
Since we know our sins are infinite, only an infinite forgiveness and trust could so encourage us. That everyone has heard this Voice of hope and encouragement is evidence to us all that the Son of God has come in our "flesh". We may resist and drown the Voice, but if we listen to it, we will be impelled to follow him.
The Voice that speaks to our hearts and the truth written in nature—both disclose the heavenly origin of the principle of the cross.
This little book makes no pretense of reaching beyond a search for the cross. When we conclude our visit together, the search will have only begun for us both. The vast reservoir of truth yet unrealized is a pledge that there must be an endless life to come that will be devoted to I quest for the meaning of that infinite sacrifice. Our search will grow into the science and song of the redeemed throughout eternity.