The Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ

by T. Austin-Sparks

Chapter 2 - The All-inclusiveness of the Cross

Due to the poor quality of the audio recording of this message many of the words were difficult to hear. We have put these words into [square brackets] to indicate where the transcript may not be correct.

Can we have a moment or two of silence, lifting our hearts to the Lord, and each one of us making it a very definite matter of prayer that we not only hear the word, but the voice of the Lord.

Lord, it is quite evident from Thine own words and acts that it needs something supernatural to be done in us, in man, in order to hear the voice of God. We may hear the words and miss the voice. We ask that the Holy Spirit will quicken and open these inner ears that we may be able to go from this place quietly tonight saying, 'The Lord has spoken and He has spoken to me.' In Thy great grace and mercy, let it be so, we ask in the name of the Lord Jesus, amen.

Many of you who were here last evening will recall that I intimated that my own burden or message for this time relates to the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I reminded you that in every book of the New Testament the Cross is either explicit or implicit. That is, it is either definitely stated in words or it is implied by what is being set down. But in these four gospels the Cross is historical - an act, an event at a certain time in a certain place in certain circumstances in history.

In the book of the Acts the historic facts became the theme of the gospel for the whole world. And the apostles, the sent ones, were the heralds of the Cross, everywhere preaching Jesus Christ and Him crucified, "We preach Christ crucified". It's the explicit statement made by one apostle. And then we have heard that after the Acts, every following book has some particular aspect and application of the Cross for a particular situation, and it is there that we take up the matter this evening as we come to the letter to the Romans, the letter to the Romans and the Cross as found therein.

Let me say at once, it is not my thought or intention to embark upon an exposition or commentary upon these letters in particular, but taking everything upon this central reality of the Cross, and to note the place and the meaning of the Cross as foundational in these various letters.

The letter to the Romans has a peculiar meaning under the sovereignty of God, though by no means the first of the apostolic writings as to time, the [sovereignty] of the Holy Spirit has seen to it that this letter is given the first place in the arrangement. And that is of peculiar significance, because it is in this letter that we have set forth in solemn and precise and exact statements, in all its power, the whole basis of salvation. In a sublime and profound way, and yet a very meticulously clear way, this letter gives us that basis of salvation upon which the whole of the subsequent superstructure rests.

This is the Genesis of the New Testament, or of the book by that name - the beginning of the Old Testament campaign as the manifold beginning of everything: the beginning of this and the beginning of that, and all the beginnings of everything. It will subsequently be developed in its greater fulness. The letter to the Romans stands in the same position, as it's the, the foundational thing - this will be developed in all the subsequent letters.

I must not be too detailed and take too much time in all this, profitable as it might be, but I will just make this suggestion to you. If you are wanting a profitable line of study of the New Testament, just try or look to see in this letter to the Romans the things which we find in all the subsequent letters. And you will find that they are here in germ form, in a beginning form, and you will be able to trace the subsequent letters back here to this point of departure. And then you get to the final book of the New Testament, the book of the Revelation and you will have the whole Bible summed up, from Genesis to Revelation. Well, that by the way; we will get to our particular message.

Now, this letter, the Cross in the letter to the Romans, this letter, as I have intimated, is comprehensive and all-inclusive. Not to stay to take the time, but just to intimate to you that you might just look into the first eight chapters of this letter and mark the place of the Cross; you'll find that it is not implicit here, it is explicit. Right there it is focussed; definitely and particularly. The Cross has its place in this great letter.

You know, this man and [indecipherable] are a parenthesis of the history of Israel. And then the apostle after that parenthesis [was just to take all that,] take up the whole thing, "I beseech you, therefore, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice" and back to the Cross to complete the whole. This then, is a comprehensive letter in every point. It compasses all dimensions. It will take you back to the "before times eternal", outside of time, before time came in. You'll find yourself there at one point in this letter. It will bring an end to the course of time and then it will take you on beyond time into the eternity yet to be. That's the length of it. It will reach out its arms to embrace all nations, all nations; that is, the whole human race in all its departments as we proceed presently. That is the breadth of it.

It will take you up into the super-mundane, the super-earthly, the [indecipherable] and heavenly realm. That is the height of it. And it will take you down into the uttermost depths of the ultimate consequence: death and dead. That's the depth of it. The length and the breadth and the height and the depth are compassed in this letter. And right at the centre of this universe, in the time and eternity of heaven and of hell, of life and of death, stands the Cross, stands the Cross. Chapters one to five lead up to the Cross in chapter six. Chapter seven is a kind of parenthesis again and then chapter eight leads away from the Cross. The Cross is here; right at the heart of everything in God's universe and in ours.

Let us break that up. We're coming to something very definite soon. We break that up. There is in this letter, as those of you who are familiar with it know quite well, a pursuit to the very last bits and cents, as we say, a pursuit of the Spirit of God through the hand of the apostle in writing in quest of anyone in this whole creation who can stand right with God, who has right standing with God.

That quest is pursued first of all through the whole history of Israel, right up to the time that the apostle wrote this letter and particularly wrote chapter seven; that very difficult and controversial chapter. We'll come back to that.

The whole history of Israel as the nation of religious genius beyond all other nations, with all that we know about the economy of Israel, and all its sacrifices, altars, priests, tabernacles, temples, feasts and everything else, the pursuit is set in motion through all Israel and all Israel's history. The eyes, the linked eyes of the Spirit of God who miss nothing, seeking to find a man, if there be one man in this Adamic race, who is in right and full standing with God. It's a very thorough search. It's even more careful than that search made by the prophet Obadiah. Do you remember?

In the reign of king Ahab, that wickedest of all the kings of Israel, the prophet Elijah called for a drought upon the earth. And as the drought came into effect, and the Lord Himself had tucked Elijah away somewhere - and you know when the Lord hides anything, you'll not find it, and the Lord had hidden Elijah away. And things were becoming so serious that Ahab said to the prophet Obadiah, "You and I will go throughout the whole of Israel looking for that man Elijah. You go that way; I'll go this way." And they did. And there's no doubt that Ahab did his job thoroughly, for whatever he did, it was always evil, but it was always thorough. And Obadiah went his way, a different type of man. And they came back and met and their verdict on their quest was, "No. No Elijah. No Elijah." And it says that Obadiah took an oath of the kingdom that Elijah was not, Elijah was not. Well, I'm not in that story... the next day Elijah appeared and is seen. But the point is, by way of illustration, they searched and scoured the whole kingdom to find that man and they could not find him. He had to take an oath that he could not be found, but that is a mere figment of things compared with these first chapters of the letter to the Romans: the quest of the Spirit of God for one man who stands in rightness of character and nature before God, of whom God could say that he was a man, in the old creation of God, a man who stood right with God.

I'm leaving out Abraham and the patriarchs who were called righteous men, but even so, their righteousness was not in themselves - that's the point. Not in themselves. If they were called righteous, it was the righteousness which was of faith, but in themselves no man could stand before God in all Israel's history. That's Israel: a quest - thorough, complete - and the verdict full and final. We'll come to that.

Then, having searched through all Israel's history and all Israel's multitudes with this vain result, the Holy Spirit turns to the Gentile world and the quest is set going there. The whole of the nations outside of Israel - the same verdict. And when this has been done, God by His Spirit through this apostle's hand could write down the verdict: "There is none righteous, no not one; no, not one!" Hold that for a moment while we take up this man who is writing this, through whose hand and whose spirit came this quest, search, and verdict.

This man is a representative of that most religious of all nations and peoples, and he is representative of the very best - the very best product. Here he is: born of and born into the world as Jewish and as Gentile. A Jew, a Hebrew of Hebrews - a free man of the rest of the world, a Roman citizen, freeborn. He'd go into any province of the world under the Pax Romana, the world dominion of Rome, and have all the rights of a Roman citizen accredited.

Here he is: a universal man on the Hebrew or Jewish side. Hear what again and again he says about himself, both his birth, his heritage, his upbringing, his training, and his triumph in that realm. As a lad, up to the age of twelve, steeped in the law, the Jewish law, steeped in it - to a detail. At the age of twelve the ceremony of adoption as a son of the law, that far he has qualified, and now he graduates into the next phase of things: a son of the law, at the age of twelve. From the age of twelve in the higher classes of Jewish education he sits under the chief rabbi, here, Gamaliel - the most noted and famous of all the Jewish rabbis. He sits at their feet at the age of twelve until he comes to the age of maturity and graduates from the Jewish university as a rabbi and a member of the select Sanhedrin - qualified to the very last point in the Jewish economy, not only intellectually (that, marvellously), but in character, so far as that could make character - most meticulously observing everything of the law according to their standard and way; dedicated. This is the man, if he represented this, [he's] a representative man of the best product of the Adam race.

Read chapter seven of this letter. He has stepped back from chapter six for a moment into that old position of his upbringing and training and pursuit of the law. And he tells you exactly, exactly the truth about his inner life. What he did outwardly was one thing, but what he had come to discover of himself now, through the Cross, is quite another thing. And at the end of chapter seven he sums himself up. It's all personal pronouns, notice, in that letter. It's all personal pronouns: "I, I, I." And he sums it all up. "Oh, wretched man that I..." the great Saul, the great Jewish scholar, the great Pharisee, meticulous Pharisee, "Oh, wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" "There is none righteous, no not one." Not even a man like that.

Now, I'm not exaggerating, mark you, I'm only telling you what's here. I don't think I could set it out as it ought to be, but it's enough to make the impression. That man, representative of the Jewish and the Roman or non-Jewish world, that's the verdict on himself and that's the verdict of God upon that whole regime of Adam; Jewish and otherwise.

Now, what am I getting at? First of all, you can't get to the heart of things with the Cross until you get this clear: that is, the utterness of this letter.

There are three "utternesses" in this letter. That's what I want to get to, but first of all in accordance with what we have seen.

The Utterness of Human Reprobation

Dear friends, let me anticipate the end of this by saying that it takes us almost the whole of our life to accept that as a truth and reality, as differing from a doctrine.

Of course, fundamentalism will accept it. If you're a fundamentalist you do believe in total depravity. That's a tenet in your theology or your doctrine: the depravity of man. You accept that all have sinned, there's no one good, there's none righteous, no not one. Oh yes, alright, alright. Doctrine. But let me say again, to your dying day, perhaps in your last breath, you may not have accepted that fully in your heart, because you'll still be looking for something good in yourself to make you happy and comfortable, to deliver you from introspection and self-condemnation and all that realm of things.

The miseries of this wretched man! You'll be bothered about that to the end unless you come to the heart of things, as we are seeking to do, [indecipherable] and understand clearly the meaning of the Cross. That's the first utterness, you see, the utterness of human reprobation and human disqualification for the presence of God. Yes, every one of us by nature in ourselves, in what we are in ourselves, are disqualified from fellowship with God, from the presence of God. We are by nature reprobate. We'll come to that. That's what this letter begins with. And we'll have to settle it sooner or later, you'll have to settle it, but so far as we in ourselves are concerned, that's where we are.

But there's a second utterness here. It is not only the pronouncement of the judgement and the verdict upon us, upon mankind, it is:

The Relegation of That Whole Humanity From Adam Onward.

The relegation, the exclusion carried out, effected (this is again a thing that you and I have not arrived at as we've got to arrive) carried out; right put out; excluded, relegated.

The illustration of this, you know, is the Jewish economy. Do you remember the scapegoat in Israel? Ah, but have you seen the truth about that scapegoat? The priest takes one of the two goats, and the priest, as representing the whole nation, himself included, laying his hands upon that scapegoat and transferring the sin of the nation, the unrighteousness of the nation, the reprobation of the nation, transferring it to that goat by the laying on of hands. See, identifying the nation with that goat. Keep hold of that.

Oh, typology, yes, but we miss the point so often. Oh yes, there were two goats and one of them was taken and the priest laid his hands upon it and confessed the sins of the people, then took it outside the camp. Away and away and away, ever farther away from the habitation of God, from the habitation of God, from where God was. A speck upon the horizon and then let go. 'Dismissed' is the only word for it. Dismissed from the presence of God, from the habitation of God, from all that has to do with God, dismissed to beyond the horizon: excluded, cut off, shut out. Poor creature, dying afar off from God and all that is of God. That's there in your Bible.

And look again, look again! Look with those larger eyes, you are not seeing one man a priest and one goat. You are seeing all Israel fading out, trailing away behind that goat following to the far, far remoteness of the land of desolation. Forsakenness. That's the nation gone; as God sees it. There's your Old Testament illustration and it's a very powerful one, a very poignant one. That's in the letter to the Romans. And if you study deeper, you'll find so much of the Old Testament in this letter. That's here in effect: reprobation, dismissal, exclusion - you, me, all of us in the humanity of Adam. This is God's exclusiveness. Man's exclusiveness is very often a very different thing and a very evil thing. This is God's exclusiveness, that side of the Cross.

You see this is exactly what the Cross meant: this whole thing, this universal reprobation and this universal disqualification. This universal rejection is focussed in that Cross when one Priest took the sin of the race, your sin and my sin, the sin of the whole race, because there is none righteous, no not one, took that to the cross and cried, forsaken, forsaken of God: "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? I'm the scapegoat driven out from the presence of God". That's one side of the Cross, that's the meaning of the Cross. Oh, it's a terrible side. Thank God, it is only one side, but let's get clear about this: if you're trying to get back into favour with God on your own ground, you'll find there's a barrier that you cannot pass. For a gaping grave of universal size stands between you and God: the grave of the Lord Jesus. That's the second utterness, the utterness of our situation, of man's situation up to the cross. But now, let us breathe more freely, take a deep breath.

There's a third utterness for those who have seen that, who have accepted that, and who have embraced that by faith, that forsakenness of their Representative on their behalf as theirs, for them, for them, and have said, "When that Scapegoat went out from the presence of God I was with that Scapegoat", and said, "When He died, I cried, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? Why hast Thou forsaken me?'". That was your forsakenness, and mine. When we have accepted that as our position and our destiny by nature, and put faith in the Lord Jesus in what He did in His Cross, there's another goat that hasn't gone away. It stayed in the presence of God. There's the other half of things, the other side.

The Utterness of Acceptance Through Faith in the Lord Jesus

Faith that He did all that as us, not only for us; faith that that was you and that was me in that position, in that dour hour on the cross. I was there. It was my penalty. He was my sin. He was my rejection. He bore my sin in His own body on the tree. Blessed be God, He did it as me and for me, and I worship at His feet and believe that.

When we've come to a position like that of faith and oh, again, not a doctrinal position, not a theological position, have you been there? If you have, you know what I am talking about. Then the door is open and there's an utterness of acceptance. I'm standing before God rightly - oh, can it be? Can it be? You? I? To be able to stand upright in the presence of that infinitely holy and righteous One? And without, without bending my head in that awful remorse of rejection, to find in that Beloved One I am accepted, I have right standing. May God make our doctrine, our familiar doctrine, more real. It's going to be so, it's going to be so. We are getting away from our teaching in reality.

Anybody who's been this way knows what a real thing it is. Yes, this very thing, this sixth chapter of the letter to the Romans, it turned my life inside out and upside down and cut it in two, even as a preacher, an organiser of Christian work, at home and abroad, and a preacher with a very large scope of preaching, thinking I was getting on. And then came the crisis. And in that crisis, I said, "Never again will I preach. Never again will I put my hand to Christian work. Lord, I'm going out, I'm going out unless You do something You've never done before." He did it. That's why I'm here now. But it was a terrible thing. I cannot tell you... it was devastation and desolation, the end of everything at that time. It was something, oh yes, and oh, even so, it... although it meant so much, so much and it did mean a lot, it was only a mere fragment, a microcosm of what my Lord and your Lord went through in the crisis of the Cross.

The Cross is something devastating when you really come into touch with it under the hand of God, on the one side. And until some crisis of that kind - I'm not saying that it's got to be in the same way as mine, or Paul's, or others, but something like that has happened or is happening, is in process of happening and you're coming more and more and more to an end of yourself and to despair about yourself, until something like that happens, you're not going to be any good to God. Preach if you like, organize Christian work if you like, and the end? Desolation. Well, that's that. Let's come back to this happier side.

The Utterness of Acceptance

Ah, it's not that you and I are in ourselves any more perfect than we were before, but what is happening? What ought to be happening? And I ask you: is it happening with you? On the one side of your life, your history and experience progressively, you are coming more and more to realise how utterly hopeless a person you are. Are you? Are you? Are you at the point often of giving it all up because of yourself? That's alright, dear friends, that's very good so long as it doesn't stay there.

What is God doing? What is the Holy Spirit doing with us? With you, with me now, in bringing us to this position where, "Oh Lord, unless you take over altogether, I die in despair after all." That's very utter isn't it? Yes, that's on the one side of our history. We are not getting to the place where we can say, "I'm getting better and better every day." That may be alright for meliorism, but it isn't alright for Christianity. I am getting... now, am I getting worse and worse every day? No, I'm not. I never could be worse than ever I was, but I'm coming to discover how "worse" I am. That's bad language, bad grammar, isn't it? Ah, but we must be careful.

And this great man who wrote this letter, yes, he understood what he was writing, tremendously, "Oh, wretched man that I am!" - this man! At the end of his long, full life, poured out for God, at the end he wrote: "Brethren, I count not myself to have attained, neither am I already perfect." Is my ambition still that in that day I shall stand, not having a righteousness of mine own, but the righteousness which is of God through faith in Jesus Christ - right to the end? Depreciation of self and growing apprehension of Christ? Now here arises a point that I would leave you in trouble if I didn't touch upon it.

You see, we've got a devil around us; I don't mean inside. There's this devil that I have called 'the sneak'. We say that lightly, but that's what he is. And you see it, for you have only got to have some kind of reverse in your life - some difficulty, some adversity, some sorrow, some loss, some trouble in family or in business in your life, something that is difficult, hard, and you cannot understand it... for the life of you, you cannot explain it; it's beyond your comprehension and power of understanding at all why the Lord should allow that to come to me, to happen to me, why it should be my lot. So many people haven't got that, don't know anything about that, but why? And there's the sneak right at your ear to say: "The Lord is displeased with you; the Lord is grieved with you. You have upset the Lord and therefore this! This is the Lord, the Lord turning on you. This is, this is an example or an expression of the Lord's disapproval of you." And as he puts that in your ear, it's a lie, and if you listen, and if you take it on, it will not be long before you have called into question all that the Lord Jesus did in His Cross. You will have undercut the very foundation of your new relationship with God and you'll be under a dark cloud, an oppression of accusation. Oh, yes, the fact is that we are still faulty, imperfect, failing! We slip up, we make mistakes, we do wrong and this 'sneak' is always at hand to condemn us, to accuse us, and make us believe and accept that that adversity is the displeasure of the Lord.

Well, what are you going to do about that? Do you know something about that? What are you going to do about it? Are you going to say, "I am faultless; I am perfect. Satan, you have no place at all, because, you see, I have already attained." Are you? Oh, what are you going to do? You will come to this letter and you will see what I have tried to point out about the Cross and our place in it, and what has been done. And with God it's been taken; we have been taken right away. And yet here we are in the reality of an imperfect, faulty life, not sinlessly perfect (forgive me if some of you believe in that, I don't) not sinlessly perfect, capable of failure, but - what? You're on the other side of chapter six now, and you're on the other side of chapter seven now, and the triumphant shout rises to heaven in the presence of the wretched man: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus." I am in Christ Jesus.

There is no condemnation from God. Alright, the devil can do what he likes, but [we shall know]. But here is your difficult point: why is it then that when we make mistakes, we do suffer for our mistakes? Don't you see that you're under a different economy? Under the old economy your mistakes brought judgement on you: condemnation and death. In the new economy of "in Christ Jesus", you make your mistakes... you're not, of course, going to excuse them, "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid." No, you're going to repudiate this. You are going to say, "That was wrong. That was wrong, the way I spoke was wrong, what I said was wrong, what I did was wrong. There's no justification for that. It's wrong, but I confess. I bring it back to the Cross and I say to the Lord, 'Now turn my mistake and my wrong to good account.'" That's the new economy.

The sovereignty of grace is that although we default, it does not bring us under that old judgement and condemnation. The Lord's sovereignty and grace takes up our mistakes and turns them to wonderful account. Have you a history of that? Oh, yes, we've made mistakes. I'm not one of those who thinks that the apostle Paul was infallible and never made a mistake. No, and he wouldn't agree with that. I think I could put my finger upon several big mistakes that he made. Is that heresy? Is that heresy about a life such as his? No, but I do see how marvellously the sovereign grace of God turned those mistakes to account. And the issue, although different from what Paul wanted and expected - very different - nevertheless the issue was more to the glory of God.

Now, I'm almost afraid to take that up because you may dispute my position. I think Paul did make a bit of a mistake, you know, about going up to Jerusalem as he did and when he did, and when he went to the temple and then resulting [in expedience], expedience in the temple; getting back onto old Jewish ground again. Of course, the motive was so good. Oh yes. I think he made a mistake.

And he had written that he would go to Rome; oh, the ambition of his life was to go to Rome and meet the saints there. He got to Rome alright. He got to Rome alright, not as he wanted or expected; in a very different way. But in the sovereign grace of God - what? Those prison letters! Would we be without them? Would you be without Ephesians, Colossians, Galatians, Philippians, and so on? Would you? What the church owes, I was going to say, to that mistake!

Well, if you don't agree with me, I'll try to bear your condemnation! But I do believe that under this new economy in Christ, faults, failures, mistakes (which will be characteristic of us to the end) can be turned to real account for the Lord in His sovereign grace and really, really and truly, no condemnation rests upon us or still holds to us. The utterness of acceptance - that's my point, the utterness of acceptance.

What does Paul say about this? Oh, my dear friends, do you need it to be read again? The utterness of this acceptance after that utterness of rejection, reprobation, and exclusion, how far we are [received]? Well, let's read it. Turn to chapter 8.

Here is a challenge thrown out by this apostle, a challenge thrown out in a threefold: 'who?' "What shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who is against us? He that..." and you're at the Cross. Here they are, right back at the Cross: "He that spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?" Challenge number one.

"Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" Who? Only the devil. And that will be a false accusation. Now, "who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies," that puts us into right standing with Himself. "Who is he that shall condemn, and bring us under condemnation? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God..." - I'm glad he put that in, I'm glad he put that in - why? He's out of reach of the devil and all accusation, and [oh, the Cross again], "at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us".

The third challenge: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" That's the question, the mighty question. And now the apostle embarks upon the impossible answer. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation?" "Oh, but you see, that tribulation came to me because the Lord was against...". Was He? "Who shall lay any charge to God's elect? Shall tribulation?" If you interpret it rightly he will separate you from your enjoyment of the love of Christ anyway. "Shall persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Even as it is written" (here's the Cross in the life of the believer): "For Thy sake are we killed all the day long." Then: "For Thy sake" - then it isn't the Lord against us! "For Thy sake all the day long we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay..." the answer is: "Nay".

Who, who, who? Nay! And what a mighty "Nay" it is! "In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation, nor anything else in the whole creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Is that utter acceptance? Dwell upon it, dwell upon it.

Oh, may the Lord help us by this word, help us to see, to understand, that there will be tribulation, peril, nakedness, sword, hunger, life (that can be a big burden: life), death, height, depth, and anything else you'd like to mention in the whole creation. Yes, Paul gives you long lists of the things that have happened to him. And there's no sign that any one of them, all the shipwrecks and all the other things, brought any sense of condemnation upon him. It may be these things, there probably would have been some of them in every life here if you're going on with God, but the love of Christ, the love which we come into in Christ - that's the point - in Christ - that love is greater than every mentionable force in this universe, including the sneak, the evil one, the accuser of the brethren. That love is greater than all, as the uttermost.

But then the apostle makes his appeal after his parenthesis. He says, "By those mercies of God...", what mercies? "By those mercies of God, I beseech you, present your bodies, that is, your whole selves, a living sacrifice." Put it on the altar of dedication, consecration, utterness, like His burnt offering, completely consumed. Present your body as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable. After all, it's only your reasonable service or your spiritual worship (however you like to interpret the words, or translate them) - utterness for God, for Christ, because of His utterness for us.

[Here at this point] I, after all, feel I have failed to get over to you what I feel about this. Dear friends, speaking out of up-to-date experience... oh, this cruel evil one, this cruel evil one! Days of weakness, perhaps physical weakness, days of outward adversity and trial, days of unfaithfulness and disloyalty on the part of Christian friends, and much, much more. What a cruel enemy he is to try and get in between us and the Lord! So you see, this is only his condemning of me.

We've got to learn something about the Cross, haven't we? Yes, the marvellous thing that has been done by our Lord in the greatness of His Cross, issuing in a love which cannot be nullified by anything in heaven, earth, or hell. God help us to understand. That's the Cross in Romans, very imperfectly presented, but I think you've enough to cope with.

Shall we pray. How often have we sung it and said it, "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all". Oh Lord, break through our inability to grasp, really grasp. Break through this handicap of our inability to apprehend, as we must do, and show us yet more than ever we have seen, how great, high and deep, rolling on, is that love of Calvary for such people as we are. We leave it to Thee, oh Lord, we leave it to Thee. Work, we pray Thee, and send us out from this place under the solemn touch of the greatness of the Cross. For Thy name's sake, amen.