The Cross: Crucified with Christ, and Christ Alive in Me

by J.C. Ryle

Heaven or hell, happiness or misery, life or death, blessing or cursing in the last day – all hinges on the answer to this question: “What do you think about the cross of Christ?”

If the apostle Paul never gloried in any of these things, who in all the world, from one end to the other, has any right to glory in these qualities today? If Paul said, “God forbid that I should glory in anything except the cross,” who should dare to say, “I have something to glory in; I am a better man than Paul”?

Consider what I say again. You may know a good deal about Christ with a kind of head knowledge. You may know who He was, where He was born, and what He did. You may know His miracles, His sayings, His prophecies, and His ordinances. You may know how He lived, how He suffered, and how He died. But unless you know the power of Christ’s cross by experience, unless you know and feel within that the blood shed on that cross has washed away your own particular sins, and unless you are willing to confess that your salvation depends entirely on the work that Christ did upon the cross, Christ will profit you nothing. The mere knowing Christ’s name will never save you. You must know His cross and His blood, or you will die in your sins.[4] As long as you live, beware of a religion in which little is said of the cross. You live in times when this warning is sadly needful. Beware, I say again, of a religion without the cross.

It was not by accident that the crucifixion is described four times in the New Testament. There are very few things that all four writers of the Gospels describe. Generally speaking, if Matthew, Mark, and Luke tell a thing in our Lord’s history, John does not tell it. But there is one thing that all four describe most fully, and that one thing is the story of the cross. This is a telling fact and not to be overlooked.

People seem to forget that all Christ’s sufferings on the cross were foreordained. They did not come on Him by chance or accident; they were all planned, counseled, and determined from all eternity. The cross was foreseen in the provisions for the salvation of sinners. In the purposes of God, the cross was set up from everlasting. Not one throb of pain did Jesus feel, not one precious drop of blood did Jesus shed, which had not been appointed long ago. Infinite wisdom planned that redemption should be by the cross. Infinite wisdom brought Jesus to the cross in due time. He was crucified by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.

People seem to forget that all Christ’s sufferings on the cross were only necessary for man’s salvation. He had to bear our sins, if they were ever to be borne at all. With His stripes alone could we be healed. This was the only payment of our debt that God would accept; this was the great sacrifice on which our eternal life depended. If Christ had not gone to the cross and suffered in our place, the just for the unjust, there would not have been a spark of hope for us. For he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteo...

People seem to forget that all Christ’s sufferings were endured voluntarily and of His own free will. He was under no compulsion. Of His own choice He laid down His life; of His own choice He went to the cross to finish the work He came to do. He might easily have summoned legions of angels with a word and scattered Pilate and Herod and all their armies like chaff before the wind. But He was a willing sufferer. His heart was set on t...

If I listened to the wretched talk of proud men, I might sometimes fancy that sin was not so very sinful. But I cannot think little of sin when I look at the cross of Christ.[4]

Let others, if they desire, preach the law and morality; let others hold forth the terrors of hell and the joys of heaven; let others drench their congregations with teachings about the sacraments and the church, but give me the cross of Christ. This is the only lever that has ever turned the world upside down and made men forsake their sins. And if the preaching of the cross will not do this, nothing will.

Whenever a church avoids Christ crucified or puts anything whatever in that foremost place that Christ crucified should always have, from that moment a church ceases to be useful. Without Christ crucified in her pulpits, a church is little better than a hindrance, a dead carcass, a well without water, a barren fig tree, a sleeping watchman, a silent trumpet, a dumb witness, an ambassador without terms of peace, a messenger without tidings, a lighthouse without fire, a stumbling block to weak believers, a comfort to infidels, a hotbed for formalism, a joy to the devil, and an offense to God.

As the sun that is gazed upon makes everything else look dark and dim, so the cross darkens the false splendor of this world. As honey makes all other things seem to have no taste at all, so the cross that is seen by faith takes all the sweetness out of the pleasures of the world. Continue every day steadily looking at the cross of Christ, and you will soon say of the world, as the poet does – Its pleasures now no longer please, No more content afford; Far from my heart be joys like these, Now I have seen the Lord. As by the light of opening day The stars are all concealed; So earthly pleasures fade away, When Jesus is revealed.[6]

Poem by John Newton.

“The world we live in would have fallen upon our heads, had it not been upheld by the pillar of the cross; had Christ not stepped in and promised a satisfaction for the sin of man. By this all things consist – not a blessing we enjoy but may remind us of it; they were all forfeited by sin, but merited by His blood. If we study it well, we shall be sensible how God hated sin and loved a world.” – Charnock.

“If God hates sin so much that He would allow neither man nor angel for the redemption thereof, but only the death of His only and well-beloved Son, who will not stand in fear?” – Church of England Homily for Good Friday, 1560.

“The believer is so freed from eternal wrath, that if Satan and conscience say, ‘Thou art a sinner, and under the curse of the law,’ he can say, ‘It is true, I am a sinner; but I was hanged on a tree and died, and was made a curse in my Head and Lawgiver Christ, and his payment and suffering is my payment and suffering.’” – Samuel Rutherford, Christ Dying and Drawing Sinners to Himself, 1647.

His Christian Leaders of the Eighteenth Century (1869) is described as having “short, pithy sentences, compelling logic and penetrating insight into spiritual power.” This seems to be the case with most of his writing as he preached and wrote with five main guidelines: (1) Have a clear view of the subject, (2) Use simple words, (3) Use a simple style of composition, (4) Be direct, and (5) Use plenty of anecdotes and illustrations.