Come Down From the Cross!

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 14, 1915

“Come Down From the Cross!”

THESE were, perhaps, the most insidious, and, withal, the most cruel words addressed to the Master during his brief stay in our sinful world. They were spoken at a time when he was suffering the greatest physical pain, the most intense mental agony, and supreme sorrow of soul. Surely, the invitation was one of the most alluring and the most accursed that could have come to man or God.

Little did his tormentors dream that it was easily within his power to come down from the cross, and to smite them, one and all, with everlasting death. He might have willed, and in a single second all the armies of heaven would have come to his rescue. He could lay down his life; but neither man nor devil could take it from him. According to his own will, he came to the cross, and out of a boundless love for lost creatures, endured the shame and death of the cross.

As to the Master in the long ago, so to his children today comes the cry of the centuries, “Come down from the cross!” Let the young man strive to live the pure and noble life, and the Christless throng will hiss in his ears the same satanic words. The plea to the young man of today is to avoid distinctive piety, and be as others about him. “Why should you be different from the rank and file?” is continually dinned in his ears. Day by day he is deafened by the din and roar of deviltry, and his eyes are often blinded by the glare of gilded sin. Happy, thrice happy, the young man who, like his Saviour, can resist the tempter’s cry and bear his cross to the end of the journey.

To the poor girl, working for a mere pittance, comes the seductive cry, “Come down from the cross!” “Why,” says the tempter, “should you plod on in poverty, while others have the luxuries and pleasures of life?” Come down from the throne of honor and virtue, is the ceaseless song of the satellites of sin. As never before, sin proffers its premium to the storm-tossed soul.

Thank God, Christ bore the cross, and dared to die for us that we might live for him. His death on the cross glorified every cross we are called upon to bear for him. As he endured the cross, despising the shame, for the joy set before him; so may we, for the joy that awaits us in his presence. Let us toil on till the end of the day; and by and by it will appear that our dreaded crosses have become glittering diadems in the crown of life.—Western Recorder.