p. 5 | PREACH THE CROSS by T. L. Cuyler

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 19, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 47.

PREACH THE CROSS.

By T. L. Cuyler

[T. L. Cuyler, in Evangelist.]

IN these days no preacher can improve on Paul. To his converts in Corinth he wrote: “I determined to know nothing among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” He also declared: “First of all I delivered unto you that Christ died for our sins.” The “first of all” does not refer to priority of time, for

he had sounded the Gospel taught elsewhere before he struck its keynote among the corrupt idolaters of Corinth. It means that as the principal thing he preached the cross, and salvation by the atoning blood. Whatever else came second, this came first; whatever he omitted, he never omitted the core and marrow of the Gospel.

The atonement is the cardinal doctrine of the New Testament; for the very core of Christianity is the sacrificial death of its divine Founder. All its paths converge on Calvary. The Gospel does not underrate ethics, or the duties of human brotherhood, or the spotless example of Jesus; but the atonement is the sublimest display of the divine love, and it transcends all other revealed truths in saving power. If I could deliver but one discourse to a congregation composed of all nations of the globe, this should be my text, “Christ Jesus died for our sins.” This is the truth that has lain closest and warmest to the Christian heart in every age of the church. This is the touchstone for every pulpit. Wherever the highest spiritual power has been attained, there has been the most faithful preaching of the guilt of sin, and of salvation only through the redemptive work of Christ Jesus on the cross of Calvary. It is the duty of every minister to thunder against injustice and intemperance and fraud and selfishness and hypocrisy and covetousness and every form of wickedness; but the true vantage ground from which to assail them is beside that cross where Jesus died to condemn all sin and to save the sinner.

Sometimes a theory of the atonement is presented in the pulpit, from which every drop of its vital fluid has been drained away. Neither Paul nor Peter nor John would have recognized their doctrine. The one theory of the atonement which meets the tremendous necessities of a world lying in wickedness is this plain, short, simple line: “Christ Jesus died for our sins.” The three great and glorious ideas compressed into this line are—Substitution, Sacrifice, Salvation! Christ became our substitute and suffered for us. Christ became our sacrifice, and laid down His life to take away our guilt; the “Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all!” Christ secures eternal life to every true believer and faithful follower.

The highest success in preaching lies just there. Paul’s keynote, struck amid the idolatries of Corinth and in defiance of Caesar’s lictors at Rome, has been the secret of converting power everywhere. Luther preached this Gospel of atoning blood to slumbering Europe, and it awoke the dead. Amid all his emphasizing and defenses of the divine Sovereignty, Calvin never ignored or belittled the atonement. Cowper sang of it in sweet strains among the water-lilies of the Ouse; and Bunyan made the cross the starting-point for the Celestial City. John Wesley proclaimed it to the colliers of Kingswood and the swarthy miners of Cornwall. Moody’s bells all chimed to the keynote of Calvary. Spurgeon thundered his doctrine of vicarious atonement into the ears of peer and peasant with a voice like the sound of many waters. The heart of God’s church has in all ages held to this as the heart of all Christian theology—“Christ Jesus died for our sins.” This sublime central truth is no more obsolete to-day than yonder sun in the firmament. To every young brother who is about entering the ministry I would point the example of the mightiest of all preachers, and would say to him, “Follow Paul, and plant your pulpit on Calvary, and let the uplifted Christ draw all men unto Him!”