FACT AND GOSPEL by Alexander Maclaren

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Apr 25, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 17.

FACT AND GOSPEL.

By Alexander Maclaren

PAUL turns a historical fact into a historical Gospel by the common term or explanation which he appends to it—Jesus Christ died; a beautiful story, a touching martyrdom; but if that is all you have to say, it is no more a Gospel than any of the obituaries in tomorrow's newspapers will be. He died. Yes, and we are to take that fact apart from all theory; as they tell us nowadays we ought to do, as being the Gospel for the world? There is no power in it, and there never has been; and there never will be a quickening, elevating, cleansing, life-giving power in a so-called Gospel, however it may be adorned, which begins to falter and stutter when it goes on to say, “died for our sins.”

There is only one way by which it is possible that Christ's death should be regarded as being for our sins, and that is, that it takes them away because He is the Lamb of God whose sacrifice expiates the sin of the world, and because He imparts His blood, the principle of His life, to all those who open their hearts to receive Him, and that thence it pulsates through their veins and cleanses them from all sin.

And so, dear friends, a Gospel without a Cross is a Gospel without power, and the one thing that the church needs is not a mere narrow, traditional repetition of old-fashioned formulas consecrated by antiquity, and made weak sometimes thereby, but a fresh, vital, ever-renewed apprehension of the eternal fact,—which is young through all the ages, and through all the ages is the fact on which the world's redemption is built,—Jesus Christ died for our sins, and rose again the Conqueror and the King.—Alexander Maclaren.