p. 66 | The Joy of the Cross by Cuyler

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 27, 1863

The Joy of the Cross.

By Cuyler

We have just been witnessing that scene—old yet ever new, common yet ever wonderful—of the sufferings and love of Jesus as set forth by the sacramental table. The simple scene took us back to Jerusalem. We were in the "upper chamber," and heard the melting words, "This is my body broken for you." We followed through the midnight silence over the brook Kedron to the olive garden, and listened to the broken utterance, strange, awful, and full of agony, that comes forth out of the deep darkness: "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me." Then we saw the march of mockery through the streets of Jerusalem—the howling mob led on by infuriated Pharisee and Scribe—the heavy toil up the mount—the piercing of nails through tender flesh, too sacred for an angel’s touch—the slow swooning away of the tortured sufferer on a cross dripping warm with the blood that cleanseth from all sin. To our eye there hangs the bruised flower of divine perfection drooping on the cross, while a rabble is foaming with execration before him, while the sun wraps his face in a noonday night, and the affrighted earth shudders with pain at the tragedy of horror.

All this we see, and see no more than this. But to the divine sufferer there appear infinitely other and brighter objects. For through this appalling spectacle, his all-seeing eye looks onward to the glorious results of this bitter agony. And for this joy set before him, he endures the cross and despises all its shame.

To his eye there is a child of sin resting under the wrath of God. He hears the first cry of penitence. He sees that penitent approaching the cross. Sin is confessed there, forsaken there, cleansed away, and the pardoned penitent retires healed and happy. Faith has saved him. He is thenceforth a new man; leads a new life—a life assimilated to the life of Christ. He triumphs over temptation, does valiant battle for truth and righteousness, and crowns his career of beauty and beneficence by a serene death-bed. And this spectacle is a joy before Christ’s dying eyes for which he endures the cross and despises the shame.

But this is a unit only in the calculation. We must multiply this one redeemed soul by tens of thousands, and these again by thousands of thousands. We must add to the saved of one land the saved of all lands. We must add to the saved of the first century the saved of the nineteenth century, with all the countless multitudes interlying the two. Then multiply this stupendous product by eternity! And then we have reached an element, but only one single element, in the joy which the dying Saviour "set before him."

Let us take another element of that promised joy. The one we have just glanced at ultimated on man as a saved and glorified being. Let us now look at the result of Christ’s humiliation on the Saviour himself. He was then in the deepest, darkest valley of the death-shade. But as one who is in the bottom of a gloomy, terrific gorge, toiling up the precipitous mountain side, over jagged rocks, and through tangled thickets, catches, ever and anon, through the o’erhanging forests, a glimpse of the mountain top flashing in the crystal sunlight; so did our suffering Saviour, from the depths of Gethsemane’s gloom, and from under Calvary’s vail of horror, behold far above him the joy of his final exaltation. Then he was hearing but the howls of his persecutors. Soon should he hear the "harping symphonies" of the redeemed in glory. Now his temples are torn with the crown of thorns. Soon should that bleeding brow be encircled with the diadem of universal sovereignty. Now he is the Lamb slain. Soon should he be the "Lamb in the midst of the throne, and his servants shall serve him, and have his name written on their foreheads. On his vesture and on his thigh will a name be written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords." With the luster of all this looked-for glory falling upon his dying eye, the Redeemer, "for the joy set before him, endured the cross, and despised the shame."

In one brief paragraph we cannot enumerate all the innumerable sources of satisfaction which Jesus Christ found in his atoning work—in honoring the divine law, in establishing the divine government, in satisfying the violated justice of God, in humbling the power of the devil, in bringing a multitude of souls from hell to the raptures of paradise. As the young mother bears up under the anguish of the birth-hour—hushing her sobs and wailings with the "joy that a man-child is born" into her bosom and her house—so did the Divine Patience bear the anguish unutterable of the spiritual birth of a "peculiar people" born anew unto God. With that bitter price bought he the ransom of his church. He paid their ransom in the groans and stripes and blood of Golgotha; he shall be repaid in the homage of the white-robed armies of light on the sea of gold like unto pure glass.

How many an earthly cross is endured under the inspiration of the joys that cross shall bring! How many a patriot-soldier has beheld through the tears of parting with wife and children—as through a crystal lens—the triumph from afar of liberty and right! How often, amid the half-waking visions of his midnight bivouac, he catches glimpses of victorious standards borne homeward, garlanded with the broken fetters of the ransomed, and hailed with the benedictions of a liberated people. Such are the joys of the Christian reformer, when his every blow against the Bastiles of oppression and wickedness arouses the howls of the envenomed Cerberus within. Such is the sweet solace of the philanthropist, who, over thorny paths, goes about doing good. These are the inspirations which have sent every true missionary to the lonely toils of heathen shores; every martyr to his solitary cell, or to the bloody crown of martyrdom. It was for the joy set before them—the joy of pleasing God, and of receiving the final "well done, faithful servant"—that the cross was taken up and cheerfully borne unto the end.

As we withdrew from that sacramental table this day, methought I heard a voice, sweet and sad exceedingly, that said unto us, "For the joy set before me, I am enduring this cross, despising its shame. Whosoever of you, will be my disciple, let him too take up the cross and follow me. For whoso will not take up his cross and come after me, is not worthy of me."