Good Friday Devotional '24 "...to despise no one, despair of no one, because Christ despises none and despairs of none..."

 

For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps:

“Who committed no sin,
Nor was deceit found in His mouth”;

who, when He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously; who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.  For you were like sheep going astray, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

1 Peter 2:21-25

 

When the tempest comes; when affliction, fear, anxiety, shame come, then the Cross of Christ begins to mean something to us. For then in our misery and confusion we look up to heaven and ask, “Is there any One in heaven who understands all this? Does God understand my trouble?” Then, does the Cross of Christ bring a message to our heart such as no other thing or being on earth can bring. For it says to us, God does understand thee utterly; for Christ understands thee. Christ feels for thee; Christ feels with thee; Christ has suffered for thee, and suffered with thee. Thou canst go through nothing which Christ has not gone through. He, the Son of God, endured poverty, fear, shame, agony, death for thee, that He might be touched with the feeling of thine infirmity and help thee to endure, and bring thee safe through all to victory and peace. 

On the torturing Cross Christ prayed for His murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And this is the character many a man may get in the dark deep. To feel for all, to feel with all; to rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep, to understand people’s trials and make allowances for their temptations; to put oneself in their place till we see with their eyes, and feel with their hearts, till we judge no man, and have hope for all; to be fair and patient and tender with everyone we meet; to despise no one, despair of no one, because Christ despises none and despairs of none; to look on every one we meet with love, because they too may have been down into the deep….

 

CHARLES KINGLSEY

Good News of God ~1883

 

Midwinter Lenten Devotional '24 ~The Cross of Christ

 

On a hill far away, stood an old rugged Cross
The emblem of suffering and shame
And I love that old Cross where the dearest and best
For a world of lost sinners was slain

 

Oh, that old rugged Cross so despised by the world
Has a wondrous attraction for me
For the dear Lamb of God, left His Glory above
To bear it to dark Calvary

 

In the old rugged Cross, stained with blood so divine
A wondrous beauty I see
For the dear Lamb of God, left His Glory above
To pardon and sanctify me

 

So I'll cherish the old rugged Cross
Till my trophies, at last, I lay down
I will cling to the old rugged Cross
And exchange it some day for a crown

George Bennard

 

 

 

Whatever may be the mysteries of life and death, there is one mystery which the Cross of Christ reveals to us, and that is the infinite and absolute goodness of God. Let all the rest remain a mystery so long as the mystery of the Cross of Christ gives us faith for all the rest. Faith I say; for God Himself has taken upon Himself the task of solving it; and Christ has proved by His own act, that if there be evil in the world, it is none of His, for He hates it, fights against it, and He fought against it to the death. The Cross says, Have faith in God. Ask no more of Him, “Why hast Thou made me thus?” Ask no more, “Why do the wicked prosper on the earth?” Ask no more, “Whence pain and death, war and famine, earthquake and tempest, and all the ills to which flesh is heir?” All fruitless questioning, all peevish repinings are precluded henceforth by the death and passion of Christ.

 

Dost thou suffer? Thou canst not suffer more than the Son of God. Dost thou sympathise with thy fellow-sufferers? Thou canst not sympathise more than the Son of God. Dost thou long to right them, to deliver them, even at the price of thine own blood? Thou canst not long more ardently than the Son of God, who carried His longing into act, and died for them and thee. What if the end be not yet? What if evil still endure? What if the medicine have not yet conquered the disease? Have patience, have faith, have hope, as thou standest at the foot of Christ’s Cross, and holdest fast to it, as the Anchor of thy soul and reason, as well as of thy heart. For however ill the world may go, or seem to go, the Cross is the everlasting token that God so loved the world, that He spared not His only begotten Son, but freely gave Him for it. Whatsoever else is doubtful this as least is sure, that God must conquer, because God is good; that Evil must perish, because God hates Evil, even to the death. 

  

CHARLES KINGSLEY

Westminster Sermons ~1883