WHEN I SURVEY THE WONDROUS CROSS – I MARVEL AT THE PARADOX:
The third verse says: “See, from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down; Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?”
A “paradox” is “a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition that when investigated or explained may prove to be well founded or true.”
What is the paradox of the cross? That is the place where the love of God and the wrath of God meet. The cross, the pain of the cross, the sorrow of the cross, is where God extends His eternal, matchless love to sinful mankind.
It is the cross that makes so many people see Christianity as foolish. It’s the preaching of the cross that people think is foolish – how can God save man from His sins by someone else dying on the cross? There were people in Paul’s day who thought that was foolish (1 Cor. 1:18) and certainly many people think that way today. In Paul’s day, the cross was a stumbling block to the Jews (1 Cor. 1:23). Paul mentions the “stumbling block of the cross” in Galatians 5:11.
But the paradox is that, yes, through the horrors of the cross, God offers the most beautiful gift to mankind: salvation from sins. God kept His plan a mystery because mankind could not believe it if He were to have told them. God had to do it before man could understand it. Man had to see the wondrous cross before he could understand that the cross is where “steadfast love and faithfulness meet; where righteousness and peace kiss each other” (Psa. 85:10).
We see this paradox in vivid color in the picture of Jesus carrying His cross on the road to Golgotha in Luke 23:26-31.
Jesus is on His way to be crucified, to die for the sins of Jerusalem, and He expresses love and sorrow for the Jews there who will not accept that crucifixion, who will survey the wondrous cross with their own eyes and turn away in disgust for they do not see the love of God expressed for them on that cross.
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WHEN I SURVEY THE WONDROUS CROSS – I DIE TO THE WORLD:
The fourth verse reads: “His dying crimson, like a robe, spreads o’er His body on the tree; Then am I dead to all the globe, and all the globe is dead to me.”
Okay. So, we are looking into the eyes of our Savior, drenched in blood, stinging from the salt in the sweat and blood, and we survey the cross and we realize that nothing else really matters. The whole globe is dead to me and I am dead to the world. My desires, my interests, my passions, my goals are no longer worldly. They have all been bathed in the blood of Christ and they are now being used in service to my Savior.
This process, of course, happens when we are immersed into Christ for it is then that we are immersed into His blood and we die to the world and its passions and lusts. Let us read Romans 6:2-7, especially verses 6-7.
Paul will word it another way in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” We know that Paul was crucified with Christ when he was baptized into Christ, as he writes in Romans 6. So, here, Paul says, “I was baptized into Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” When Paul surveyed the wondrous cross and responded to the loving message of Jesus Christ, His Prince of glory, Paul determined, “the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”
When I survey the wondrous cross, I die to the world.
Paul Holland
