1199. A Startling Sequence

A Startling Sequence

"Behold, I Paul say unto you, that, if ye receive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing" (Gal_5:2).

There are two things which are bound to happen when the offense of the Cross ceases.

1. "Christ shall profit you nothing." Whenever an individual steps away from Calvary's Cross he steps away from the Christ of Calvary. There is no approach whatsoever, save the approach of the Cross. With the Cross gone, Christ is gone. There is no profit in Him if we are seeking profit in the things of man.

Some may be glad to give up the Lord, but they must remember that the Word of God plainly says, "No man cometh unto the Father but by Me." If we give up the Cross we give up Christ and if we give up Christ we are Godless, graceless, homeless and hopeless. This is all set forth for us in the second chapter of Ephesians.

"Oh, to have no Christ, no Saviour,

How dark the world must be,

Like a steamer tossed and driven

On a wild and shoreless sea."

If we have not Christ our names are not written down in the Lamb's Book of Life.

If we have not Christ we will have no part in the rapture when Christ comes again.

If we have not Christ we will have no place in the Holy City.

If we have not Christ, it will ever be dark, without one ray of light; irrecoverably dark, total eclipse.

If we have not Christ we will hear God's "Depart from Me." The everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels, will be our lot.

We may have religion, but if we have not Christ we are lost, irrecoverably lost.

2. "Ye are fallen from grace." "Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall profit you nothing. * * Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the Law; ye are fallen from grace" (Gal_5:2-4).

The Cross stands for mercy. He who refuses Christ crucified refuses mercy. The Cross stands for favor to the guilty; it stands for the grace of God reaching down and lifting up the undeserving and the unworthy. He who has no Christ crucified, has fallen away from grace; He leaves God without any method through which He can save him from his sin; he cuts God off from saving love and grace.

The story is told of a young man, who had broken his mother's heart and killed her with grief, and who had just returned from the funeral. The father had pled with him to stay at home that night, but the boy in anger had said, "No, I must go to meet my friends." Then the father threw himself across the threshold saying: "Son, if you go, you go over my body." Without a moment's hesitancy the profligate leaped over the body of his father and went out into a night of carousing sin.

This is just what a sinner does. God, the Father, throws the Cross, the consummate expression of His love, the only method by which the sinner is saved, between the sinner and gaping hell. But the sinner leaps past, and spurns the Cross. That which he has refused can be of no profit to him. God loved and gave His Son upon the Tree, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring the sinner to Himself. The sinner spurns that Cross, and therefore, his sins remain.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR