11. Ashamed of the Gospel
11
Ashamed of the Gospel
…There is an inwardness, and there is an absoluteness, and there is an abidingness, and there is an exclusiveness in the cross of Christ, that is neither easily preached, nor easily believed, nor easily practised. To keep our own hearts shut up to the cross, and that not only at our first conversion, but to the end of our best sanctification, and to preach the cross always and to every one as the one and the alone ground of peace with God amid all the ups and downs of the spiritual life: that staggers many, and offends many, and it becomes, sometimes, a cause of shame and pain even to those who have succeeded Paul best in his revelation of Christ that God made to him, and who have also succeeded him best in his experience of all that.…
Now, my brethren, you will go to so-called Christian churches, both in town and country, where you would never discover that Paul’s Epistle to the Romans had ever been written, and where you will never be put to shame with such old-fashioned doctrines as the imputed righteousness of Christ of which Paul is full. Christ’s suretyship, and his substitution, and his finished work are not known in those churches. The imputation of your sin to the Lamb of God, and the imputation of his righteousness to you; no such offensive things are ever uttered there. Speak for yourselves, my brethren: speak for yourselves and make your choice. As for me, the longer I live—the longer I really live—these things, and the things they represent, are becoming every day more and more necessary and more and more precious to me.
*From James Fraser, Laird of Brea: Parish Minister of Culross; Bass Rock, Blackness, and Newgate Prisoner, and Author of ‘The Book of the Intricacies of My Heart and Life’ (Edinburgh/London: Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier, 1911), 70-71.