A STEADYING PASSAGE: “Therefore, my brethren, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved” (Phil. 4:1). Paul, after having talked of the upward call of God in Christ, here talked about holding steady: “stand firm thus in the Lord.” He pointed to the cross as the place to hold steady: “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, live as enemies of the cross of Christ” (Phil. 3:18). Evidently there were those who claimed to be in Christ, but in Christ without the cross. Stand fast at the place of the cross, he pleads, even with tears.
Was Paul right? Is the cross the touchstone of being in Christ? Yes. Just as self-surrender is the touchstone on our part of being in Christ—no being in Christ without it—so the divine self-surrender in the cross is the touchstone of the real gospel from the side of God. God cannot save without a cross. The cross is the price God must pay to get to us in spite of our sin.
Self-giving on the part of God and man is the crux of the Christian faith. Put one point of the compass there, then let the other point go as far into truth as you will. You are fixed and free!
Paul saw that he had slipped away from the center at Athens. He preached some important truths—God has made of one blood all nations; in Him we live and move and have our being—but he brought in the gospel as a postscript. A dim postscript: “Because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31). There was no cross in it, not confronting men with the real message of the gospel. He failed at Athens—no church, no letter written. When he came to Corinth he had learned his lesson: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Out of this emphasis came the Corinthian church and the Corinthian letters!
O God, my Father, I pray Thee help me to stand fast at the cross. There Thou didst reveal Thy heart, didst show us our hearts, and didst redeem them. Not to emphasize that would leave out the very heart from the body. I love Thy cross. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The cross shall be not merely on my church, it shall be in my consciousness—my working way to live.
