James Nisbet Commentary - Luke 23:26 - 23:26

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James Nisbet Commentary - Luke 23:26 - 23:26


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

BEARING THE CROSS AFTER JESUS

‘And as they led Him away, they laid hold upon one Simon, a Cyrenian, coming out of the country, and on him they laid the cross, that he might bear it after Jesus.’

Luk_23:26

It is very difficult to define what our ‘cross’ is; what a ‘cross’ means. The word, as we generally use it, is of course a metaphor; but, following the metaphor, ‘a cross’ will be something which carries with it shame, and suffering, and some kind of death. You must look for these three ingredients to combine to make ‘a cross.’

Let me imagine one or two cases to which the word more accurately belongs.

I. A naturally proud and shy man is called to make some confession of his religious feelings and his faith, before some man, or some company of men, of irreligious habits and sentiments. He knows what it will entail—misunderstanding, coldness, suspicion, disgrace. To do it is a real pain; and there must be such a victory over self that self is nowhere. These are the three things which make ‘a cross’—shame, and suffering, and self-mortification. And if he do it, he is really ‘bearing the cross after Jesus.’ And this ordeal will have to repeat itself again and again. The occasions will be frequent; but it will be the same ‘cross.’ He will almost every day have to show and declare before persons whom it is very difficult to meet, ‘Whose he is, and Whom he serves.’ No one knows, but those who have to do it, what a martyrdom that is to a sensitive mind. No physical pain is greater, and no act of heroism is more honourable. It needs the compulsion of a strong, irresistible motive; of a conscience quickened and kindled by the love of God. That is a ‘cross’—ignominy borne, suffering endured, self killed for Christ’s sake.

II. Or it may be you may have lived much in the world, and for the world; and, for a time, its fashions and its influences are everything. A change has come across your views: your standard and your convictions have risen. You see the incompatibility—the need of real and deep spiritual religion. You are convinced that to you, at least, it is impossible to unite them. And you make up your mind that you ought to make an entire change and give the world up. But there are things in the world so dear to you that to surrender them is like sundering the cords of life. And you know only too well the penalty you will pay. You will be thought little of where you used to be very much admired. Your worldly prospects will be blasted. No one will understand you. The most unfair construction will be put upon you. You may sacrifice many of your best friends, in a worldly point of view. It will be a cloud upon your path. But, by the same token, it is ‘the cross,’ and you know it and you feel it. The path to heaven is by that ‘cross.’ And only ‘if we be crucified with Christ’ can we hope that ‘we shall be glorified together.’

III. Or a man feels he is called to some particular work for God.—If he do it, he must abandon a lucrative engagement. It will be hard work to him, mentally and bodily. And he must cut many ties. And every one will call him a fool! But he believes it to be to him a call from God, and he feels God has ‘laid that cross upon him, that he may bear it after Jesus.’ Happy the man that takes up that ‘cross’ and asks no questions!

Illustration

‘There is a mistake into which some persons naturally run, and which very much owes itself to this latent image of “the cross.” They think that the more painful anything is to them, the more it pleases God; and they carry this theory so far that they very much measure the work and acceptability of any duty by its disagreeableness to their own feelings. They almost show it, though they would not say it, that nothing can ever be pleasing to God but that which is unpleasing to oneself. A most unfilial view! It is the pleasure, not the pain, which a child finds in anything it does or bears which becomes pleasing to God. To bear the pain of “the cross” would be a great thing; but to rise above the pain to the joy that is in it, and to turn the suffering to happiness, and the shame to glory, and the death of the natural feeling into the very deliciousness of the higher life, that is far greater! On the whole, “the cross of Christ”—shame, agony, death, horror, as it was to Him—“the cross of Christ” was joy to Christ. He delighted in it. Such was His obedience and such His love! And this is the true and the grand view of every “cross.” ’