PART TWO BEARING THE CROSS— A PART OF SELF-DENIAL
Sections 1-2 We Are to Take up Our Cross as Followers of Christ.
Section 1 Christ’s Cross and Ours
The pious mind must ascend still higher, namely, whither Christ calls His disciples when He says that every one of them must “take up his cross” (Mat 16:24). Those whom the Lord has chosen and honored with His [fellowship] must prepare for a hard, laborious, troubled life, a life full of many and various kinds of evils—it being the will of our heavenly Father to exercise His people in this way while putting them to the proof. Having begun this course with Christ the first-born, He continues it towards all His children. For though that Son was dear to Him above others, the Son in Whom He was “well pleased” (Mat 3:17; 17:5), yet we see that far from being treated gently and indulgently, we may say that not only was He subjected to a perpetual cross while He dwelt on earth, but His whole life was nothing else than a kind of perpetual cross. The Apostle assigns the reason: “Though he was a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered” (Heb 5:8). Why then should we exempt ourselves from that condition to which Christ our Head behoved to submit—especially since He submitted on our account that He might in His own person exhibit a model of patience? Wherefore, the Apostle declares that all the children of God are destined to be conformed to Him (Rom 8:29). Hence, it affords us great consolation in hard and difficult circumstances, which men deem evil and adverse, to think that we are holding fellowship with the sufferings of Christ: as He passed to celestial glory through a labyrinth of many woes, so we too are conducted thither through various tribulations. For in another passage, Paul himself thus speaks, “We must through much tribulation enter the kingdom of God” (Act 14:22). Again, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death” (Phi 3:10). How powerfully should it soften the bitterness of the cross to think that the more we are afflicted with adversity, the surer we are made of our fellowship with Christ, by communion with Whom our sufferings are not only blessed to us, but tend greatly to the furtherance of our salvation.
Section 2 The Cross Leads Us to Perfect Trust in God’s Power
We may add that the only thing that made it necessary for our Lord to undertake to bear the cross was to testify and prove His obedience to the Father. There are many reasons that make it necessary for us to live constantly under the cross. Feeble as we are by nature and prone to ascribe all perfection to our flesh—unless we receive as it were ocular demonstration of our weakness—we readily estimate our virtue above its proper worth and doubt not that whatever happens it will stand unimpaired and invincible against all difficulties. Hence, we indulge a stupid and empty confidence in the flesh, and then, trusting to it, wax proud against the Lord Himself as if our own faculties were sufficient without His grace.
This arrogance cannot be better repressed than when He proves to us by experience, not only how great our weakness, but also our frailty, is. Therefore, He visits us with disgrace, poverty, bereavement, disease, or other afflictions. Feeling altogether unable to support them, we forthwith, as far as regards ourselves, give way, and thus humbled learn to invoke His strength, which alone can enable us to bear up under a weight of affliction. Nay, even the holiest of men, however well aware that they stand not in their own strength but by the grace of God, would feel too secure in their own fortitude and constancy, were they not brought to a more thorough knowledge of themselves by the trial of the cross. This feeling gained even upon David: “In my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favor thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled” (Psa 30:6-7). He confesses that in prosperity his feelings were dulled and blunted, so that, neglecting the grace of God on which alone he ought to have depended, he leant to himself and promised himself perpetuity. If it so happened to this great prophet, who of us should not fear and study caution?
Though in tranquility they flatter themselves with the idea of greater constancy and patience, yet, humbled by adversity, they learn the deception. Believers, I say, warned by such proofs of their diseases, make progress in humility and, divesting themselves of a depraved confidence in the flesh, betake themselves to the grace of God. When they have so betaken themselves, [they] experience the presence of the divine power in which is ample protection.
Sections 3-6 This Is Needful to Teach Us Patience and Obedience
Section 3 The Cross Permits Us to Experience God’s Faithfulness and Gives Us Hope for the Future
This Paul teaches when he says that tribulation worketh patience and patience experience (Rom 5:3-4). God having promised that He will be with believers in tribulation (2Co 1:4), they feel the truth of the promise; while supported by His hand, they endure patiently. This they could never do by their own strength. Patience, therefore, gives the saints an experimental proof that God in reality furnishes the aid that He has promised whenever there is need. Hence also their faith is confirmed, for it were very ungrateful not to expect that in [the] future the truth of God will be, as they have already found it, firm and constant. We now see how many advantages are at once produced by the cross. Overturning the overweening opinion we form of our own virtue and detecting the hypocrisy in which we delight, it removes our pernicious carnal confidence, teaching us, when thus humbled, to recline on God alone, so that we neither are oppressed nor despond. Then, victory is followed by hope, inasmuch as the Lord, by performing what He has promised, establishes His truth concerning the future. Were these the only reasons, it is surely plain how necessary it is for us to bear the cross.
It is of no little importance to be rid of your self-love and made fully conscious of your weakness; so impressed with a sense of your weakness as to learn to distrust yourself; to distrust yourself so as to transfer your confidence to God, reclining on Him with such heartfelt confidence as to trust in His aid and continue invincible to the end, standing by His grace so as to perceive that He is true to His promises and so assured of the certainty of His promises as to be strong in hope.
Section 4 The Cross Trains Us to Patience and Obedience
Another end that the Lord has in afflicting His people is to try their patience and train them to obedience: they can [not] yield obedience to Him except in so far as He enables them. But He is pleased thus to attest and display striking proofs of the graces that He has conferred upon His saints, lest they should remain within—unseen and unemployed. Accordingly, by bringing forward openly the strength and constancy of endurance with which He has provided His servants, He is said to try their patience. Hence, the expressions that God tempted Abraham (Gen 22:1, 12) and made proof of his piety by [the fact that he declined not] to sacrifice his only son. Hence, too, Peter tells us that our faith is proved by tribulation, just as gold is tried in a furnace of fire (1Pe 1:7). But who will say it is not expedient that the most excellent gift of patience that the believer has received from His God should be applied to uses by being made sure and manifest? Otherwise men would never value it according to its worth.
But if God Himself, to prevent the virtues that He has conferred upon believers from lurking in obscurity, nay, lying useless and perishing, does aright in supplying materials for calling them forth, there is the best reason for the afflictions of the saints, since without them their patience could not exist. I say that by the cross they are also trained to obedience because they are thus taught to live not according to their own wish, but at the disposal of God. Indeed, did all things proceed as they wish, they would not know what it is to follow God. Seneca mentions that there was an old proverb when any one was exhorted to endure adversity, “Follow God,” thereby intimating that men truly submitted to the yoke of God only when they gave their back and hand to His rod. But if it is most right that we should prove our obedience to our heavenly Father in all things, certainly we ought not to decline any method by which He trains us to obedience.
Section 5 The Cross as Medicine
Still, however, we see not how necessary that obedience is, unless we at the same time consider how prone our carnal nature is to shake off the yoke of God whenever it has been treated with some degree of gentleness and indulgence. It just happens to it as with refractory horses, which, if kept idle for a few days at hack and manger, become ungovernable and no longer recognize the rider, whose command before they implicitly obeyed. And we invariably become what God complains of in the people of Israel: waxing gross and fat, we kick against Him Who reared and nursed us (Deu 32:15). The kindness of God should allure us to ponder and love His goodness. But since such is our malignity that we are invariably corrupted by His indulgence, it is more than necessary for us to be restrained by discipline from breaking forth into such petulance. Thus, lest we become emboldened by an over-abundance of wealth; lest elated with honor, we grow proud; lest inflated with other advantages of body, mind, or fortune, we grow insolent—the Lord Himself interferes as He sees to be expedient by means of the cross, subduing and curbing the arrogance of our flesh, and that in various ways as the advantage of each requires. For as we do not all equally labor under the same disease, so we do not all need the same difficult cure. Hence, we see that all are not exercised with the same kind of cross. While the heavenly Physician treats some more gently, in the case of others He employs harsher remedies, His purpose being to provide a cure for all. Still none is left free and untouched because He knows that all without a single exception are diseased.
Section 6 The Cross as Fatherly Chastisement
We may add, that our most merciful Father requires not only to prevent our weakness, but often to correct our past fault, that He may keep us in due obedience. Therefore, whenever we are afflicted we ought immediately to call to mind our past life. In this way, we will find that the faults that we have committed are deserving of such castigation. Yet the exhortation to patience is not to be founded chiefly on the acknowledgment of sin. For Scripture supplies a far better consideration when it says that in adversity, “We are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world” (1Co 11:32). Therefore, in the very bitterness of tribulation we ought to recognize the kindness and mercy of our Father, since even then He ceases not to further our salvation. For He afflicts [us] not that He may ruin or destroy, but rather that He may deliver us from the condemnation of the world. Let this thought lead us to what Scripture elsewhere teaches: “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be weary of his correction: For whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth” (Pro 3:11-12). When we perceive our Father’s rod, is it not our part to behave as obedient docile sons rather than rebelliously imitate desperate men, who are hardened in wickedness? God dooms us to destruction if He does not by correction call us back when we have fallen off from Him—so that it is truly said, “If ye be without chastisement…then are ye bastards, and not sons” (Heb 12:8).
We are most perverse then if we cannot bear Him while He is manifesting His goodwill to us and the care that He takes of our salvation. Scripture states the difference between believers and unbelievers to be that the latter, as the slaves of inveterate and deep-seated iniquity, only become worse and more obstinate under the lash. The former, like freeborn sons, turn to repentance. Now, therefore, choose your class. But as I have already spoken of this subject, it is sufficient to have here briefly adverted to it.
Sections 7-8
Bearing the Cross in Persecution and Other Calamities
Section 7 Suffering for Righteousness’ Sake
There is singular consolation, moreover, when we are persecuted for righteousness’ sake. For our thought should then be on how much honor God bestows upon us in distinguishing us by the special badge of His soldiers. By suffering persecution for righteousness’ sake, I mean not only striving for the defense of the Gospel, but for the defense of righteousness in any way. Therefore, whether in maintaining the truth of God against the lies of Satan or defending the good and innocent against the injuries of the bad, we are obliged to incur the offence and hatred of the world, so as to endanger life, fortune, or honor. Let us not grieve or decline so far to spend ourselves for God; let us not think ourselves wretched in those things in which He with His own lips has pronounced us blessed (Mat 5:10). Poverty, indeed considered in itself is misery; so is exile, contempt, imprisonment, ignominy: finally, death itself is the last of all calamities. But when the favor of God breathes upon us, there is none of these things that may not turn out to our happiness. Let us then be contented with the testimony of Christ rather than with the false estimate of the flesh, and then, after the example of the Apostles, we will rejoice in being “counted worthy to suffer shame for his name” (Act 5:41). For why? If, while conscious of our innocence, we are deprived of our substance by the wickedness of man, we are no doubt reduced to poverty, humanly speaking; but in truth, our riches in heaven are increased. If driven from our homes, we have a more welcome reception into the family of God; if vexed and despised, we are more firmly rooted in Christ; if stigmatized by disgrace and ignominy, we have a higher place in the kingdom of God; and if we are slain, entrance is thereby given us to eternal life. The Lord having set such a price upon us, let us be ashamed to estimate ourselves at less than the shadowy and evanescent allurements of the present life.
Section 8 Suffering under the Cross, the Christian Finds Consolation in God
By these and similar considerations, Scripture abundantly solaces us for the ignominy or calamities that we endure in defense of righteousness. [Accordingly], we are very ungrateful if we do not willingly and cheerfully receive them at the hand of the Lord—especially since this form of the cross is the most appropriate to believers, being that by which Christ desires to be glorified in us, as Peter also declares (1Pe 4:11, 14). But as to ingenuous natures, it is more bitter to suffer disgrace than a hundred deaths. Paul expressly reminds us that not only persecution, but also disgrace awaits us, “because we trust in the living God” (1Ti 4:10). So in another passage he bids us, after his example, [to] walk “by evil report and good report” (2Co 6:8).
The cheerfulness required, however, does not imply a total insensibility to pain. The saints could show no patience under the cross if they were not both tortured with pain and grievously molested. Were there no hardship in poverty, no pain in disease, no sting in ignominy, no fear in death, where would be the fortitude and moderation in enduring them? But while every one of these, by its inherent bitterness, naturally vexes the mind, the believer in this displays his fortitude: though fully sensible of the bitterness and labouring grievously, he still withstands and struggles boldly. In this, [he] displays his patience: though sharply stung, he is however curbed by the fear of God from breaking forth into any excess. In this, [he] displays his alacrity: though pressed with sorrow and sadness, he rests satisfied with spiritual consolation from God.
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