SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, 1 April 1922, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

"SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE.” “There they Crucified Him.” —Saint Luke, XXIII., 33. (By Rev. A. H. Collins, New Plymouth.) ‘'Suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified, dead and buried,” so rune the Apostles’ Creed, and, straight as a shaft of light, the words strike home to the redripe heart of the Christian Gospel. A creed without the Cross would not be Christian. • Concerning the actual death of Christ there is no dispute. He was done to death outside the walls of the Holy City, twice a thousand years ago. But no single event in the life of our Lord has ever been made quite real to us. least of all His crucifixion. Artists of many lands have toiled to represent the scene in a thousand pictures. Apostles stand around in graceful pose and picturesque attire. Rulers scowl and Pharasees gesticulate with dramatic vivacity. The multitudes jibe and whitehaired saints droop with mournful grace and emotion. But however satisfactory this may be from the artistic standpoint, it does not satisfy. We miss the atmosphere. Calvary has yet to be worthily treated. Will you try to visualise the story? One still, white, hot, blinding day in Jerusalem there was a noise in the street, a loud, coarse laugh, an oath, a scream, a sound of hurrying feet. Then the shoemaker looked up from his lapstone and the miller looked out from his mill. In the midst of the surging crowd and above a sea of scowling faces one arm of a cross was seen quivering along. Progress was slow, for the cobble-stoned streets were steep, the cross was heavy, and the victim faint. When the crest of Calvary was reached, rough Romans, with brutal faces and close cropped hair, flung their prisoner to the ground, hammered home the spikes, and shook the jibbet into its hole. “And, sitting down, they watched Him there,” while they gambled for His robe that Mary made, and. as if to crown tragedy with a jest, Pilate caused the title

“Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” to be nailed above the dying Saviour’s head, a title which rendered into human speech the loudest laugh of Hell! Our task is to understand the significance of that historic event.

TWO THINGS TO AVOID. In all our thoughts and words about the death of Jesus Christ, there are two things we must at all costs avoid. One is irreverent familiarity. We speak and sing about the Cross. I sometimes think we sing too much, or sing too lightly. Perhaps if we entered more deeply into the grim reality, and took our share in the poignant pain, our lips would quiver and our hearts would shake. The four Gospels are our safe guide. The evangelists say little of the Saviours pain. The fact of His death is stated with reverent reticence, and no obtrusion of the writers’ feelings. They seemed to realise that any dying man is sacred, and any dying scene is a holy place, only to be entered with hushed footfall and stilled heart. In one of our English cemeteries there is a green hillock. In winter it is mantled in snow, in spring, golden daffodils blossom; and in summer, grasses toss and wave. I have day dreams that once more I might stand there and sing my mother’s praises in my heart, but I could not bear to have a crowd of strangers, with strident voices, shouting her virtues. “There is a green hill far away,” and in quiet hours I like to steal away and softly “sing the praise of Him who died,” but I confess that it hurts to hear the praises of the Cross uttered in the ready rattle of thoughtless syllables. The aoctrine of the Atonement is central and vital, but it is a very delicate doctrine, and we need guard our hearts against all that coarsens and vulgarises it.

“With eye abashed and murmur low. We Name the Name most dear.”

REAL AND GRIM. The other extreme to be avoided is false delicacy. Jesus Christ’s Cross was real and grim. It was not a golden, jewelled, pretty thing, worn at a feast and dropped at night amongst a woman’s trinkets. It was no such cross as sparkles in a crown, blows on a banner, and flames on a spire. Jesus Christ’s cross was actual, and our sin helped to make it a Divine necessity: “It was for me that Jesus died, For me and a world of men. Just as sinful and just as slow To give back His love again: He didn’t wait till I came to Him, But He loved me at my worst; He needn’t ever have died for me If I could have loved Him first.” “There they crucified Him.” What a verbal quartette that is! “There” — “they”—“crucified”—•■Him”! The place invests the deed with deeper shame. The Hebrews were justly proud of Jerusalem. They prized its stones and praised its temples. The story is part of the romance of history. It stood as a monument of God’s mercy and faithfulness, and the centre of the nation’s hopes and prayers. Yet it was “there” the deed was done! But if the place emphasises the wickedness, what of the chief actors? “They crucified Him.” Instrumentally the Romans did it, but the Romans were puppets in other hands, and the chief guilt rested on the most religious men of the age. They “whose sick folk He healed, whose little children He blessed, whose dead He raised, put Him to death.” “Crucified.” Even the cold, remorseless, Roman reckoned this a form of death cruel beyond reason or measure, and they ’reserved it for slaves and criminals of the worst class. Yet “they crucified Him,” the holy, harmless, undefiled! WHY DID HE SUFFER? Why did He suffer under Pontius Pilate? And why was He “crucified, dead and buried”? As I have said already, the actual death of Jesus is not in dispute. The fact of Christ’s death is central, regnant, supreme in Gospels and Epistles. The Apostles rested their hope of salvation on that fact, and they preached it wherever they went. It is the missionary faith. It met the ancient world in deadly conflict. It subdued the Roman Empire. It converted the fierce race of barbarians and laid the foundation of modern Europe. It gave martyrs their fortitude. It came anew to the churches of 'England, sunken in formalism and sloth, and the Evangelical Revival was the result. The death of Christ for sinful men, preached by Wesley and Whitfield, came like the breath of spring; and» let me say, as one of the rooted convictions of my life, that any explanation of the death of Christ that makes it less than central weakens the working forces of the Christian life. A

bloodless Gospel cannot save the world. Only let it be remembered that there is a distinction between the fact of Christ’s death and some theory that we may hold. Oh! the shameful wrangling about this or that attempted explanation of the death of Jesus Christ! It is like botahising on a mother’s grave. THE ATONEMENT. I used the word “atonement,” and I hold to it with every fibre of my heart. But do you know the word is not a New Testament word? It occurs only once in the authorised version, and even then the marginal reading is “reconciliation.” In the Revised Version, the Twentieth Century New Testament, Dr. Waymouth and Dr. Moffat’s translation of the word is not “atonement,” but “reconciliation.” Lot only has the word been changed, the doctrine has changed, and the heresy of one period has become the orthodoxy of the period following. Gregory of Nyssa taught that the sacrifice of Jesus was a sacrifice made' to the Devil, a ransom paid to the Evil One! That was the orthodox view for centuries. Anselm taught the commercial idea of the atonement. Sin was a debt beyond the power of man to pay, and the Son of God paid it. A third conception was that of Augustine. Jesus, by His death, satisfied the justice of God. The angry Father was softened and placated by the suffering of Jesus Christ. The purpose of Christ’s death was to reconcile God to man! Thus the minds of devout men have been pondering the great and adorable mystery, and finality has not yet been reached. We cannot believe some of the attempted explanations, but the' attempt bears witness that these men were serious minded, and did what some of us never do—they thought, and thought deeply, on this subject. But I repea+ that it is the atonement of Jesus Christ, and not any theory of the atonement that avails for our sm.

RELIGIOUS POVERTIES. I do not venture to propound any rationale of the Atonement; but two facts seem clear. The two religious poverties of our day are the lost sense of God, and the lost sense of sin, and the death of Christ sheds light on both. The Cross emphasises the fact of sin. The fruit of that deadly Upas tree has ripened in many forms. You see it in gaols and hospitals, in domestic tragedies, social alienations, national upheavals and bloody wars, but Calvary is sin’s crowning crime. We use milder terms than our fathers did. We tone down rugged Bible words about sin. We sometimes treat sin as a technicality. But you cannot make sin appear less odious and not at the same time make Redemption less glorious. If sin is only a blunder, an error of judgment, or an immaturity, the death of Christ looks like an exaggeration of remedial measures. but if sin is the revolt of my will against the holy and perfect will of God, then “other refuge have I none, hangs my helpless soul on Thee.” We may excuse and apologise for sin, our own and others, but that is not the Bible way, and when conscience is stirred, it sees sin in the light of Calvary, and owns it is “exceeding sinful.” But the chief significance of Christ’s death is its revelation of God’s redeeming grace.

THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE. The Cross is the triumph of love. Christ “put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.” But there is-no victory without battle and wounds and death. We must bleed to bless. The missionary who looks across the sea and aches to roll away the burden of ignorance and wrong puts himself in the midst of the misery and saves the people by giving himself in sacrificial service. The mother who tries good advice and fails, who tries serious living and succeeds but little, goes to her room and agonises for her lad, and finds she has won the battle, for although her lad never sees her tears or hears her petition, he feels that his mother is suffering for him. That is the secret of Jesus. The Gospel is not that God was angry and Jesus appeased His wrath. The Gospel is not that God was bound and fettered by His own law and could not forgive without loss of dignity unless Jesus suffered and died. The Gospel is that Jesus unveiled the very heart of God and taught us that love is eternal and sacrificial. The death of Christ is not the cause of God’s love but the proof of it. God does not love the world because Christ died, but Christ died because .God loved the world already. There is only one way by which the pure can save the impure, and that is by suffering with and for that guilty one. Jesus Christ came not to put sin behind prison bars and leave man caged and sinful. He came to reconcile us to God, to pour into our life His life, and by suffering with and for the world to cleanse and restore us to God. “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.”

Bishop Faber tells, in a moving passage, how he was on the sea-shore and his heart overflowed with a great love. His happiness went out on the wide waters and the unfettered wind. The dawn lighted up the tall cliffs which sun and sea had blanched for centuries. Daybreak was like Eternity, and the thought came to him of his acceptance with God. “To be saved!” he said. “To be saved!” And he clapped his hands for joy. Then came the thought of the nature and manner of salvation, and he cried: “To be saved with such a salvation!” He tried to sing, but could not for deep emotion. Last of all, and greatest nf all. came the thought: “To be saved by such a Saviour!” Then he adds: “I looked at the sea, as it reddened in the morning. Its great heart was throbbing in the calm, and methought I saw the precious blood of Jesus, throbbing with real human love for me.” To be saved! To be saved with.such salvation’! To be saved by such a Saviour!!!