The cross is the centre of the world’s history; the incarnation of christ and the crucifixion of our lord are the pivot round which all the events of the ages revolve. The testimony of christ was the spirit of prophecy, and the growing power of jesus is the spirit of history.
This is the third place where Jesus predicted about the way he would be crucified. Jesus said this to his disciples but they were never able to connect with him on that realm. Jesus was lonely but among all this he was a hero. We have here a heroic Christ. “The ideal man unites in himself what men are in the habit, somewhat superciliously, of calling the masculine virtues, as well as those which they somewhat contemptuously designate the feminine. He reads to us the lesson, that we must resist and persist, whatever stands between us and our goal.
The most tenacious steel is the most flexible, and he who has the most fixed and definite resolve may be the one whose heart is most open to all human sympathies, and is strong with the almightiness of gentleness. Hastening to his cross; surrendering himself to death. His self-sacrifice was not the flinging away of the life which he ought to have preserved, nor carelessness, nor the fanaticism of a martyr, nor the enthusiasm of a hero and champion; but the voluntary death of him who of his own will became in his death the oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. Part of the reason for his haste have been that instinct which we all have, when some inevitable grief or pain lies before us, to get it over soon, and to abbreviate the moments that lie between us and it? In Christ this natural instinct never became a desire or purpose. It had so much power over him as to make him march a little faster to the cross, but it never made him turn from it.
Unappreciated aims; unshared purposes; misunderstood sorrow; solitude of death, all this he bore, that no human soul, living or dying, might ever be lonely any more.
Christ’s going on with his undertaking for the salvation of mankind, was, is, and will be, the wonder of all his disciples. Worldly honour is a glittering thing, with which the eyes of Christ’s own disciples have many times been dazzled. Our care must be, that we may have wisdom and grace to know how to suffer with him; and we may trust him to provide what the degrees of our glory shall be. Christ shows them that dominion was generally abused in the world. If Jesus would gratify all our desires, it would soon appear that we desire fame or authority, and are unwilling to taste of his cup, or to have his baptism; and should often be ruined by having our prayers answered. But he loves us, and will only give his people what is good for them.”
It was Christ who willingly went to the cross, and it was our sins that took him there!