John 3:14-15:
And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up;
that whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life.
John 8:28:
Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the Son of Man,
then shall ye know that I am He.
John 12:32:
And I, if I be lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men unto Myself.
When we think of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, we naturally and rightly associate with it the whole matter of sin. Rightly, because the Scriptures say so much about His bearing of our sins in His body on the tree.
But there are very many aspects of sin set before us in the Word of God. Sin is said to be many things. Sin has many forms. It covers a lot of ground. It relates to quite a lot of matters. It has quite a lot of different effects.
But there is one thing about every aspect of sin which they all have in common, as to sin’s nature and sin’s effect. That common element, or factor, in all forms of sin is its disruptive effect, its divisive effect.
It is divergent. It breaks up the unity of life. Every form of sin does that. Sin, however it is expressed, works out that way.
In the Bible, sin is regarded as spiritual disease. We know that the great—perhaps the chief—illustration of sin in the Bible is leprosy.
And we know that the effect of leprosy is to disintegrate the body, to completely break down its unity, destroy its integration.
And that is what God thinks about sin. Having chosen that as the chief illustration of sin in its effect, He has put His finger upon that deepest and that universal element.
And that shows to us, surely, very clearly, what a terrible thing in the sight of God divisiveness, disruption, disunity, disintegration really is. How contrary to the divine nature; how abhorrent it is to the divine nature.
We have vivid pictures of the leper in the Bible: how the leper had to be put outside altogether. And if ever coming into proximity to other people, the leper had to cover his mouth with a linen cloth and go on his way crying in his hollow voice, “Unclean, unclean, unclean.”
God laid hold of that as the great symbol of sin and sin’s effect: to disintegrate the individual affected, and to disintegrate the society to which he belongs; to break up fellowship, to break up relationship.
We have no more terrible picture, perhaps, of God’s thought about divisiveness—the effect of sin.
Well, that is the setting, you see, at the cross. Here we have Jesus saying that the effect of His being lifted up—that is, of His cross—would be to bring together: “I will draw all men unto Myself.”
The cross would destroy that factor in sin which scatters and divides, breaks up, and counter it and reverse the process, and reunite.
“If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Myself.” The cross would do that because it would deal with the disease that disintegrates, the sin which divides.
Oh, that statement I have made is a very great, a very strong statement—a very terrible statement.
I have spoken like that because, you know, dear friends, we treat this matter far too lightly.
Oh, if I were to speak about sin—speak on and on about sin—of course you would all thoroughly agree with me and say, “Oh, let us get as far away from that as we can. Let us do everything possible to get rid of that.” See? Who wants to have anything to do with sin? Who wants sin?
We would all say, “No,” while you use the word sin. But God calls division sin. And are you quite sure that we are as desperate about this matter of division as we are about what we call sin? Are we taking that just as seriously as we do what we would call sin?
We mention some things that are called sin. We read the headlines in the papers, and we will not read any further, because there is something in us that revolts against what is there—that which even the world calls sin.
We feel that we are touched with uncleanness. We do not want that. We are only too sorry that it is brought out like that, that it fills our papers, that people want that sort of stuff. We hate it. We loathe it.
But God says the common factor in sin, in all its forms, is this: it separates, it divides, it breaks up, it breaks down, it disintegrates. And it is the effect that God hates—He hates so much.
We will see in a moment why it is like that. But there it is.
Coming back to the cross of the Lord Jesus, there is one word that we always associate with the cross and His blood: the word atonement.
We make His atoning work fundamental to the Christian faith. We say that it is one of the main planks in the platform of Christian truth. His atoning death—we cannot make too much of that.
But what do we mean? What do we mean? Well, I suppose we mean that He atoned for man’s sin.
That would be quite true and right. Dear friends, that is only a very small part of the meaning. The word itself, the word itself, gives us the full meaning: atonement—at-one-ment, set at one.
Atoned for sin—thank God for that. So our sin has been atoned for; we have not got to atone for our sin. That is very blessed, very precious. We will cling to that.
But that may just take us so far—does take us so far—and put us in a certain position that we call justification, righteousness by faith.
But atonement means oneness. It means that this common, universal factor of separation, in all its directions and aspects, has been dealt with in the cross; and that the universal effect of the cross is setting at one, making at-one-ment.
The cross is, therefore, the great reuniting, or uniting, power of God.
And not to recognize that—certainly, to violate that—is to render the whole meaning of Calvary in vain. That is a terrible thing, is it not? That is a terrible thing.
In God’s sight, that is what disunity means, what divisiveness means: making the cross of our Lord Jesus of none effect.
If it is true—and it is His own word, His own word—“If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Myself”; if that is true, if we have not found our focus and our unity in Christ, the cross has not done its work.
The cross, we have said, is therefore the great power of unification.
Now this brings us back to all that has occupied us in these gatherings. One great thing that has been the fruit of sin in this universe, which has polluted, corrupted, and defiled this whole universe, is that disintegrating work of the evil power and powers from the beginning.
This has become a universe shot through and through with conflict and strife, division, and all that belongs to that: a disintegrated and shattered creation.
With every attempt of man through the ages, it can never, never be repaired.