In the Gospel by John, chapter 3, at verse 14:
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.
Chapter 8, verse 28:
Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He.
Chapter 12, verse 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 universal element.
And that shows to us, surely very clearly, what a terrible thing in the sight of God divisiveness, disruption, disunity, and disintegration really are—how contrary to the divine nature, how abhorrent 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 and 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 and breaks up, 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 thing. 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.”
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—the things that the world calls sin, even. 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 it 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 in the cross, and that word is 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 gives us the full meaning: atonement—at-one-ment, set at one. He 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. It 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.
The cross is therefore the great reuniting, or uniting, power of God.
And not to recognize that, and 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 powers from the beginning, causing this to 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. All men’s greatest efforts, institutions, and organizations to counter that become perfectly laughable.
The United Nations—what a misnomer. The United Nations, the charter of which is for the protection of weak peoples: today, Tibet, making the United Nations Charter a laughingstock, just as the old League of Nations was.
I am not touching politics; I am only illustrating. Men’s greatest institutions and organizations become laughable in the end in the face of this immense power in this universe of disintegration. Forces are at work, and everything that is done to undo their nature and their work fails.
That came in at the beginning. It has grown and become universal, and today, more than ever, it is plain on every hand. Men are finding that it is a hopeless thing to try to repair this damage. One after another, leader and country goes down before this force—broken, broken. Too great.
There is only one thing that can meet it and solve it, and does—can and does when it gets a chance—and that is the cross of the Lord Jesus.
The first great schism which came in with sin was between heaven and earth. Heaven and earth became not only closed to one another, but in conflict with one another.
No way through—no way through for man. The way through to heaven is closed. O man, by nature, has no correspondence, no fellowship, no communication, no open way from earth to heaven.
Until the cross comes in. And with the Lord Jesus lifted up, the link is made again.
To a man whose name was Nathanael, He said:
Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
Well, actually, “Behold, an Israelite in whom there is no Jacob.” You remember Jacob.
And then He went on to Nathanael:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
Exactly the same title, you see, that He uses of Himself: the Son of Man, lifted up. That Jacob has been dealt with—the supplanter, the trickster, the man who broke up the family, the man whose presence, wherever it was, was a disintegrating factor. He could not get on with anybody; nobody could get on with him. He was that in the world while he was Jacob—always a disturber, restless, dissatisfied, selfish, cunning.
Jacob is dealt with; Israel appears. The vision, or the dream, that he had now finds possible realization. Heaven can come down to him and bless him and take him on his way and fulfil all the promise and covenant. He has come at length to know the meaning of communication between heaven and earth—the ladder set up.
Now Jesus took that right over to Himself and said to Nathanael, “There is coming, Nathanael, a new true Israelite who will come into all that. You will see the heavens opened, and you will see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
Only a figurative way of speaking and saying, “There is coming, Nathanael, a time when this closed way between heaven and earth will be opened again, when this great schism and conflict between heaven and earth will have been healed, and they will be united by the Son of Man.”
I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Myself.
The heaven is open for all men again. The division has gone; the sin has been dealt with.
That marvelous effect—that terrible effect—of sin in separating heaven and earth, closing each to the other, is remedied in the cross of the Lord Jesus.
I need not remind you that in the Bible, day and again, we come upon a closed heaven. A closed heaven.
You only have to lift out one of those many occasions: the life of Elijah. Because of Israel’s sin, Elijah said:
As the Lord liveth, before Whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain these years, but according to my word.
And the heavens were closed. We read the history. It is a very terrible story of that closed heaven, that withheld blessing, that lack of communication—a terrible story.
You see, a closed heaven, whether it was literal in the Old Testament or not, is always the mark of judgment for sin: the division between heaven and earth, a judgment for sin.
The cross of the Lord Jesus sees that judgment taken on Himself, and heaven and earth are united again.
And that is a wonderful statement of truth. You and I here tonight—I take it more than ninety percent of this company—know in experience how true that is. What is our very first consciousness when we receive the Lord Jesus into our lives, into our hearts? Heaven is not so far away as we thought it was.
Heaven is not closed as we knew it was. Put it as you like: heaven is open. The experience of every truly born-again child of God is that heaven has come down to their soul to greet. It is an open heaven.
Sin, which separated heaven and earth, has been dealt with, and the at-one-ment between heaven and earth has been made.
And not only so: an at-one-ment between man and man. We have seen earlier how, with the coming in of sin, man was set against man. It started in the family and spread and spread—this schism, this strife—until it became universal.
Man against man in his heart: jealousies, envy, covetousness, pride—oh, the unholy brood of this sin, divisiveness.
If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Myself.
Heal that between man and man; bring man and man together again.
We have already, last night, referred to it, but it will bear another reference. You remember the words of the Lord to Job? Job had exhausted all that he could say, trying to justify himself, put himself right with God and men. The whole thing had collapsed, broken down. He was not getting very far with that.
Between himself and the other men, there was no healing, no fellowship. Every effort to get fellowship, to get right, to get a ground of oneness, failed. They had all been trying it—all these men—for perhaps weeks or months. They had been trying to find a common ground on which they would all agree, and it all failed.
And when they had all failed, and they had all come to the last word that they could say, the Lord stepped in. The Lord said to Job:
Who is this that darkeneth counsel
by words without knowledge?
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
When the morning stars sang together,
and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
What a picture. What a description. Before all this came in—all this, Job, that you have been trying to get over—it was a state of beautiful harmony. The morning stars were singing, singing in glee, singing in unison or harmony. There was no discordant note. No discordant note then. It was a unity, a song. That is how it was before.
From there we leap to Revelation 7:
After these things I saw, and behold, a great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes, and palms in their hands;
and they cry with a great voice, saying, Salvation unto our God Who sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb.
Here at the end, as at the beginning, is a great song. Whether in unison or harmony, it does not matter; there is no discordant note. That is gone—that strange note that came in and spoiled the harmony of the creation and of men’s relationships. That has been eliminated, and things are now as they were—perhaps better than they were before all this came in.
Now here we have the two songs: the song of a creation in harmony, without sin and without any division or discord; and the song of redemption, with no strange note in it, all singing together. All singing together. Why? Of course, the focal point is the Lamb.
I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Myself.
Out of every nation, tribe, and tongue.
But what was the discordant note? If we can just put our finger upon that, we have got to the heart of the whole matter. If we can just see what that foreign, strange note was that came in—the divine octave was being played, and suddenly another sound came in that did not belong to it at all, and threw it all out, spoiled the whole thing—what was it?
We can put our finger upon that note. It is described for us. I will give it to you. It is in the prophecies of Isaiah, chapter 14:
How art thou fallen from heaven, O day-star, son of the morning!
How art thou cut down to the ground, that didst lay low the nations!
And thou saidst in thy heart, I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit upon the mount of congregation, in the uttermost parts of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.
What is the discordant note? The spirit—once, twice, right through—“I will, I will.” That is it. The heart of it all: “I will,” as over against the will of God.
That always is the mischief. That always lies behind division, schism. Somewhere, somehow, if only we could probe to the heart of the root, we would find something like that—“I,” “I.” The whole Bible shows that.
But, dear friends, this is a wonderful thing. Over against that “I will, I will”—“thou saidst, I”—we have the cross.
And we have the wonderful description of the One Who went to the cross:
Existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a servant.
And ultimately He became obedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross. And as He came to it, in the dark night before, in the garden, He said:
Not My will, but Thine, be done.
Thou saidst, “I will.” He said, “Not My will.” The cross of the Lord Jesus was not only the elimination, the annihilation, of that strange note bringing all the discord into every relationship. “I, I, I”—that was slain in the cross in the person of the Lord Jesus.
Set that out. Oh, if we could get it out of ourselves and out of everybody, why, the song would start right away.
We know, as we go about this world and go into all the nations, that when we meet the children of God—of any and every nation or tongue or people—we all sing the same song. We have got something that finds us in tune with one another.
Mark you, while we keep on the ground of the cross. Get on to another ground, and we find that is spoiled. But while we keep on the ground of Christ together, we have a wonderful fellowship. It is proved, it is proved.
Not only have we the proof that the great schism between heaven and earth has been bridged, or closed. When we come to the Lord Jesus, we know that we have the opened heaven. But as we move about the world, we know that the effect of the cross is to have created a marvelous oneness between men out of every nation.
Try it without the cross. See what you can do with it.
Oh, governments have tried it with armies. Today we are smarting and stinging under the awful shame and reproach, the breakdown of trying to overcome some animosity by force. You cannot legislate this thing out of God’s universe, and you cannot drive it out by force.
You only deepen the malice and strengthen the hatred, make it of still longer duration. Those wounds last a long time. They have tried that all through the centuries; it does not work. But take the cross of the Lord Jesus in that—it works.
Fundamentally, basically, there is something that all believers have in common which makes them one. Keeping on that ground—it is true, is it not?
Well, this is elementary, I know. But this is what He meant:
If I be lifted up, I will draw.
I will not alienate.
I will not scatter.
I will not divide.
I will draw all men unto Myself.
There is, after all, a magnetism in the cross of the Lord Jesus, is there not?
What I have been saying, of course, carries with it a big challenge to the self-life, does it not? Self-life lies behind our divisions.
Now, do take this to heart, dear friends. You and I—will you tonight covenant with the Lord in this place? You and I have got to set ourselves to fight this battle of oneness. We have got to set ourselves that, by the grace and help of God, we will leave nothing untouched that needs to be given to the cross.
Christ crucifies His rights in this, in overcoming divisions where we find them between ourselves and others. It has got to be the desperate battle—or it is a desperate battle. But the cross can win in this, if only it does its work in us.
If only that “I” thing in us—so deceptive, so deceptive. Of course, the other person is always wrong; we are always right. And that is just where the “I” has its greatest strength.
If we would get down and say, “Very likely I am, after all, the responsible one,” at least we open the way for such conviction.
If all that I have said tonight is true of God’s attitude and God’s interpretation of sin, if this is true, it is a very terrible thing, is it not? But it is a very great thing that the cross means.
If we are going to be really companions of the cross of our Lord Jesus, we have got to give ourselves to this: that by His help, we will not countenance any kind of division, except the division between what is of God and what is of the devil.
I will draw.
The cross has an appeal, has it not? Because, you see, the cross is the great revelation of divine mercy. And all men need that, and most men know their need of it.
If we can only present the cross aright to them, it will make its appeal. All men need, and know that they need, the mercy of God. Let us present Christ crucified as the great revelation of divine mercy, divine grace, and it will draw. It will draw.
It is the great revelation that God is not against men, but toward men—for men. Proof that God wants me; He is not against me.
And is not this a universal need, of which most men are conscious—to really know and to be able to believe that God is for us, God is on our side, God is not against us?
The devil’s first insinuation in the garden was that God was not really for the man. He was really not for him. In forbidding him to do this, He was really against his highest interests. An awful insinuation.
Have you noticed the effects? Many of this world’s strongest religions put men in fear and dread of God. They are always trying, some way, by some means, to get even with God—to overcome that something about God that is against them. Appeasement, appeasement: that is the word in that whole awful realm, appeasing God somehow—God to be appeased.
I know we have got a better gospel than that. Our God has not got to be appeased. He is for man. He is toward men. He has demonstrated it in the cross. His arms are stretched out wide toward men. His great word, through those human lips, is:
Come unto Me.
The cross is the great revelation of the fact that God has taken responsibility for us—for us in sin, and for everything.
He had to do that. So they wonder about the cross. God decided to make man; He took tremendous risks, and He knew it. Because to have man conforming to His own will and mind, He had to give him a free will.
Man should never be forced, or coerced, or made to go one way like a machine. Man could choose. All the greatest things for God lie in the direction of man choosing, willing, desiring, preferring.
So God took the risk of giving him a free will, knowing exactly how it might work out—shall we say, how it would work out? But seeing all the terrible consequences of the responsibility that He Himself took in so creating man, the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.
The cross is not an afterthought; it is some eternal provision in the mind of God—something there before man’s sin—that when man misused his great trust of choice, and it would lead to all this, the remedy was on hand from eternity.
The cross is the great proof that God has taken responsibility not only for creating man, but for all the results of His creating man. That is good, you know. Of course, that is theology, but it is good gospel—good gospel.
Are you not glad that the Lord Himself has taken responsibility for you—your sin, and for you? Only come to the cross of the Lord Jesus; that is where you meet God taking over responsibility for you.
I think that is as grand a provision as that we may have the answer of a good conscience. Is not that tremendous—a good conscience toward God?
The Bible says, “the answer of a good conscience toward God.” What a lot men do to get that.
You see, the whole Roman Catholic system is built upon that: the priest will be your conscience; you need not worry; you will be all right. Just divest yourself of every concern; you need not have it. The priest will be responsible for you.
But it does not do it, does it? It just does not do it. There is something false.
And the tremendous success of that system, its sweep over the earth, is because men everywhere want a good conscience and want someone to take responsibility for their conscience and clear them of a guilty conscience.
That is all a travesty. The truth is that at Calvary, in Christ, God took responsibility for everything for us, and it is there that we find the ground of a good conscience toward God.
Some tremendous thing. The apostle speaks of no more consciousness of sin, using that word “consciousness” in this sense: no more evil conscience. Wonderful—the cross is just that.
From there we could go on, but, dear friends, all this is gathered into the one thing: unity with God, fellowship with God.
And the fellowship established between God and us, and between us and God, is to spread and spread through the family, through all our relationships. Just as the opposite spread at the beginning—the disintegration started with one and spread and grew and grew and grew—the cross reverses it, and puts it right in the individual, and then expects that the cross will mean that it expands to all relationships.
If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto Myself.
Oh, how imperfectly I try to present this. I do trust that through so many words, so many words, and impossible explanations, you catch a glimpse of the great meaning of the cross and what it involves us in: this matter of giving diligence to keep the unity of the Spirit.
The fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all.