Excerpt from The Weakness of God: And Other Sermons The cross the weakness of God. It is only the cross, or Christ crucified, that the apostle ex pressly designates, but his reference implies the whole life-history of our Lord. His earthly con dition and experiences throughout that history had on them the stamp of weakness. In His birth and onward we see it. Of the royal house of David He was, but the weakness is thereby only the more accentuated, through the lowness to which the fortunes of that house had fallen. He was born of a humble Nazarene mother, and born in a stable. He was sought for by Herod, and had to be carried into Egypt to preserve His life. He was brought up as the son of a carpenter, and was Himself a carpenter.

He was assailed by and had sore conict with the devil. He suffered thirst, hunger, weariness, hardship, and had no where to lay His head. He had to endure afic tion and persecution. He was finally apprehended as a criminal, tried and condemned before tribunals both ecclesiastical and civil, was mocked and scourged, and was in the end crucified, and died. In this, and the whole of this, there was weakness. Especially there could be no greater note of an adverse condition and weak estate than the cross. The Gentile world knew of no death lower than that. Deaths more cruel they might sometimes invent, but none lower as regarded ignominy the cross was the lowest depth of ignominy the Roman world then knew.

What is more to the purpose, it was the lowest depth of degradation the Jewish nation knew for to be crucified was to be hanged on a tree, and under Jewish law none were so hanged but such as were marked as accursed of God. The cross was the extreme of weakness. It is, however, not so much the weakness in itself we have to think of, but that all this was the weakness of God. It was all ordered and ap pointed by Him; it came to pass according to His plan and purpose. It is also true that He in whom the weakness was manifested was Himself divine, the Son of God, of the same nature with the Father, though appearing now in that human nature which, for the ends of the redemption He came to accomplish, He had taken into union with His divine nature. This is true, and is of the highest significance. But we may think at pre sent, as the apostle does, of God in general; of the whole manifestation of weakness in Jesus as being of God's appointing and ordering. The cross was God manifesting Himself in weakness.

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