But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
—Galatians 6:14
Christ’s highest glory is His cross. It was in this that He glorified the Father, and the Father glorified Him. In the fifth chapter of Revelation, it is as the Lamb slain in the midst of the throne that He receives the worship of the ransomed, the angels, and all creation. And it is because He is the Crucified One that His servants have learned to say, “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Is it not reasonable that Christ’s highest glory should be our only glory, too?
When the Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “Lo, I am with you alway[s]” (Matthew 28:20), He gave the promise as the Crucified One, who had shown them His pierced hands and feet. And each one who seeks to claim the promise must realize that it is the crucified Jesus who promises, who offers, to be with him every day.
We do not glory in the cross by which we are crucified to the world. Is this not one of the reasons why we find it so difficult to expect and enjoy the abiding presence of Christ? We have been “crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20); our “old man is crucified with him” (Romans 6:6); “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:24); and yet how little we have learned that the world has been crucified to us, and that we are free from its power. How little we have learned, as those who are crucified with Christ, to deny ourselves, and to have the mind that was in Christ when He took “the form of a servant, and…humbled Himself and became obedient unto…the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:7–8).
Oh, let us learn the lesson: it is the crucified Christ who comes to walk with us every day and in whose power we, too, are to live the life that can say, “I am crucified with Christ…Christ [crucified] liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20).