Christ's Challenge

I have come to you today for just one purpose and that is to preach the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. To do so is my principal business in the world.

I desire to make it very plain to all those who know me in my new activities connected with Wheaton College that I have not changed my sacred vocation, that my business is to preach Christ and Him crucified. I have a new field of labor but not a new vocation.

So far as I can remember, I have never refused an opportunity to preach the Gospel when it was possible for me to preach. I have preached in many strange places, frequently in saloons, very often on the streets, sometimes in theaters, on several occasions in modernistic churches, sometimes among brethren who truly love the Lord but do not hold with us in many important principles. Wherever the place and whatever the circumstances, I have always gone to preach the Gospel whenever it was possible for me to do so.

It is an unusual pleasure to find myself with you this evening. Not in every place where I have gone to preach the Gospel have I found the sympathetic understanding and the common purpose of things in Christ which I find here. I so thoroughly believe in this great church, in your doing for Christ, that I count myself most happy in the privilege of being here [at The Moody Church].

My subject this evening is “Christ’s Challenge.” I take my text from the ninth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, the 23rd and [through] the 26th verses. The 23rd verse gives us Christ’s challenge, the 24th gives a statement of facts, the 25th an impersonal argument, and the 26th a personal argument for accepting His challenge. We will proceed according to the outline laid out for us in these four verses. “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.” You notice that this challenge begins with that powerful little word “if.” If any man will come after me. Evidently then there is a possibility of refusal to come after Him. A great German philosopher has said, “Many of us are giving to the world the words ‘both and’ when we ought to give to the world the words ‘either or.’” We ought in these days of confusion and perplexity and doubt to emphasize great choices and decisions, not to harmonize and blend all the various fields of thought and kinds of activity, but to begin as Jesus Christ began—with the word “if.” “If any man will come after me.” If I know anything of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ it must essentially begin with the matter of choice. He that is not with me is against me. He that is not against us is on our part.

If

I flatly deny the common doctrine that everyone does as well as he can under the circumstances. I deny that all are the sons of God. The “Fatherhood of God” and the “brotherhood of man,” in the sense in which the terms are generally used, are not Christian doctrines and are not to be found in the Old or the New Testaments. The point of great significance connected with any challenge is that the challenge may be accepted or may be refused. The Lord Jesus Christ did not assume that all would follow Him; He called them to do so, and said “If any man will come after me.” In this little word “if” inhere all the great issues of time and eternity; if you choose Him, you go to be with Him throughout all the ages to come. And His servants shall serve Him and they shall see His face. If you choose to reject Him, He will speak to you with words of wrath, “Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”

What Choice?

Since Christ’s challenge begins with the word “if” and insists upon a choice, what does this choice involve? Two things are mentioned in the verse which we are now discussing. If anyone will follow Christ, let him first “deny himself,” and second, “take up his cross daily.” What is it then to deny one’s self? It is a great pity that these words have been so much misunderstood. Sometimes people tell me that they are practicing self-denial; I find, however, that they are not denying themselves but denying the petty privileges and minor treats connects with ordinary social life. They are not denying themselves; they are denying certain things to themselves. The accusative case ought to be used, but the dative has been substituted. Sometimes a text is cleared up if we go back to the Greek and then substitute another English word to make the meaning more vivid and startle our minds into wide-awake attention. To use a different word, then, which really translates the Greek with more accuracy, “Jesus said, If anyone will come after me let him “renounce” himself—not deny certain things to himself but renounce himself.

The Christian doctrine of self-denial, which is truly a doctrine of self-renunciation, flatly contradicts the modern educational theories of the world. We are being told that we must develop ourselves and realize ourselves. We are told that to educate ourselves is to lead forth from within ourselves all the latent possibilities which are stored up there. Jesus, however, calls upon us for something very different.

Three Theories

I am acquainted with some individuals who are attempting to realize themselves, to develop themselves, on the principle of breaking all the social laws and the customs of the age in which they live. If men wear one kind of hat, they wear another kind. They develop to the fullest possible extent all the idiosyncrasies of their peculiar nature. In doing things differently from other people they believe that they are realizing or finding themselves.

There are others who seek to realize themselves or find themselves by carefully punctiliously observing all the customs and conventions of polite society. They try to do precisely the right thing at precisely the right time. These theories of self-development, it seems to me, have very little to do with real issues. They are so far from the great facts announced in the words of Jesus Christ that they may be ignored. Some of the conventions of society ought to be observed because they are useful and good, others ought to be destroyed because they are harmful and based on false premises.

There is a third theory of self-development which comes a little nearer to that which Christ calls upon us to do; it is the theory of development by adjustment. The individual must be adjusted to his environment. He must find himself by learning how to conduct himself in the traffic on the road, when to turn and where to park; when to avoid an obstacle and when to remove an obstacle. My only quarrel with this theory of self-development is that it is so pitifully in adequate and incomplete. Carry it out to its logical conclusions and you are not so far from Christ’s challenge. If the individual must be adjusted to his environment, I ask the question: What is the most important factor in his environment? Here we are, tiny creatures in an out-of-the-way world, and we discover that in every part of our world, and every world, and all possible worlds, there is law and order and the evidence of the mind of God. Not only in the world as we observe it but in history we know that God has come into the world—God incarnate in the flesh. Moreover, in our own hearts we find those characteristics which respond to the fact of God.

I submit it to the careful judgment of any who think on the subject that the most important factor in our environment is God. One is not properly adjusted to his environment until he has “got right with God through Jesus Christ,” by the only plan by which God has ever made it possible for a man to get right with Him, the plan of Calvary. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

If, then, anyone would develop himself or find himself, or come to the fullest possible realization of himself, he must lose himself in Christ. He must renounce himself and center himself in Christ.

Proper Relationship

A very simple illustration of self-denial may be taken from the principles of mechanical law. Any part of any machine simply as a part in itself is perfectly useless, it amounts to nothing; the only possible way in which it may be useful, in which it may find itself, is for it to find its proper relationship to the plan of the whole, to lose itself in the plan of the maker of the machine. So it is with the individual man or woman developing himself by himself according to his own selfish tendencies and purposes; centering himself in himself he is eternally lost. If any man would come after Christ he must renounce himself and center himself in the purposes of Christ. This is merely a long and roundabout way of saying “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. Take Him as your personal Savior, your Lord and Master. Ye are bought with a price; ye are not your own, therefore glorify God in your body.”

Something Else

Christ’s challenge involves not only self-denial or self-renunciation, it involves also crucifixion. This is the meaning of the phrase, “Let him take up his cross daily and follow me.”

It is a great pity that this marvelous sentence of our Lord has been so much misunderstood. To deny one’s self as we have seen is not to deny certain privileges to one’s self but to renounce one’s self. To take up the cross, now, is not merely to accept certain inconveniences which may fall upon us, the common ills which fall to the lot of our human nature. This is not the meaning of the phrase at all; the phrase has been much misunderstood. To take up the cross is to be ready to hang upon the cross. In the time in which Jesus spoke, to the people to whom He spoke, in the historical setting, these words could have one meaning and only one. No one ever carried a cross except he expected to hang upon it. For one to take up the cross, then, is to be ready and actually expecting to die for Jesus Christ.

What a marvelous world this would be if every professing Christian began every day with the thought, “I had rather die this day than deny my Lord. I had rather be crucified than do that which would bring shame upon His holy name.” The world is filled with a pitiable spectacle of half-hearted, so-called Christians. We seem to think that we may join the church as we would join a social club, that we may profess Christ as we would profess allegiance to any fallible human party in politics. I find no such possibility suggested anywhere in the Scripture. One either accepts Jesus Christ or does not. When one has accepted Him, he is living either for Him or wandering as a prodigal. The most disgraceful thing, the most difficult obstacle for Christian missionaries to overcome, is a professing Christian who is not sincere, or a type of Christianity which does not owe full allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ. Essentially, and without possibility of compromise, the Christian life is the crucified life. “If any man will come after me let him take up his cross daily and follow me.”

Not Vicarious

Let there be no mistake in the understanding of the meaning of this phrase. The suffering of Christian people has no vicarious significance whatsoever.

“No angel could our place have taken,
Highest of the high tho he,
The Loved One on the cross forsaken
Was one of the Godhead Three.”

No man can, by any possible means, provide any ransom or atonement for the sin of his brother. When one sins against God, the sinner must bear the penalty and be punished, or God must bear the penalty and forgive. We cannot be the Son of God dying for the world. It is necessary, however, for us to recognize that we must represent the Son of God dying for the world. How shall it be possible for us to preach Christ crucified while we live lives of selfishness? The life of ease and comfort which is characteristic of many of our churches today is a flat contradiction of the Gospel which is, or ought to be, preached. In the death and resurrection of Christ imputed to us by our faith in Him, we have passed through the experience of death and resurrection. We are to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God. This is the meaning of Paul’s words, “I am crucified with Christ. God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world is crucified so far as I am concerned and I am crucified so far as the world is concerned.”

Fact Versus Opinion

Christ’s first argument in calling men to accept His challenge is the statement of a fact, not of an opinion. There are opinions in the world and there are facts; God grant that we may distinguish between them. Jesus Christ here simply states a fact. Verse 24: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” Anyone who thinks deeply into the affairs of life will discover the great fact to which Christ is here calling attention. To save one’s self or to spare one’s self in any kind of activity is to lose one’s self altogether. Those who have discovered the great facts which underlie our modern conveniences have thrown ourselves into their work, laboring night and day without thought of self-advantage, and so, in losing themselves (in a secular way), they have found themselves in great secular achievements. David Livingstone, Robert Moffat, William Carey—all the great heroes of the faith on the modern mission fields—have lost themselves in their work and in so doing have found themselves—in great achievement for the glory of Christ and also in that they are known throughout the world for their accomplishments. A young man, a graduate of Wheaton College, has recently made a very remarkable discovery in the field of physiological chemistry. I have talked with his father about his work. I am told that he worked all night many, many times before coming to the end of his experiment. He forgot regular hours of sleep and of partaking of food; he knew only one thing, namely, his great problem and his great work of solving that problem. He lost himself in his work and in so doing, he found himself and discovered a fact which will be useful for the physical welfare of mankind throughout all the years to come.

I would not have anyone understand that there is any complete analogy between losing one’s self in a great secular work and losing one’s self in Christ. There is only sufficient analogy to make the illustration useful. The Lord Jesus Christ is the eternal Logos of God, the one by whom the worlds were made, the one through whom the ages are unfolded, to whom all glory shall be ascribed, the one in whom we live and move and have our being. God has placed before the race of men just one question and that involves every other question: What will you do with the Son of God? Believe on Him, renounce yourself, lose yourself, and find yourself in Him and you shall be saved. Refuse to accept Him, save yourself for yourself, and you will be eternally lost, for “whosoever shall save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.”

An Impersonal Argument

The second argument which Christ used in persuading men to accept His challenge is an impersonal argument. For what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself or be a castaway? What is the use of it all if we lose ourselves? I think you all remember Hickson, Dickens’ character; you remember his pitifully miserable type of life; you remember his still more pitiful and still more miserable death in the dark river on a cold winter night; you remember how he was found clutching a gold coin in his fist. He had reached out from his boat to rob a drowning man; he had seized the purse; he had taken the gold coin’ he had reached so far that he himself had fallen from his boat and he drowned in the river, entangled in the rope of his boat, clutching the coin in his fist. But he went out into the darkness of eternal night; he had lost himself; he was a lost soul and he had not retained that which he had thought he had gained. What is the use of it all? What is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world and lose himself or be a castaway.

The people of the world speak much of common sense and judgment. There is much talk of practical knowledge in the materialistic philosophy of the age. For my part, I find it utterly irrational to believe that this world is all. I cannot conceive of such a thing as life in time not completed by life in eternity. If one would be practical, if one would be reasonable, if one would have common sense in the conduct of the affairs of this life, let him listen to the argument of the Lord Jesus Christ as He calls upon men to accept His challenge and follow Him. Stop for just a moment where you are. I know not your business of your social relationships, but I know that you are a man made in the image of God, lost in the clutches of sin, standing in need of the omnipotent hand of a Savior. Stop and examine yourself; examine your life; examine the conduct of your affairs. Are you listening to the argument of the Son of God? What is the use of your kind of activity in eternity? “For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away?”

Personal Appeal

“For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.” I frankly confess that no consideration of facts would save my soul. I acknowledge that the impersonal argument, the balance of values, the uselessness of time, the eternal values of eternity, that even such an argument as this would not turn my willful mind from self to Christ. But here is the supreme argument, the one which wins in every case of salvation; the one which turns us from things unto Christ: Are you ashamed of Jesus Christ the Son of God? Mrs. Clibborn has said, “My religion is not something, it is Someone.” Count Zinzendorf said, “I have one passion, it is He!” The ethics of heathen philosophers are not bad; they are parallel to Christian ethics in some respects. The rational arguments of people of the world are not far wrong. Most men know in general what they ought to do. There is much need of more light, and yet when all knowledge is revealed, when all ethical principles are made plain, when all laws are made known to the mind of man, these things will not turn the sinful man from hell nor save the lost soul from destruction. I know of only one appeal which will win men from darkness unto light; it is the appeal of the crucified Christ. I have come here for just one purpose tonight and that is to tell you of Him. I would present Him to you in such terms that you could not resist His grace, His winsomeness, His love, His power, His forgiveness, His sympathy, His death for you, His resurrection on your behalf, that death to sin and resurrection in glory and power might be yours.

Thoughts Of Our Savior

Let us meditate for just a few moments on the person and work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He came into the world in the only appropriate way in which the pre-existent Son of God could come into the world. In the ordinary process of generation, a new personality, a new soul, comes into being. Jesus Christ did not come into being when He was born in Bethlehem of Judea. He is, and was from all eternity, the Son of God, the second Person of the eternal Trinity. The virgin birth of Jesus Christ was a miracle performed by the Holy Spirit whereby the pre-existent Son of God clothed Himself with human flesh.

He was born of a virgin, lived a sinless life; He manifested in all things the glory of God. He humbled Himself, and yet in His humility, John says, “we beheld His glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” We have four Gospels; the first three are called the synoptic Gospels because they mention the same series of events. It remains, however, for John, the beloved disciple, the one who leaned on Jesus’ shoulder at the Last Supper—it remains for him, the youngest of them all at the time, the one whom Jesus loved, the one who knew Him intimately, to reveal in the clearest possible terms the fact that Jesus was from all eternity the Logos of God, the pre-existent Son of God, God with God, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father; God become flesh dwelling among us.

Think of His wonderful life; think of His marvelous teaching. There are many who would make the teaching of Jesus Christ the entirety of the Gospel. I do not hold with these, but I will not permit any modernist to take from me the Sermon on the Mount when understood in its proper connections with the Gospel as a whole. I will not allow any modernist to take from me the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. His teachings involve many things but they are summarized in words, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.”

His Work

Christ placed His works, His miracles, second to His teachings. Think for a moment of the works of the Lord Jesus Christ. He never attended a funeral but He raised the dead! Wherever He went, peace and happiness, purity, righteousness and joy sprang up in His pathway. He comforted the brokenhearted; widows and orphans came to Him for refuge and for counsel. Perhaps the most beautiful picture in all the world is the picture of Jesus Christ with children in His arms. “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

While His works show forth in every particular the love of God, we must not forget His revelation also of the wrath of God and the scorn and contempt with which God regards hypocrisy. Any broken, fallen sinner who came to Jesus found welcome and refuge and forgiveness, but when Jesus Christ met a hypocrite, He poured forth, in the strongest invective to be found in any language, the scorn and wrath of Almighty God against hypocrisy. “Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, whitewashed tombstones full of dead men's bones and rottenness. Ye wash the outside of the cup and the platter and within is extortion and excess. Ye devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers.”

Someone, some time ago, criticized me for preaching against sin and calling upon men to repent from definite evils in their lives. Strangely enough, he asked me only to preach Christ and to let the subject of sin alone. I can scarcely imagine the type of mind he must have had. I could not believe the story had I not experienced it myself. My reply was, “I have only one Christ to preach and that is the Christ revealed in the Scriptures.” I will have nothing to do with an imaginary Christ who said nothing and did nothing with regard to the cursed, sinful condition of the world. The Lord Jesus Christ poured forth powerful invective, wrath, and scorn against all manner of sin and hypocrisy. He did not deal in polite and polished terms; he accused man of straining out gnats and swallowing camels. All sin in general and hypocrisy in particular withered before His scorching language.

Christ Is All

But it must never be forgotten that Jesus Christ was not in any sense a mere reformer. He had not only a message of correction and of reproof, but He had a remedy to offer, which was Himself. “I am the door of the fold, by me if any man shall enter in he shall be saved and shall go in and out and find pasture. I am the light of the world. I am the bread of life. I am the water of life. I am the good shepherd.” All these things and many more He said to the people. They asked Him one day, “What shall we do that we may work the works of God?” His reply was, “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent.” A young man once asked Him, “What good thing shall I do to inherit eternal life?” The reply, after questioning him, was, “One thing thou lackest. Get rid of everything else and come follow me.” “Follow me”—He repeated it over and over again under different and diverse circumstances. His one message to the world was, “Turn from sin, repent from iniquity, and follow me.” If Jesus Christ did not announce Himself as the Savior of all who would come to Him by faith, then history from that time till this is a hopeless riddle.

But the supreme fact connected with the historical life of our Lord Jesus Christ is not anything that He said or that He did, but the end and climax of His life. Whether we like it or not, the symbol of the Christian religion is the cross, an instrument of torture, a means by which criminals were frequently put to death. This cross is a gruesome thing for it represents the lowest reach of human sin. When the Son of God came into the world, the race of men rejected Him and hung Him on a cross.

But, thanks be to God which giveth us the victory, the cross is not the end. If the cross is all, then death conquered Him; but the cross leads on to the bodily resurrection. In the resurrection, He conquered death, therefore His work on the cross was not a defeat but a victory. He has brought life and immortality to light. He has made known to us forever the power of God to subdue death and sin in us and to bring us into everlasting glory.

And now this is the Lord Jesus Christ whom I present to you. He stands here tonight though we do not see Him with our physical eyes. His hands are pierced with the nails which they drove through His palms; His feet are pierced with the spikes which they nailed through His feet; the mark of the spear in His side; the marks of the thorns upon His brow. Here stands the Christ of Glory, the Son of God, God incarnate in the flesh. He stooped from heaven above to reveal forever the love of God and now the cross is not only the gruesome representation of the lowest reach of human sin, it is the sublime manifestation of the lowest stooping of the love of God. From all eternity, God planned the cross. He knew our failings, our falling away from Him; He knew the need of redemption. Christ is the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. The cross was in the mind and plan of God before the creation. Christ stands this day calling upon you to follow Him, renounce yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Him.

Are You Ashamed?

A young man was about to graduate from a college. His poor old father, who had labored long hours at the blacksmith’s forge to provide money enough for the son’s expenses, decided to come to the fashionable college town to see his son graduate. With his shabby suit and coat and his old hat and shoes, the father descended from the train. He could not afford better things to wear because all the money had gone for the expenses of the son in college life. The father walked up to the campus, found his son among a gay company of students, embraced him and spoke to him. I cannot explain what took place. I cannot describe the scene, but somehow in a flash it was revealed that the son, who had frequently wasted his father’s substance in riotous living, was ashamed of the father who had provided the means for his education. In a glance of the eye, in an expression of the face, in a turning of the head, in an avoidance of other company, somehow the young man was ashamed of his father and revealed the fact.

I wish I could make the matter very forceful tonight. I would like you to see Jesus Christ and all that He has done for you. Here He stands with His thorn-crowned brow, hands outstretched, pleading for you to come and follow Him. Are you ashamed of Him? Then listen to His words: “For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels.” But you, many of you, are not ashamed of Him. I know in the depths of your hearts you love Him. Frequently you have been prodigal and wandered away, but Jesus brought you back and you love Him. Many of you tonight I know will come forward and confess Him and will bow before His throne and will accept His mercy and His forgiveness, will believe the power of His atonement and, believing, will find life in His name.

“Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.”