Truth for Life

You do not make your own cross, although unbelief is a master carpenter at cross-making; neither are you permitted to choose your own cross, although self-will wants to be lord and master. But your cross is prepared and appointed for you by divine love, and you must cheerfully accept it; you are to take up the cross as your chosen badge and burden, and not to stand complaining. This night Jesus bids you submit your shoulder to His easy yoke. Do not kick at it in petulance, or trample on it in pride, or fall under it in despair, or run away from it in fear, but take it up like a true follower of Jesus. Jesus was a cross-bearer; He leads the way in the path of sorrow. Surely you could not desire a better guide! And if He carried a cross, what nobler burden would you desire? The Via Crucis is the way of safety; fear not to tread its thorny paths. Beloved, the cross is not made of feathers or lined with velvet; it is heavy and galling to disobedient shoulders; but it is not an iron cross, ...

Across cultures and centuries the lion is a symbol of courage, power, royalty, and justice. In Roman mythology, the lion is a beast whose roar can wake the dead. It is strange, then, that the follower who fled in fear of his life from the scene of Jesus's arrest is commonly depicted in Medieval and Renaissance art as a lion. As early as the fifth century, Mark the writer of the second Gospel, also called John Mark, was depicted symbolically as a winged lion. The other three writers were given similar symbols in accordance with the four beasts described by the prophet Ezekiel. Two centuries later these curious creatures were universally employed as symbolic of the four writers. Today, the majestic lion depicting the witness who once ran away can be seen throughout European museums and Venetian cathedrals in stone and on canvas. By definition, a follower of a particular cause or a leader cannot run in the opposite direction of the thing or person they are following; doing so, they wo...

Matthew 1:21Many people, if they are asked what they understand by salvation, will reply, "Being saved from hell and taken to heaven." This is one result of salvation, but it is not one tenth of what is contained in that blessing. It is true our Lord Jesus Christ does redeem all His people from the wrath to come; He saves them from the fearful condemnation that their sins had brought upon them; but His triumph is far more complete than this. He saves His people "from their sins"--a complete deliverance from our worst foes. Where Christ works a saving work, He casts Satan from his throne and will not let him be master any longer. No man is a true Christian if sin reigns in his mortal body. Sin will be in us--it will never be utterly expelled till the spirit enters glory; but it will never have dominion. There will be a striving for dominion--a lusting against the new law and the new spirit that God has implanted--but sin will never get the upper hand so as to be abso...