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Never confuse the
Cross of Christ with the benefits that flow from it.
For all Paul's doctrine, his one great passion was the Cross of
Christ, not salvation, nor sanctification, but the great truth
that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son;
consequently you never find him artificial, or making a feeble
statement.
Every doctrine Paul taught had the blood and the power of God in
it. There is an amazing force of spirit in all he said because the
great passion behind was not that he wanted men to be holy, that
was secondary, but that he had come to understand what God meant
by the Cross of Christ. If we have the only idea of personal
holiness, of being put in God's showroom, we shall never come
anywhere near seeing what God wants; but when once we have come
where Paul is and God is enabling us to understand what the Cross
of Christ means, then nothing can ever turn us (Rom.8:35-9).
Most of our emphasis today is on what our Lord's death means to
us: the thing that is of importance is that we understand what God
means in the Cross. Paul did not understand the Cross in order
that he might receive the life of God; but by understanding the
Cross, he received the life. Study the Cross for no other sake
than God's sake, and you will be holy without knowing it.
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