Luke 23:21

Luke 23:21

The Cross the expression of man's unbelief. Crucifixion was the death of the outcast only, the Gentileoutcast. "Crucify Him," then, meant, "Let Him die the worst of deaths, the Gentile death, the death that is so specially connected with the curse; the death that proclaims Him to be not merely an outcast from Israel, an outcast from Jerusalem, but an outcast from the Gentiles, an outcast from the race."

I. It was thus that man rejected Christ civilised man, educated man, religious man! It was thus that the natural heart spoke out, and showed the depths of its enmity and atheism the extent of its desperate unbelief.All unbelief is rejection of the Son of God. Whatever be its evasions and subterfuges, and excuses, and fair pretences, this is its essence rejection of the Christ of God.

II. And why this desperate rejection; this feeling of man towards the Christ? For many reasons; but chiefly for this, that God's religion, of which Christ is the beginning and the ending is so thoroughly opposed to man's religion, or man's ideas of religion, that to accept Jesus of Nazareth would be a total surrender of self, a confession of the utter absence of all goodness, an overturning of every religious idea or principle which the flesh had cherished and rested on. Man's alternative is the denial of self, or the denial of Christ; the rejection of his own claims to be his own Saviour, or the rejection of the claims of Christ; the crucifixion of the flesh, or the crucifixion of Christ. Allow unbelief to take its own way and, run its course, and it will end in the crucifixion of the Lord of glory. It will prefer self, the flesh, the devil, the worst of criminals to Christ. "Not this man, but Barabbas!"

H. Bonar, Short Sermons,p. 157.