Gems from R.W Dale - 4

“The power of the cross is the power of the love of Christ. And yet, not the love of Christ only. For the sufferings of Christ were not a mere dramatic display of love. ‘I delivered unto you first of all,’ said St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, ‘that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins.’ This truth, according to the greatest evangelist among the apostles, was one of the chief things, the fundamental things, that he made known to those heathen people when he preached the Gospel to them. It is not enough to tell men that Christ died because He loved them; the gospel of the death of Christ includes the fact that He died for their sins. Until men know what sin is – sin as distinguished from mere natural defects and infirmities, which they may attribute to their temperament and to the physical constitution which they have inherited from their parents; - sin as distinguished from mere deformity which offends their ideal of moral grace and beauty; - sin as distinguished from mere vice, which conscience condemns, and which, in the absence of any belief in the authority or even the existence of the Living God, conscience would continue to condemn; - until, I say, men know what sin is they can see no meaning in a large part of St. Paul’s gospel of the death of Christ. Until they are troubled, ashamed, and alarmed by the consciousness of sin, they will listen to a large part of this gospel with moral indifference, or even with moral resentment.” –P. 210