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The One Object of Supreme Regard, August 20
I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him
crucified.... And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of
man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
1
Corinthians 2:2-4
.
To Paul the cross was the one object of supreme interest. Ever since he had been
arrested in his career of persecution against the followers of the crucified Nazarene
he had never ceased to glory in the cross. At that time there had been given him
a revelation of the infinite love of God, as revealed in the death of Christ; and a
marvelous transformation had been wrought in his life, bringing all his plans and
purposes into harmony with heaven. From that hour he had been a new man in
Christ. He knew by personal experience that when a sinner once beholds the love of
the Father, as seen in the sacrifice of His Son, and yields to the divine influence, a
change of heart takes place, and henceforth Christ is all and in all.
At the time of his conversion, Paul was inspired with a longing desire to help
his fellow men to behold Jesus of Nazareth as the Son of the living God, mighty to
transform and to save. Henceforth his life was wholly devoted to an effort to portray
the love and power of the Crucified One. His great heart of sympathy took in all
classes. “I am debtor,” he declared, “both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both
to the wise, and to the unwise” (
Romans 1:14
). Love for the Lord of glory, whom he
had so relentlessly persecuted in the person of His saints, was the actuating principle
of his conduct, his motive power. If ever his ardor in the path of duty flagged, one
glance at the cross and the amazing love there revealed was enough to cause him to
gird up the loins of his mind and press forward in the path of self-denial....
In the power of the Spirit, Paul related the story of his own miraculous conversion
and of his confidence in the Old Testament Scriptures.... His words were spoken
with solemn earnestness ... that he loved with all his heart the crucified and risen
Saviour. They saw that his mind was centered in Christ, that his whole life was
bound up with his Lord....
Paul realized that his sufficiency was not in himself, but in the presence of the
Holy Spirit, whose gracious influence filled his heart, bringing every thought into
subjection of Christ. He spoke of himself as “always bearing about in the body the
dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our
body” (
2 Corinthians 4:10
). In the apostle’s teachings Christ was the central figure.
“I live,” he declared; “yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (
Galatians 2:20
). Self was
hidden; Christ was revealed and exalted (
The Acts of the Apostles, 245-251
).
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