Basic HTML Version
Our Saviour’s Highest Honor, December 31
And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then
he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my
friends.
Zechariah 13:6
.
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth
were passed away.”
Revelation 21:1
. The fire that consumes the wicked purifies
the earth. Every trace of the curse is swept away....
One reminder alone remains: Our Redeemer will ever bear the marks of His
crucifixion. Upon His wounded head, upon His side, His hands and feet, are the
only traces of the cruel work that sin has wrought. Says the prophet, beholding
Christ in His glory: “He had bright beams coming out of his side: and there was
the hiding of his power.”
Habakkuk 3:4
, margin. That pierced side whence flowed
the crimson stream that reconciled man to God—there is the Saviour’s glory, there
“the hiding of his power.” ... And the tokens of His humiliation are His highest
honor; through the eternal ages the wounds of Calvary will show forth His praise
and declare His power.
The cross of Christ will be the science and the song of the redeemed through
all eternity. In Christ glorified they will behold Christ crucified. Never will it be
forgotten that He whose power created and upheld the unnumbered worlds through
the vast realms of space, the Beloved of God, the Majesty of heaven, He whom
cherub and shining seraph delighted to adore—humbled Himself to uplift fallen
man; that He bore the guilt and shame of sin, and the hiding of His Father’s face,
till the woes of a lost world broke His heart and crushed out His life on Calvary’s
cross. That the Maker of all worlds, the Arbiter of all destinies, should lay aside
His glory and humiliate Himself from love to man will ever excite the wonder and
adoration of the universe. As the nations of the saved look upon their Redeemer
and behold the eternal glory of the Father shining in His countenance; as they
behold His throne, which is from everlasting to everlasting, and know that His
[343]
kingdom is to have no end, they break forth in rapturous song: “Worthy, worthy is
the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His own most precious
blood!”
386