The saints love the cross. The cross is painful and humiliating and it is despised by the world. Our personal cross is a sharing in the sufferings of Christ. The cross is the only path to joy, to peace, to victory over the world, over Satan, and over our flesh and self-will, to fruitfulness and dominion.

The cross is the wisdom of God and the power of God. The cross can be seen and felt in the personality and ministry of the man of God.

There is a reproach, a scandal associated with the cross of Christ. The person who gladly bears the shame of the cross is heading straight toward the throne of the Father in Heaven.

The cross may be arrayed in light until it is we who are hanging there.

The cross is the only means, of destroying the self-seeking of the human personality. Ministry apart from the cross is self-willed, self-seeking, self-vaunting, self-centered.

The cross is God's response to the self- centeredness of man. Religious people erect elegant structures in order to "glorify God." But God is glorified in the cross of Christ. Herod's Temple was just that—Herod's Temple. It was not God's Temple. The same is true with all the striving of men.

Men build tabernacles but God builds the cross.

There are three crosses on Golgotha. God is on the cross. The saved thief is on the cross. The unsaved thief is on the cross. All are on the cross.

The world died with Christ Jesus. It is finished.

The true saint is on the cross with Christ and beholds the world from his position of helplessness on the cross. The crucified saint looks constantly to the Lord for the eternal power of the Spirit of God. It is this incorruptible wisdom and power that gives life to the saint and overflows from him so that humanity is released from the chains of Satan.

The cross is our protection against deception. The believer who attempts to evade the cross will be deceived by Satan (Matthew 16:23). God Himself will send delusion on him (II Thessalonians 2:11).

There is no way around the cross. Whoever is unwilling to forsake all, to take up his cross and follow Jesus, is unworthy of the Kingdom of God. He cannot be a disciple.

The cross is a prison from which we cannot escape without breaking God's laws for it is God who has locked us up.

The cross is a pinnacle. We are not to jump from it "by faith in God's Word." It is a place of waiting, of restrictions, of suffering, of patience.

It is God's will that we suffer in this confinement, this prison. It is God's will that our most intense desires are withheld from us. It is God`s will that we are required to keep serving Him in situations that are frustrating us and keeping us praying every moment, day and night.

The believer who forces his way out of God's prison may gratify his flesh for a season but his end will be grief, disillusionment, anguish, disappointment, loss of fruitfulness, loss of authority, loss of the Kingdom of God.

He who saves his life surely shall lose it.

He who loses his life for Christ's sake and the Gospel's certainly shall find his life again, and eternal fruitfulness with it. His life will be transformed, having been blended eternally with the life of Christ Jesus.

The cross is the glory, the boast of the Christian. It brings him down to helplessness. From the cross he arises in Christ renewed, transformed, vindicated totally, ruler over all. (from A Study Guide for the Book of Galatians)