The meaning and message of the cross; a contribution to missionary apologetics

Front matter

PRINCETON. N. J.

“Re. Neon Orcee. | f- yee ox

The Meaning and Message of the Cross

Foreword

No phase of thought connected with Christian teaching in our time, more needs to be clarified than that which is connected with the redeeming work of our blessed Lord.

While gifted minds in various periods have profoundly studied the subject, and have written upon it immortal treatises, yet even the best of these at some points are ever in need of restatement. The controversies which have raged concerning the subject have generally left some clouds of obscurity peculiar to all controversy. Language from its inherent weakness as implying too much or too little is so capable of being misunderstood, that any statement made in a given generation requires a somewhat altered phrasing for the generation following. Then the very conceptions of Scripture being often paradoxical or symbolic, carry in them meanings which lie below the surface. The most vital implications of Scripture never clearly appear except to an insight born of deep, spiritual experience ; and this element is ever a variable one. To real insight the mysteries of the Divine Word increasingly become open secrets. a

8 FOREWORD

In what I have written I have not followed the beaten paths to construct a theory of redemption, but have sought rather by an induction from Scripture teachings to get back to the enduring realities which underlie any theory of permanent value. In the first five chapters I have sought to find the meaning of the Cross of Christ. This necessitated a clearing up of that confusion of thought so widely prevalent, as between the mere human tragedy and crime of the crucifixion, and the Divine Cross of the reconciliation ; and the setting forth of the voluntariness of the death of Christ considered as a redeeming achievement, or a graciously judicial transaction, wherein that death becomes the basis of both the forgiveness and the cure of sin. In the latter five chapters I have endeavoured to state the message of the cross as concerns the following matters : individual salvation, the nature and habit of the new life, the redemption of the body, the dynamic of missionary endeavour, and the supreme adaptation of the cross to meet the soul-hunger of all men.

That there are signs of a new accent upon the essential redeeming realities, particularly in Great Britain, promising great values to the church of the future, is certain. Teachers in the Universities, like Fairbairn, Orr, Denney, and Stalker ; preachers like MacLaren of Manchester, the late Dr. Dale, and his successor, Dr. Jowett, of Birmingham, G. Campbell

FOREWORD 9

Morgan of both sides the sea, and others ; and writers like W. Robertson Nicoll, whose two books, ‘¢ The Return to the Cross,’’ and ‘*‘ The Church’s One Foundation,’’ and his many editorials in The British Weekly are signals of protest against current radicalism, all lifting up new standards in behalf of essential truths in danger of being quite discarded.

Dr. James Orr’s two works on “ Ritschlianism ”’ and his more recent book, ‘‘ God’s Image in Man,”’ and the two late discussions by Professor Denney on ‘‘The Death of Christ,’’ and ‘‘ The Atonement and the Modern Mind,”’ are strong testimonies to the objectivity and the superhumanness of Christ’s redemption. Contributed articles on ‘‘ The Atonement in Modern Thought,’’ which appeared in a symposium in The Christian World, London, about five years ago, by such authorities as the late Principal Cave, P. T. Forsyth, R. F. Horton, Marcus Dods, and Frederick Godet, of Switzerland; a notable English work, entitled ‘‘ The Spiritual Principle in the Atonement,’’ by Rev. J. Scott Lidgett, and ‘‘ Atonement and Personality,’? by Canon Moberly, of Oxford, further illustrate the recent renewed emphasis on the redeeming work of Christ as the deepest moral reality in our world.

Among those representing reaction and protest against non-expiatory views of this work stands prominently,—Dr. P. T. Forsyth, Principal of Hack-

10 FOREWORD ney College, London. At the International Council of Congregationalists, which met in Boston, Mass., in 1899, Dr. Forsyth read a classic paper entitled, ‘The Cross as the Final Seat of Authority,’’ which produced a profound impression,—an impression peculiarly reassuring to the less radical wing of that council. Dr. Forsyth located that seat in the Cross of Christ, ‘‘which is the world’s central moral act, which is redemption’’ ; a reality which he placed ‘back of the Bible (as a canon) the church, the reason, or the human heart.’’ In several noted papers published since by this gifted preacher and writer, a very unusual light has been thrown on the evangelical idea. Some crudities in thought have been exposed, some traditional terms discarded, and distinctions more consonant with an enlightened Christian consciousness have been drawn. I owe special obligation to Dr. Forsyth for conclusions reached and set forth in the following pages.

The ultimate aim of my discussion, as expressed in the last two chapters, has been to show that in Christ’s death as a gracious judgment-death—the essential redemption—resides the basis for the central evangelical missionary motive and assurance of the satisfying portion for the heathen. In this light also the ground for the true missionary apologetic so greatly needed by the church of our time is not far to seek. This ground is in the relation of the

FOREWORD 11 unique first judgment which occurred in Christ’s cross and its saving potentialities, to the last judgment of mankind. With the divine reconciliation and our implied cooperation with it to actualize its values for our fellow men, the missionary passion is closely connected. Lack of missionary conviction, and want of power over the heathen, other things being equal, will be found due in the end to a lack of appreciation of the reconciling work of Christ and its implicates for His disciples. Missions, like theology, must always ‘‘adjust their compass at the cross.’’

H. C. M.

Boston, Mass,, August 1, 1906.

Contents

I. THE Cross DISTINGUISHED FROM THE CRUCIFIXION :

Shocking but common misconceptions—The Cross of the Reconciliation as distinguished from the tragedy of the Crucifixion—Antithetical rather than synonymous—An element of mystery not resolvable—Carefulness in statement requisite— -—Exceptional discernment of the dying penitent —The cross either man’s glory or his stumblingblock—The cross of our glorying, not the crucifixion-crime.

Il. SouRCES OF CONFUSION RESPECTING THE CRoss . i ) i :

II Sources Of Confusion Respecting The Cross

Not in wisdom of words lest the cross of Christ should be made void.—1 Cor. 1:17.

DoUBTLESS a fruitful occasion of the confusion respecting the cross is the ambiguity which has attended the theological use of the term ‘‘ death,’’ as applied to Christ. A common assumption is that this term in the New Testament is narrowly used in the sense of mere mortal dissolution ensuing upon the separation of the soul from the body. Jesuson the physical side of His being of course was flesh and blood, and the inference is natural that when His persecutors transfixed Him to the wood, His constitution, being under peculiar strain, would give way, as naturally as would that of any ordinary man. A death thus physically inflicted and limited is conceived to be the death which Jesus died for the sins of the world. Says one, ‘‘ When sin came into man’s being, it affected his body as well as his soul, and so there is some kind of connection between sin and death. This connection in the Scriptures is always presupposed by the reconciliation, and so when

Christ redeemed mankind He tasted that form of 32 mortal death which is inseparably connected with sin.’’

Of course, on the basis of the conception just stated, the ‘‘mortal death’’ of Jesus is regarded as having a peculiar distinction and moral value from the fact that it was the death of an unfallen one linked to Deity, that it involved so abject humiliation, and that it was patiently endured ; but taken as it stands, the conception is inadequate and misleading.

In one of the sorry caricatures of the evangelical conception quoted in the former chapter, it will be recalled that the author of the sentiment referred to held that the death of Jesus was either that of murder or of suicide. It would seem not to have entered the mind of the author of those forced alternatives, that there was a third sort of death possible to Christ ; namely, the experience of spiritual death, including of course physical dying also, that He was ‘‘ pouring out His soul unto death,’’ ’ that the Father was making ‘‘ His soul an offering for sin’’ ;? which certainly was a death far enough from suicide, because it was a death which Christ had original authority to incur, as well as to overcome in resurrection power.

This third form of death also, as a basis on which men could fix their faith as a vicarious work, was in character far enough from the death of murder, which indeed Christ’s enemies designed to inflict upon Him. Of course, the error in the sentiment above quoted, lies in the supposition that the only death to be thought of in the case of Jesus is the death by ‘‘murder’’—at the most mere mortal dying,—whereas the reconciling death as the basis of evangelical reliance for salvation was far above this in character, and is quite misunderstood by the objector quoted. Of the real nature of this death, I will speak in a later chapter.

The traditional Roman Catholic theology has been the most fruitful source of much of the confusion referred to. From the beginning, Romanism has materialized Christianity. It has put large emphasis upon the physical dying of Jesus. It has correspondingly misunderstood and minimized the resurrection, and the actual redemption organically connected with it. In all Roman Catholic churches the central object is the crucifix. In its great cathedrals like Cologne, one may behold not only fulllength wax-figure representations of Jesus stretched upon the cross, but also imitations of the dead Saviour lying in the sepulchre, every wound inflicted by the torturing instruments, oozing and red with gore. To one who apprehends the real character of the atonement, these representations are gross and revolting.

In the paintings of Tissot, although they are the expressions of a spirit deeply influenced by the moral power of Christ’s death, the emphasis is overwhelmingly upon the mere tragedy, which the artist so vividly conceived. There is little suggestion of that which is really the mediating work itself; that is, of the work which God intended and which Christ was enacting behind the crucifixion. This work was deeply in the invisible and spiritual realm, impossible of portrayal upon a canvas; it has to be seen by the conscience and the insight of faith ; it must be painted on the moral retina of the soul, and can never be externalized to the natural eye.

Romanism commonly makes its appeal to the senses. The Mass as the perversion of an original truth is something strangely calculated to kindle the imagination, that it may sense anew the literal physical dying of Jesus. In the ‘ elevation of the host,’’ the observers, instead of being taught to die daily with Christ to the flesh-life, are trained to see Christ Himself repeatedly and dramatically lifted up as on the tree before them. By the priest’s blessing, the bread and the wine are supposedly transformed into the literal body and flowing blood of Christ, dying before the people, then eaten and drunk by them in a materialized appropriation of the body of the Lord. In all this there is a sad perversion of teaching respecting the real nature of the divine achievement which the apostles apprehended in the cross of the reconciliation, and also of its legitimate appropriation and assimilation in the believer’s spiritual life.

In the famous Passion Play enacted every ten years in Oberammergau, Bavaria, we have a marked illustration of the Roman Catholic accentuation of the error here referred to. That dramatic exhibition is not adapted to teach the real mediating work of Christ. as the Scriptures teach it. It is the dramatization of the tragedy. It pictures forth the public execution of the innocent ‘‘man of Nazareth.’’ No doubt there is a deep sincerity in the spirit of the extraordinary participants, who spend much of their lives in study to represent in a most realistic way the crucifixion event. I would not presume to say that those who so profoundly meditate upon the great occurrence, and who act their part in it with such artistic skill, may not themselves by faith grasp the underlying mediating fact. An intelligent observer of the play may also bring to the occasion a right apprehension of the work of Christ itself, and so may get profit out of the dramatization. My contention, however, is that the play in itself is adapted to emphasize not the reconciliation but the tragedy. Its appeal is to the sensibilities. It is essentially impressional, chiefly serving to awaken sympathy with the innocent sufferer, rather than conviction of sin and the appropriate repentance for it.

And yet while thus showing the over-accentuation of the tragedy side of the cross, I do not forget that there was a tragedy in connection with this Supreme event, the most consummate tragedy of history. As divinely foreseen, God purposed to use it for its historical and impressional value, to startle the world into attention, to compel reflection concerning the deep iniquity of sin and what it cost the Lord to redeem from it, and to warm the affections towards a divine beneficence so absolute. In the order of the world of which we form a part—a world into which sin has come, a world existing under a redemptive economy—God saw it to be necessary that sin should be unrestrained up to a certain limit, that it should have opportunity publicly to disclose its own unreason and virus. It must be given opportunity to work itself out to selfrevealed cruelty and absurdity. It was doubtless in. some way necessary that the public divine dealing with the sin-problem should manifest itself in immediate connection with—right over against—the demonstrated turpitude of moral evil which the crucifixion of the innocent Christ illustrated. Sin required to be set forth as deicide ; and men needed to be convinced that even for a sin so atrocious there was a pardon. In no less dramatic way could the utter contrast between holiness and sin, and at the same time the adequacy of divine grace to overcome the breach, be made to stand out so impressively. Hence the strangely unique tragedy. God can make use even of the forms in which Satan’s lies express themselves. So He uses the very moral shock, the sensation caused by the historic crucifixion-crime to arrest attention, to impress the world and all worlds in the interest of His holy grace. Thus there seems to have been not a physical, but a moral necessity, that on God’s part the martyr-principle— the innocent suffering for the guilty even—should be utilized, in order that the world might be gripped by a new and diviner power. In the logical development of the evil of American slavery, it was morally necessary that such an one as John Brown (and a great multitude of others of whom he was the forerunner), should lay down his life. Brown himself with deep insight is said naively to have remarked on the way to the scaffold that he was ‘worth more to hang than for anything else.’’

The issue of our Civil War working as the deep eure of the evil which brought on the war, could not reach its established result until President Abraham Lincoln, the embodiment of all that was most opposite to the enslaving-principle, fell a martyr to freedom.

Said Hugh Latimer to Ridley when bound to the stake at Oxford in 1555, as they both were about to be burned, ‘‘ Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man! We shall this day light such a candle by God’s grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.’”’ ‘*The blood of the martyrs” is always “the seed of the church.’’ This would seem to be morally essential to a public power that would prove curative of evil. So while the work of Christ in its mediating element is far deeper than the efficacy of mere martyrdom, it nevertheless makes use of the principle of martyrdom on the way to its proper goal. It is in this way that the crucifixion itself in all its revolting character, blackest of crimes though it is, is overruled and utilized by God,—since man would perpetrate the deed,—to shock the world into realization of its own baseness on the one hand, and of God’s infinite compassionateness on the other.

Thus it is that Christ, and Him even as crucified, when taken in its whole meaning, is both ‘the wisdom of God and the power of God.’’ While no one could say that the crucifixion of Christ, considered as a crime, could be made the basis of salvation, yet we must say, as above explained, that the crucifixion has a most effective bearing in bringing men into saving union with Christ. For it needs ever to be remembered that the reconciliation must be wrought not only in consistency with the ethical nature of God, but in such a form as to impress human nature in the simple, that something unparalleled has occurred —something moreover that will not be put by—and this is just what did occur in the experience of the Divine Man of Calvary. Such aspectacle is adapted to reach and melt the heart of the sinner, and unless he has been strangely sophisticated to awaken in him a new spontaneity of righteousness.

A Bechuanaman in South Africa, after listening in astonishment to a graphic description of the crucifixion, exclaimed,—‘‘ Jesus, away from there ; that’s my place.’’

This new spontaneity is effected by the Divine Spirit through the vision thrown up against the background of sin’s turpitude of the innocent sufferings of Christ, phenomena peculiarly adapted to accomplish the result. This divinely pathetic spectacle is an unspeakably more effective moral power than the imposition of any mere legally ethical constraint on the human spirit could have been. Says President Edwards, ‘‘In legal humiliation, men are brought to despair of helping themselves: in evangelical, they are brought voluntarily to deny and renounce themselves; in the former, they are subdued and forced to the ground ; in the latter, they are brought sweetly to yield, and freely, with delight to prostrate themselves at the feet of God.’’

There is undoubtedly a divinely intended value in the power to impress the sensibilities which the event of Christ’s dying, in just the manner He did, constituted ; it acts as a mysterious public phenomenon, a magnet to attract the curious, to move the careless, to awaken discrimination against sin, and at length to win the grateful devotion of the penitent. The phenomena accompanying the crucifixion, the satanic cruelty, the darkened heavens, the earthquake shock, the opened sepulchres, and the rent temple vail, just at that juncture of the world’s concentrated public life, made the crucifixion for all time the sensation of the ages. It compels attention. This peculiar execution wrought in no such way as the crucifiers Supposed it would, namely, to reduce Christ to oblivion. It rather exalted Him into notice; it tended in the retrospect to move all men, as well as Israel, to ‘‘look upon Him whom they pierced.’”?' But even so, the intended value in all this sensational potency to rouse the attention of mankind was the result of overruling wisdom and power; no thanks to the crucifiers. In no sense was the power of this dramatic transaction due to the purpose of the murderers of Jesus: they had no such thought. Sin is too shortsighted for that; in the end it always o’erleaps itself. In this case particularly it went wide of its own intentions ; and so God, and not Satan, reaped a benefit from the ghastly deed. Sin in its own over-doing killed itself. God took up the effect of the suicide 1 Zech. 12:10; John 19: 37, and turned it as only He could turn it,—to the glory of His righteous and gracious government forever.

The death described by the mere tragedy, however, is by no means the deeper death which Jesus died. It was not the crucifixion per se, the mere Roman form of public execution in itself which constituted the reconciliation—that substance of divine dealing with sin—which was contemplated ‘‘ from before the foundation of the world.’? That mediating death which Christ underwent was something vastly deeper down than a form of human execution. It was primarily an immaterial and spiritual experience, the result of His voluntary assumption of the world’s sin and guilt, including that of His own tormentors.

No mere dramatization like that of the Passion Play, therefore, could set forth the reconciliation itself, simply because that which was then and there enacted, while objectified, was in the main invisible, involving deep spiritual elements and relationships. The chief factors in this achievement working in a death grapple with the sin-problem lay deeper than sight. These factors were the holiness of God, and the measureless love and grace of God working harmoniously in the divine government. The crucifiers indeed knew not what they did, much less did they know what the Christ was doing ; meanwhile, even as they tortured, He was redeeming.

But great as is the mistake of the Roman Catholic

Church in fostering the unfortunate confusion respecting the nature of Christ’s death, yet Protestantism cannot be said to be wholly free from blame ; for the language of a materialized conception concerning Christ’s work has often been used by Protestants in a misleading way, and yet prevails, despite the constant misunderstanding of the terms used. Doubtless this tendency is the harder to correct, because of the very depth and preciousness of evangelical experiences so deeply cherished. These experiences are rooted in the sense of the vicariousness of Christ’s dying work, and so they have become associated closely with the shedding of His blood, in some meaning of this term. With many, so true and deep is the consciousness that their sins have been purged away by the sacrificial work of Christ, that to them it is the very physical element itself that flowed from Christ’s wounds, which cleanses. The terminology of the Scriptures in the emphasis it places upon ‘‘ the blood of the covenant”? ! is strong and repeated. It should, however, not be forgotten that in a book so highly symbolic as the Bible, many of its terms, and especially those which have been brought over into the New Testament from the ceremonialism of Jewish sacrifices, need to be explained. As between the reality and the shadow, there is always danger of confusion. Scripture language is not always self-defining. There is therefore 1Heb. 10; 29.

need of thought and careful speech in interpretation. Take, for example, such a passage as that in Hebrews 9: 183—“‘ For if the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the (an, or His) eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.’’ From this text the inference is hastily drawn that whereas ‘‘ the blood of bulls and of goats’’ only ceremonially purified sin, yet the blood of Christ—the physical element —sinee it is Christ’s blood, acts as the real purifying agent. Thus reasoning, a habit most devout and well-meaning easily follows to magnify the blood itself.

But suppose now we carefully notice the two members of the antithesis in the text just quoted. The first member is ‘‘the blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer’’ ; the second member is ‘‘ the blood of Christ’’ plus all that is embraced in the accompanying qualifying statements ; including of course Christ’s life for which the blood stood,’ that is, the second member is ‘‘the blood of Christ who through His eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God.’’ Then the teaching is not that the blood of Christ, in itself considered, really accomplished what the blood of bulls and of goats only ceremonially expressed ;

i Levevads 21:

but that the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice consisted in the fact that He ‘‘through His eternal Spirit offered Himself (even unto death) without spot to God,”’ of which offering, His blood—emblem of His life—was the speaking sign.

Should we, however, be oblivious of the fact that multitudes not early accustomed to evangelical teaching, and uninitiated in its peculiar experience, are more likely to be repelled from Christianity than won to it, when in our interpretations we fail to take pains to distinguish between the physical element and the symbolic import of Christ’s blood? Now when it is explained that the language of the New Testament, so abounding in terms like ‘‘ the precious blood of Christ,’’?’ ‘‘the blood of the lamb,’’? ‘‘the blood of an eternal covenant,’’* etc., is speaking in symbol, really meaning that the sacrifice of Christ was the surrender of the most precious life, a surrender to the very uttermost in unspared devotion, even unto blood and death, and that back of the blood was a great moral recognition of the deepest death which sin necessitated ; and that Jesus in His offering even unto blood was in principle owning the penal judgment which sin and guilt deserved, the Scripture language filled with a richer content, is highly ennobled, while nothing of value is lost.

Of course we would give no occasion for any to speak lightly of the blood of Christ, for to us it is charged with the profoundest and most hallowed meanings. Those who can thus speak of this most sacred of all emblems have given away far more in the realm of moral reality than they suppose; and they are making it easier for the enemies of the real cross to blaspheme. To any who are in doubt about the sanctity of this particular Biblical symbol, as involving the devotement of the divine life for men, a deeper study is commended. All who would help to the appreciation and acceptance of evangelical truth should go deeply into the realities concerning Scripture sacrifices which underlie the terms employed.

Til

THE NEW TESTAMENT USE OF CRUCIFIXION TERMS

For I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.—1 Cor, 2: 2.

In view of what has been said, it is now necessary to give our attention to some particular scriptures which doubtless have occurred to the reader bearing upon the subject in hand. These passages at first sight may seem to present an objection to the distinction I have been drawing between the crucifixion in itself considered and the divine achievement of the reconciliation.

In his first Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter i, verses 23, 24, Paul declares, ‘‘ But we preach Christ crucified, unto Jews a stumbling block and unto Gentiles foolishness, but Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.’’ In chapter ii, and verse 2 of this same Epistle, the Apostle says, that in his ministry among the Corinthians, he ‘‘determined not to know anything save Jesus Christ, and Him (as) crucified.”’

And to the Galatians, in chapter vi, verse 14, Paul 47 wrote, ‘‘ Far be it from me to glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world.’’

I grant that at first sight it does appear as if in the passages quoted, the Apostle was magnifying the crucifixion itself as being the basis of human salvation. But we shall see this is far from the truth. In each of the passages referred to, Paul is dealing with a difficult paradox, in which he takes note of the twofold aspect of that mysterious event, the death on the cross. In one aspect of it, he recognizes the humiliation—a public historic event indeed—involved in Christ’s endurance of the crucifixion ; but in another aspect of it, he takes note of what God intended in permitting and overruling the evil in that event, and which, because of His own divine working back of all, eventuated in the Moral Achievement of Christ’s Cross.

As to the first of these passages, observe, that Paul concedes that the preaching of the cross, as he understood it, was a paradox hard to receive for both Jews and Gentiles: that to the one it was a stumbling block, and to the other it was foolishness, while to the spiritually initiated, the Christ who had been crucified was both the wisdom of God and the power of God. What Paul here really is magnifying is the Messiah manifested in the form of self-sacrificing humiliation, as submitting even to ignominious death, while doing his deepest work, rather than as one authenticated by pomp and circumstance as the Jews expected. Asa sign, the Jews were unable to accept this; and as a mark of wisdom, such a manifestation was utterly confounding to the proud Greeks. So what Paul is defending is the paradox of a humiliated sacrificial Messiah, as a manifestation of God’s moral power and of His divine wisdom. It is plain, therefore, that in this passage the Apostle was not justifying crucifixion, per se; he rather took that crucifixion as the sign of an unparalleled public self-abasement to which God in Christ submitted for man’s sake.

So with reference to the second of Paul’s declarations before us. In saying that, he ‘‘ determined not to know anything,’ among the Corinthians, ‘‘ save Jesus Christ and Him crucified,’’ he is similarly emphasizing not the element in the crucifixion which is a palpable crime, but that paradoxical objective sign which Christ’s peculiar humiliation constituted. The world’s Redeemer was one who gave Himself to the deepest self-renunciation, in order that by so doing He might save and exalt lost men; and so, in the personal allusions of the Apostle which follow, he avows his fellowship with that kind of a Saviour: ‘* And I was with you in weakness and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.’?! The emphasis here clearly is upon the paradox of the lowliness of the agent of salvation, and the divine overruling purpose concerning it, and not upon any virtue in the crucifixion wrong itself. ‘The divineness of this paradox is the more apparent also, as we follow the Apostle in his reasoning: ‘Although this looks like foolishness to men, yet we speak wisdom among them that are full grown, yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world who are coming to nought: but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that has been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory: which none of the rulers of this world hath known: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of Glory.’’?