The Effect of the Cross in the World (1) - All The LORD is near Daily Devotionals for 2025

For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.
Hebrews 2:10

The Effect of the Cross in the World (1)
The moment I get the cross, all is settled; it was fitting for Him; it was fitting for God, in bringing many sons to glory to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering—that was fitting for God. His majesty is maintained in the highest way. The Son must suffer if He takes up this cause.

Then I find perfect righteousness against sin, but along with it infinite love to me, a poor worthless sinner. There I get, consequently, the Son of Man glorified and God glorified in Him, and all moral questions in the presence of God’s revealed nature settled forever. All is perfectly settled according to God’s nature and for God, and by that which passed between God and Christ alone, perfect consequently according to their perfection. As to myself, if I look at the cross, I say, the only part I had in it was my sins and the enmity that crucified Christ. I am put in my place and humbled, and yet I see the great righteous basis of all-divine counsels in it and infinite love to me; but this brings me to know myself, too. Nothing ever showed like the cross the full development and manifestation of evil. Let people say what they like, the perfect development of evil was there on our part, and the full development of good before and from God.

When I look at the present effect of all that in this scene, in a broad sense there is none. The scene is not changed, as to the general state of things. Christ has gone to heaven when He had by Himself purged our sins; but as to the state of the world at large there is no effect, though many souls are saved. You get new forms of evil but as to the state of the world, it remains in the same state.

J. N. Darby