Jesus at Calvary proves Himself both our Substitute and our Exemplar.  He who finds and opens a trail to a mountain-top encounters and removes obstacles, which none of those who come after him need to meet; he makes the path for them.  When the sinless Jesus found Himself socially involved with His brethren in the low valley of the world’s sinfulness, and looked off to the summit of His Father’s perfectness, He felt a separation between the whole world and God; and He gave Himself to end it.  We shall never know the uncertainties that shrouded Him and the temptations He faced, from the experience in the wilderness at the outset to the anguish of His spirit in Gethsemane and the consciousness of dereliction on the cross.  The “if it be possible” of His prayer suggests the alternative routes He sought to find, before He resigned Himself to opening the path by His blood.  Since His death there is “a new and living way” for those who know Him, which stretches from the lowest point of their abasement to the very peak of God’s holiness.  Up that way they can pass by repentance and trust, and down it the mercy of God hastens to meet and lead them.  They are forever delivered from the sense of exclusion from God; the way lies open.  But he who knows a path must himself walk it, if he would reach its goal; and no one is profited by Christ’s sacrifice who does not give himself in a like sacrificial service; only so does he ever reach fellowship with the Father.

The cross convinces us that we must love one another in the family of God as our Father in Christ has loved us; and it further pledges us God’s gift of Himself, that is His Holy Spirit, to fulfil this debt of love.  It speaks to us of One who offers nothing less than Himself, and nothing less will do, to be the Conscience of our consciences, the Heart of our hearts, the Life of our lives.  We are lifted by the cross into a great redemptive fellowship, a society of redeemers—­the redeeming Father, the redeeming Son and a whole company inspired by the redeeming Spirit.  We fill up on our part as individuals and as Christian social groups—­churches, nations, families—­that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for His Kingdom’s sake.  The more Christian our human society becomes, the more it will manifest the vicarious conscience of its Lord, and feel burdened with the guilt of every wrong-doer, and bound to make its law-courts and prisons, its public opinion and international policies and all its social contacts, redemptive.  Through every touch of life with life, in trade, in government, in friendship, in the family, men will feel self-giving love akin to, because fathered by, the love of God commended to the world when Christ died for sinners.