The heaviest end of the cross lies ever on His shoulders. If He bids us carry a burden, He carries it also.

The cross is not primarily a burden (although it is that indeed); it is first of all an instrument of death. Jesus demands of those who follow Him that they must lay their lives on the line; they must be ready to suffer as Jesus suffered. They must be willing to literally lose their lives. The Last Things (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans: 1978) 64

Jesus was crucified not in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves.

The wisdom of God has ordained a way for the love of God to deliver us from the wrath of God without compromising the justice of God.

Where are the marks of the cross in your life? Are there any points of identification with your Lord? Alas, too many Christians wear medals but carry no scars.

Jesus now has many lovers of His heavenly kingdom, but few bearers of his cross.

A crucified style best suits the preachers of a crucified Christ.

It may take a crucified church to bring a crucified Christ before the eyes of the world.

Some missionaries bound for Africa were laughed at by the boat captain. "You'll only die over there," he said. But a missionary replied, "Captain, we died before we started."

To glory in tribulation is no hard thing for him that loveth, for so to glory is to glory in the cross of the Lord.

Anybody who has once been horrified by the dreadfulness of his own sin that nailed Jesus to the Cross will no longer be horrified by even the rankest sins of a brother. Looking at the Cross of Jesus, he knows the human heart. He knows how utterly lost it is in sin and weakness, how it goes astray in the ways of sin, and he also knows that it is accepted in grace and mercy. Only the brother under the Cross can hear a confession.

There are no crown-wearers in heaven who were not cross-bearers here below.

...Sufferings must be the Churches most ordinary lot, and Christians indeed must be self-denying Cross-bearers, even where there are none but formal nominal Christians to be the Cross-makers...

It was not for societies or states, that Christ died, but for men.

Gospellers have much to say about what Christ's death accomplished for those who believe in Him, but very little is said about what that Death accomplished Godwards. The fact is that the death of Christ glorified God if never a single sinner had been saved by virtue of it.

Christ was willing to suffer and be despised, and darest thou complain of anything?

We are not bearing our crosses every time we have a headache; an aspirin tablet will take care of that. What is meant is the trouble we would not have if we were not Christians...

O what is He providing for me? What entertainment with Him shall I shortly find? Not such as He found with man, when He came to seek us. It is not a manger, a crown of thorns, a cross, that He is preparing for me: when I have had my part of these in following Him. I shall have my place in the glorious Jerusalem.

In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God's forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ. It is not the lack of psychological knowledge but lack of love for the crucified Jesus Christ that makes us so poor and inefficient in brotherly confession.

There is no mystery in heaven or earth so great as this—a suffering Deity, an almighty Saviour nailed to a Cross.