The Cross of Christ
“In Samuel Rutherford, we find a rare combination of the precise mind of a theologian but also the passionate heart of a poet. When you read his descriptions of Christ, when you read his descriptions of the love of Christ for His Church and His Church for Him, his imagery reminds me of the Song of Solomon.”
― Dr. John Snyder, PURITAN: All of Life to the Glory of God
Samuel Rutherford was a seventeenth century Puritan pastor, theologian, author, and thinker. He writes tenderly, warmly, and devotionally of Christ and of the Christian life.
In the Loveliness of Christ, Rutherford writes of the cross every believer is called to bear:
Ye will not get leave to steal quietly to heaven, in Christ’s company, without a conflict and a cross.
I find crosses Christ’s carved work that He marketh out for us, and that with crosses He figureth and portrayeth us to His own image, cutting away pieces of our ill and corruption. Lord cut, Lord carve, Lord wound, Lord do anything that may perfect Thy Father’s image in us, and make us meet for glory.
It is the Lord’s kindness that He will take the scum off us in the fire. Who knoweth how needful winnowing is to us, and what dross we must want ere we enter into the kingdom of God? So narrow is the entry to heaven, that our knots, our bunches and lumps of pride, and selflove, and idol-love, and world-love must be hammered off us, that we may throng in, stooping low, and creeping through that narrow and thorny entry.
O, what owe I to the file, to the hammer, to the furnace of my Lord Jesus! Why should I start at the plough of my Lord, that maketh deep furrows on my soul? I know He is no idle husbandman, He purposeth a crop.
Crosses are proclaimed as common accidents to all the saints, and in them standeth a part of our communion with Christ.