This is the third lesson!

From Galatians 6:14 … “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”

Now let me demarcate today’s text, the specific phrase we need to notice this morning. “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, AND I UNTO THE WORLD.”

Paul just declared himself “crucified unto the world!” By means of the Cross on which Jesus died! Which, obviously, still has not lost its Power!

To me through these years … “crucified” has only held one meaning. What else could it possibly imply? It is in Greek “stauroo,” and means “to stake.” As in driving a stake into the ground. And it describes (as well as defines) what this old world did to my Saviour. They beat Him then hung Him on a stake (a pole, a tree) and left Him there until He died. Hence, the Cross!

But this morning, earlier, I have learned a new meaning for “stauroo.” And it (of necessity) still involves a “stake.” That can’t be changed, not honestly.

But imagine a line of stakes, one after another (each say about three or four feet tall). Now let those stakes surround a man’s field, a vineyard let’s imagine it. Then we connect those stakes one to another with some wire or rope or wooden planks … and we have “a fence!”

Well … I just read a Greek scholar saying that an alternate meaning (a legitimate meaning as well) for “stauroo” can be “to fence off” something! To effectively “separate” yourself from an undesirable environment! To erect a fence!

Wow!

Thus, if I am right, Paul uses the Cross “to cut himself off” from the world! To “fence” himself “into” Jesus … “into” Calvary, “into” the things of God … and to fence himself “away from” the carnal or selfish or detrimental things of the world!

Wow, again!

A permanent Barrier!

If Paul ever even thought about returning to some element of the world … the Cross prohibited him! (No going back to that Pharisaical way of life, to that pride, to that “bragging on one’s works” mentality! No going back to some “sin” which so easily beset him!

No going back to anything that smacked of the world! (“Abstain from all appearance of evil.” 1st Thessalonians 5:22, even the “appearance!” In Greek “eidos” means “shape, fashion, or sight.”)

All that unprofitable stuff … fenced off by the Cross!

So … one could really say that the old rugged Cross … separates two worlds! Eternally so! One is heavenly, the other hellish!

Fenced off … because of Calvary!

Fenced in … because of Calvary!

No wonder an old Bible Preacher (A. C. Dixon) years ago wrote a Book (based on a Series of Sermons he had preached in the Church he pastored) entitled “The Glories of the Cross.”

And one of those “glories” is … “by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Or would that be two?

Crucify … “to fortify with driven stakes,” the exact commentary quote!

— Dr. Mike Bagwell

Fenced in today!