But be sure you see not only the condemnation of sin, but secondly, be sure that when you survey that cross, you see the manifestation of the greatest love that mortals have ever known. How much did He love us? Nobody knows. Nobody on earth knows! You have to deal in superlatives, because nothing else suffices. So you read John 3:16. Did He tell us how much He loved us? He just said, “God SO loved the world.” You have to use superlatives, because there is no way to measure it!

And then, thirdly, in surveying that cross, be sure you see not only condemnation for sin, and the greatest love that mortals have ever known, but be sure you see the great gift of salvation. And it is a gift! It is a free gift! Even though I must submit to it—I can’t earn it, I can’t deserve it, I can’t repay it—it is still a “gift,” Romans 6:23. How great is salvation? Again, we have to use superlatives! Nothing else will suffice. In Hebrews 2:3, the Bible speaks of “SO great a salvation.” How great? You just leave it at that, because there is no way to get any kind of a measurement—there is no instrument that we can use get the depth of it. In fact, it is a four-dimensional love, Ephesians 3:18. It has “breadth, and length, and depth, and height.” It’s too deep to fathom—it’s too high to reach—it’s too broad—it’s too long for us to even try to measure. That’s the love of God, and He “commends His love toward us, in that, while we were sinners, He died for us,” Romans 5:8. And the Bible said, “Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called His children,” 1 John 3:1.

All of that is because, “by grace have you been saved through faith,” and that “by the grace of God, He tasted death for every man.” Don’t say, “If God had wanted to save the world some other way, He could have.” Don’t you believe it! That’s blasphemy! Don’t you know that if there had been any other way, when His Son in that great agony prayed that night, that if it be possible, it would pass, He would have done it? But it was the only way! In 2 Corinthians 4:10, the Bible says, “carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in this” mortal flesh. You see, if it weren’t for the sinless life that He lived, the cross would have been meaningless! If it hadn’t been for His doing exactly what God wanted and never deviating—something all of us should have done and nobody has—then we couldn’t glory in that cross! There would be no glory at all there! But now we can glory in the cross. And then He did over and above what was owed God—obedience. He was made sin for us, and He took those stripes that really should have come to us. “Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift!”

The cross of our Lord is significant because it really manifests the grace of God. There isn’t anything like it! It’s a love that we can’t possibly understand. Our Lord came from the God-head, Philippians 2:6 to 8, and “He is the image of the invisible God,” Colossians 1:15, “the brightness of His glory” coming down to earth, Hebrews 1:3 and 4, and “through Him” all of these things on earth were made, John 1:1 and 2. And subjecting Himself to all of this suffering and going through all that He did was so that He might be made sin for us. I tell you, that’s marvelous! That’s Gospel!

Well, in closing, you and I can be “baptized into His death,” Romans 6:3. What does that really mean? I don’t know, I really honestly don’t know, but surely it means a lot more than meets the eye [than we can understand]! I wish I knew of the depth of it. But don’t overlook that we’re baptized into His body, the church, 1 Corinthians 12:13—that’s true! We’re baptized “into Christ,” Romans 6:3—that’s true! But we’re also “baptized into His death.” We know this much, whatever else there is that we haven’t seen [haven’t understood]. Anything that was made possible in and through that death is mine and yours when we’re baptized into that death. I tell you, if no other passage in all the Bible had to do with baptism, that passage ought to be enough to cause all of us to want to be baptized—to reap the benefits of all that was made possible in and through that death! [Read ALL of Romans, chapter 6!]

Is there any one here tonight that would like to do that? Is there anybody here tonight that has probably forgotten all that Christ did, and you’ve let your love grow cold and you’ve let your interest dwindle? You’re not really steadfast as we taught this morning. Come back to Him tonight. Don’t let another moment pass! One of the devil’s greatest wiles is to “wait awhile.” He’s saying, “Don’t do it tonight—but wait!” We’ve gone an hour, but in much less time than this whole service has been tonight, you can change an eternal destiny. Will you do it? We hope and pray that you will! Why don’t you do it right now while we stand and while we sing. Will you come?