Cross-Bearers of the King
The Mystery of Jesus’ Sacrifice
by Richard
Wurmbrand
Suppose you were living 2,000 years ago in
Palestine, that you were sinful, heavy with guilt,
and Jesus told you, “Your sin is grave and
deserves punishment. ‘The wages of sin are death.’
But tomorrow I will be flogged and crowned with a
crown of thorns for you—I invite you to assist
them when they drive nails into My hands and feet
and fix Me to a cross. I will cry in anguish, and
I will share the sorrow of My mother whose heart
will be pierced by compassion for Me as if by a
sword. You should be there to hear My cries. And
when I have died, you shall know that your sins
are forgiven forever, that I was your substitute,
your scapegoat. This is how a man gets saved. Will
you accept My suffering for your offense, or do
you prefer to bear the punishment yourself?” What
would you have answered?
I believe that this dilemma should be placed
before a soul seeking salvation. Fifteen hundred
years before the historical birth of Christ the
Bible says, “Today I have begotten You” (Psalm
2:7). It also says to the penitent 2,000 years
after Golgotha, “Today I die for you.” Jesus’ life
and death are outside of time and space.
Would you accept? More than once in Communist
prisons I have seen a pastor receive a beating to
the blood in place of another prisoner. A name
would be called and the pastor would simply say,
“It is I.” In Auschwitz, Maximilian Kolbe, a
priest, offered to take the place of a Pole
sentenced to death by the Nazis. The Pole was the
father of many children. The commandant of the
camp accepted the substitution and the Pole was
spared. Kolbe died by asphyxiation. Had you been
that Pole, what would you have decided?
I lived many years in an isolated subterranean
prison cell, in timelessness, something akin to
the weightlessness experienced by astronauts. Just
as they know no difference between heavy and
light, I knew no distinction between past,
present, and future.
In my prison cell Jesus’ presence was immediate.
His life did not belong to the past, nor was it a
series of successive events. He put before me the
problem I have just put to you. He told me, “You
are a sinner and are condemned to eternal
punishment for your transgressions, but I am ready
to save you. Because of your sin, I will endure
rejection, flogging, being spat upon, being
crowned with a crown of thorns, the pains of
crucifixion, and the agony of seeing my mother
brokenhearted at the foot of the cross. My blood
will cleanse you from all sin.”
I had to decide whether or not to accept the
sacrifice of the innocent Son of God for my sins.
I believed that to accept would be a greater
wickedness than all I might ever have done in my
life and I flatly refused this proposal. Jesus was
glad about my “No.”
Then came the real question, the thing He had had
in mind from the beginning. “What if I incorporate
your being into Mine, if you become part of My
body, if you deny yourself as an independent self,
and I will live in you henceforth and you will be
‘crucified with me’ (Galatians 2:20), ‘buried with
me’ (Romans 6:4), and share the fellowship of My
suffering (Philippians 3:10)? People in churches
will sing, ‘safe in arms of Jesus,’ while you will
be safe as an arm of Jesus, nailed like His to a
cross, but also imparting goodness like His. Do
you wish to become My co-worker for the salvation
of mankind, alleviating sufferings, filling up
‘what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ.’
I have accepted this proposal. Christians are
meant to have the same vocation as their King,
that of cross-bearers. It is this consciousness of
a high calling and of partnership with Jesus which
brings gladness in tribulation, which makes
Christians enter prisons for their faith with the
joy of a bridegroom entering the bridal room.
When George Vins, the general secretary of the
Baptist Union of the USSR, was sentenced for his
faith, believers in the courtroom covered him with
flowers. His little daughter, hoisted on a stool,
recited in front of the Communist judges, “Father,
with Christ you are free in prison, and freedom
without Him is prison.” The believers waiting
outside the building received him with a Christian
hymn.
The relative of a Christian prisoner in Red China
said to someone who sympathized with her, “You
should not feel sorry for us, for if he were not
in that slave labor camp, how could the others
here come to know the gospel of the Lord Jesus?”
In the same spirit we should receive the crosses
of poverty, racial discrimination, personal
betrayals, unfaithfulness of marriage partners,
rebellion of children, and all other sorrows of
life.
A man who smugly accepts Christ’s dying for him
and shouts Hallelujah about the innocent Son of
God receiving punishment he himself deserves
should be more severely punished than before. The
gospel, the good news, is the privilege of
becoming a member of the Body of Christ, of
suffering, of dying in pain with Him, and also of
being resurrected with Him in glory.
Because sacrifice is implicit in a conversion, the
call of an evangelist has the name “altar call.”
Every being placed upon the altar in
Jerusalem—lambs, rams, and pigeons—died. Someone
dies for you. This time it is not an animal, but
the Son of God. He has decreed it and nothing you
can do will change His mind. You can only ask for
the privilege of henceforth being able to
sacrifice yourself as well, for the glory of God
and for the good of your fellowmen. In return you
receive the right to die to sin and to the world
and its laws.
The reality of a conversion is in becoming one
with Him. It is shameful and abominable to accept
His substitutionary death otherwise.
This
article and the brief bio below is excerpted
from 100 Prison Meditations: Cries of
Truth from Behind the Iron Curtain, by
Richard Wurmbrand, (c) 1982, 1984, 2000 The
Voice of the Martyrs, Living Sacrifice Books,
Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Previously published
by Bridge-Logos Publishing, Inc.
Pastor
Richard Wurmbrand (1909-2001) was an
evangelical minister who endured
fourteen years in Communist imprisonment
and torture in his homeland of Romania. He was
one of Romania's most widely known Jewish
Believer leaders, authors, and educators. In
1945, when the Communists seized Romania and
attempted to control the churches for their
purposes, Richard Wurmbrand immediately began
an effective "underground" ministry to his
enslaved people and the invading Russian
soldiers. He was eventually arrested in
1948. Richard spent three years in
solitary confinement, seeing no one but his
Communist torturers.He was then transferred to
a group cell, where the torture continued for
five more years.
His wife, Sabina, also Jewish, was a slave
laborer for three years. Due to Pastor Richard
Wurmbrand's international stature as a
Messianic Jewish leader, diplomats of foreign
embassies asked the Communist government about
his safety. They were told he had fled
Romania. Secret police, posing as
released fellow prisoners, told his wife of
attending his burial in the prison cemetery.
Pastor Wurmbrand was released in a general
amnesty in 1964. Realizing the great danger of
a third imprisonment, Christians in Norway
negotiated with the Communist authorities for
his release from Romania. The "going price"
for a prisoner was $1,900. Their price
for Wurmbrand was $10,000. In May 1966, Pastor
Richard Wurmbrand testified in Washington
before the Senate's Internal Security
Subcommittee and stripped to the waist and
showed 18 deep torture wounds covering his
body. His story was carried across the world
newspapers in the U.S., Europe, and
Asia. Read a portion of this report.
Communist Exploitation of Religion Pastor
Richard's Testimony from 1966.
Pastor Wurmbrand has been called "the Voice of
the Underground Church" and the "Iron Curtain
Paul." His books are best sellers in
over fifty languages.
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