Unless you see yourself standing there with the shrieking crowd, full of hostility and hatred for the holy and innocent Lamb of God, you don’t really understand the nature and depth of your sin or the necessity of the cross.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the need for self-reflection on one's own sins to truly comprehend the significance of sacrifice and redemption.
C. J. Mahaney's quote emphasizes that to grasp the true nature of sin and its implications, one must visualize themselves amidst a hostile crowd, demonstrating how easily one can embody the same hostility that leads to the rejection of goodness and purity, represented by the Lamb of God. This grim reflection is necessary to appreciate the profound necessity of the cross as a symbol of sacrifice and atonement for one's sins.
In practice
During a sermon about redemption and self-awareness, this quote could be used to illustrate the importance of acknowledging one's own failings.
The alchemists spent years in their laboratories, observing the fire that purified the metals. They spent so much time close to the fire that gradually they gave up the vanities of the world. They discovered that the purification of the metals had led to a purification of themselves.
The modern believer is not suspicious enough, which is perhaps why when they try to construct arguments in their defence, the convictions are left doing all the work and reason, debilitated by neglect, weakly fails to prop them up.
If I should die, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.
Generally in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this.
Every time we sit at a table at night or in the morning to enjoy the fruits and grain and vegetables from our good earth, remember that they come from the work of men and women and children who have been exploited for generations.
…. Query: How contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language on doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.
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