WHEREFORE AND THEREFORE
Wherefore Jesus…suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp.
Hebrews 13:12,13
Jesus kept his “wherefore” and I must keep my “therefore.” He went without the gate to suffer and I must go outside the camp to serve. I am not merely to go from something, I am to go to Him. Where He is I belong. And it is not His popularity but His reproach that I must bear. The world and some churches have devised a popular Christ, but He is not this Christ of the Wherefore. One can stay inside the camp and follow this fictitious Jesus, but not the One who suffered that I might be sanctified with His blood. This present age, like all ages past, despises a bleeding Christ and a gory cross. There is nothing elegant about following a crucified Saviour and seeking a city to come.
I cannot get by with singing about the wondrous cross. Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all. His “wherefore” demands my “therefore.” And that means the sacrifice of person: “Let us…(v.13), of praise (v.15), of possessions (v.16)
“Jesus paid it all” in the Wherefore. “All to Him I owe” in the Therefore.