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. (Galatians 6:14)

This book will be useless to the reader unless we establish quickly where the study of the human spirit must lead us. Anything known about a creature who is human commences in the fall of man. At the other end of the revealed Word of God lies the redemption of man by the free grace of God as set forth in the Cross of Calvary where Christ Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures (I Cor. 15:3).

Therefore, we may view man—the human spirit—in the fall or in the Cross. We begin this unpretentious book with man in creation and the fall, as well as in the Cross and redemption. It has been this struggle of theology concerning man in these two places that has been the battlefield for both libertines and legalists. After all is said and written, all false teachings lie in these two entities—the libertines and the legalists. More formally, they may go by other names and systems down through history, but the end is the same: can man, as a human spirit, save himself to God? or can man, as a human spirit, aggrandize himself to God in his own goodness? We extend quickly and absolutely in both categories, "No!"

In our hope in this volume of speaking on behalf of the revealed Word of God, we must identify quickly a number of differences in man's use of the word "Cross" as various interpretations have been presented.

Of all the views which have been taken, we desire to reach into the use of several prepositions in the New Testament as the best of Christians have chosen to use them. We leave apostates, liberals, legalists, and all that is seen as clear heresy, and hopefully go into the holy precincts of Biblical interpretation for a life in Christ. These treacherous slopes, heretofore, have led many to what is called "the higher life," "the deeper life," "the holy life," "the sanctified life," "the humble life," "the pious life," and a host of other names which of themselves are precious in the thinking of a grace-forgiven Christian. However, and far too often, movements have led to concerted error, and finally their "ism" has brought their "schism." Often in our own readings across a half-century, we have found grave error in the very areas we would have least expected it—in certain movements such as the "Deeper Life," the "Higher Life," the "Pious Life," etc. Through all these years we have wondered more about our need of Christ in "The Desperate Life" for the times in which we live. But we have also known individual Christians who lived a life by grace that was "the different life in Christ" from many others who walked not in such a path.

Can we not see the hunger that grace often brings to the lost and famished soul, when that soul has, for the first time in its existence, hungered aright in spite of certain humanities in its spirit? This book is dedicated, hopefully, to a better understanding of that human spirit. How else can we deal with one of the least of them in both their grace-pure hunger or their sin-purged weakness? We certainly must deal with and reject the belief of the unsaved, the compromiser, and the apostate; but we must deal differently with a grace-saved sinner who has the right hunger although he may have the wrong appetite.

So we have entered into both a dangerous and a delightful subject, or else we must believe that man's depravity is so total it has gobbled up all creatures to hell. A soul is worth more than that; a soul is precious in God's sight and should be in our sight. It is with a vicarious concern for such Christians who hunger for the Christ life that we share a definite affinity in these dark and desperate and unholy days.