Daily Inspiration Quote by Samuel Rutherford

Rutherford asks for a kind of belief that feels almost psychologically impossible: not merely trusting Christ, but trusting the instrument of agony associated with him. The line hinges on a daring redefinition of "friend". A friend is not only a comfort; a friend can be the one who tells you the truth you would rather avoid, who stays near when your life is being stripped down to what it actually is. Rutherford extends that logic to the cross, turning suffering from an enemy to a companionable presence under God’s sovereignty.

The intent is pastoral and disciplinary at once. Rutherford, a Scottish Presbyterian writing in an era of political upheaval and personal affliction (including imprisonment and exile), is training readers to interpret pain without romanticizing it. Calling the cross a friend doesn’t deny its brutality; it refuses to grant it ultimate malice. In Reformed spirituality, faith isn’t proven by agreeing to doctrines in the abstract but by consenting, in practice, to God’s way of sanctifying: humiliation before exaltation, loss before consolation.

The subtext is a challenge to the instinctive theology of self-protection. Most believers can say Christ is good while quietly insisting that hardship is bad and meaningless. Rutherford labels the harder move as "a special act of faith" because it requires a second conversion: from trusting God when life makes sense to trusting him when life looks like contradiction. The cross becomes a test of whether faith is transactional or relational - whether the believer wants Christ’s gifts, or Christ even when the gift is the cross.