Crucified with Christ

Tuer lesson which the Lord wished His disciples to learn from His statement concerning the taking up of the Cross and the losing of their life fiads its expression in the words of Paul, after Christ had died on the Cross, and had been exalted on high, and the Spirit had been poured out. Paul says: ‘‘T am crucified with Christ. God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and IT unto the world’’ (Gal. 2: 20; 6: 14). He wished every believer to live so as to prove that he was crucified with Christ. He wished us to understand that the Christ who comes to dwell in our hearts is the crucified Christ, who will Himself, through His life, impart to us the true mind of the Cross. He tells us that ‘‘ our old man is crucified with Him.”’ Yea, more, that ‘‘they who are Christ’s have crucified the fiesh.?? When they received by faith the crucified Christ, they gave over the flesh to the death sentence which was executed to the full on Calvary. Paul says ‘‘we have been planted together in the likeness of His death’’ (Rom. 6: 5), and that therefore we must reckon that we are dead to sin in Christ Jesus.

These words of the Holy Spirit, through Paul, teach us that we must abide constantly in the fellowship of the Cross, in fellowship with the Crucified and living Lord Jesus. It is the soul that lives ever under the cover and shelter and deliverance of the Cross that alone can expect constantly to glory in Christ Jesus and in His abiding nearness.