Abide
in Christ by Andrew Murray
Day
11
The
Crucified One
I
am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me.—(Gal. 2:20 KJV)
“We
have been planted together in the likeness of His death.” —(Rom.
5:5 KJV)
"I
am crucified with Christ:" Thus the apostle expresses his
assurance of his fellowship with Christ in His sufferings and death,
and his full participation in all the power and the blessing of that
death. And, showing that he really did mean what he said and knew
that he was indeed now dead, he added: "It is no longer I that
live, but Christ that liveth in me." How blessed must be the
experience of such a union with the Lord Jesus! To be able to look
upon His death as mine, just as truly it was His. To be able to look
upon His perfect obedience to God, His victory over sin, and complete
deliverance from its power as mine. And then to realize that the
power of that death does, by faith, work daily with a Divine energy
in putting to death the flesh, and renewing the whole life into the
perfect conformity to the resurrection life of Jesus! Abiding in
Jesus, the Crucified One, is the secret to the growth of that new
life which is ever begotten of the death of nature.
Let
us try to understand this. The suggestive expression, "Planted
into the likeness of His death," will teach us what the abiding
in the Crucified One means. When a graft is united with the stock on
which it is to grow, we know that it must be kept fixed in place. It
must abide in that place where the stock has been cut, and thereby
wounded, to make an opening to receive the graft. There is no graft
without wounding—the laying bare and opening up of the inner life
of the tree to receive the foreign branch. It is only through such
wounding that access can be obtained to the fellowship of the sap and
the growth and the life of the stronger stem. Even so with Jesus and
the sinner. Only when we are planted into the likeness of His death
shall we also be in the likeness of His resurrection, partakers of
the life and the power which are in Him. In the death of the cross,
Christ was wounded, and in His opened wounds a place prepared where
we might be grafted in. And just as one might say to a graft, and
does practically say as it is fixed in its place, "Abide here in
the wound of the stem, that is now to bear you," so to the
believing soul the message comes, "Abide in the wounds of Jesus;
there is the place of union, and life, and growth. There you will see
how His heart was opened to receive you. How His flesh was rent that
the way might be opened for your being made one with Him, and having
access to all the blessings flowing from His Divine nature."
You
have also noticed how the graft has to be torn away from the tree
where it by nature grew, and to be cut into conformity to the place
prepared for it in the wounded stem. Even so the believer has to be
made conformable to Christ's death—to be crucified and to die with
Him. The wounded stem and the wounded graft are cut to fit into each
other, into each other's likeness. There is a fellowship between
Christ's sufferings and your sufferings. His experiences must become
yours. The disposition He manifested in choosing and bearing the
cross must be yours. Like Him, you will have to give full assent to
the righteous judgment and curse of a holy God against sin. Like Him,
you have to consent to yield your life to death, as laden with sins
and curses, and through it to pass to the new life. Like Him, you
will experience that it is only through the self-sacrifice of
Gethsemane and Calvary that the path is to be found to the joy and
the fruit-bearing of the resurrection life. The more clearly the
resemblance between the wounded stem and the wounded graft, the more
exactly their wounds fit into each other, the surer and the easier,
and the more complete will be the union and the growth.
It
is in Jesus, the Crucified One, I must abide. I must learn to look
upon the Cross as not only an atonement to God, but also a victory
over the devil. I must look upon it not only as a deliverance from
the guilt, but also from the power of sin. I must gaze on Him who is
on the cross as wholly mine, offering Himself to receive me into the
closest union and fellowship, and to make me partaker of the full
power of His death to sin, and the new life of victory to which it is
only the gateway. I must yield myself to Him in an undivided
surrender, with much prayer and strong desire, imploring to be
admitted into the ever closer fellowship and conformity of His death,
and of the Spirit in which He died that death.
Let
me try to understand why the cross is thus the place of union. On the
cross the Son of God entered into the fullest union with man. There
He entered into the fullest experience of what it says to have become
a son of man, a member of a race under the curse. It is in death that
the Prince of life conquered the power of death. It is in death alone
that He can make me partaker of that victory. The life He imparts is
a life from the dead. Each new experience of the power of that life
depends upon the fellowship of the death. The death and the life are
inseparable. All the grace which Jesus the Saving One gives is given
only in the path of fellowship with Jesus the Crucified One. Christ
came and took my place. I must put myself in His place, and abide
there. And there is the only place which is both His and mine. That
place is the cross. It is His by virtue of His free choice. It is
mine, because of the curse of sin. He came there to seek me. There
alone I can find Him. When He found me there, it was the place of
cursing. This He experienced, for "cursed is everyone that hangs
on a tree (Gal. 3:13). He made it a place of blessing. This blessing
I experience, for Christ has delivered us from the curse, being made
a curse for us. When Christ comes in my place, He remains what He
was, the beloved of the Father. But in the fellowship with me, He
shares my curse and dies my death. When I stand in His place, which
is still always mine, I am still what I was by nature, the accursed
one, who deserves to die. But as united to Him, I share His blessing,
and receive His life. When He came to be one with me, He could not
avoid the cross, for the curse always points to the cross as its end
and fruit. And when I seek to be one with Him, I cannot avoid the
cross either, for nowhere but on the cross are life and deliverance
to be found. As inevitably as my curse pointed Him to the cross as
the only place where He could be fully united to me, His blessing
points me to the cross too as the only place where I can be united to
Him. He took my cross for His own. I must take His cross as my own. I
must be crucified with Him. It is as I abide daily, deeply in Jesus
the Crucified One, that I will taste the sweetness of His love, the
power of His life, the completeness of His salvation.
Beloved
believer! It is a deep mystery, this mystery of the cross of Christ.
I fear there are many Christians who are content to look upon the
cross, with Christ on it dying for their sins, who have little heart
for fellowship with the Crucified One. They hardly understand that He
is inviting them to it. Or, they are content to consider the ordinary
afflictions of life, which the children of the world often have as
much as they, as their share of Christ's cross. They have no
conception of what it is to be crucified with Christ, that bearing
the cross means likeness to Christ in the principles which animated
Him in His path of obedience. The entire surrender of all self-will,
the complete denial to the flesh of its every desire and pleasure,
the perfect separation from the world in all its ways of thinking and
acting, the losing and hating of one's life, the giving up of self
and its interests for the sake of others—this is the disposition
which marks the one who has taken up Christ's cross, who seeks to
say, ''I am crucified with Christ; I abide in Christ, the Crucified
One."
Would
you in very deed please your Lord, and live in as close fellowship
with Him as His grace could keep you? O ask that His Spirit would
lead you into this blessed truth...this secret of the Lord for them
who fear Him. We know how Peter knew and confessed Christ as the Son
of the living God while the cross was still an offence (Matt. 16;16,
17, 21-23). The faith that believes in the blood that pardons and the
life that renews, can only reach its perfect growth as it abides
beneath the cross, and in living fellowship with Him seeks for
perfect conformity with Jesus the Crucified.
O
Jesus, our crucified Redeemer, do not teach us only to believe on
You, but to abide in You, to take Your cross not only as the basis of
our pardon, but also as the law of our life. O teach us not only to
love it because on it You bore our curse, but because on it we enter
into the closest fellowship with you, and are crucified with You. And
teach us, that as we yield ourselves wholly to be possessed of the
Spirit with which You bore the cross, we will be made partakers of
the power and the blessing to which the cross alone gives access.
No comments:
Post a Comment