Let us have a word of prayer.
Father, thank You today for Your great love for us. Thank You for giving us Your lovely Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Thank You for the presence of Your Holy Spirit and Your wonderful Word.
We are so dependent on You, Lord. We cannot do anything without You. We are thankful that You are here today to speak to us. Take Your Word and cause it to enter into every one of us—every one of us, Lord—because Your promise is that when Your Word enters into us, it gives us light. We need You to be our light today.
Thank You for these brothers and sisters here in Richmond, Lord. We bow before You and ask You to bless Your Word to all of our hearts. May You have the increase, Lord Jesus, even from this one gathering this morning. We ask it in the wonderful name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I want to thank the Lord today, in your presence, for all of you, because you have been a blessing to my wife and me for many years. I want to thank the Lord that He began to do something here in Richmond. My wife and I had the privilege to come, I think, just a few years after it began. So I want to thank the Lord for that.
I am going to share something that you may say is very elementary and very basic, but I believe it is so vital and so important. I want to share it with you this morning.
Without opening your Bibles, I want to know if anybody here can tell me something—some words—or if you can recite this text. This is the text I want to speak on this morning, and it is found in Galatians 2:20. Do not turn to it yet.
Can anybody tell me anything that is in that Scripture verse? Put your hand up.
Can anybody say anything about, or recite, the verse? Yes? Okay: “No longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Okay, that is the way it starts. Right. We are getting it from all corners here.
A number of years ago, I was sharing on that text in a little house church in Cuba. When I said something like that, everybody, I think, in the whole group started to recite that verse by heart.
I know that you can know a verse by memory and still have a great lack of the reality of that verse in your life. That is true. But God wants to work this into us. So I want you to turn to Galatians 2:20 this morning, and I want to speak about this verse.
Galatians 2:20. This is part of the testimony of the Apostle Paul:
I have been crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
and the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of God,
Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.
In this one verse of Scripture, I want to point out to you three little words. They are very small words—three of them.
The first one is the word with: “I have been crucified with Christ.” The second one is, “Not I, but Christ liveth in me”: the word in. The third word is this word at the end of the verse: “the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me”: the word for.
Three little words: with, in, and for.
These three little words represent three great and glorious facts—facts that are true of every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. For everyone who is born of the Holy Spirit and belongs to the Lord Jesus, these three words represent three eternal facts about you.
You have been crucified with the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ lives inside of you. And He, the Son of God, loved you so much that He gave Himself for you.
I want to work backwards from this verse this morning and start by spending a little bit of time on the last word: for.
The Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.
June and I had the privilege this past week to speak to a class of about twenty-six thirteen-year-old students in a school in Roanoke Rapids. I asked them a question that I often ask when I am sharing in Cuba or speaking in different countries. It is this: What do you believe is the most well-known verse of Scripture in the Bible?
I think so. Can we say that together this morning? Let us say it out loud:
For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish,
but have everlasting life.
I asked this of the class, and one boy put up his hand in the front of the class. He said, “I think that verse is in Genesis.”
I said, “Can you tell me anything about that verse?”
He said, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only—”
I said, “Well, you do not have the context right, but that is the verse.” For God so loved the world.
Somebody mentioned this morning that the price is paid. The price is paid to redeem every soul, every man in the earth—every person that has ever lived. That price has already been paid.
For those people driving up and down Huguenot Street today, if they are not the Lord’s, the price has already been paid for their salvation. They need to hear and receive the Lord, but the price is paid.
God so loved the world—the whole world. He knows everything about His creation. He knows everything about us. He so loved us, and the whole world, that He gave. He gave His all. He gave His only begotten Son for us.
I was noticing in John 3, as I was sharing this past week at the mission in Roanoke Rapids, that not only does it say that in John 3:16, but John 3:15 is almost the same as the last part. It says:
That whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish,
but have eternal life.
Then it says in John 3:16:
That whosoever believeth in Him
should not perish,
but have everlasting life.
So it repeats that twice in those two consecutive verses. This is God’s great love for the world.
But that is not what Paul said in Galatians 2:20. He said, “The Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
It is almost as though Paul felt and realized that, had there been nobody else who was a sinner and needed the cleansing and redemption of the Lord Jesus, He still would have come for me.
The Son of God Who loved me—and loves every one of you—and gave Himself for us, for me, for you as an individual.
I think, when I share like this, it is highly unlikely this morning that anybody would be here who is not a Christian. I think you all belong to the Lord. That is what I think.
But in spending these few moments on this portion of the verse, I want you to know that if you have never received the Lord, never believed on Him in that way, and never been born of the Holy Spirit, today God is inviting you to come and give your life to Him and receive this tremendous gift of eternal life through the Lord Jesus Christ.
So that is that last little word: for.
Then I want to go back to that second word in the middle of the verse. It says:
Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
The Lord Jesus Christ lives inside of us.
Maybe you know the old hymn that says, “I come to the garden alone, when the dew is still on the roses,” or something like that. The chorus goes something like this: “He walks with me, and He talks with me.”
With, or beside. But this phrase says, “But Christ liveth in me.”
So I want to remind you of this this morning: if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, you belong to God; you are born of Him. You have the Lord Jesus Christ living inside of you.
With Him, you have God the Father living inside of you, and the Holy Spirit living inside of you. Wherever you go, you take Him with you, because He lives inside of you.
We know this is a mystery, but it is true. Every time someone is born into the family of God, God performs this great, mysterious miracle in their life. He places His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, within them, and He lives in them.
The Apostle Paul said, “It is no longer I that live.” I am living, and this is part of the mystery. He says, “Nevertheless I live; yet it is not I, but it is Christ Who is living inside of me.”
Not only does He live in us, but He wants to govern every aspect and every facet of our lives from within. He wants to have total control. He wants us to depend on Him completely for everything—for everything.
That is what He desires. He wants to rule and reign within us, in our hearts, inside of us, and over us in everything.
In fact, He is always speaking inside of us. I wonder if you are aware of that.
In every encounter, in every relationship, in everything, in every event, He is in us. Maybe you did not realize it this morning when you got up and got ready to come to the meeting, that He is in you.
When you came, you brought with you the measure of Christ that you have in you, because He came with you. He dwells inside of us to rule and reign in our lives, and He speaks to us because He wants to govern everything about our lives.
Where I think I am most aware of this is when I have a disagreement with the person who is closest to me in this life: my wife.
When I say something or do something that hurts her, I feel bad inside. Anybody else—any other husbands—like that? Amen? You ever do that? Maybe you do not. I did not see many hands go up too high.
But when I do, and I can remember various times—many times—one brother said, “He will teach you how to close the door.” He will teach us everything, if we will let Him. He lives inside of us.
I just want to read a Scripture from Colossians that speaks about this matter.
Colossians 1:25-29:
Whereof I am made a minister,
according to the dispensation of God
which is given to me for you,
to fulfil the word of God;
even the mystery which hath been hid from ages
and from generations,
but now is made manifest to His saints:
to whom God would make known
what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles;
which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
Whom we preach,
warning every man,
and teaching every man in all wisdom;
that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.
Paul said God would make known to us what is the riches of the glory of this mystery. What mystery? “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
God wants to make known to us the riches of the glory of this mystery. That is what the Lord wants to do with this great fact.
Now, there is something about these facts. They are eternal facts. Christ died for each one of us. That is a fact. He died for those who do not belong to Him as well. He died for them, but they do not know it.
Because they do not know it in a living way, that fact does them no good. It is of no value to them.
That is the thing about these facts: they are true about all of us, but we need to have them revealed divinely by the Holy Spirit for them to be of value to us.
God wants to give us our own personal divine revelation of the greatness of the Lord Jesus Christ as He dwells within us. He is always working to that end in our lives, engineering circumstances in our lives, conforming us to the image of His Son.
The Father has this longing and desire to reveal Him in us, show us more of Him, and give us, as I said, our own personal divine revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Life-changing revelation—we need that. Every one of us needs that. We need this for ourselves. Oh, that God would create that hunger within us that would not let Him go until He comes and meets us Himself.
So He wants to show us that it is Christ living inside of us.
Sometimes I need my jacket. I did not think I was going to need this.
Those of you who have read The Normal Christian Life will remember this illustration. I have kind of made it a little more graphic, I think, because I do this with so many poor people that we speak to in other countries.
I hold up a little coin. Can you see that at the back, Gail? Not hardly, eh? That is a penny—an American penny. It is the lowest coin that you have in this country.
In Cuba, this is worth twenty-one of their pennies—well, twenty-four, actually—so it is pretty valuable. I know people here sometimes throw them away, but I pick them up and collect them because they are so valuable there. Not literally, but if we make the exchange.
If I put that penny in my pocket, I can walk very casually. If that is all I have got, if I lose it, it is not so important. I can do somersaults on the ground. I can be very casual about my walk.
In fact, I could be like a boy of twelve or thirteen that I saw in Havana one time, standing on his hands with his feet up against a building. Everything must have fallen out of his pockets, if he had pockets. I do not have to be very careful.
But what if I have something else in my pocket? Now, just imagine with me today. Can you imagine with me that I have a hundred thousand dollars in my wallet? I can assure you I do not.
That usually brings a roar in Cuba because they are so poor, but imagine a hundred thousand U.S. dollars. Just imagine that I do.
On some occasions, I have to go to the bank in Canada and get a substantial amount of cash because we cannot use traveler’s checks, checks, or the like in that country and some other countries. Occasionally, I have to have a lot of cash on me.
I am not particularly pleased to do that, but there is something that automatically happens with me when I do. Imagine with me that I have a hundred thousand dollars in my billfold. Now I put that in my pocket, and I go for a walk.
I do not swing my umbrella or my stick, and I do not do somersaults. I walk very carefully. I want to know everybody who is around me, who may be following me.
In one of the malls in our little town, they have this place that I call the glass house. It is a money exchange where you go to get different currencies. I do not like to go there. I try to go to the bank, and I always tell the teller, “You are going to take me into another room, are you not, so that the other people do not see her counting all that money that she is giving to me?”
In the glass house, of course, there is no option. Everybody can see. So I want to know who is following me. I walk very carefully, and every few steps I take, I put my hand in my pocket and say, “Oh, I have still got it. I have not lost it.”
In fact, I may walk with my hand in my pocket, around that billfold, because that is very valuable. I do not want to lose it or have anything happen to it. I do not want to lose it.
Somehow, the Lord can speak to us about this treasure that we have in us. How do you treat the treasure that you have?
Paul says:
We have this treasure in earthen vessels.
A treasure. He considered the Lord Jesus Christ to be his treasure.
Men give up everything they have in this life to find treasure. To find hidden treasure, they will leave family and go and search for gold, or die for it in the ocean, for treasure—for something that they consider valuable.
Paul says:
We have this treasure in earthen vessels,
that the excellency of the power may be of God,
and not of us.
You have Christ living in you as a treasure. Does He govern how you walk? How do you walk? Are you aware that He is in you? Do you realize that you carry the God Who created the universe in your spirit, within you, wherever you go and whatever you do?
When you are by the sink doing your dishes, He is in you. When you go to bed at night, He is in you. When you wake up in the morning and go to be with the fellows and girls that you work with, He is in you.
When you are having that kind of relationship with your fellow students at school, do you remember that Christ is in you? When you are tempted to do something that you know is not right, are you not aware that He is speaking to you and tugging at your heart?
Paul says, “It is not I; it is Christ Who is living this life. But Christ liveth in me.” We have this treasure in earthen vessels.
I cannot help but refer again to Brother Nee in The Normal Christian Life. He says—the divine, your own—well, I am going to paraphrase his words, but your own personal divine revelation of this fact will revolutionize your Christian life.
It will affect everything—how you do everything in life—because you are aware that Christ is inside of you. He knows what you are doing. Not only that, but He wants to live His life through you.
He knows that you cannot live the Christian life in a victorious way without Him. So He says, “Let Me live My life through you. Listen to Me. Obey Me.”
He is dwelling within us to govern our lives and to give us an honorable way to represent Him honorably in this life.
That is the second little word: in. A great fact. This is a fact that is true of every truly born-again Christian: Christ is living in them.
May the Lord reveal this to us so that He can exercise His life and power through our lives.
Now, the first word—or the last: “I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live.”
Just that first phrase: “I have been crucified with Christ,” or in Christ. The other phrase in the middle says, “Christ liveth in me.” This one says, “I have been crucified in Christ,” or with Christ.
In other words, when we have been born of God miraculously by the Holy Spirit, not only has God put His Son in us, but He has put us in the Lord Jesus Christ. He has done it.
This also is an eternal fact. If you are His, you are in Christ because God has put you there. You did not have to struggle to get there. You did not have to do anything but receive the Lord Jesus Christ. When you receive Him, God performs the miracle and puts you in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Someone has said that for every reference in the New Testament to Christ being in us, there are ten references to this fact that we are in Christ.
This is a glorious fact, brothers and sisters. If you belong to the Lord, you are in Christ. You are in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul says, “I have been crucified in Christ,” or with Christ.
Now I want you to turn to Romans 6. I want to read what I say is a commentary on this phrase.
Romans 6:1-14:
What shall we say then?
Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
God forbid.
How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ
were baptized into His death?
Therefore we were buried with Him by baptism into death:
that like as Christ was raised up from the dead
by the glory of the Father,
even so we also should walk in newness of life.
For if we have been planted together
in the likeness of His death,
we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection:
knowing this,
that our old man was crucified with Him,
that the body of sin might be destroyed,
that henceforth we should not serve sin.
For he that is dead is freed from sin.
Now if we be dead with Christ,
we believe that we shall also live with Him:
knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;
death hath no more dominion over Him.
For in that He died, He died unto sin once:
but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin,
but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body,
that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.
Neither yield ye your members
as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin:
but yield yourselves unto God,
as those that are alive from the dead,
and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.
For sin shall not have dominion over you:
for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
This portion is, I believe, a real commentary on that first phrase of Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ.”
Paul says, “Do you not know?” He is writing to brothers and sisters in Rome, and he says in Romans 6:3, “Do you not know that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?”
We were buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.
If we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this: that our old man was crucified with Him, or in Him.
Now this is an eternal fact for every believer, for everyone who belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. You have been born of the Holy Spirit; you belong to Him. You have died because God has put you in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then the Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross and died on the cross. Because we were in Him, we died.
Why is this so important? It is so important that we have this revealed to us.
If you will allow me, I want to share a little bit of my testimony. June and I were raised in an evangelical denomination in Canada for the first thirty-three years of my life.
Then something happened to me. By a miracle of God, He put a hunger in my heart and a thirst to know Him and to know His will for my life.
That was in 1974. The Lord was dealing with me. The Holy Spirit was speaking, and I knew that He was. He put this hunger in my heart that I would know Him and know His will.
Yet I was serving Him. I was very active and busy in the denomination—very busy. I do not know if anybody was any busier. But He put this hunger in my heart to know Him Himself, to have my own personal meeting with Him and relationship with Him.
You know, that is what we all need. That is what you need. That is what I need, in an ongoing way.
We need to have our own encounter with the Lord. He is waiting to meet us. He is waiting to bless us. He is waiting to reveal Himself to us.
But He is waiting for us to find that hunger within us that will not let Him go, that puts that first place in our lives.
This happened to me, and I could not explain it. I did not know who to talk to in order to have it explained to me.
Somehow, I thought that maybe I should go away by myself and seek the Lord. And I did that.
I cannot explain to you what happened, except that the Lord operated on me in my spirit somehow. Before I went away, I was trying to read that book called The Normal Christian Life.
I was enjoying biographies, reading about Hudson Taylor and other servants of the Lord. But when I tried to read The Normal Christian Life, I could not get into the second chapter.
I loved the first chapter even then because it spoke about the blood—how valuable the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is, and that it is effective in three directions. It is effective for man, effective against the devil, and effective to the Father. He accepts it—totally accepts that precious blood of His Son.
I loved the first chapter, but I was totally blind to the second chapter. I could not understand: What is the work of the cross? The cross was where Jesus died. I was so blind. I did not know I was blind.
So this hunger came, and I went and sought the Lord. Well, I just went away and got alone. The Lord did something in my life. He operated on the eyes of my understanding to give me a glimpse of Himself that changed my life forever.
I have come to realize that I have so much more yet to learn of Him and to see of Him, because He is so great. God wants to continue to reveal Him. The more you see of Him, the Lord Jesus, the greater He becomes and the more you long to see Him.
After that experience, I thought everybody had to go away and get by themselves, and the Lord would meet them. I thought the Lord gave me a formula whereby people could come to know Him.
I remember hearing a testimony years ago about a man whose mother received the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues. People were asking his mother, “How did you get this?”
She said, “Very simple. Get up early in the morning, go down to the kitchen, light the kitchen wood stove, open the oven door, put a chair by the door, get down and pray. God will fill you with the Holy Spirit.”
Because that is what she did.
But you know that we cannot do that. I thought if anybody would go away and seek the Lord by themselves, God would do something in them.
But I had to realize that God can do this work any way that He wants. I still believe it is very valuable for us to go alone and seek the Lord.
This revelation of this fact is so important in our lives: that God would reveal to us that we are so united to the Lord Jesus Christ that when He died, I was in Him and I died.
When He was buried, I was put in a tomb. When He rose from the dead, I was in Him and I rose. When He ascended in the sight of those disciples on that glorious day we read about in the book of Acts, I was in Him.
There He is, seated at the Father’s right hand. Mystery of all glorious mysteries: I am there in Him.
This is a fact for every one of us, but it only becomes valuable to us as it is revealed divinely by the Holy Spirit. Only then.
That is why it is so important to have revelation of this great fact: “I have been crucified with Christ.”
I have been. When did this happen? It happened when the Lord Jesus Christ hung on the cross. That is when it happened for every one of us because, by God’s miracle, we were in Him. That is when it happened.
This is God’s way of deliverance for us—for all of us—from those things that hamper us in our Christian life: from sin as a master and a power over us. That is what Romans 6 deals with.
He has delivered us from the law. How? Because we have died with Christ. He tells us that in the beginning of Romans 7.
We have been set free from the flesh. Does your flesh ever give you a bad time? Yes, but God has liberated us from our flesh. How? He tells us in Galatians: we have been crucified in the Lord Jesus Christ.
That is how you have been delivered from self, from the big “I.” It takes a drastic work of God to deliver every one of us—especially us men—from ourselves, because some of us are just full of ourselves.
The big “I,” Romans 7. How are we to be delivered? Only this way. God looked at man and said, “There is no hope. I will put him away. I will put him to death in My Son.” And He did that.
This is an eternal fact. God wants to reveal it to us, to every one of us in our lives. It is so crucial that we know this in a living way.
Paul could say, “I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live.” I am still living, but I have been crucified with Christ. The old “I” went to the cross with Him.
It is not that you can say, “Lord, crucify me.” No, He has already done it. But what you can say is this: “Lord, would You reveal this to me? Would You give me this revelation? Would You open my eyes, the eyes of my understanding?”
What was the burden of the Apostle Paul after he met the Lord Jesus on the Damascus road? His burden was that everybody he wrote to would have this same meeting that he had with the Lord, because his life was so revolutionized.
Why? Because he saw the Lord Jesus. He heard Him speak, and God did a glorious work.
Can the Lord meet us today? Yes. Will He? Yes. Does He want to? Yes.
He is waiting for us to have that hunger and that thirst.
This is the way the Lord has delivered us from the world, from the attraction of the world. Do you find this in your life? The more you give yourself to Him, the more you sense you do not have time for the things of the world.
But they are always out there, always attracting us.
Paul said, “The world has been crucified to me.” How? Because God put me in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and when He died, I was in Him and I died. Hallelujah.
This is a fact for every one of us. Let me remind you: the value of it comes in knowing it in our spirit.
Paul said in Romans 6:6, “Knowing this, knowing this, knowing this.” Knowing what? Knowing my union with the Lord Jesus Christ in this way. Knowing by the Spirit that when He died, I was in Him, God put me in Him, and I died.
Paul said:
Knowing this,
that our old man was crucified with Him.
If you have read The Normal Christian Life, maybe you remember part of Watchman Nee’s testimony in that book. He was the Lord’s; he was serving the Lord, and I think he was very effective for the Lord even at that time.
But he could not get hold of this fact, this truth—the understanding of it.
He went to the other brothers that he was in fellowship with, and they said, “Romans 6:11. Reckon yourself, therefore, to be dead indeed unto sin.”
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin,
but alive unto God
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
They always would give him that verse.
He would go, but his testimony was this: “The more I reckoned that I was dead, the more alive to sin I really was.”
Then God showed him something. He tells it as a testimony in that wonderful book, The Normal Christian Life. He said, “For seven years, I sought the Lord to know this. What was wrong? Lord, what are You doing? How come I do not understand this?”
Think of it: seven years. What are you willing to do to have this revelation?
Then he says, one day light dawned. He was reading his Bible at his desk, and God came and gave him this revelation. He showed him that if he was to reckon, he needed to reckon on something that he knew.
So he went back to Romans 6:6 and said, “Knowing this.” When you know this by divine revelation, when you know your union with the Lord Jesus Christ in this way by divine revelation, you can reckon on that.
In fact, you will find yourself reckoning on it automatically in your spirit. It just happens.
He said he read this, and God showed him this. He went down to the kitchen—I do not know where he was; Brother Con would know—and there was a brother working in the kitchen.
He got hold of the brother and said, “Brother, do you know that I am dead?”
You can imagine the shock of that brother, looking at him.
He said it was so real to him that it never left him. That is the thing about divine revelation.
I can only give you information this morning. I trust before God that it is living information and going to be effective for you. But only God can give you divine revelation. Only God can do it.
Life-changing revelation: where our lives are altered and we have a feeling that God has operated upon us. This is what happened to Brother Nee. This is what happened to the Apostle Paul.
In fact, I would like to read you a few brief excerpts. I have testimonies of sixteen servants of the Lord who have been used, and you will recognize their names. I will not read all of them.
Andrew Murray says this:
Like Christ, the believer too has died to sin.
He has been one with Christ in the likeness of His death;
and as the knowledge that Christ died for our sin as our atonement
is indispensable to our justification,
so the knowledge that Christ—and we with Him,
in the likeness of His death—are dead to sin
is indispensable to our sanctification.
It is indispensable. This fact—the revelation of this—is indispensable.
Hudson Taylor said:
Since Christ has thus dwelt in my heart by faith,
how happy I have been!
I am dead and buried with Christ,
and risen too;
and now Christ lives in me.
And the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of God,
Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.
He continued:
Nor should we look upon this experience, these truths,
as for the few.
They are the birthright of every child of God,
and no one can dispense with them
without dishonoring the Lord.
These facts are the birthright of every one of us who are children of God. We cannot dispense with them without dishonoring our precious Lord.
Ruth Paxton said:
That old “I” in you and me
was judicially crucified with Christ.
Ye died, and your death dates from the death of Christ.
The old man, the old self, in God’s reckoning,
was taken to the cross with Christ, and crucified,
and taken into the tomb with Christ, and buried.
Assurance of deliverance from the sphere of the flesh
and of the dethronement of the old man
rests upon the apprehension and acceptance
of this fact of co-crucifixion.
Watchman Nee said:
The blood can wash away my sins,
but it cannot wash away my old man.
It needs the cross to crucify me, the sinner.
Our sins are dealt with by the blood,
but we ourselves are dealt with by the cross.
The blood procures our pardon;
the cross procures our deliverance from what we are.
T. Austin-Sparks said:
The first phase of our spiritual experience
may be a great and overflowing joy,
with a marvellous sense of emancipation.
In this phase, extravagant things are often said
as to total deliverance and final victory.
Then there may be, and often does come,
a phase of which inward conflict is the chief feature.
It may be very much of a Romans 7 experience.
This will lead, under the Lord’s hand,
to the fuller knowledge of the meaning
of identification with Christ, as in Romans 6.
Happy the man who has been instructed in this from the beginning.
I have been crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless I live;
yet not I, but Christ liveth in me:
and the life which I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of God,
Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.
Three little words, but three great facts true of every one of us who are born of God. God wants to give us revelation. He wants to reveal these things Himself in us so that we will understand.
May He be able to do that in all of our lives. Let us pray.
Father, thank You for Your precious Word, and thank You for this time this morning. May You be glorified in every one of our lives.
We give You thanks in Your precious name, Lord Jesus. Amen.