51. The Mold of Fellowship

The Mold of Fellowship To make the mold effective I do not forget this—the constant fellowship that Christ has with us. Let us read Hebrews 2:18, “For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted.” Let us never forget this. If we do not fail to enter into the co-passion, Christ will never fail in compassion. “Being tested, He is able to succor them that are tested.” He will never let us go alone; and whether He keeps you in America or takes you to China or to the uttermost ends of the earth, He will never let you go alone. The way is too rough for you and me to be allowed to go alone, and oh, the compassion of the living Christ for the members of His Body! Through the mold of the cross He is always going by His own Holy Spirit, and every time you and I go into that mold and allow the Holy Spirit to work into us the pattern of His character we are filling up, like Paul, the sufferings of Christ, making the joy of the Lord more real and more full.

I beg you to remember that that is what we are called to (1 Corinthians 1:9), “Ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son.” We are called into such a fellowship as that, a co-passion with Christ like that. We cannot avoid it, if we are to be true to Him. We are called to be partakers of the cross, if we are to be partners in the crown.

It will always be the endeavor of Satan to make you and me shirk the cross, to keep us from the cross, to make us shirk the painful element in witnessing, to shirk the act of sacrifice, to refuse the position that will prove inconvenient and to choose another position that seems to be less inconvenient. That is the constant temptation of the enemy, the same temptation to us that was hurled in the face of the Lord Jesus upon the cross, “Save thyself, and come down from the cross” (Mark 15:30). That is still the bait by which the devil seeks to lure us away from the path of the cross; it is the challenge that he is continually flaunting in our faces. But we dare not claim the benefits of the redemption of Christ unless we are prepared to accept the redemption position.

Satan never drove Christ to the cross. You have noticed in the Gospels how, by every possible means in his power, he tried to keep Him from that moment. He instigated Herod to kill all the little children in Bethlehem and its vicinity, in the hopes that he might get rid of the holy child, Jesus. All through the ministry of the Lord, if you look you can see the track of Satan. It is said if the devil left Him for a season it was a very short season. There was almost never a moment after that temptation that the devil left Him alone. He tried to drive Him over the brow of the hill, tried to stone Him, tried to drown Him, tried to force Him upon the throne when the people were aroused by the miracle of the loaves and fishes. I believe he tried to kill Him in the garden, and when he could not do that and found that Christ was bound to fulfill the purpose for which He had come to the earth, which was to go to the cross, he heaped insult upon insult upon the Son of God and tried to brand with the mark of shame what God meant to be the instrument of victory.

You and I will find, there is no use of hiding it from ourselves, perhaps more than ever, that the offense of the cross has not ceased, and upon those who stand for the cross, and who follow the cross, the hatred of Satan will be concentrated just as it was upon the Master. “Save thyself, and come down from the cross,” that will be the temptation to you, my dear young man and woman, as you go back into Christian work, and as you go out into the mission field. That will be the continuous temptation that will be leveled against you, “Save yourself. Shirk that little bit of work. It is too painful, it is going to cost too much. Forget it. You will get on all right. Shirk it, save thyself, and come down from the cross.” But if you and I are ever to know the deeps of God’s grace, if your lives and mine are ever to be raised to the level on which God means them to be, in order to touch the conscience of that world outside, it will only be as you and I are willing to go into the mold of the cross, cost what it may, and yield ourselves to the power and purpose of the Holy Spirit. And the question is, are we willing to go on?