========================================================================
  BONE OF HIS BONE
  by F.J. Huegel
========================================================================

Huegel's theological work addressing the gap between Christian ideals and
practice, proposing that the Christian life is not an imitation of Christ but a
participation in Christ through spiritual union. He argues that believers must
be born again and indwelt by Christ to achieve genuine transformation.

  Chapters: 13

------------------------------------------------------------------------
  TABLE OF CONTENTS
------------------------------------------------------------------------

    1. 000 - Forward
    2. 01 - The Christian Life: A Participation, Not An Imitation
    3. 02 - Participants of the Cross: Christ's Death Our Death - Part One
    4. 03 - Participants of the Cross: Christ's Death Our Death, Part Two
    5. 04 - Paul: the Chief Exponent of Co-Crucifixion
    6. 05 - Particpants of Christ's Resurrectin
    7. 06 - Christ's Ascension Our Ascension
    8. 07 - Christ's Victory Our Victory - Part One
    9. 08 - Christ's Victory Our Victory - Part Two
   10. 09 - Christ's Sufferings Our Sufferings
   11. 10 - Christ's Appearing Our Appearing
   12. 11 - A Typical Case
   13. 12 - The Bearing of this Position Upon the Church, Missions and Prayer

========================================================================
  CHAPTER 1: 000 - FORWARD
========================================================================

Bone of His Bone by F. J. Huegel

FOREWORD

ONE thing for the missionary is inevitable. If he is to go forward in the face
of the seemingly insuperable obstacles which beset him, ushering in a new day
for enslaved souls, if, I repeat, he is to do the thing which God expects of
him, and the Church expects of him, and the heart-rending need of these to whom
He has come as an ambassador of light, requires of him, then he must himself
appropriate in an ever-deeper and fuller way the power of Christ. He must
himself be bound to that unconquerable Christ who all down the centuries has
through His disciples achieved the impossible. He must get beyond a mere
intellectual knowledge of the historical Christ, and so entwine the tendrils of
his, spiritual nature in the Eternal Christ that he imbibes a divine life. The
job he is attempting to do requires of him superhuman force. The merely human,
however noble and strong and cultivated, proves as insufficient and as
inadequate as a handful of glowing coals would be for the dissipation of an
arctic blizzard. He must transcend the purely natural, and immerse himself in
the super-natural. He must experience the power of the indwelling Christ, and,
dispossessed of his own life, become in an ever-fuller measure possessed of a
Divine life.

Only "rivers of living water" flowing from his innermost being-the promise which
the Saviour has made to His own-can make possible the renewal of life in the
state in which he finds it.

It may be that temperamentally he is not predisposed to forge his way into these
lonely uplands of the faith. He may even have a deep aversion to the mystical
elements of Christianity. Still the force of circumstances like a mighty tide
will most certainly sweep him from the moorings of a merely intellectual grasp
of the Christian verities, out into the deeps of a vital experience of redeeming
grace. For, unless Christ becomes more real to him than any other reality, even
of the physical universe, and unless he learns to draw upon Christ and to sink
his being into Him and thus emerge from the deep well of the Uncreated Good,
charged with that power which had fallen upon the apostles, he is from the very
nature of the circumstances in which he is involved, doomed to defeat. The force
of evil which he would overcome will be as destructive of his purpose, and as
disdainfully subversive of his message as some mighty Gibraltar which stands out
in invincible might against the waves of the sea. The following chapters are
simply an outline of the position to which, as a missionary of the Cross, I was
led. I wish to share with Christians of all lands and all sects, those blessed
experiences of the indwelling Christ, those immeasurable treasures which, in the
deeper participation in Christ, have become mine. I wish to make the common
property of the Church, those ineffable experiences which are the fruitage of a
oneness with Christ-that Christ without whom the missionary, because of the
peculiar situation in which he finds himself, more than any one else, realizes
that he can do nothing.

I cannot send forth these messages however, without acknowledging the great debt
of gratitude which I owe the late Mrs. Penn-Lewis, whose writings on the deeper
aspects of the Cross, and whose insistence on the believer’s identification with
Christ in death and in resurrection, have meant so much to the Church in these
recent years. God greatly used the writings of Mrs. Penn Lewis to bring me to
the victorious position in Christ which the following messages seek to clarify.
With the hope and prayer that my kind readers may be given grace to realize in
their own experience this deeper oneness with Christ, so that their joy may be
that joy which is "unspeakable and full of glory," and their peace that "peace
which passeth all understanding," and their life that "abundant life" which is
eternal and which flows from the throne of God, I place these messages upon the
altar of my Lord that He might use them for the edification of "the saints" and
for the glory of His name.

F. J. HUEGEL Mexico City, Mexico.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 2: 01 - THE CHRISTIAN LIFE: A PARTICIPATION, NOT AN IMITATION
========================================================================

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE A PARTICIPATION NOT AN IMITATION

CHAPTER I

ONE cannot make a study of the New Testament without experiencing something of
the nature of a shock, in view of the glaring difference between the Christian
life as we are wont to live it, and the ideal of the Master. The disheartening
incongruities, and the grievous contradictions are so painfully evident, that
even those who have only a superficial knowledge of the Saviour’s Word-yea, one
dare say, even those who have never looked into the pages of the New
Testament-are shocked. What little faith they may have, is shaken. When one
holds up before the picture of the Christian life as set forth by the Apostles,
that which today goes under the name, one staggers. The emaciated body of a
dying friend-not to say his corpse-could not stand in more violent contrast with
him who in the days of health and vigour walked at our side.

It is not my object to pick to pieces the modern Christian. I have no quarrel
with the Church. I am not pretending to play the role of an iconoclast. I have
been for ten years a missionary of the Cross, and have no thought of deserting
the ranks. My only purpose in calling attention to our failure as Christians, is
to point the way to the victorious life in Christ for those who are conscious of
their spiritual poverty, and "hunger and thirst after righteousness."

It is for the Christian who finds himself at the brink of despair, because of
the gruesome picture he present when all the while he longs to faithfully
reflect the Master’ image, that I feel that I have a message. It is for the on
whose thirst for the water of life, far from being quenched, consumes him, and
leaves him sick with yearnings, that I fain would unfold the secret of the
abundant life-the life of which Jesus spoke when He said that "rivers of living
water" would flow from the innermost being of those who believed. It is to the
one who is weary of hollow mockeries, sick of shams, who has become the victim
of a secret self-loathing,--one who feels that as Christian he should be free
from the power of sin, an who, in spite of all his struggles is crushed by a
sense c failure-that I long to bring the message of the Cross. It is to those
who pant for power,-that power which is from on High-those who long to have
their life and service ministry, and preaching, charged with the Spirit of the
living God that I feel that I have a word which will not fail to usher in a new
day. But we must briefly summarize the requisites of the Christian life before
we enter upon a statement of my thesis. We are to walk as Jesus walked (1 John
2:6 We are to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44). We are 1 forgive as Jesus
forgave-even as He who in the Shan and anguish of the Cross looked down upon
those wt blasphemed Him, while they murdered Him, and forgave (Colossians 3:13).
We are to be aggressively kind towards those who hate us, yea, we are actually
to pray for those who despitefully use us (Matthew 5:44). We are to be over
comers-more than conquerors (Romans 8:37). We are to give thanks in all things
believing that all things, even those which blast our fondest hopes, work
together for our good (Romans 8:28; Ephesians 5:20).

We are to be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving to let our requests be made known unto God, so that the peace
of God which passeth all understanding may guard our hearts and minds (Php 4:6).
We are to rejoice in the Lord always (Php 4:4). We are to think on whatsoever
things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just,
whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are
of good report; if there be any virtue and if there be any praise (Php 4:8). We
are to be holy, for God is holy (1 Peter 1:16). The Saviour said that if we
believed in Him, rivers of waters of life would flow from our innermost being
(John 7:38). We are to stand out in bold, unmistakable contrast from the
crooked, perverse world, blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without
rebuke, shining as lights (Php 2:15) . We are positively to hate ourselves not
to pamper, nor to caress, nor to seek, nor to love ourselves, but literally to
hate and to renounce our own selves, and that daily (Matthew 16:24). We are told
that we cannot be Christ’s disciples if we do not renounce ourselves utterly and
absolutely in all things, and at all times (Luke 14:26). Paul tells us that our
affections are to be set on things above (Colossians 3:1).

Enough. We dare go no further. It would only increase Our shame, and our pain.
We stand indicted. We are not "What Christ would have us to be. If this is the
measure of the Christian life, if this is the basis upon which we are to be
judged, if this is what God requires of us as Christians, like Isaiah we cry:
"Woe is me, for I am undone."

Why does not the Saviour, so tender and so understanding, so loving and so wise,
not make requirements more in keeping with human nature? Why does He seem to be
so unreasonable? Why does He not demand of us what we might reasonably attain?
He bids us soar, yet we have no wings. Talk about the super-man; it is not so
much a mere overabundance of man that is required. It seems to be rather
man-deified, if I may so speak, which the New Testament pronounces as the true
type of Christian. Why does the Saviour go so far beyond the merely natural, and
put Christian living on the basis of the supernatural? I protest, it is not
natural to love our enemies; it is not natural to rejoice always; it is not
natural to be thankful for the things that hurt; it is not natural to hate
ourselves; it is not natural to walk as Jesus walked. Have we honestly faced
this dilemma? Have we had the courage to face the implications of Christ’s Word?
Is anything gained by subterfuges, by pretending that the gulf between the
humanly possible, and the law of Christ (i.e. what we can attain by nature and
what God requires in His Word) is after all not so great?

If no satisfactory answer can be given (my contention as stated in the following
chapters is that there can) the Christian system merits the aspersions of its
enemies. It must face the grave charge of
over-emphasis,-exaggeration-fanaticism-or whatever we may call this want of
adjustment between the law of Christ and human nature. This is no new dilemma.
The great Apostle to the Gentiles, makes no bones about his conviction that
human nature, as such, can never attain the ideal of Christ. He does not
minimize the overwhelming incongruity. He lets the glaring fact of Christ’s law
as an utterly unattainable ideal, as something to which human nature, as such,
can never adapt itself, stand out in all its naked reality.

Romans vii is witness to that fact. Here we have the Apostle’s confession of
failure, his cry of despair, his bitter regret, upon finding the Christian ideal
unattainable, his groanings over what he found to be a heart-rending dilemma,
his honest admission that he actually believes that the requirements of Christ’s
law, are something to which human nature, as such, struggle as you will, agonize
as you will, can never adjust itself. Lest I be misunderstood-lest my readers be
shocked by something apparently so unorthodox-I quote Paul’s own words: "The
good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do... I
delight in the law of God after the inward man: but, I see another law in my
members (aye, there’s the rub) warring against the law of my mind, and bringing
me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. Oh wretched man that
I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" (Romans 7:1-25). Paul
struggles. He agonizes. He weeps. He strives as only this moral giant, one of
the greatest of all time, could strive. All to no avail. The law of sin, he
confesses, like the onrush of a mighty stream, sweeps everything before it.

We do well to face squarely all the shocking aspects of this dilemma. Paul did.
He did not throw up any smoke screen over either his own incapacity on the one
hand, or the unattainable character of Christ’s law on the other. He is
astonishingly frank over the fact that in himself (that is, in his flesh, Romans
7:18) he can find no good thing. He candidly acknowledges that he delights in
God’s law, loves, but finds it something to which human nature cannot attain. If
we will be honest about these things, we will find ourselves led all
unconsciously to take certain steps which will most assuredly usher us into a
glorious new day. It led Paul to a great discovery. It will lead us.

It was not that Paul, when he wrote Romans vii, was still willfully disobedient,
as in the days prior to the Damascan road crisis. He did love Jesus. He was a
soldier of the Cross. He was a consecrated Christian. It was only that he was
now seeing himself in a new light-in the blinding light of the Cross of Christ.
What before, as a strict disciple of Moses, would have been excusable, now
overwhelms him with its magnitude. Innocent little things, attitudes
comparatively harmless, insignificant little sins which under the Mosaic law
would pass unnoticed if they did not appear to be actual virtues, now break his
heart. They are repulsive. They are unbearable. They seem to burn with the fire
of hell. They sting like the bite of a scorpion. They stink like a decaying
carcass in some slimy pool.

Paul wants to be like Jesus. It is no longer a question of mere ethics. It is no
longer a question of right or wrong. Is it Christ-like? That is the burning
question. Paul wants to be free. Self-love even in its secret forms, its
harmless gestures, nauseates him. He would be like Jesus in all the loveliness
of his humility, and of his compassion. He would love God with a pure love and
serve Him with that utter singleness of eye which characterized the
"only-begotten of the Father." In a paroxysm of self-loathing, and in the
anguish of self-despair, the Apostle cries out for deliverance (Romans 7:24). Is
there a way out? Yes, there is. Paul found it-we can all find it,

Now my thesis is this: we have been proceeding upon a false basis. We have
conceived of the Christian life as an Imitation of Christ. It is not an
Imitation of Christ. It is a Participation of Christ. "For we are made partakers
of Christ" (Hebrews 3:14). There are good things in Thomas A. Kempis’ Irritation
of Christ, but the basic idea is false to the principles that underlie the
Christian life. To proceed on the basis of Imitation, will plunge us in just the
sort of slough of despond Paul found himself in when he wrote Romans vii.

We are not what Christ would have us to be; the Sermon on the Mount does not
find expression in our attitudes; sin as a principle is still rampant in our
lives; we are not free from envy, pride, self-love, and lust of pleasure; the
mountain of secret selfishness still crushes us and in spite of all our efforts
remains immovable; there is little joy, so little freedom of spirit, none of
that rapture which so characterized the primitive Christians; we agonize, and
bleed, and struggle,-but failure dogs our footsteps. What is the matter? We are
proceeding upon a false basis. We are attempting to do what the Saviour Himself
never expected us to do. The Christian life is not an Imitation. The great
dilemma of which we have been speaking resolves itself into most simple terms
when we grasp this distinction between Imitation and Participation.

For, what is impossible to me as an imitator of Christ, domes perfectly natural
as a participant of Christ. It is Only when Christ nullifies the force of my
inherent "self life," and communicates to me a Divine life, that Christian F
:.-;wing in its true sense, is at all possible for me. I must be born again.
"The flesh profiteth nothing." Without Jesus z I can do nothing. I must live in
Him and, renouncing my own life, find in Him a "new life."

Now to this "new life," the Christian requirements, so incomprehensible and
unattainable while we move in the realm of the "flesh-life," are all simple.
They are nothing more nor less than statements regarding its modus operandi. The
Sermon on the Mount so far from cramping in any way this new life, is simply a
statement of the way it operates. The trouble is, we have not listened to Jesus.
He tells us that we must abide in Him as a branch in the Vine. Matthew v, vi,
vii, without John xv, would be like so many freight cars without an engine, or
like a whale without water, or a bird without air. In that upper-room interview,
the Master, knowing that it was His last opportunity to impress fundamentals
upon His disciples, places the supreme emphasis upon this mystical union, this
spiritual oneness with Himself of all believers-this sublime fact of
participation. "Abide in Me and I in you." Our failures only confirm the
Saviour’s Word, for He said: "Without Me ye can do nothing."

No, we are not called upon to imitate Christ. The truth of the matter is, there
would be little virtue after all in that sort of thing. Paul said so, in effect,
in the oft-quoted 1 Corinthians xiii-the love chapter. It could only be a
wooden, artificial thing. Even here Jesus would say: "The flesh profiteth
nothing." Some years ago in the country where I was doing missionary work, this
sort of thing was carried to its nth degree, when a zealous devotee had himself
crucified, literally nailed to a cross where his parents found him dead, when
they came to his rescue. The Church rightly does not acclaim that sort of thing,
and yet theoretically she proceeds, in the case of vast multitudes of her
children, upon this false basis of Imitation. The Christian is not called upon
to strain over a role as an actor would agonize over lines poorly learned. The
Christian life in the thought of God is infinitely more blessed and compelling.
"We are made partakers of Christ" (Hebrews 3:14) . Exceeding great and precious
promises are given us, "that by these we might be partakers of the Divine
Nature" (2 Peter 1:4). The Believer is grafted into the Trunk of the Eternal
Godhead. "I am the Vine, Ye are the Branches."

"The riches of the glory of this mystery-Christ in you the hope of glory"
(Colossians 1:27).


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 3: 02 - PARTICIPANTS OF THE CROSS: CHRIST'S DEATH OUR DEATH - PART ONE
========================================================================

PARTICIPANTS OF THE CROSS CHRIST’S DEATH OUR DEATH - PART ONE

CHAPTER II MY purpose is to trace step by step the scope of this great principle
of participation in Christ-to measure, as it were, the length and breadth, the
depth and the height, of this marvelous identification of the believer with his
Saviour. Christ, and all true believers, are one. They constitute His body. They
are, in the language of Adam, "bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh." Just
what the implications of this oneness with Christ are-the overwhelming glory of
such a position most Christians have never had -so much as an inkling. May the
Father of Lights enable us not only to understand, but to enter into this holy
temple, and to realize our oneness with Christ. This is the only spring that can
quench our thirst. There is no other way to the fulfillment of our deepest
aspirations as Christians.

We must bear in mind that it is the office of the Holy Spirit to graft the
believer into Christ, as a gardener would graft the branch of a tree into the
main body of another. "By one Spirit are ye all baptized into one body" (1
Corinthians 12:13). Paul dwells upon this grafting process in the eleventh
chapter of his letter to the Romans, where he speaks of the breaking off of
Israel from the Root, Christ, and the grafting in of the Gentiles, to become
partakers of the Root.

True conversion in its deepest aspect is just this. If it fails to result in a
veritable grafting into Christ, it is spurious, and from the nature of the case,
unfruitful. Indeed, we must be born again. We must be rooted into the very Trunk
of the Eternal Godhead. We do not simply strive to imitate a Divine Leader;
exceeding great and precious promises have been left to us whereby we are made
partakers of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4). The Spirit itself beareth witness
with our spirit, that we are children of God, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with
Christ (Romans 8:17) .

It was the Spirit who convicted us of sin, creating in us a deep antipathy for
sin, and a burning desire to be free from its foul dominion. It was the same
Spirit who revealed Christ to us as the only way out our sin-bearer (John
16:7-15) . It is the same Spirit who binds us to Christ, rooting our lives into
His Divine Life, and causing us to grow up into Him who is the Head. Madame Penn
Lewis, in one of her books, points out that in the Greek, the much-loved John
3:16, conveys a very different meaning from that of our English versions. It is
not simply he that believeth in Christ, but rather he that believeth into Him,
who shall have eternal life. By the co-action of the Spirit (and the Holy Spirit
works so in conjunction with our spirit that we are often altogether unconscious
of His working) we have believed into Christ. He has become our life. "But he
who is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Corinthians 6:17) .

Now this grafting necessitates some cutting, of course. If we will not die to
the natural, how can we expect to live to the supernatural? Paul puts it thus:
"If we be dead with Christ we believe that we shall also live with Him." The
branch which contrary to nature is grafted into a tree of another species, must
die to the old life. It must send its roots into a new trunk. It receives a new
life. Its relation with the old is severed so utterly, and so completely, and so
continuously, that for it, the old no longer exists. It imbibes the new with a
constancy which brings about a veritable fusion of the two. A study of Christian
biography reveals the fact that the great saints of the Church (and I use the
term in its Biblical sense as descriptive of all those who have truly lived in
and for Christ) have with few exceptions experienced what some have called "a
second work of grace." There came a time when they panted after a fuller
participation in the life of God. We may speak of it as sanctification; others
dwell upon the aspect of rest, and speak of the "rest of faith." The modern
emphasis seems to be upon the victorious aspects-it is the Victorious Life. Or,
we might speak of it as the Abundant Life. Be that as it may,-Christian
experience will not be bound by terminology-the fact remains that, sooner or
later, the Christian is awakened to a sense of the sin of "self-hood." There is
no reason, Scriptural or otherwise, why Christians should not immediately upon
conversion, be brought to this stage, but the facts indicate that they usually
wander for some years in the wilderness of a divided affection before entering
into the land of milk and honey.

Again, it is the Holy Spirit who works in the believer this conviction of the
sin of a divided heart. He shows the believer how tragically self-will has
thwarted Christ’s purpose to bring him into utter union with Himself. He reveals
with racking precision and crushing clearness, the awful consequences of the
"self-life" in its enmity to Christ, and its power to choke the life of the
spirit. He shows the believer the duplicity of his way, the shamefulness of a
hollow piety, the mockery of a superficial devotion to Christ. The believer
comes to realize that he is crucifying Christ afresh by his lust for pleasure,
his greed for excitement, and his passion for self. He sees that though he has
been rooted into Christ, yet, he has been drawing more from the old roots. He
sees how muddy is the stream of his life, how tainted the waters, how the stench
of the "self-life" has blighted what flowers have grown by their side. He begins
to understand Romans 7:1-25. He, too, would be free. The secret cry of his heart
also becomes: "O wretched man that I am! who will deliver me from the body of
this death ?" This marks a crisis. The hour has come for a fresh revelation of
the scope and efficacy of Christ’s redemptive work. The believer’s eyes are now
to be opened to the meaning of the deeper aspects of the Cross of Christ. The
Cross is unveiled. The Holy Spirit reveals Christ, this time not as the Divine
Sin-Bearer (though the believer never gets beyond the need of a constant
appropriation of the efficacy of Christ’s sacrifice for sin), but as the way out
of this loathsome thing we call "Self." It is a vision of himself as one with
Christ in His death-crucified with Christ -which the Spirit now vouchsafes to
the believer. He is made to see that he too died to sin in the death of the
Saviour, and was ethically committed to a position of death, in order that he
might be brought by the cataclysmic action of a corporate participation in the
Cross, and the Tomb of the Son of Man, out from under the dominion of the "self
life" to a new life of Divine potency. He begins to see that without this
participation in the death of the Son of Man, sin as a principle (that very
thing which precipitated the heinous tragedy of Calvary) continues to operate in
him, and to place him, in a sense, in a position of complicity with the very
murderers of the Saviour. He realizes that if he fails to sign the death
sentence of "self," his position as a believer becomes utterly intolerable, the
acme of contradictions. He begins to realize that Christ not only died for him
as a sinner, but that he, as a sinner, potentially died in Christ to sin, and
that the former without the latter would involve him in moral contradictions
deep-dyed and infamous. The logic of it all bears down upon him with the force
of a demon, and drives him from his position of duplicity (unconsciously held,
no doubt). He must either die with Christ to sin, or continue to crucify Christ
(the carnal mind is enmity against God), (Romans 8:7). He sees that unless Self
is crucified, Christ is.

It is all the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not natural for a man to turn
against himself and to begin to hate that which by nature he loves, as he loves
nothing else under the sun; namely, "self." The Holy Spirit, as writes Dr. A. B.
Simpson in Drays o f Heaven, is the great Undertaker who finally brings us to
the place to which God has assigned us; namely, to a sharing of Christ’s tomb.
But He cannot bring us to a participation in crucifixion-life-bring us to the
place called Calvary-without our consent. We must consent to die. All that the
Cross signifies of pain and shame, ignominy, and death-the breaking of the Heart
of Christ-is nothing more nor less than God’s infinitely delicate and moral way
of bringing us to a willingness to die. This was not too much if He could but
woo us from ourselves, and get our consent to die. That is why the Cross saves.
It is not by Divine magic. It is not simply that Christ bore our sin. He did
that. But the purpose of Calvary strikes infinitely deeper than that. In a
sense, I agree with Lord Beaconsfield, who casts aspersions upon the doctrine of
the atonement, and says that it is positively immoral. As conceived by many it
is immoral. If Christ’s substitutionary death for me stands before God as
something the merit of which may be imputed to me simply because I accept the
Saviour’s sacrifice regardless of my mode of living, leaving in me the venomous
weed, the dastardly thing which has caused this historic stench we call sin, to
grow; then, by all that is potent in reason, I say that the Cross is immoral.
But that is not the Cross of Christ. That is the dismembered Cross of modern
Christians. The Cross of Christ is substitutionary for "the Lord laid on Him the
iniquity of us all," but it is more. The very nature of the Redemptive work of
Christ consummated on Calvary, is such that you cannot receive its penal
benefits without partaking of its moral benefits. That is to say, if you have
looked to the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, without coming
by a profound willingness to be detached from self-unhinged from the false
center, self, to be hinged to the true, which is God-then it is safe to say that
the actual purpose of God in that indescribable event, which one writer has
called the sublimest moment in the moral history of God, simply has not been
attained. The Holy Spirit has never had a chance to work in you so as to bring
you to a spiritual participation in the death of the Son of God which in the
Divine economy was corporate -the Body, the Church, dying in its Divine Head.
The Chief of the Apostles saw this so clearly that he cries out as if stabbed,
when the startling thought of a possible continuance in sin, after faith in
Christ, is suggested,-a doctrine which even in the primitive Church had its
acceptance. "What, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" Why not, if
after all, salvation, as so many are womt to think of it, is simply a release
from the penal consequences of sin. Ah ! says the Apostle, "How shall we who 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 ?...We are buried with
Him...into death....We have been planted together in the likeness of His death.
. . our old man is crucified with Him, that thee body of sin might be destroyed
.... In that He (Christ ) died, He died unto sin once...Likewise reckon ye also
yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ
our Lord" (Romans 6:1-23).

Truth out of proportion, it has been fitly said, becomes error. The truth of
Christ’s substitutionary death without this that we find in Romans vi, namely,
the fact, in the judgment of God, of our participation in the Cross, our oneness
with Christ in His death to sin, our willingness, in a word, too have the Spirit
terminate the old life of "self," the carnal life which is enmity against God,
detaching us from "self," and centering us in God,-the truth, I repeat, of the
Former held without the truth of the latter, precipitates the holder into the
confusion which error always entails: It is a decapitated gospel, which, because
it is a false home, may do, in some cases, more harm than good. In the Memoirs
of Mrs. Penn-Lewis, there is a strange story connected with the Madame’s visit
to India, which fits most beautifully into this line of thought. A Missionary,
who later gave himself with the zeal of an Apostle to the task of propagating
the writings of Mrs. Penn-Lewis, which almost all bear upon the believer’s
identification with Christ in death and resurrection, had a dream that greatly
impressed him. It was of the Cross of Christ. However, it was not the Saviour’s
bleeding form which held his eye. It was an exceedingly ugly thing, an
indescribably loathsome thing, the nature of which he could not make out. What
was this thing which so horrified him? Later, as he heard the message of
identification, and realized that with Christ he had been crucified, the Spirit
revealed to him that this loathsome thing he had seen in his dream, was none
other than himself.

Oh! that the Church might catch a fresh vision of Calvary and come to appreciate
the meaning of the deeper aspects of the Cross; that Christians might realize
that Christ’s object was to terminate, as it were, the "old creation," taking
Man (Christ was the Son of Man) down into the grave to destroy the "body of
sin," putting an end to the "old life," and then to bring him forth in
resurrection power charged with the dynamic of a Heavenly life. Speaking of Jew
and Gentile, Paul says: "Christ...having abolished in His flesh the enmity...for
to make in Himself of twain, one new man...by the Cross" (Ephesians 2:15-16).
What a spiritual revolution it would work in the life of the Church. How the
tidal wave of a Divine life would sweep through her, charging the members of
Christ’s body, so many of whom are languishing in the sloughs of spiritual
decrepitude, with a fresh joy, and firing them with a Heavenly life-the Life of
the Ages. The Church, as has said the great French preacher, Lacordaire, was
born crucified and until, like her Divine Head, she falls into the ground and
dies, she abides alone, the life-giving streams cannot break forth from her
bosom. It is not, as some one of our British brethren has said, a great stir in
the realm of fleshly doing, but a Divine dying, which will bring the Church
again to a flaming Apostolic zeal, and a fruitfulness comparable to that of
primitive Christians.

God grant us the grace to be clear about one thing: Christ does not come into
our lives to patch up the "old man." Here is where unnumbered multitudes of
Christians have been "hung up." They thought it was Christ’s mission "to make
them better." There is absolutely no Biblical ground for any such idea. Jesus
said that He had no intention of pouring His new wine into old pig-skins. He
said that He had not come to bring peace, but a sword. He said that unless a man
should renounce himself utterly, he could not be His disciple. Christ does not
come to us to simply straighten out the "old life." He has never promised to
make us better. His entire redemptive work consummated upon the Cross, rests
upon the assumption (it is more than an assumption-God says it is a fact) that
man’s condition is such that only a dying and a being born again, can possibly
meet the exigencies of the case. So far from attempting to patch man up, and
then leaving him to imitate as best he can the pattern given in Judea two
thousand years ago, Christ takes him down into the grave where the "old life" is
utterly terminated, and then makes him the participant of His resurrection.
Christ our Lord fastens us to Himself and imparts to us an entirely "new life."
But we have-the new upon the basis of our refusal of the old. Christ is the
Vine, we are the branches. He is the Head, we form the body.

Paul’s epistles are punctuated by a momentous "if," which again and again points
us to Calvary, and startles us with an imperative demand-we must consent to
co-crucifixion. "We shall live with Christ, if we be dead with Him." "We shall
be with Him in the likeness of His resurrection, if we have been planted
together in the likeness of His death."

"We shall reign with Him, if we suffer with Him."

I have often wondered why in that symbolic standard Moses lifted up in the
desert, and to which our Lord in that classic interview with Nicodemus, when "As
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, must the Son of Man be lifted
up,"-I have won repeat, why it had to be a serpent. Why not some thing lovely,
inasmuch as it was to typify the King in His work upon the Cross? We read that
all who the serpent were healed. But why a serpent-why y, or a rose, was it not
the Rose of Sharon who s represented? It was only after I had discovered the
principle of identification that I came to understand. vas not there on
Calvary’s Cross alone. Our "old s being crucified in the second Adam-the
Representative Man-who was there upon the accursed Tree, Himself, but for man;
there as One so identified offering, sinning man, so merged with the Human its
iniquity and its depravity, that He could not die and to sin without that man
should ethically die in since my accursed, loathsome "self-life" was nailed
there to the Cross with Christ, and in the judgment of God died in Him, what
more fitting symbol than the serpent? there is in man a serpent which has stung
him with death, and poisoned the springs of his being. plunged him in the night
of alienation from God, if the vile thing is removed and a new life injected,
that is, to say the least, most unenviable. No other need be pronounced, no
other doom sealed, no other ion involved-the very nature of "self," once we get
use into its true workings, and its real nature, we is such that misery must
follow in its wake. It is exorable law. Not long ago, I was reading about the
strange lot of certain young ladies who are employed in a laboratory where
contact with radium is inevitable. These young ladies know that upon entering
this factory their fate is sealed. They will die. After a few months, or years-I
do not recall the exact time, they are released from their work with a handsome
cheque for ten thousand dollars. Some live a year, some two, some three, but all
eventually die from the effects of radium. Hence the ample remuneration. Doctors
have examined girls who have thus toiled in contact with radium, and have found
by means of the X-ray, that a strange fire slowly consuming the life, burns in
their bones. Radium kills. It is the most highly concentrated force known to
scientists.

Two thousand years ago, there in the manger of Bethlehem, God gave to the world
His only-begotten Son. In Him, was concentrated the infinite love of the Father.
But the full force of that redeeming love was not released upon a sin-stricken
world until there on Calvary the flaming heart of the Beloved broke. Then it was
that the Radium of the Celestial was focused upon the great cancer of humanity’s
sin and shame. Radium kills. There is no power under Heaven that can withstand
its concentrated dynamic. The Cross kills. The man who exposes himself to
Calvary soon discovers that a hidden fire burns within his bones. The old
"self-life," so resentful, so fussy, so greedy, and so touchy, so haughty and so
vain, so blind to all save its own particular lust, so ready to sacrifice the
good of the many if only its own glory may be secured-the old "self-life" can no
more resist the impact of Calvary, than some frail barque, the onrush of a great
tidal wave.

Dr. Mabie in his notable work on The Cross, speaks of the Saviour’s death as
"Immortal-dying." It generated a force-moral force destructive of sin-beside
which all the cold ethics of the ages, all the precepts of the moralists, yea,
all the laws of the nations are as the twinkle of a star beside the sun’s
meridian blaze. Indeed, it was not mere dying. The rocks were rent, and the
earth quaked when in that hour of triumph the Son of Man cried out (the
Evangelists insist that it was with "a loud voice"), "It is finished." Life did
not merely ebb out. The force of it increased. That is why in the final hour the
great Cry of Consummation shook the very earth. "When the centurion saw that so
He cried out. . . he said: Truly this Man was the Son of God." (Mark 15:39).
Rightly does Dr. Mabie speak of the "death-resurrection-midprocess." The
resurrection was in the death, and the death is in the resurrection. Now this
concentrated Moral Radium, if I may so speak, is released in the believer’s
spirit when he yields himself to the Christ of the Cross. The "old life" brought
under the dynamic of the Cross, is doomed to die. Resurrection life takes its
place. Little wonder the Apostle to the Gentiles cried out "God forbid that I
should glory save in the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom I am crucified
unto the world, and the world unto me."

"We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto them
which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God." (Power, Greek,
Dunamis, from whence we get our word Dynamite.)


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 4: 03 - PARTICIPANTS OF THE CROSS: CHRIST'S DEATH OUR DEATH, PART TWO
========================================================================

PARTICIPANTS OF THE CROSS CHRIST’S DEATH OUR DEATH – PART TWO

CHAPTER III THE full meaning of our identification with the Saviour in His
death, cannot be taken in at a glance. We must tarry here at this place called
Calvary in order that the Holy Spirit might reveal to us the deep implications
of our participation in Christ’s Cross. The natural man cannot receive these
things. They are spiritually discerned. But, if we are willing and anxious to
experience the deeper things of God, the Spirit will not fail to do His work.
The Truth which Jesus said would set one free, will be unfolded to us. But, we
shall not only see and understand. Far more-these truths will be woven into the
fabric of our very being. No Scriptural truth which has to do with our Christian
life can be said to be really ours until it has wrought within us and brought us
into harmony with itself. As Christians we cannot speak of possessing truth
apart from Him, who is the Truth.

Mature Christians who have experienced an inner crucifixion, and who know what
it means to count upon Christ’s death, reckoning themselves dead to sin, and
alive unto God through Christ, even after the lapse of years, are led to
discover deeper depths of the "self-life." Some fresh test, some circumstance
which brings with it the great question of the Father’s will or self-will,
suddenly reveals the workings of hidden "self-life." They may have thought that
they were wholly the Lord’s, and that the "old self" was buried with Christ, but
some sudden shifting of the scenes, seemed to awaken the old life and to set in
motion what has been called "the wheel of nature." As the Spirit unveils to them
the secret workings of the "self-life," they come to realize their need of a
fresh and a deeper appropriation of the Cross. Their only way out is through a
deeper participation in Christ’s death. Only the Radium of Calvary can remove
the remaining roots of the old cancer. They rise, so to speak, to higher heights
of spiritual life, by sinking themselves into deeper depths of death. However
deep they may have gone, Calvary has for them still undreamed of depths of
crucifixion. It is both a position once and for all taken by an act of faith, in
which the believer commits himself to the place God assigns in the death of His
Son, and a process of growth in which the believer appropriates according to his
need, an ever-deeper life of communion with the Saviour’s death. Paul said that
he longed to know Christ and the power of His resurrection...being made
conformable unto His death (Php 3:10). It is all summed up in the great paradox
of the gospel: "He that loseth his life shall find it...”

Not, of course, that there is any nullification of personality involved. Quite
the contrary. Paul was no less Paul after the realization of his oneness with
Christ in death, expressed in that amazing pronouncement of the Galatian
Epistle: "I am crucified with Christ." He could, with infinitely more right say:
"Nevertheless I live… ,"

Once the Cross removes the "I-life" so that the soul becomes God-centered,
personality in all of its glory and the full fruition of its powers, begins to
develop. We can only possess ourselves when God is supreme in our lives.

If this is not clear, I beg the reader to hold in reserve all judgment -as to
the truth of my thesis, and to go forward with me in the development of the
subject for I have confidence in the Spirit. He is the Spirit of Truth. No truth
related to the great work of redemption, as has already been said, can be held
without Him. He will unfold to us the fact of our participation in the Cross of
Christ, and give us the courage to abide by the consequences. It is all His
work, and He cannot fail.

We must constantly bear in mind that our death in Christ is a potential
communion. Though from the Divine viewpoint it is a thing long since
consummated, historically and objectively completed (we are told to reckon on it
as a thing done, Romans 6:11), yet from the human angle, it is something held in
trust for us which only upon the exercise of faith becomes effective, in
experience. Just as the Saviour’s substitutionary death for us becomes effective
in the blotting out of our sins upon the exercise of faith, so our participation
in Christ’s death for the removal not of sins this time but of sin as a
principle (the old life with its enmity against God and its infatuation with
self) becomes effective upon the exercise of faith. The one we might call a
participation in the penal benefits of Christ’s redemptive work, the other, a
participation in its recreative moral forces. Our willingness is the supreme
condition in the reception of either the one, or the other, though as has been
stated in the previous chapter, we do violence to the Spirit of the Cross in any
conscious or unconscious disassociation of the two. They are one. When I say our
willingness is the prime condition, I mean to say that God’s respect for man’s
freedom is something so great that we may say that God cannot when lean will
not. He can only work these mighty works which so greatly and so eternally
affect Iran’s being, upon the condition of his consent. Wrought upon any other
basis they could have no meaning. In the act of creation, crowning man with that
Divine prerogative, the freedom of the will, God limited Himself. Moved by
infinite love, He shared with man His very Divinity, setting bounds to His own
Omnipotence by endowing man with the power to choose. Now, these bounds on the
Divine side never have been and never will be violated. God woos man, but never
forces him. He appeals in a thousand ways to the best in him, but never coerces
him. He pleads with him, shows him the heinous consequences of sin (witness the
Cross), but He never obligates him to come back into loving relations with
Himself. So we must choose. Will we be dominated by Self, or Christ? Will we
continue to pamper self and crucify Christ afresh, or will we die to the
self-life (call it what you will, flesh-life, the old life, the carnal-it
matters not), and rise up out of the grave to live in the power of Christ’s
resurrection, complete in the will of God? This is the great issue which the
Cross of Christ raises. That we might be compelled (in a moral way, not by the
coercion of force) to come to grips with this the supreme question of all
time-yea, eternity has no greater question, God conceived the sublime
object-lesson of Calvary. And that we might decide aright, that we might make no
mistake in our decision, yea, that we might choose to stand with God and
irrevocably break with self, Christ humbled Himself-wits willing to be spat
upon, willing to be reviled, willing to be classed with criminals, willing to
hang in ignominy before a jeering rabble upon the accursed tree. Could the
wisdom of the ages conceive of a more potent way-a more irresistible way--a
surer way of obtaining man’s consent to be detached from self ? If anything more
designed to engender in man a loathing for self, and a love for God, could have
been found, we may be sure that the Eternal Wisdom would not have failed to
produce it. "Christ crucified,"-yea, verily, this is-"the power of God and the
wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:23-24).

"Our old man (some versions have it in the present, some in the past tense-both
are true) was crucified with Christ." Potentially it is a completed transaction.
Judicially, as believers we are dead in Christ in the ethical sense. Thus, the
:Father judges us. We can neither add nor subtract from a Divinely consummated
work. In the Federal Head of the new race, those who spring from this the Second
Adam, are crucified. Your being a German or a Frenchman makes inevitable certain
habits of mind, a certain temperament of soul. Your being a Christian makes
inevitable a Crucified life. The Church did not come forth from the womb of the
Eternal until upon the Cross that life had been generated. For this purpose
Jesus came. His death was no mere accident. He was "slain front the foundation
of the world." His death was not simply that of a martyr. "I lay down my life
that I may take it again. No man taketh it from me but I lay it down of myself"
(John 10:17-18). "Now is my soul troubled (referring to His Cross) ; and what
shall I say? Father save me from this hour: but for this Cause come .I unto this
hour" (John 12:29), Verily, His death was no afterthought, but the indispensable
achievement incident to the engendering of a Crucified Church. A crucified
Christ that He might have crucified followers.

But, I repeat, we must choose. If the Christ spirit is to blossom out in us in
its fullest splendour so that we shall attain the measure of the stature of the
Perfect Man, we must, by an act of the will, yield ourselves to that which is
already potentially our status before God: identification with the Cross of
Christ. We must, on the basis of the Cross, and our oneness with Christ in
death, refuse the "old life." "The Kingdom of God suffereth violence and the
violent take it by force." We must not only refuse the "old life" in a sublime
moment of surrender when the truth of our oneness with Christ bursts in upon us,
but we must do it consistently, every time nature would reinstate itself. We
must do it as consistently and as habitually as we would, so to speak hold our
noses from the stench of some filthy alley which daily we must pass. In a sense,
you have it once and for all in a position you intelligently take, for you are
grafted into the Trunk of the Eternal Christ whose
"death-resurrection-mid-process," you share; but in another sense it is all held
in Divine trust so that you might as a free moral agent choose, and choose
again, and again, and continue to choose. Which will you have? The Divine Life
which flows as a great river of life from the Throne and from the Lamb? Then you
must refuse your own life. It has been corrupted by sin. Cut yourself off from
it by standing in Christ’s death. Receive a Heavenly life moment by moment. Do
this, and you shall be more than conqueror. Do this, and you will no longer
agonize over a role, seeking to imitate the Christ; you will all unconsciously,
spontaneously walk as Jesus walked. You could not be anything but like Him,
sharing as you do His death and His resurrection. It will be an easy thing, a
joyous thing, a lovely thing-like the play of children. It is now natural for
you to be Christian for you have been made a partaker of the Divine nature.

Oh! that the Church might see this sublime Truth. She has been enjoying a fifty
per cent. redemption because she has not realized the implications of the Cross.
She has not been willing to die with her Lord. She does not "possess her
possessions" because she has not learned to reckon herself dead to sin. She is
still under the thralldom of the "flesh, the world, and the devil," because she
has not believed her Lord, who over and over, by precept and by example, and
finally by the far depths of His self-emptying on Calvary, sought to inculcate
the sublime principle of self-renunciation. She has not believed that eternal
life can only be found by an utter renunciation of the "old life." She has
sought to imitate her Lord-in the energy of the "flesh-life" reproduce His way.
She has not been willing to acknowledge her utter inability in this regard, and
to lay down her own life in order to become the participant of the Heavenly. She
cannot convey life to a dying world because she does violence to her covenant.
That covenant was made on Calvary. It is a covenant of death. Christ led the
way, He bids us follow. A deep eternal union, a grafting of the soul into
Christ, a great merging of interests, purposes, aspirations, all, is to be
consummated. This is the gospel. But God has, in terms so unmistakable, so
eloquent, so sublime, so provoking that all ages and all races, and all
generations might not fail to grasp the meaning, revealed upon what basis this
union may be achieved. It is through the Cross of Christ. The "old life" must be
drained out, and in the person of the Son of Man it was terminated. But the
Church has not come under the consuming fires of the Radium of Golgotha. Hence,
her impotence in this great hour when a world crisis not only economic but moral
is upon us.

It is folly to talk of revival apart from a deep participation in the Cross.
Christian leaders have become suspicious. One hardly dare speak of revival. And
the Church does well in holding herself aloof from all clap-trap Evangelism. All
revival in the Church which springs from the "flesh-life," that is, the merely
natural, which is brought about by a mere working up of the "soulish-life"; all
revival which fails to cut in upon the "old-life" and bring it to the place
called Calvary for execution, is spurious. If God were to lend Himself to such
revivals and such gatherings, noted for their wild-fire (two of Aaron’s sons
lost their lives because of the introduction of strange fire into the ceremonial
offerings of the Israelites), if, I repeat, God were to place the seal of His
approval upon such counterfeit fire, He would constitute Himself an enemy of the
Cross. He would be antagonistic to the Son. He would be reviving what Christ has
slain. Saul might refuse to hew down Agag, but not Samuel. "The flesh profiteth
nothing," "Our old man is crucified with Christ." "They that are Christ’s have
crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." We read in Exodus that the
oil was not applied until first the blood had been sprinkled. The oil (Holy
Spirit) after the blood (Cross) (Exod. 31:32). To share the Christ-life, we must
partake of Christ’s Cross.

It is interesting to note how that in the great Book of Nature, this same lesson
is taught. There is hardly a page in all the Book which fails to emphasize the
fact that all life springs out of death. Not a tree, not a blossom, not a shrub,
not a fruit, but what cost the death of a seed. The other day a cotton planter
took me out to see his plantation. I am so glad that he insisted that I follow
him out between the rows of cotton, for God spoke to me through my friend’s
exposition of the ways of cotton seed. He dug up half a dozen seeds-just
sprouting-to show me, in a manner I can never forget, that before the seed sends
any sprouts up it sends a long root down. One would imagine that the seed
already buried would have enough of death, and that it would send its first
sprout up for air and light and freedom. No-first down deeper in its already
hidden tomb.

How clearly through Old Testament type and symbol and story, the Holy Spirit
flashes light upon this mystery-this fact of our co-crucifixion with Christ.
Abraham must sacrifice his Isaac. Isaac was spared, yet, in spirit, Abraham
offered him up. It was because he had done this thing that the promise was made:
"In blessing I will bless thee and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as
the stars of Heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore." And even
previous to that, we read, that it was from "the womb as good as dead" that he
issued. Joseph is buried in an Egyptian prison before he rises to become a
veritable saviour, seated on the throne which he seemed to share with the mighty
Pharaoh. For forty years on the lonely slopes of Midian the fiery Moses is
schooled. There were graves, if I may so speak, scattered all over the
mountainside where hope after hope was buried until at last self goes down in
utter annihilation. But for those graves, the Man of God who spoke face to face
with Jehovah, who became the moral giant of antiquity, and whose guiding hand
will be felt in the affairs of nations until the end of time, could not have
been. If Leviticus with its myriad sacrifices, its rivers of blood, means
anything, it means that God meets man on but one basis-the basis of the Cross.
Our pleasure-infatuated, jazz-intoxicated age will stop its ears and gnash its
teeth as those who stoned Stephen. For these things hurt. But, those who have
tasted of the Lord, and pant after the wine of Heaven; those who cannot be
satisfied with anything short of the fullness of the Spirit, and whose hearts
are, as it were, "a furnace of desire" for the deep things of God, these truths
that cut and burn, and blast away the old-life are welcomed with an unspeakable
joy.

Dr. Trumball, in that masterful study of ancient sacrifices, Blood Covenant,
points out that all the peoples of antiquity, of whatever race, or country,
practiced in one form or another, sacrifices, either of animals, or of human
beings. He wisely gathers from a study which took him to the sacrificial altars
of countless aborigines, that an instinct so universal and so deep-seated
reveals the fact that man in his blind gropings after God, moved by the deepest
intuitions of the race, never has attempted to establish harmonious relations
with the Divine, without it be upon the basis of death. The Israelites must go
down into the valley of the Jordan, leaving in the bed of the stream twelve
stones, in order to enter the land of milk and honey. The waters return as
Israel passes, burying the twelve stones, symbolic of Israel’s twelve tribes.
Israel cannot abide in Canaan without a constant abiding in death through the
twelve symbolic stones, buried in the stream (Joshua 4:9) . David does not come
to the throne until in the caves of the Philistines, where he was hunted down
like a dog by the infuriated Saul, he dies-deaths innumerable. The Psalms, with
all their varied loveliness, so adapted to human woe, their seraphic unfolding
of the life of communion, could not have been, but for the inner crucifixion in
the heart of the sweet singer of Israel, brought about by the mad persecutions
of Saul. Isaiah sees the Lord and is undone. He must be purged of the old life
by a fiery coal from off the altar of Heaven. Jeremiah dies a thousand deaths as
he weeps over the chosen people. Jonah is pitched into the sea and is swallowed
by a whale-even then he does not come forth wholly purged from self. God’s
people have never in any age come to the mountain-peak of spiritual attainment,
the glory of unbroken communion with the Most High, without having the
"self-life," the "flesh-life," brought again and again to the dust of death.
When the "fair one" of Canticles cries out: "kiss me with kisses of thy mouth"
(the symbolical languages of Canticles indicative of the soul’s thirst for union
with Christ), speedily there follows the confession: "A bundle of myrrh (bitter)
is my well beloved to me." "My beloved is as a cluster of Cyprus (cemetery-tree)
in the vineyards of Engedi." Ah yes! it must be death. The Beloved cannot bring
us to union with Himself without a deep participation in His Cross. The fretful,
greedy, self-centered, fussy, lustful, hateful "flesh-life" (see Galatians 5:19,
for an analysis of "flesh-life") must die. It must be absolutely and mercilessly
terminated. At this point our Saviour must be firm. He dare not spare. He must
not waver. He is compelled to be severe. He cannot bring us to the highest
without coming between us and the lower. Have yon taken your place with Christ
in His death? By an act of faith you must lay hold of that death as your death;
you must place Christ’s Cross between yourself and "the body of sin." You must
learn to refuse on the basis of your crucifixion the life of nature, the
so-called "flesh-life." You must take your stand with Christ on Calvary ground
and each time that the "self-life" would assert itself, say: "In Christ I died.
In His name, I refuse." This done, the Holy Spirit will bear witness to your
faith and set you free, and keep you free.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 5: 04 - PAUL: THE CHIEF EXPONENT OF CO-CRUCIFIXION
========================================================================

PAUL THE CHIEF EXPONENT OF CO-CRUCIFIXION

CHAPTER IV

THOUGH the Apostle Paul never knew Christ "after the flesh," he seems to have
had a deeper insight into the mysteries of the Faith than the other Apostles. He
was the dominant force in the shaping of the character and life of the nascent
Church. After the Master, he is the outstanding personality of the New
Testament, making the greatest contribution to the literature and the growth of
the Church. Yet, he knew not Christ "after the flesh" as did the other Apostles;
he had never come under the sway of the Saviour’s teaching and ministry.

After the Damascan Road revelation, Paul went not to Jerusalem "to confer with
flesh and blood." He went into Arabia. He wanted to be alone. Such an experience
as he had had-the vision of that blinding light, the sudden apprehension of that
ineffable glory, the discovery that the Jesus of the accursed tree was none
other than the Christ of God-such an overwhelming revelation of the power and
beauty of Him, who is none other than the King of kings, made a period of
silence and rapt meditation absolutely imperative. Paul spent three years in
profound meditation (Galatians 1:16-18) . It would seem as though he made a
great mistake. What! not go to Jerusalem to confer with Peter, James, and John?
Think of it, he (Paul) who had never known Jesus could have sat at the feet of
the Apostles. He could have talked it all over with Peter. He could have
obtained first-hand information from John. Some of us would have travelled
around the world for such a privilege. Did Paul make a mistake? We will let Paul
speak for himself: When it pleased God...to reveal His Son in me...immediately I
conferred not with flesh and blood: Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which
were Apostles before me; but I went into Arabia...." (Galatians 1:15-16). For
Paul, in that sublime hour, the supreme need was solitude, so that unmolested
and undisturbed, he might give himself to an undivided contemplation of the
vision. Christ filled and flooded the horizon. The glory of Christ so absorbed
him that for three years he could not detach himself from the Heavenly magnet.
What! go to the Apostles for light when the Lord Christ Himself had- come with
blinding glory to his spirit; go to men for truth when He who is the truth had
constituted Himself his teacher?

Fourteen years later he went up to Jerusalem (Galatians 2:1), but he makes the
significant confession that those who seemed to be somewhat. . . added nothing
to him. The Apostles could give him no light. The contrary was the case. He,
Paul, understood better. He had superior light. He knew Christ (the Christ of
God) better. His insight into such questions as the relation of the Gentiles to
the Church, the relation of Christianity to Judaism, the doctrine of the
indwelling Christ, the doctrine of the mystical body, the universality of
Christianity-his insight into the mysteries of the faith was deeper. His
judgment was sounder. The three years in the Arabian desert at the feet of the
glorified Christ had done infinitely more for this once proud Pharisee, than the
three years with the Man-Jesus -had done for the fishermen Apostles. Paul was
always ahead of them-as a missionary, as a theologian, as a preacher, as an
organizer, as a saint. After our Lord, it is to Paul that the Church owes the
greatest debt.

Now, how do we account for this? Paul, who had never known Jesus after the
flesh, knew Him better after the Spirit. He, as none other was hid with Christ
in God. He had been caught up to the third Heaven where he heard things
unspeakable, unlawful to utter. He it was who prayed for his Ephesian brethren,
that the Lord would grant to strengthen them with might by His Spirit in the
inner man; that Christ might dwell in their hearts by faith; that they, rooted
and grounded in love, might be able to comprehend with all saints what is the
length and breadth and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ which
passeth knowledge, and that they might be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now what was the central doctrine upon which Paul focused his genius? Was it
justification by faith? Many would say that it was. However, a study of Paul’s
Epistles brings one to the conviction that the great Apostle’s glorying was not
simply in the fact that Christ had died for him. With that, there was always
associated another aspect of the Cross, namely: the fact that he (Paul) had died
in 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 I unto the world" (Galatians 5:14) .

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I but Christ liveth
in me" (Galatians 2:20).

"Our old man is crucified with Him (Christ) that the body of sin might be
destroyed" (Romans 6:6) .

"Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that
are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (Romans 6:1-2).

"For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:3) .
This seems to be the sublime lesson which the Saviour there in the Arabian
desert where Paul listened in rapt wonderment, burned into the fibre of his
being. It was the deep meaning of Calvary which the Master unfolded to the now
broken Pharisee-to him who was to become the greatest of the Apostles. The veil
was drawn aside and Paul saw into the hidden mystery of the Cross. He saw
himself there with Jesus-in the purpose of God potentially crucified. For Paul,
the Christian life was never to be a mere imitation, but a glorious
participation in the Saviour’s death and resurrection. For him, the believer was
a member of Christ’s body-bone of His bone, and flesh of His flesh. For him, to
live was Christ. He would not have some of self and some of Christ, or even a
little of self and much of Christ. He simply would have none of self, and all of
Christ. He saw that God had laid not only sins upon the Son, but also the
Sinner, and that in Him he (Paul) had actually, if potentially, died. He never
wavered. He committed the "self-life" to death and stood forth before the world
free in Christ. So utterly does the great Apostle identify himself with Christ,
realizing as he does that this identification of all believers with the Federal
Head of the New Race, Christ the Lord, was something which in the mind of God
had been conceived as man’s way out of sin and the thralldom of the corrupted
"flesh-life," and which springs, as it were, from the very nature of redemption
(Christ identifying Himself with man, taking the form of a man in the
Incarnation and suffering for man upon the Cross that man might identify himself
with the One who had died for him and in Him die to sin)-so utterly, I repeat,
does the Apostle identify himself with his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that
he sees in his own sufferings as a follower of Christ what we may call a
prolongation of Calvary. Paul speaks of it as a filling up that which was
lacking of the afflictions of Christ. In a word, the Apostle interprets his own
suffering in the light of the Cross.

We see this in the second Corinthian letter where he dwells upon the
persecutions and trials which he bore. "We are troubled on every side," he says,
"perplexed...persecuted...cast down." Then follows the amazing utterance which
gives us the key for the interpretation of the deepest secret of Paul’s
innermost soul: "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus .
. ." It is Christ suffering, it is Christ receiving fresh wounds, it is Christ
being crucified afresh in, and through, his servant. It is Calvary being
reenacted. Not that Paul looked upon his sufferings as in any sense a sharing of
Christ’s sufferings in His capacity as Sin-Bearer when He bore the sin of the
world, or as a completing of the great work of expiation. That was consummated
once and for all upon Calvary. In this sublime giving of Himself as a ransom for
all, the sinner had nothing to do.

What I wish to emphasize is the fact that for Paul, identification with Christ
is something so real that he sees in the Cross not only the death of the
Saviour, but also the potential death of all those who constitute His body;
something so complete that he (Paul) sees in his own sufferings as a Christian,
and in the afflictions of all Christians, a constant dying of the Lord Jesus
Christ Himself. But we must not think of this death to which Paul says we are
always delivered for Jesus’ sake (2 Corinthians 4:11) as something purely
negative. Out of it Paul asserts springs life-eternal life. "Always bearing
about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might
be made manifest in our body...So then death worketh in us but life in you" (2
Corinthians 4:10, 2 Corinthians 4:12). It is when we die in Christ to the "old
life" that the barriers .are all removed and the living streams break forth from
our innermost beings bearing life-the life of God-to others.

Before we leave this phase of our participation let us briefly summarize its
implications, as Paul saw them

First, in Christ we are dead to sin (Romans 6:11). Sin is not overcome simply by
struggling against it. If it was something which always met us from without,
that might not be so difficult. But our very being is soaked with it. A drop of
ink in a glass of water will taint the entire glass. Self is such an insidious
thing. Our very thinking is poisoned with the leprosy of self-love. Our spirit
is so twisted, torn, because of self, out of its right center, God, and rooted
in the flesh; the old life is so foul in the sight of God that no patchwork, no
mere polishing up, no amount of varnish will do. Jesus says we must be born
again. In Christ we are taken into the tomb to be undone.

Christ cannot be to us the life of God without being to us the death of self. "I
came not to bring peace but a sword." Now the knife must cut if we would be
free. There is no other way out of selfhood.

Second, in Christ we are dead to the world. That does not mean, of course, that
some medieval cloister, or a desert retreat, or the cell of a monastery, or some
St. Stylites pillar would be more conducive to Christian living. No man ever
stood nearer the heart of this world’s affairs than Christ: whether in the
market-place, in the temple, in the home, with the poor, the maimed, the halt,
or with those who rejoiced at a bridal feast, He was ever in the stream of life
where the current was swiftest and deepest. No indeed, He was not an ascetic.
Yet He could say: "I am not of the world." "They are not of the world even as I
am not of the world." The world has taken on plenty of gloss since Christ’s day,
but the friendship of the world is still enmity with God; for the simple reason
that the Spirit of the world with its shams and its lies, its greed, and its
lust, springs from the monster self. Satan, working through man’s pride, is
still the god of this world. Be on intimate terms with this world which
crucified Christ? It is unthinkable. The spirit that crucified Christ is still
rampant in the world. Nothing more logical, nothing more inevitable, nothing
more practicable than that the Christian should be cut off from the world. Until
this world changes its attitude toward Christ, enthroning Him in its very
institutions and life, we, as disciples of Christ, find ourselves compelled to
stand out against selfishness and greed. We are dead to the world in Christ
(Galatians 6:14). In the third place, in Christ we die to the party-spirit.
Paul, speaking in his Ephesian letter of the middle wall between Jews and
Gentiles, says, that Christ broke down this wall by His Cross, making of "twain
one new man." Oh! that the Church might catch this vision; that she might see
herself crucified with Christ. How the walls would break down. The wall for
example, of Sectarianism. "In Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew." Any
intense holding of sectarian attitudes is positively un-Christian. All division
is of the "flesh." Satan raises walls between spirit and spirit, group and
group, sect and sect, nation and nation-Christ breaks them down. To be Christian
one dare not adopt any exaggerated views of nationalism. One must die to
jingoism. We are in Christ citizens of the world with vast responsibilities to
the entire race. Only the Cross of Christ can do away with this welter of
jingoism, and sectarianism, and nationalism. Not that a good Christian does not
recognize his duties to his country. He does. Indeed, only a Christian can be
all that a true patriot should be, and the truer the Christian, the truer the
patriot. But over and above nationalism and sectarianism stands Christ, and as
members of His . body, we are irrevocably committed to the glorious program of
world redemption. We have died in Christ to every divisive spirit. We cannot
take Christ to our bosoms without embracing humanity, for Christ identifies
Himself with the interests of every living soul (Matthew 25:31-46). We cannot
have Christ if we will not have His Cross-and on that Cross was slain all racial
enmity-in fact all that interferes with the perfect harmonization of the life of
the world for the working out of the highest interests of humanity.

"Christ...is our peace who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle
wall of partition between us; having abolished in His flesh the enmity...for to
make in Himself of twain (Jew and Gentile) one new man, that He might reconcile
both unto God in one body by the Cross, having slain the enmity thereby"
(Ephesians 2:13-17).

Finally, in Christ we have died to the law: "my brethren ye also are become dead
to the law by the body of Christ" (Romans 7:4). Christ has lifted us not only
out of the "flesh-life" and cut us off from the world by His death in which we
participate, but has taken us clear out of the realm of law. We are not under
the law, but under grace it is the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
which governs us. In a sense, it is still law, "the perfect law of liberty" of
which James speaks in his Epistle. But we must not confound this law with the
Mosaic. The one liberates, the other binds. The one gives the power to be
Christ-like, the other is dead legalism. The one is an expression of the
new-nature, the other is an attempt to check and control the old.

How good it is to be free-free from the dominion of the "flesh-life," free from
the tyranny of the world, free from the hideous monster which we call self; free
from the legalism of a dead law which as Paul says worketh wrath; free from the
bondage of fear and anxiety and worry. How good to have a liberated spirit
surcharged with the life of God. It is the Cross of Christ that thus liberates.
Only as we stand with Christ in His death, and appropriate by faith the
liberating force of Calvary (i.e. believe that with Christ we died) can we hope
to experience the true freedom for which our spirits pant.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 6: 05 - PARTICPANTS OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTIN
========================================================================

PARTICIPANTS OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION

CHAPTER V AS we go forward step by step in the consideration of that which our
participation in Christ implies, we will find that it is the key to unfathomable
riches, the Aladdin’s Lamp of unspeakable power, the gateway to such happiness
as we had never dreamed could be possible this side the gates of Heaven.

We cannot take these steps without experiencing such a radical revolution in our
attitudes, our relationships, and our thinking, that all things indeed become
new. We look back down upon the old way of Imitation, struggle, failure,
confusion-the old way of "self," the way of the "flesh" --with unutterable
relief, unspeakable gratitude that a new day has dawned. No disinherited prince
who, after years of strife has at last come to his own-name, wealth, power in
his father’s palace-could look back upon years of loss and shame with feelings
any more profound.

We find that after yielding all to the Master, He comes so to possess us by His Spirit that our very frames-of-mind are governed by Him. Are we moved to pray? He gives that spirit of prayer, access into the presence of the living God. And our prayers have a force and a vitality that leads us to laugh at the impossible. Are we tried? He holds us in Iris boson and the hisses of His mouth make: our hearts to sing. Are we tempted? He girds us with night---we are more than conquerors in Him. The next: step which we would consider is our participation in Christ’s resurrection. Not only did we (lie in Christ - in Him we arose. Our death to self is but the gate-way to a larger, fuller life-the more abundant life. As we sign our death-warrant and consign to the grave (we are sharers of Christ’s tomb-Weymouth’s translation of Romans 6:4) tile "old life," it is only to find that we are the recipients of a life infinitely more wonderful-the life of the Ages. We become once more temples of the living God. That element of discord-self, the "fled,-life" which, however religious, is still at enmity with God, for "they that are in the flesh cannot please God," "the carnal mind is enmity with God"---that element of discord once removed, God conies again into His own in us and we truly live.

"God who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us...hath
quickened us together with Christ...and hath raised us up together" (Ephesians
2:6).

Marvelous Truth! Glorious Fact! How it enriches! What treasures of grace, what
power, what glory-what a wealth of meaning. Christ’s resurrection my
resurrection. God raised me up together with Him. He is something adapted to my
deepest need. I want life, life abundant, life eternal. My spirit pants for
life. "As the hart panteth for the water brooks, so panteth my soul after Thee,
O God."

Jesus had said that such a life was to be at the disposal of the believer. "He
that drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but he that drinketh of the
water that f shall give him shall never thirst but the water that I shall give
him shall be in him a well o f water springing up into everlasting life." "He
that believeth on Me, out of his innermost being shall flow rivers of living
water." "I am come that they might have life and that they might have it more
abundantly." "I am the Bread of life, he that cometh to Me shall never hunger
arid he that believeth on Me shall never thirst." Were it not for this Divine
life which in a measure all believers, even those who are still dominated by the
"flesh life," enjoy (for some it is a tiny rivulet almost imperceptible, .for
others it is as a mighty stream, "Rivers of living water," the degree being
determined by one’s union with Christ and dependence upon Him-see Ezek. xlvi,
the vision of the rising waters), were it not, I repeat, for this Divine life
which in a measure all believers receive, they could not participate in Christ’s
Cross. Only a living creature can die. Only souls that have in a pleasure
received the Christ-life can die to "self." "Self" cannot overcome "self." We
must be Christ-possessed to die to the "flesh life." And to the degree in which
we receive Christ, we die to "self." Or, to state the matter conversely, to come
,more fully into Christ we must more fully die to "self." In the first chapter
of the Ephesian letter, Paul utters a marvelous prayer. He says to the
Ephesians: "I cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my
prayers: that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give you
the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the, knowledge of Him: the eyes of your
understanding being enlightened that ye may know...what is the exceeding
greatness of His Power to us-ward who believe." And this’ power which is to us,
for us, in us, who believe; whence does it emanate-what is it? It is the "power
which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead." That is the
matchless power which works in the believer -the power of Christ’s resurrection.
Paul longed to have the Ephesians realize that fact. When we come to consider
the requirements of the New Testament as they bear upon the Christian- life, we
realize that they all presuppose this very oneness of the believer with Christ
in the power of His resurrection. No one but a Christ-centered soul, one with
Him in death and resurrection, could possibly measure up to the ideal of Christ
in Christian life and service. To love one’s enemies without a deep
participation in the power of Christ’s endless life, with that Divine love
(Greek agape, Divine love) which the Word enjoins, would no more be possible for
the purely natural man, nay, for even the Christian in whom the "flesh-life" is
still in the descendency, than for a worm to play the role of a bird. There is
not a New Testament requirement that does not immediately bring the believer
face to face with an overwhelming dilemma. Either he must cease to move in the
realm of the purely natural, die to the "flesh-life" and find in the resurrected
Christ a new life-or, he must fail as a Christian. To the New Life, the life
that flows from Christ, the Sermon on the Mount presents no problems. It is all
natural, easy, a spontaneous expression of principles already inherent. To the
"old life," which animates man naturally, which by virtue of his oneness with a
fallen race surges within him, the Sermon on the Mount can never be anything but
an amazing contradiction. The ways, customs, language, of a Hottentot would be
no more unintelligible or impracticable to the average European, or American, or
Latin, than the Sermon on the Mount to one who has not been born again (i.e.
died to the "self-life" to rise up with Christ, n the power of a "new life").

We deceive ourselves with the cant of the hour. We talk glibly of the social
gospel, and Heaven knows we need a social application of the teachings of Jesus,
an injection in all the ramifications of life of the love of Christ. We talk no
less glibly of following in the footsteps of the Master. But we forget that a
mere mechanical doing as Jesus did in that which has to do with our social
relation, would never bring us to the Christ-life. A dead frog can be made to
kick as if it were alive by the touch of an electric current. An imitation of a
Frenchman would not have me a Frenchman. I am a German and I would have to be
"reborn" to be anything but what I am. And so in the Christian life. I must be
born anew. That is why Christ took me with Himself down into the gravy: and
brought me forth a "new creation." He terminates my old life when there upon the
Cross as Representative He died; and He imparted to me a new-life when He arose
from the grave.

Christ expects nothing of the "flesh." However religious its garments, however
holy its mien, however sanctified its undertakings, it still "profiteth
nothing." It is still only "flesh." It is still only the realm of the natural.
It is still "self." The Christian faith is not simply supernatural in its
God-ward aspects. It is not simply the Incarnation of Christ which comes under
the category of the miraculous. The believer, too, becomes God possessed. He,
too, as a partaker of Christ’s resurrection comes under the sway of the
supernatural. It is not simply Christ dying for the sinner. It is the sinner
dying in. Christ. It is not simply Christ being raised from the dead. It is the
believer being raised with the Divine Head. It is not simply man reaching out
after God-it is God taking the form of man and then, as the "Son of Man,"
changing life’s entire process, subjecting it to the Cross for the extinction of
that great monster which has been the source of all corruption, the root of
man’s misery, namely: the principle of self; and bringing him out from the tomb
charged with the Life of the ages-Resurrection life. This is the Christian faith
the faith of the Apostles, the "faith of the Son of God." "I am 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" (Galatians 2:20).


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 7: 06 - CHRIST'S ASCENSION OUR ASCENSION
========================================================================

CHRIST’S ASCENSION OUR ASCENSION

CHAPTER VI HIS principle of participation. oneness with Christ has reaches so
unfathomable that not even the spiritual man finds it easy to scale the heights
and grasp its full meaning. We stand overawed. We stagger. Faith wavers.

I recall a recent visit to the sea after years of seclusion in a barren desert
land. When my eyes caught sight of the far horizon, and the great roar of the
breakers struck, as the chords of a great organ upon my heart, I stood
speechless. When one looks out for the first time, after years of weary
wandering in the desert land of a self-originated imitation of Christ, to the
ocean of unfathomable riches which participation in Christ holds for the
believer, one is not simply speechless. Like Saul of Tarsus, one falls to earth
blinded by the Heavenly vision.

I must confess that when I first contemplated the phase of participation which
we are about to consider, I staggered. Could it be that even this-Christ’s
ascension, was mine? Not hereafter, but now? Dared I mount this fiery chariot
and like Elijah be swept into glory? Did the Scriptures actually teach such a
thing? And how could one be upon earth and yet with Christ in the Heavenlies ? A
thousand questions surged up demanding a reply. But the Holy Spirit, who leads
us, as we are willing and able to bear, into those mysteries, gave faith. I
believed, and now I know. Faith is more than sight, as Hudson Taylor was wont to
say. "It is the substance of things hoped for." We come actually to possess the
very substance, the pith and the marrow of those unseen realities.

We are made not only partakers of Christ’s death and resurrection, but of His
very ascension. As Paul puts it, we were "made to sit together in the Heavenlies
with Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:6). Jesus states the case in His High Priestly
prayer, which had as its supreme object this very union of which we are
speaking, in this wise: "I in them and Thou in Me...Father I will that they also
whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am that they may behold My glory."
That He had in mind His going to the Father is evident enough, for He had
already said: "And now I am no longer in the world. And now I come to Thee." By
faith He was already taking His place at the right hand of the Father. He was
returning by the way of the Cross, the empty tomb, and ascension to the Throne
He had left, and by faith He was taking with Him those who in the foreknowledge
of God were to form His mystic body. The Heavenly Bridegroom was placing the
Bride at His side on the Throne.

Believers and Christ are one. Therefore, the Saviour could say: "And Thou hast
loved them as Thou hast loved Me." For this purpose Christ had come: to graft
into Himself a new stock; as Son of Man to constitute Himself Head of a New
Race; as Second Adam to be Federal Head of a New Humanity. And as this New Man
(the body) should participate in His Cross, and in the Resurrection so he should
also ascend with Him into Heaven.

True, it was a potential ascension and yet even in this life, it may become
actual. We must learn to possess our possessions and to appropriate by faith
what by Divine Trust is actually ours. Our "experimental position" should be
made to conform to our "judicial position." God judges us dead, raised, and
seated with Christ in the Heavenlies. "He hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in Heavenly places in Christ" (Ephesians 1:3). We do well to look to
the tenses of the verbs which the Holy Spirit employs, as F. B. Meyer points
out. It is ours now. "He hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in
Heavenly places in Christ." It is not death (physical dissolution) which will
bring us into our heritage in Christ. It is faith. We may scow sit with Him in
the Heavenlies, because God has already made us to sit there in the Person of
Christ, the Head of the Church. If this seems too much, too great a blessing for
such unworthy children, let us not forget that the merest crumb of spiritual
blessing comes in the same way. It is only because we are "in Christ" that we
presume to address the Father at all. Since it would be just as impossible to
attain the least, without Christ, why shall we not attain the highest with Him?
"He that spared not His only begotten Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how
shall He not with Him also freely give us all things." Yea, even the Throne.

"To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My Throne, even as I also
overcame and am set down with My Father in His Throne" (Revelation 3:21).

Dr. G. A. Peck, for some years a missionary in Africa, has written a book on
what he calls Throne Life, or Life in the Heavenlies, in which he expounds this
phase of the Christian life in a unique way. He states that the believer before
entering into glory through the portals of death, may take his place with Christ
in the Heavenlies and draw upon the Saviour’s Throne life. The Doctor sees the
conquest of Canaan, the entrance of the children of Israel into the land of milk
and honey, as the great Old Testament type. Canaan represents the highest union
with Christ, the Throne-life to which every believer is called. Joshua
represents the Holy Spirit who quickens and imparts faith and leads the believer
into this union with Christ. The Canaanites, sons of Anak, Giants, etc.,
represent the mighty forces of evil, Satanic and otherwise, which oppose the
believer in his attempt to "take" the land of promise- i.e. his place with
Christ in the Heavenlies. As to Joshua the Lord said: "Every place that the sole
of your foot shall tread upon, that have I given unto you." So to the believer
the Spirit says: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus who heath
blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Heavenly places in Christ." It is
held in trust. It is already the believer’s judicially, and will become his
actually upon the exercise of faith.

Though Dr. Peck’s message fell upon stony ground (such a message could only be
received by Spirit-taught hearts; it seems few were prepared) the glorious truth
remains. And, praise God, there are many things which cause one to believe that
the Church is being roused and is about to claim her glorious possessions-rise
to take her place (I do not refer to her translation at Christ’s coming) in the
Heavenlies.

I realize that this is no "facile" doctrine, no light thing. But is anything
related to Christ’s coming, His passion, His death, His great programme of world
evangelization, easy or simple? Perchance there are no mysteries connected with
the Saviour’s death for the sinner? Ah! yes there are. The greatest intellects
need to be shorn of pride, lest entering here they stumble and fall. And the
simplest souls need grace lest they fail to see. Only anointed eyes can pierce
through the veil and see into the ante-chamber of the King. If, without the Holy
oil we cannot grasp the A B C of Christology, should it surprise us that the X Y
Z are not easily attained? The same anointing, which according to John "teacheth
all things, is truth and is no lie, which has taught us to abide in Him," will
also enable us "to mount up on wings as eagles," so that we may become not only
potential but actual participants of Christ’s Throne Life. A bit of psychology
will, I am sure, aid us at this point. Not only the Bible, but science as well
declares man to be a tripartite being. He is spirit, soul, and body. "The God of
peace," prays Paul, "sanctify you wholly and preserve you: I pray God, your
whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless." The Bible constantly
distinguishes between spirit and soul. We are told that the Word divides asunder
soul and spirit (Hebrews 4:12). When man fell he ceased to live in the spirit,
which is the seat of God consciousness and which God intended should dominate.
He sank into "the vessel of the soul," and then into the flesh. He became
"flesh." We read that it repented the Lord that He had made man; for He said:
"he also is flesh" (Genesis 6:3) .

Now the purpose of -God in the great work of redemption is to bring man once
more to a God-consciousness through the spirit; to quicken and to release the
spirit of Man, disentangling it from that which is soulish and fleshly, and
bringing it once more into the ascendency that man might be dominated by the
spirit. So the Cross must cut, dividing asunder soul and spirit. The spirit,
once released from the thralldom of the carnal, takes its place with Christ in
the Heavenlies. The believer’s life should flow in an unremittant stream from
the Throne. As to his spirit, he is translated into the Kingdom of Christ, here
and now. During His earthly ministry Jesus stood in just such relations; He
could say: "No man hath ascended into Heaven, but he that came down from Heaven,
even the Son of Man which is in Heaven." As to His spirit, Jesus was in Heaven
even while He walked on earth and preached by the shores of Galilee. His life
flowed in an unremittant stream from the Throne. The soul and the body were kept
under.

Now when by faith we rise to claim our place in the Heavenlies, our spirits are
released from the thralldom of the "flesh-life." They are disentangled from the
"soulish life." We are no longer in bondage to "self." We are set free. Our life
is no longer lived at the circumference. It flows from the center to the
circumference. Thus it is that we truly come into our own, not only as sons of
God, but as men-the highest realms of manhood (the Manhood of the Master) unfold
within us.

Oh! the glory of the Christian life when lived in the fullness of its
prerogatives, when we learn to participate in Christ in all the wealth of the
redemption which He has wrought out for us. Oh! that we might see the poverty of
our spirits, the barrenness of our life, the death which still envelopes us
because we have not incorporated in our being all that Christ would have us to
receive. John could say: "And of His fullness have all we received, and grace
for grace." How little of His fullness have we received. Oh! how many Christians
are living on starvation rations, when all the time the King would have them so
filled, so charged with the life of God, so rooted in the Divine fullness that,
unable to contain themselves, rivers of living water should burst forth and flow
out to a perishing world. "A garden enclosed is my sister," so speaks the
Beloved (Christ) in Canticles, to the spouse (the Bride-the Church -or the
individual Christian) "a spring...a fountain...The plants are an orchard of
pomegranates with pleasant" fruits; campfire with spikenard...myrrh and aloes
with all chief spices, a fountain of gardens, a well of living waters and
streams from Lebanon” (Song of Solomon 4:12-15).


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 8: 07 - CHRIST'S VICTORY OUR VICTORY - PART ONE
========================================================================

CHRIST’S VICTORY OUR VICTORY – PART ONE

CHAPTER VII AT no time in the Christian’s pilgrimage is he free from peril.
Temptations of every hue beset his path. The farther along the road, and the
greater the grace, the more subtle the snares, and the more intense the
opposition. It was at the end of the road in the hour of greatest achievement,
in the moment of loftiest spiritual attainment, that the Saviour experienced the
sharpest and grimmest conflict; and so it is with the Christian. He will never
know how determined and how mighty the foe is, how cruel the enemy, how potent
the opposition, until he forges his way to the highest spiritual attainment. It
is when he asserts his claim to a place with Christ in the Heavenlies, that the
great Adversary, the Prince of Darkness, begins to employ his subtlest tactics,
and brings into action his most telling weapons.

It is quite possible to doubt the existence of his Satanic majesty while one is
still dominated by the "flesh-life." One simply does not see. The spirit is not
yet released. Satan has no great controversy, no real quarrel with those who are
content to go along professing to be Christ’s, while "self" in one form or
another sits, so to speak, upon the throne. So long as the "old life" is not
displaced so long as the Cross is simply looked upon as a distant symbol, so
long as no inner crucifixion takes place releasing the spiritual faculties and
entailing a vital union with Christ in the power of His ascension-life, the
Enemy is not greatly alarmed. It is when the Christian realizes his position of
death-identification with the Divine Head, rising with Him in spirit to a place
of real power, that he comes to appreciate the meaning of Paul’s: "For we
wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against
the rulers of the darkness of this world, against wicked spirits in Heavenly
places" (Revised Version margin). It is then that he begins to grasp the deeper
significance of the Saviour’s Cross.

Jesus not only came to reveal the Father’s love, to express in terms of human
life the Divine purpose; He not only came to heal and to teach; it was not
simply to give His life as a ransom for many there upon the Cross. In the
strictest sense, those were secondary objects. There was one supreme purpose of
which little was said, because man in his blindness would not understand. Behind
the scenes there was being enacted a mighty drama. Jesus saw Satan fall as
lightning from Heaven. He saw the real enemy. Not for a second was He deceived.
Back of life He saw vast hordes of demons as thick clouds enveloping the world.
Men were under the dominion of the powers of darkness. The Master’s supreme
glory, His prime value as Redeemer, lay in the fact that He was able to break
that power. He cast out demons. He faced the enemy in the desert and came forth
victor.

It is significant that on that last night the Saviour should have interpreted
His Cross in terms of conflict with the Satanic dominion. He said: "Now is the
judgment of this world: Now shall the prince o f this world be cast out" (John
12:31) . Paul had insight into this fact for he wrote that Jesus, through death,
had destroyed him that had the power of death, that is, the devil (Hebrews
2:14). Elsewhere in speaking of the Saviour’s Cross he declares that it was
there on Calvary that He spoiled principalities and powers and made a show of
them openly triumphing over them in it (Colossians 2:14-16) . It would seem that
even in spiritual realms whereof we have no cognizance, when conflict takes
place (in Revelation we read that there was war in Heaven) the forces of light
in their efforts to overcome, appeal to Calvary, and on the basis of Christ’s
victory there obtained, are able to triumph. "And they (Michael and his angels)
overcame him (the Devil) by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their
testimony" Revelation 12:11). But is not God omnipotent? Why could He not with
one stroke have upset the whole Satanic hierarchy? He could have, but that would
not have answered His purpose nor solved the problem. Man had sinned. Man had
been deceived by the great Father of lies. Man had made common cause with Satan.
More or less unconsciously, yet how effectively a sin-besmirched world reeking
with crime testifies, man had lent himself to the great plan of the fallen
Prince. God was ruled out. Rebellion broke out in the primitive camp. So it was
necessary that man of his own free will should break with Satan and return to
the Father. Christ as man must overcome Satan. Herein lies the virtue of it all.
It was Man, "the Son of Man," employing weapons which man might use, triumphing.
It was Man challenging the usurper’s authority and standing for God. It cost the
Saviour the ignominy and shame of the Cross, for Satan fired the Jew with a
diabolic hate. No man was ever hated as was Jesus-just as no one was ever loved
as was He. Any explanation of this hatred on any other basis than that of
demonism simply cannot satisfy. Why the best man who ever lived (perfect Man)
should have been hated, as probably even Nero never was-the One who befriended
thousands, communicating treasures of priceless value-remains the greatest
enigma of History until we accept the Scriptural postulates. We read that "Satan
entered into Judas." It was Satan who fired those hearts with the wrath of hell.
But to come to the point of interest for us. What has all this to do with
participation? Much, every way. We are not only baptized into Christ’s death,
and raised with Him in the power of an endless life; we are the participants of
His Victory over the forces of hell. When the Son of Man achieved, we
potentially achieved in Him. The humblest believer may trample the "dragon"
under foot. The weakest disciple who realizes his oneness with Christ, may in
His Name "bind the strong man" and spoil him of his goods.

It had to be through death for this reason: The "self life" and the Satanic
spirit are in unconscious affinity. However polished the former-it may shine
with the culture of the ages and bear the religious glow of the best in natural
religions-it is still "self," it is still "flesh-life." It has the curse of God
upon it. It has the smell of infernal associations about it. It stinks. "The
carnal mind is enmity with God" (Romans 8:1-39.). It hates Him while it pretends
to love Him. Where "self-life" dominates, be the religious professions what they
may, Satan finds plenty of ground on which to work. The rails over which he runs
his engines of war, are laid. Just as there are affinities in the natural world,
i.e. lighting and electricity-how they coalesce; sunlight and the green of
nature-how they fuse and intermingle, and are made one for the other; the glass
and light-how the latter penetrates the former. The glass does not lose its
character because the light passes through it. So just as there are affinities
in the natural order, so there are in the spiritual. If the "self-life" is
supreme, Satan does not have to be invited in. The lines are already set for the
"electric" current to flow. Satan is master of ceremonies, though he be
apparently non-existent. The ground is all his. That is why the Scriptures speak
of that wisdom which does not descend from above as being "earthly, sensual,
devilish" (James 3:15) .

So, I repeat, it had to be through death. The Son of Man through death,-the
utter, absolute uncompromising, all-inclusive negation of "self-life" which the
Cross entailed -destroyed him who has the power of death, that is the devil. The
Christian has been planted into that death. He is grafted into the Cross of the
Son of God. "Our old man is crucified with Him." In Christ he dies. He shares
the Saviour’s tomb. And, as in Christ he dies, Satan’s dominion over him is
destroyed-destroyed because the "flesh-life" with its Satanic affinity is
destroyed. In all realms God works according to law, and in none more strictly
than the spiritual. And it is law that where the carnal mind which is enmity
toward God is given free play, the Satanic hierarchy which is based upon the
same principles that govern the carnal mind, and which necessarily stands in
closest relation to it, has no difficulty in asserting its authority and in
maintaining its power. Even Christ Himself could not set a soul free from
Satan’s power which failed to avail itself of the efficacy of His death, and in
the power of that death failed to renounce the "flesh-life"-the so called "old
Adam-life." If He did He would be untrue to the Universe. It respects even the
rights of Satan. He respects the laws of the Universe. He can only save man in
ways wholly in keeping with the highest claims of morality. In other words, He
must be true to Himself. Ile cannot violate His own Nature.

I once saw this very principle at work. A missionary of my acquaintance suffered
a strange break-down which had all the earmarks of demon possession. The
missionary soon comes to know the derangement which, as Dr. White of China, who
has made an exhaustive study of demonism, says, has symptoms absolutely
distinctive. It fell to my lot to hear the blasphemy which issued from the lips
of this dear comrade-those lips which had for years proclaimed Christ. One cried
out within one’s soul: "This is none other than a demon from hell." Prayer
finally prevailed; though there were days of agony before it did. Not even a
missionary is exempt, if inadvertently, or otherwise, he gives ground to Satan
by some form of "self-life," or by accepting some lie or some counterfeit
emanating from the pit.

Then, too, the Authority of Christ over wicked spirits is delegated to the
believer. I once happened upon an incident in Mexico City which threw light upon
what has been called the "executive authority" of the Christian. The boy scouts
were taking their places at street corners to learn how to deal with traffic. I
watched a lad on the stool of a "gendarme." The boy signaled and the traffic
obeyed. If ten thousand cars had been lined up on Avenida de La Re f Reforma,
that lad could have held up the entire procession with a single wave of the
hand. And why? He stood at his post vested with all the authority of the
Republic of Mexico. It was the Magic Wand-law. That was sufficient. Said Jesus
to the disciples: "I give unto you power over all the power of the enemy." They
returned amazed and cried out: "Lord, even the devils are subject unto us
through Thy name."

Helen Montgomery in Prayer and Missions, tells of a Chinese lad casting out a
demon. A poor grief-stricken father came to the home of a Christian pastor
beseeching aid for his demon-possessed daughter. The pastor was not at home. His
boy taking in the situation at a glance said "I’ll go with you. I’ve seen father
do it. I know how." Afterward the lad stated that while on the way he confessed
his sins and called upon the Lord for help. Upon arrival he was conducted into
the presence of a poor maid writhing and foaming at the mouth. The lad
immediately turned upon the unseen spirit, in whose grip the maid had fallen,
and said: "In the Name of Jesus Christ, I say, go forth." The spirit obeyed. The
maid was instantly restored. The humblest believer who realizes his oneness with
Christ, is invested with the very authority of the Son of God. As members of His
Body we share His executive authority. Shall we not judge angels? If God be for
us who can be against us? Yea, verily l mountains do move and are cast into the
sea at our bidding. The Apostles exercised this power and we may exercise it.
Christ stands ready to make effective the command of the humblest lamb of His
flock, if that lamb is obedient. But, we cannot have all that Christ has for us
in this regard until He has all of us. A bit of "self" may seem insignificant
enough to us, but God sees it in the light of the Cross: "self" placed the Son
there. The true measure of "self" is the Cross. Pilate knew that for envy the
Jews would have Christ crucified. After Calvary who ever could think lightly of
envy? Envy’s hands are red with the blood of the king. "Self" is still a monster
and until we dethrone him (not wheedle him secretly, or, fondle him in some deep
hidden love), dethrone him with the actual slaying of the Cross of Christ, we
rob ourselves of infinite wealth and power; we feed on the husks with the swine.

God grant to us a disposition to die with Christ that with Him we may reign. In
which case the very devils will be subject unto us.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 9: 08 - CHRIST'S VICTORY OUR VICTORY - PART TWO
========================================================================

CHRIST’S VICTORY OUR VICTORY – PART TWO

CHAPTER VIII

WE are all very much at sea as touching this dark subject. Among present-day
Christian leaders, teachers, and preachers none seem to be willing to risk their
reputation by entering into this matter. Yet, there is no greater need in the
Church today than that of light on this intricate question. Witness the "isms"
springing up, all under the eaves of the Church. Strange doctrines that have to
do with the gifts of the Spirit, and that seem sound enough, and sufficiently
grounded in the Scriptures, are causing fatal convulsions in the Body of
,Christ, and plunging earnest Christians, seeking fuller light, into the abyss
of fanaticism. "Doctrines of demons" which according to Paul would, in the
latter days, come as a flood upon the Church.

I look back over the years of my ministry as a missionary of the Cross, when
Satan’s dark wing oppressed me, and shudder. A missionary, and oppressed by
Satan-the irony of it. Oh! the agony of the prolonged conflict when, assailed by
the hosts of hell, they saw me escaping from their hands. Had it not been for
the faithful Shepherd, who seeing my plight, came to my rescue; had it not been
for the light which He shed upon the subtle workings of the Adversary, and the
patient training which He gave me in the use of the weapons which "are not
carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds," the outcome
of this warfare with the powers of darkness would have been a very different
matter.

However, it is not only in heathen lands where the missionary comes to grips
with demon forces for ages entrenched, as it were, in their strongholds. How
many Christians there are in so-called Christian lands, who feel the weight of
the murky spirit, who have been sidetracked by the great Deceiver, and who
secretly groan under the thralldom of "the powers of darkness"! How few
Christians there are who are enjoying that complete freedom from Satanic
oppression which Jesus came to make possible! Little is being said of the
"Rulers of the darkness of this world" (it is the fad of the day to pooh-pooh
the idea of a personal devil-like Voltaire, who said he did not believe there
was such a thing, and who nevertheless lived in mortal terror of this very
monster; even the preachers of our day vaunt their skepticism in that which has
to do with this Prince of darkness). Little is being said, I repeat, of that
which was so real to the Saviour, in His conflict with evil; yet, Satan stalks
with his millions of cohorts through the land oppressing, deceiving, murdering,
inciting to evil, and plunging souls into the abyss of unutterable estrangement
from God. His chief strategy, at present, seems to be an adulterated
Christianity. In a thousand and one ways he is draining out the essence-he is
removing the savour from the salt -he is watering down the pure wine of the true
Christian life. As has been so often said: he will float any number of truths to
get into circulation one lie. He causes all our divisions. He is the father of
so many counterfeit "isms." He will even give you a revival if only you keep it
all in the realm of the "flesh-life." A revival which does not exalt the Cross,
and which brings no soul to co-crucifixion, to a deep realization of an inner
oneness with Christ in death and resurrection, simply fails to register in
Heaven. What is more, Satan may put across some of his choicest strategy under
cover, in the heart of the revival, itself in the form of truth out of relation
with other truths, in the stressing of some strictly sectarian view-point, in
the injection of passion for the triumph of some system of theology, in an over
emphasis of emotionalism, in the setting in motion "the wheel of nature"
(stirring up of "flesh-life") through some "counterfeit." He is willing that men
shall follow Christ so long as it be in the energy of the "self-life." He is not
afraid of religion. In fact, it is absolutely essential that men be religious
(i.e. bow in submission to the supernatural), for he can use to so much greater
advantage souls that are open to the supernatural. The greatest crimes of
history have been committed in the name of religion. Satan only fears one
thing-the Cross of Christ. I do not refer to a mere symbol. I refer to all that
Calvary signifies: Christ’s victory over the powers of darkness-His
substitutionary death for the sin of the world the believer’s oneness with
Christ in death-in a word, the power inherent in what we have elsewhere,
borrowing Dr. Mabie’s term, spoken of as the "death-resurrection-mid-process."
This is the "Rock cleft for me," in which if I hide, I shall find shelter from
the wiles of the wicked one, against which the gates of hell shall never
prevail. For those who feel themselves-and there are millions of professing
Christians who in their secret souls know, so far as their life and walk are
concerned, that the power of Satan is not yet broken-still victimized, who, in a
word, are not wholly free, I would offer the following suggestions.

First: You must "remove all ground." We give "ground" to Satan when we accept
any of his lies. He often paints his lies with all the colors of the Christian
faith. He quotes the Word. Witness the temptation of Jesus. We give "ground"
when we fail to avail ourselves of the power of Christ’s Cross for the
displacing and removal of "self-life." If the "old life," the "flesh-life," is
in the ascendency, a thousand unconscious lines of communication are all set for
Satan’s use. We simply have got to burn our bridges behind us and get over into
God’s camp. We give "ground" when we sin. We give "ground" by the abuse of any
organ or faculty. A doubt will give "ground" to the Evil One. That is why Satan
tried to get the Master, to doubt. "If thou art the Son of God." Had Jesus
accepted that "if," it would have entitled Satan to a considerable patch of
"ground," so to speak, in the Saviour’s life. If, under cover, he gets us to
accept what looks like an innocent sort of doubt as regards God’s perfect
faithfulness and goodness, from the vantage point given he soon forges his way
into further "ground." The "ground" is removed by an assertion of our right to a
full participation in all the fruits of the victory of Calvary. We must
deliberately take our stand with Christ on victory ground; affirm what God says
is true as regards our oneness with Christ in death and resurrection;
deliberately refuse all "ground" to Satan, and in the Name of the Victor of
Calvary take back the "ground" that may have been lost. We must claim in Jesus’
name the "ground" which belongs to the rightful King. Satan is a pretender
prince. He is the usurper. He can maintain his authority over us only on the
basis of lies and half-truths. We must displace these lies with the Word of God.
We must take up the shield of faith "wherewith we shall be able to quench all
the fiery darts of the wicked one." It is a fight. Paul says that we wrestle
with unseen foes. They are crafty; they are subtle; they are quick to discover
the weak spot in our armour; they strike when we are down; they can entrench
themselves in a constitutional weakness (witness 2 Corinthians 12:1-21), Paul’s
thorn in the flesh which was, the Apostle says, a messenger of Satan to buffet
him) ; they oppose and hamper and bind in a thousand ways. Of the woman with an
infirmity, whom He healed, the Saviour said: "this woman whom Satan hath bound."
But we have been made the participants of Christ, and we have an invincible
claim, a blood-bought right, a glorious right springing from our oneness with
the Victor of Calvary a perfect right to freedom. Are not these the good tidings
which Jesus came to proclaim in the acceptable year of the Lord? Does He not
proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening o f the prison to them that
are bound? Did He not cry out from the Cross "it is finished"? Is it only, if I
may so speak, a ten per cent., or a fifty per cent., or a ninety per cent.
salvation which He wrought out at so great a cost; or, is it all inclusive, one
hundred per cent. Simon-pure salvation? The salvation which so many professed
Christians have got is not worth the price the Saviour paid-the trip from glory;
the infinite humiliation of the Incarnation; the ignominy of the Cross. It does
not represent the victory of Calvary. It leaves Satan, if not in full control,
the cruel oppressor and possessor of great fields of the spirit.

Oh! may Christians arise and take their place with Christ in the Heavenlies "far
above principalities and powers." Their right to the air they breathe and the
water they drink is no more inalienable. They are members of Christ’s body and
by the Word of God, the Covenant of Calvary, they are the legal possessors of
all that which Christ Himself rose out of the grave to inherit. When God raised
His Son from the dead and "set Him at His right hand in the Heavenly places, far
above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is
named not only in this world but also in that which is to come, and put all
things under His feet," you, too, O Christian member of the body of Christ you,
who believe in Him and who have been grafted into the Vine, you, of whom Jesus
said: "I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in One," you,
too, O Christian, were raised to sit at the right hand of God; all things have
been placed under your feet. Will you not assert your right to freedom, and
throw off the abominable yoke? Will you not remove, on the basis of the Calvary
victory, every faculty, every power, every phase of your life whether of the
spirit or of the soul, or of the body, from Satan’s blighting, stultifying,
deadening, damning dominion, so that in the fullest possession of your faculties
you may serve God in holy freedom and joy?

Many have unconsciously come under the oppressive thralldom of the Enemy. They
have given ear to his lies; they have become passive. Passivity lays us liable
to demon intrusion. It is fundamental to Spiritism. The medium is passive-the
"spirit" takes control. "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and
Christ shall give thee light." We are not to let go of a single faculty and
expect God to control us as if we were machines. Union with Christ does not
signify any such things. After coming into deepest union with Christ, so that
like Paul we say: "I am crucified with Christ...Christ liveth in me," we do not
become passive. We do not give up self-control. As never before we live.
Personality is vastly enhanced. The will is greatly fortified. The mind is
marvelously illumined. The memory is gloriously strengthened. We are free as
never before to choose, to will, to reason, and to act. We are now to act in
perfect harmony with God, every faculty energized by the Holy Spirit. No, it
does not lead and never should to passivity. If a single faculty has fallen into
disuse and through passivity has come under Satan’s baneful sway, let us in
Christ’s Name break the shackle, take back the ground ceded, and in full
possession of our God-given faculties be free.

Finally, ground taken must be held. Satan returns in ever more subtle ways, even
as he did in the case of the Saviour. And so we must be ever prepared for
battle. The victory of today may be the cause of tomorrow’s defeat, if it
results in any glorying in the "flesh." Uncrucified "flesh-life" gives advantage
to the enemy. During the World War, there were a few Germans in the American
army secretly in touch with the enemy. At a critical moment these spies were at
the point of betraying positions of responsibility. Had they not been discovered
and shot down in time, grave consequences might have ensued. That patch of
"flesh-life" may seem innocent enough, but in the hour of conflict with the
powers of darkness if it is not brought under the Radium of Calvary, it will be
the unprotected breach through which the enemy will pour in like a flood. Our
modern theological proprieties may forbid the use of such terms as Peter used
when he wrote: "Resist the devil and he will flee"-our superior ecclesiastical
airs may make those who believe in standing against the wiles of the devil feel
most uncomfortable, but out on the battle-field of life where grim facts are the
only things that count, it is the Christian who knows how to buckle on the
armour of light and who stands against the forces of darkness that comes forth
victorious, crowned with the Crown of Life.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 10: 09 - CHRIST'S SUFFERINGS OUR SUFFERINGS
========================================================================

CHRIST’S SUFFERINGS OUR SUFFERINGS

CHAPTER IX

It is striking how over and over this word Participation appears in the New
Testament. We are told that we are made partners of Christ. In Romans vi, we are
given to understand that His Cross is our Cross; His tomb, our tomb. In
Ephesians ii, we are made to see that in Him we were raised from the dead, and
actually made to sit with Him in the Heavenlies. Not only that, we are assured
again and again that Christ’s victory, is our victory, that we may always
overcome the Wicked One, because of Calvary, and our participation in the fruits
of the Cross (2 Corinthians 2:14). And now again we are startled by the
marvelous fact, that we are made to be partakers of Christ’s sufferings. Peter
bids us rejoice over this fact. He would have us be glad because we have been
called to share the tribulations of the glorified Saviour. "Rejoice inasmuch as
ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings" (1 Peter 4:13).

Paul, the great Apostle of the doctrine of the indwelling Christ, as has already
been stated, was wont to interpret his trials and tribulations as a Christian,
and an Apostle, in the light of the Cross, and see in them a prolongation of
Christ’s own sufferings. To the Colossians, he wrote: "I rejoice in my
sufferings for you and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ
in my flesh, for His body’s sake which is the Church" (Colossians 1:24). It was
Christ suffering in and through him. The Saviour’s passion is not yet over.
Drops of blood still fall from His brow. It could not be otherwise, this world
being what it is, and Christ being what He is.

We are not, of course, to think of this suffering as having aught to do with
Christ’s great vicarious suffering as the sacrificial Lamb, there upon the
Cross, the burden He bore as our Sin-Bearer, when "the Lord laid on Him the
iniquity of us all." "This man after that He offered one sacrifice for sins
forever, sat down on the right hand of God" (Hebrews 10:12). "We are sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all" (Hebrews 10:10).
"By the one offering He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified"
(Hebrews 10:14). Of this Cosmic achievement the Saviour Himself cried out with a
great voice that rent the rocks, "It is finished." Nothing can be added to the
work consummated on the Cross. We must take care not to permit anything of the
nature of a confused thought to enter here. The entire body of revealed Truth,
both in the Old and the New Testament, converges in one overwhelmingly sublime
fact: Christ died for our sins. All the chorus of inspired voices are pitched to
their major key. To be uncertain in our exegesis here would not only be fatal
but infinitely damnable. With good reason Paul cries out: "If any one preach any
other gospel...let him be accursed." The ground of all human hope-hope which
reaches out to embrace the eternal ages to come must not be trifled with.

We must not confuse these sufferings of Christ, of which we are the partakers,
with the completed work of Calvary. I repeat, nothing can ever be added to that
absolute consummation. "Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to Thy Cross I
cling." In that all-sufficient sacrifice for sin the believer had no :part. He
can only accept the forgiveness which issues from the Cross. Nor are we to
confuse these sufferings of Christ and His Body with the objective fact of our
identification with Christ in His death, as set forth in Romans 6:1-23. That
also is a completed thing. We are commanded to simply reckon on it as a
consummated, historic fact, just as we count on the fact of Christ’s death for
us. For that "death identification" we reckon back to Calvary. When we believe
what God has to say about our oneness with His Son in His death to sin, and the
"old life," and on the ground of God’s Word simply refuse the "old life" as if
it were an utterly powerless thing-which it really is, because of our communion
with Christ in His death-we are released from the bondage of Self. The old life
drops off like a decayed garment. We are now alive unto God. And now in the
power o f this new divine life, as members of Christ’s body, there comes to us
as an inevitable consequence a participation in Christ’s sufferings. Because our
life now issues from the Throne, because, in spirit, we are virtually saved in
the Heavenlies, and because, as never before, we are one with Christ-in lieu of
all this we discover working within us a new spirit of love. The love of Christ
constraining us, inevitably issues in a great suffering. We groan with
unutterable groanings of the spirit. Could the Christ, the agony of whose prayer
upon one occasion turned the sweat of His brow into blood, dwell in us by His
Spirit, and pray through us, without that at times our prayer (for it is still
our prayer though He inspires it) should become a groaning unutterable? Could
the Christ who dwells within us, through us seek perishing souls, without that
we should upon occasions be in an agony of sorrow over those who reject the
Saviour’s love? Could the Christ, who because of this world’s injustice and
greed and hate, died of a broken heart, dwell within us without that we should
feel the pain of the world’s sorrow and shame? Let no one imagine that because
of our oneness with Christ in the Heavenlies, we are therefore brought to some
fool’s paradise which exempts us from further suffering. The truth of the matter
is, that it simply increases our capacity for suffering ten thousand fold. It
simply increases our power for the bearing of pain in an infinite manner. We
begin "to bear about in our body the dying of the Lord Jesus" (2 Corinthians
4:10). If Goethe, because of poetic sensibilities so refined and keen, found
that he had withdrawn from the world, for it seemed to him that he would die
from sheer pain, so great was the burden which contact with the world’s sin and
sorrow brought to a tender spirit,-what about one whose spirit is not simply
refined, by "the muses," but brought into living communion with the Christ of
Calvary? When "praying Hyde of India" finally succumbed and took his flight to
the celestial abode, doctors performed a post-mortem and found that the heart
had been completely changed from its natural position. Hyde’s prayer-life had
been so intense--he spent whole nights groaning before the Lord, burdened for
dying souls-that he literally died of a broken heart.

Witness the suffering of the early Christians, the travail of the Martyrs, the
birth pangs of missionaries who are called upon to bring forth from the bowels
of their compassion whole races sunken in debauchery. There can be no re-birth
of souls without travail on the part of Christians. Witness the trials and
afflictions of a St. Francis. Juen-de-Beuf, a missionary to the North American
Indians, was literally burned to death (slowly by red-hot coals, so as to
increase his agony). So marvelous a spirit of tranquility and compassion did he
manifest that in the final hour of death the Indians tore open the missionary’s
breast and drank his blood, and ate his heart. "We would be like him," they
said, "he is a god." The Galilean had won after all. It was His Face they had
seen as they watched the suffering saint, and He broke their hearts. It was
Calvary being re-enacted. We are to rejoice inasmuch as we are made partakers of
Christ’s sufferings.

I have been re-reading the story of St. Francis’ bloody stigmata-the sacred
stigmata of the lowly and beloved Francis. Somehow it has never been hard for me
to believe in Francis’ wounds, which according to Catholic historians were
printed upon this devout companion of lepers by a flaming seraph. Francis, they
say, was wont to bleed from his hands and his feet. An exact replica of Christ’s
wounds appeared in the body of the great Assisan. Somehow, I have never doubted
these mysterious wounds of Francis, and I am not Roman Catholic. Paul said that
he bore in his body "the marks of the Lord Jesus." Frances Underhill, the
greatest living authority on mysticism, seems to think that Paul had experienced
the holy stigmata-that the Saviour’s wounds appeared in him. We do not know. Be
that all as it may, wounds or no wounds, Paul was conformed to Christ’s death;
holy stigmata or no, Francis bore the image of the Crucified. "The flesh
profiteth nothing." The great fact is that we are all to bear the Saviour’s
image; we are to be conformed to His death. In the power of His resurrection we
are to have the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His
death (Php 3:10).

And, praise God, this suffering is not without its precious fruit. Christ turns
it all to our account. He uses it all to prune the branches of the Vine that
they may bear more fruit (John 15:2). Nothing touches us without first passing
through His hands and being made to serve our highest eternal interests. "We
bear about in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus." Why? "That the life also
of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh" (2 Corinthians 4:10). How
are these "rivers of living water" to flow from our innermost being except the
"outer-self" be broken? The grape does not yield its precious juice without the
breaking of the outer wall. The walls of "self-hood" must be leveled, if we are
to yield life for Jesus. That is why the Holy Spirit turns us over to death-"For
we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life
also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.... So then death
worketh in us but life in you" (2 Corinthians 4:11).

What a blessed message for the afflicted soul. Oh! child of God, lift up your
head for your redemption draweth nigh. It is not in vain that you suffer. There
can be no gold without the refiner’s fire. Christ is glorified in your patience.
You are bidden to count it all joy when you suffer divers testings (James 1:2) .
From your wounds healing streams of life-Christ’s own life-are flowing. This
will make for the increase and edification of Christ’s body. What you suffer
will deepen your "death-identification-position" with Christ. The corn of wheat
must fall into the ground and die, else it abideth alone.

"O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay
thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires.

"And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy
borders of pleasant stones.

"And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace
of thy children" (Isaiah 54:11-13).

"For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth
by Christ." (2 Corinthians 1:5).


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 11: 10 - CHRIST'S APPEARING OUR APPEARING
========================================================================

CHRIST’S APPEARING OUR APPEARING

CHAPTER X

WE have not yet exhausted the deep veins of purest gold to which this principle
of participation has led us. In a sense, the most sublime of all its aspects has
to do with the future developments of Christ’s Kingdom. There is the great fact
of the Saviour’s coming about which the New Testament has so much to say. We are
told to watch and pray, for we know not what hour our Lord may come. We are told
to abide in Him that when He shall appear we may have confidence and not be
ashamed before him at His coming. We are told that the angels shall be sent
forth with a great sound of a trumpet, and that they shall gather together the
elect from the four winds. The doctrine of the Second Coming may not be popular,
but for that matter, what word or doctrine of our beloved Lord has been? The
truth of the Second Advent may have been abused and distorted, and held out of
proportion to other truths, but what word of our Master has not been abused? As
good disciples of the Christ of God, we dare not be indifferent to any truth;
nor dare we, without hurt to our souls, neglect any word that ever issued from
the lips of Him who spake as never man spake. That the Saviour did declare again
and again in unmistakable terms, that He would come again, and that the inspired
writers with one voice herald the glorious appearing of the Blessed and only
Potentate (1 Timothy 6:15) , as the consummate event toward which all history is
moving, no student of the Scriptures would deny.

Now, just because we may not be able to grasp the full significance of the
Saviour’s word, or understand just what this glorious appearing may involve, are
we going to waver? Are we going to look askance at those who rejoice in the
comfort which this great hope imparts? Are we going to fail to heed the
Apostolic injunction, "When He shall appear we shall be like Him, and every man
that hath this hope purifieth himself, even as He is pure," because we cannot
comprehend the modus operandi? Is the Saviour worthy of trust only when He is
understood? Will we follow only when the intellect can support us? Is it any
more wonderful than those things which have already transpired? the Incarnation,
the raising of Lazarus, the Cross, the empty tomb, the ascension, our oneness
with Christ in death and resurrection? What of the prophets did they understand
the full import of the revelation vouchsafed to them as regards the first coming
of Christ? Indeed, they did not understand; and I dare say that the marvelous
events which transpired in Galilee, the proclamation of which, even after two
thousand years, still causes the ears of the world to tingle, were no less
baffling to them, as from ancient times they looked forward to them, than those
unfulfilled prophecies to which we look forward in our day.

I am not ashamed to confess that I do not understand. But I do believe. And
since I have come to realize my oneness with Christ in death and resurrection,
since I have come to enjoy the full fruits of His Victory on Calvary, since I
have learned to participate in the ascension of my Lord, as one who has been
made to sit with Him in the Heavenlies, and since I have learned that my
sufferings as a follower of the Crucified are after all a filling up of His
sufferings; since the true import of the everlasting gospel has wrought in me, I
look forward as never before to the coming of my King. Could it be otherwise,
when I know that even in that supreme event I shall participate?

We are plainly taught that when Christ who is our life, shall appear, then shall
we also appear with Him in glory (Colossians 3:4) . He can do nothing without
us. We are His body. Oh! marvelous thought! Christ has bound us to Himself with
ties so strong (no man would speak of his own hand as being near or far, his
hand is part of himself; no man would undertake anything without a full
participation on the part of every member of his body in that event), Christ has
bound us, I repeat, so eternally and utterly to Himself that we must figure in
His movements. Of course we shall appear with Him. It could not be otherwise-we
are His body. The Church has been so grafted into the trunk of the eternal
Godhead, so incorporated in His life that He and the Church are one.

Oh! the unutterable glory of this mystic union with Christ. To what an ineffable
destiny it commits us. We no longer concern ourselves about whether or no we
shall go to Heaven. The truth of the matter is, we would rather not go, if
Christ were not there. He is Heaven. The faintest glimmer of light from His holy
countenance beside which the sun is but a shadow, suffices the heart. Paul could
not have done otherwise than sing there in prison when at midnight with Silas,
he rejoiced. His back was bleeding with the stripes; it was midnight; he was in
prison. But he sings as a participant of Christ; Heaven’s ineffable light bursts
in about him, and he forgets all but the fact of Christ.

We are to participate in Christ’s coming. We are to be caught up. We are to be
changed. Chariots of fire are to sweep us from earth in the twinkling of an eye.
One thing is still lacking in our incorporation in the Godhead. Christ’s work is
incomplete. Redemption is still in its swaddling clothes. Paul says there is a
great groaning in nature. One writer has referred to it as the trinity of
groanings. The whole creation groaneth. The Spirit groaneth. We groan. For what?
"For the redemption of our body" (Romans 8:23). Our bodies are to be changed. We
are to be glorified with Christ. As His body was glorified so our bodies are to
be glorified in Him. "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also
bear the image of the Heavenly.... Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not
all sleep, but we shall all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye,
at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised
incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruption must put on
incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible
shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality,
then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up
in victory...thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus
Christ" (1 Corinthians 15:48-57).

We are moving forward toward the most stupendous transactions in the history of
the human race. We would not be dogmatic. We would not quarrel over the
interpretation of dispensational truth. It behooves us to be exceedingly
tolerant, as Christians, as to ore another’s mode of interpreting the Word in
its bearing on the future. Some believe that the shadow of the great Tribulation
is already upon us, that we may be caught up at any moment. Others tell us that
the event may not transpire for thousands of years. Be all that as it may. No
one knows but the participants of Christ’s Coming. Nothing can befall Him that
does not befall us. We are yet to participate in a fuller measure in the fruits
of redemption. We shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. With Him we
shall reign. The stream of life, which proceedeth from the Throne, and from the
Lamb and which breaks in upon us, so that even vow "rivers of living water" flow
from our innermost being, is going to just overflow all its banks some day, so
that Death will be literally swallowed up in victory. Our ascension with Christ
will not be merely in spirit as it is now-our participation in the ascension
will, as it were, blossom forth in its true splendour; and then we shall shine
as the sun forever in the kingdom of the Father. "And I heard as it were the
voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of
mighty thunderings saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. Let
us be glad and rejoice and give honour to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb is
come, and His wife hath made herself ready . . ." "And he saith unto me, write:
Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he
saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God" (Revelation 19:6-9).

Oh ! that God may give us a heart to make due preparation for the participation
in the yet unfulfilled history of Christ. For as we have been made to partake of
the death of the Federal Head of the New Race, and in Him were resurrected and
made to sit in the Heavenlies in spirit, so, in that sublime event toward which
the Church moves, the marriage supper of the Lamb, we too, shall participate.
Thanks be to God for His unspeakable gift.


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 12: 11 - A TYPICAL CASE
========================================================================

A TYPICAL CASE

CHAPTER XI The value of any principle in the realm of religion and Jewish ethics
can only be determined by its bearing upon life. Human happiness must be the
standard of measurement. Is there real dynamic in it for the ennoblement of
life, and for the fulfillment of man’s deepest spiritual aspirations? When we
apply this standard to the principle of participation as over against imitation
in our relation to Christ, our contention that the Christian life should be
lived on the basis of the former, receives an overwhelming confirmation. In my
biographical studies-I have for many years been a lover of biography-I recently
came upon what I shall call a typical case, in the experience of the founder of
the China Inland Mission. Whether v=e agree, or not, with the missionary
principles laid down by Hudson Taylor, an unbiased study of his life and work
will not fail to bring us to the conclusion that he was one of the great
missionary peers of history. His achievements were colossal. At a time when the
interior of China was closed to foreigners, and when ignorance, fanaticism, and
race prejudice made it exceedingly hazardous to venture into the interior of
China, Dr. Taylor established a chain of Missions in almost all the great
provinces of the interior. The Church records no more amazing story of sacrifice
and of achievement than that of the humble doctor who laid the foundations of
the kingdom of God in the interior of China. But Hudson Taylor was not always
victorious, not always that joyous expounder of the faith, which in the later
period of his life all who came to know him, found him to be. The fact of the
matter is that even though he had already achieved great things as a missionary,
and had mightily influenced the Church in the homeland, though he was highly
esteemed as a man of God and held in reverence by Christian leaders of many
lands, yet, in his letters to loved ones he pours out the grief of his heart,
the pain of his secret soul, over the fact of his spiritual poverty. There is a
hidden plague in his heart. He is consumed by secret longings. Like Paul, he
cries out: "Oh! wretched man that I am! who will deliver me from the body of
this death?" He longs to be victorious over sin. He struggles, he agonizes. In
spite of all his efforts, sin as a principle continues to master him; the
Saviour is no more real to him than before; he cannot, in the true sense,
overcome. If ever a man strove to imitate the Master, he was that man. But all
to no avail. In 1869, a great change took place. It was so radical, so complete,
so overwhelming, that all Mr. Taylor’s fellow workers were soon cognizant to the
fact. A tide of Divine life swept through the Mission. A change so great had
been wrought, that in all the doctor’s attitudes-his correspondence, his
sermons, his prayer life, his very purposes -a new light shone forth.

I quote from a letter by Mr. Judd: "He was a joyous man now, a bright, happy
Christian. He hid been a toiling, burdened one before, with latterly not much
rest of soul. It was resting now in Jesus, and letting Him do the work -which
makes all the difference. Whenever he spoke in meetings after that a new power
seemed to flow from him, and in the practical things of life, a new peace
possessed him. Troubles did not worry him as before. He cast everything on God
in a new way and gave more time to prayer...from him flowed the living water to
others."

"When I went to welcome him," wrote Mr. Judd, "he was so full of joy that he
scarcely knew how to speak to me. He did not even say ‘how do you do?’ but
walking up and down the room with his hands behind him, exclaimed: “Oh! Mr.
Judd, God has made me a new man! God has made me a new man." To his sister he
wrote: "I feel as though the first glimmer of the dawn of a glorious day had
arisen upon me. I hail it with trembling, yet with trust." But just how was this
great change effected? I draw somewhat at length from a letter written to his
sister, October 17, 1869: "...as to work, mine was never so plentiful, so
responsible, or so difficult; but the weight and strain are all gone. The last
month has been perhaps the happiest of my life; and I long to tell you a little
of what the Lord has done for my soul...Perhaps I shall make myself more clear
if I go back a little...My mind has been greatly exercised for six or eight
months past, feeling the need, personally, and for the Mission, of more
holiness, life, power, in our souls. But personal need stood first and was the
greatest. I felt the ingratitude, the danger, the sin of not living near to God.
I prayed, agonized, strove, fasted, made resolutions, read the Word of God more
diligently, sought more time for mediation and prayer-but all was without
effect. Every day, almost every hour, the consciousness of sin oppressed
me...each day brought its register of sin and failure, of lack of power...Then
came the question-Is there no rescue? Must it be thus to the end-constant
conflict and instead of victory too often defeat? How, too, could I preach with
sincerity that to those who receive Jesus, to them gave He the power to become
the sons of God (i.e. God-like) when it was not so in my own experience?...I
hated myself. I hated my sin; and yet, I gained no strength against it. I felt I
was a child of God: His Spirit in my heart would cry: “Abba Father”; but to rise
to my privileges as a child, I was utterly powerless.

"All the time I felt assured there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical
question was how was I to get it out?...I knew full well that there was in the
Root abundant fatness; but how to get it into my puny little branch was the
question. As the light gradually dawned on me, I saw that faith was the only
pre-requisite, was the hand to lay hold on His fullness and make it my own. But
1 had not this faith! I strove for it but it would not come; tried to exercise
it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply laid up in Jesus, the
fullness of our precious Saviour-my helplessness and guilt seemed to increase.
Sins committed seemed but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief which was
their cause, which could not, or would not, take God at His word, but rather
made Him a liar. Unbelief was, I felt, the damning sin of the world-yet, I
indulged in it...

"When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear
McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God
revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.
McCarthy, who hid been exercised by the same sense of failure, but saw the light
before I did, wrote: ‘But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after
faith, but by resting on the Faithful One.’ As I read I saw it all, ‘If we
believe not, He abideth faithful.’ I looked to Jesus and saw (and when I saw,
oh! how joy flowed) that He had said: ‘I will never leave you.’ Ah ! there is
rest I thought. I have striven in vain to rest in Him. I’ll strive no more. For
has He not promised to abide with me?

"But this was not all He showed me, nor one-half. As I thought of the Vine and
the Branches, what light the blessed Spirit poured direct into my soul...I saw
not only that Jesus would never leave me, but that I was a member of His body,
of His flesh, and of His bones. The Vine, now I see, is not the root merely, but
all-root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit; and Jesus is not only
that: He is soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than
we have ever dreamed, wished for, or needed. Oh! the joy of seeing this truth. I
do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may
know and enjoy the riches freely given us in -Christ." And now comes the part
bearing yet more directly upon the subject in hand:

"Oh! my dear Sister, it is a wonderful thing to be really one with a risen and
exalted Saviour; to be a member of Christ. Think what it involves. Can Christ be
rich and I poor? Can your right hand be rich and the left poor? Or your head be
well-fed while your body starves? Again, think of its bearing on prayer. Could a
bank clerk say to a customer: ‘It was only your hand wrote that check, not you,’
or, ‘I cannot pay this sum to your hand, but only to yourself’? No more can your
prayers or mine be discredited if offered in the Name of Jesus (i.e. not in your
own name, or for the sake of Jesus merely, but on the ground that we are His
members) so long as we keep within the extent of Christ’s credit-a tolerably
wide limit.

"The sweetest part, if one may speak of one part being sweeter than another, is
the rest which full identification with Christ brings. I am no longer anxious
about anything.... for He, I know, is able to carry out His will and His will is
mine. It makes no matter where He places me or how. That is rather for Him to
consider than for me; for the easiest positions He must give me grace, and in
the most difficult, His grace is sufficient. It makes little difference to my
servant whether I send him to buy a few cents worth of things, or the most
expensive articles. In either case he looks to me for the money and brings me
the purchases. So, if God place me in great perplexity, must He not give me much
guidance; in positions of great difficulty, much grace; in circumstances of
great pressure and trial, much strength? His resources are mine, for He is
mine...all this springs front the believer’s oneness with Christ.

"I am no better than before (may I not say, in a sense, I do not wish to be, nor
am I striving to be) ; but I am dead and buried with Christ-aye .and risen too
and ascended; and now Christ lives in me, ‘and the life I now live in the flesh,
I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.’ I
now believe I any dead to sin. God reckons me so, and tells me to reckon myself
so. He knows best, all my past experience may have shown that it was not so; but
I dare say it is not now, when He says it is. I feel and know that old things
have passed away. I am as capable of sinning as ever, but Christ is realized as
present as never before. He cannot sin and He can keep me from sinning. I cannot
say (I am sorry to have to confess it) that since I have seen this light, I have
not sinned; but I do feel that there was no need to have done so. And
further-walking more in the light, my conscience has been more tender; sin has
been instantly confessed, and pardoned; and peace and joy (with humility)
instantly restored…"

I have quoted at considerable length from the Doctor’s correspondence, because
his experience illustrates so strikingly the incalculable difference which this
principle of identification makes. The Doctor had been a burdened Christian-he
becomes a joyous, triumphant one. He had been a Christian who strove and
agonized in the energy of the "old life" to be Christ-like, only to be brought
at last to utter self-despair. He realizes, at last, his position of
identification with Christ in death and resurrection, and there emerges a new
man, who is swept forward by the tide of a Divine life, and who no longer serves
mechanically, from a mere sense of duty, but spontaneously from the inner
surgings of a, Heavenly life. This is a typical case. Had Mr. Taylor written for
the very purpose of giving us something that would illustrate in perfect detail
the force of the principle which throughout these chapters we have attempted to
set forth, he could not have offered us anything more to the point. The
apprehension of this principle (i.e. identification with Christ in death and
resurrection) revolutionized the life and work of a great pioneer in modern
missions. And, wherever it is apprehended and faithfully acted upon, wherever
this oneness with the Saviour is realized in actual experience, whether it be by
the humblest believer or the greatest Christian leader, the same glorious
results must follow. Defeat must give place to victory; spiritual poverty and
decrepitude to riches of grace and fullness of life; weakness must give place to
power; a mechanical striving to imitate Christ, to a delightful spontaneity in
the participation of His Divine Life; a gnawing sense of insufficiency for
Christian life and service, to a glorious all-sufficiency in a deep union with
the all-sufficient Christ. There will be a happy fulfillment of the promise,
staggering in its amplitude, found in the ninth chapter of 2 Corinthians "And
God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all
sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work."


========================================================================
  CHAPTER 13: 12 - THE BEARING OF THIS POSITION UPON THE CHURCH, MISSIONS AND PRAYER
========================================================================

THE BEARING OF THIS POSITION UPON THE CHURCH, MISSIONS, AND PRAYER

CHAPTER XII 1. Its Bearing Upon the Church That the position which we have been
considering is revolutionary, involving radical readjustments in all phases of
the Christian life, we would not deny. As never before, "old things are passed
away and all things are become new." The believer becomes "a new creature," the
old life having been terminated by the Cross of Christ, an ever-deeper
participation in which, results in an ever-fuller participation in the power of
the Resurrection. That such a position should greatly affect the believer’s
relation to the Church as a visible organization is, of course, to be expected.
In one sense it unhinges him. His attachment to the true Church, which is the
mystic-Body of Christ, becomes so deep, and so real, that he feels himself
somewhat detached from the visible Church as it has been organized (perhaps I
should say disorganized) by man. In dying to the "self-life," he naturally dies
to all that is nurtured by the "self-life." This means that the Church itself,
regarded as a, visible organization, in so far as it is out of line with the
Holy Spirit (and no one even among its most devoted servants will deny that it
is in many aspects of its life out of line), in so far as it may give place to
the "carnal life" which expresses itself in strife, sectarian greed, class
distinctions, unsound doctrines, racial antipathies, and the like-the Church, I
repeat, in so far as it fails to express the mind of Christ, simply fails to
grip him. He dies to every form of the "carnal-life" whether in the Church, or
out. The tie which now binds him to Christ is so strong that he finds himself
bound to all those who, regardless of denominational affiliations, are enjoying
like precious faith. If he is, for example, a Methodist, he finds himself as
much at home in the presence of Episcopalians, or Baptists, or Presbyterians,
and experiences a spiritual oneness as deep and as precious with those of other
Christian organizations who have been rooted into Christ, as with those of his
own Church affiliation. It is no longer a question of ecclesiastical procedure,
but of life. The rising tide of Divine life, once it rises high enough (it is
forever overflowing all of its banks in those who have learned to stand with
Christ in His "death resurrection-mid-process") simply wipes out the great
ecclesiastical barriers; the mighty walls of the sects, disappear. One could no
more realize a deep oneness with Christ in death, and in resurrection, and not
realize a profound oneness with all those who receive the same influx of
Heavenly life, whatever their denominational affiliations, than one could be a
member of some particular family and not be bound to the members of that family.
This does not mean, of course, that we may not have our preferences. It does not
mean that we cease to be Baptists, or Presbyterians, or Disciples, or Lutherans,
as the case may be; any more than we cease to be Frenchmen, or Englishmen, or
Americans, or Germans. We are not pleading for organic unity. Organic unity
could never bring about the kind of unity of which we speak; nor could
denominational differences, once it exists, dissolve it.

We are seated with Christ in Heavenly places, and from this high rampart we look
out upon life, conscious that we are free from its petty strife. Race prejudices
can no longer affect us. Class distinctions have been swept away. Sectarian
grooves can no longer contain our sympathies. The great discordant force of the
universe mother of all sin-so far as we are concerned has been put to naught.
Christ’s Cross has created for us a new and harmonious universe. Our love (the
love of Christ constraining us) flows out in sympathetic yearnings for the
welfare of all men. "Come with me, my Spouse," says the Beloved of Canticles,
who is Christ, "look from the top . . ." (Song of Solomon 4:10). As regards the
ceremonies of the Church we cease, of course, to rest upon them. I do not say
that we cease to adhere to the forms of our particular Church. They have their
place. The means of grace will always be essential. By saying that we cease to
rest upon them, I mean to say that we no longer look upon the sign as the thing
signified. For instance, Baptism could never be anything more than a
Divinely-instituted rite, signifying an inner renovation. We are "buried with
Him in baptism, wherein also we are risen with Him." Baptism points the way to
the spiritual participation of the believer in Christ’s death; as it also is
symbolic of his resurrection with Christ. But if this spiritual union has never
been realized (and without a full and irreversible surrender to Christ it never
can be, forms or no) dare we rest in forms? If, as Paul says, a violation of the
law made a Jew’s circumcision uncircumcision; shall we not say that a
Christian’s violation of the principles of union with Christ makes his baptism
equally void? "The flesh profiteth nothing, it is the Spirit that quickeneth."
Would a bride be content with the outer trappings, a ring, a church ceremony,
legal recognition, etc., in that which has to do with her nuptials, if her
husband is living in whoredoms? Does she not rightfully demand fellowship,
faithfulness, love, purity, in a word, oneness of spirit? Will the Heavenly
Bridegroom be satisfied with ceremonies, forms, and empty symbols, if we are not
His in spirit? He took us with Himself to the Cross to annihilate forever the
"self-life," and all that which would come between Him and those of His
Household, that He might unite them to Himself in holy, spiritual wedlock. Dare
we offer Him the trappings and withhold the reality? "Let no man therefore judge
you in meat or drink, or in respect of an holy day, or the new moon, or the
Sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ"
(Colossians 2:16-17).

2. Its Bearing Upon Missions

It is, however, in the field of missions and missionary endeavour that the
effect of this position is most telling. It is here that I have myself put to
the test this principle of identification with Christ in death and resurrection.
The result has been so overwhelmingly satisfying, so far reaching, so
incalculably blessed, that I look upon the years prior to the experiencing of
the power of the Cross, as well nigh wasted. I walked with an uncertain step; I
aimed at an uncertain goal; I employed uncertain weapons; I garnered exceedingly
unsatisfying fruits. I see now that much of my labour was not only
unsatisfactory, but positively harmful.

I preached Christ in the power of a "self-originated" fervor and consequently
mutilated Him. It gave Him no chance to reveal His true self. Christ must be
preached in the power of a Christ-centered, Christ-possessed, Christ empowered
life. Christ is never truly preached until the one who bears the message is
himself so hidden away with Him in God, that it is no longer the messenger who
speaks, but Christ speaking through him. He (the messenger) must learn to bury
himself in the Saviour’s wounds, so to speak, and die to his own life, if he
would present Christ in Apostolic fashion to perishing souls. Rivers of living
water must accompany the message-the listener must be inundated in a Divine
life, if he is to be given a chance to appraise the Christ of God, and see Him
in His true glory. Unless the gospel is preached with "the power of the Holy
Ghost sent down f from Heaven" it is not the gospel at all, no matter how true
one might be to "the letter." "The letter killeth-it is the Spirit that giveth
life."

Christian leaders in all lands are painfully aware of the fact that missions
today are passing through a crisis. The triumphant note of a half-century ago is
gone. From all lands comes the word-and the confession is made by missionaries
themselves-that missions are not duplicating the sort of thing we find in the
Book of Acts. The great expanding machinery of missions moves as never before
since the Saviour issued the Great Commission, and yet, missions are not
breaking the power of the "old-life" of heathenism. Converts are not the
Christ-empowered, Christ-centered, Christ-possessed Christians, radiant with the
joy of a Heavenly life, which Divine grace can make of them. Of course, there
are outstanding exceptions in all mission fields, but the fact remains that
things are at low ebb as regards missionary endeavour the world over. The crux
of the whole matter lies in the fact that we have not exalted the Cross. A
watered-down gospel may win adepts in heathen lands, but it can never bring
about results that will be satisfactory to Him, who at so great a cost
consummated the work of redemption on Calvary’s Tree. Nor, can it cope with the
mighty forces of heathenism, break their power, and cause to operate the
redeeming force of Divine grace in their place. Only a gospel which brings souls
to the experience of an inner crucifixion (death of the old-life), and a
glorious resurrection as a result of union with Christ, can ever do that. Unless
converts experience an inner union with Christ (and such a union is possible
only on the basis of the Cross, i.e. the "old life" committed to death with
Christ), however much they may struggle to imitate Him, or however much they may
succeed in glossing over the "old-man" with the veneer of ecclesiastical forms
and of Christian culture, such a counterfeiting of the Christian life, sincere
as it may be, will sooner or later break down under the strain to which it must
be subjected in non-Christian lands.

3. Its Bearing Upon Prayer When we come to consider prayer in the light of
"Co-crucifixion," as this position may be denominated, we find that prayer first
comes to its own on this basis. Prayer is nothing if it is not communion, and
true communion is only possible when the "old-life" which cannot have fellowship
with God, inasmuch as in Christ it was condemned and potentially put to death,
is terminated. The reason why many are finding prayer so unsatisfactory and the
life of prayer so unattractive, is because they have attempted to enter into the
celestial realms of prayer in the strength of the "old-man." The "old-man" can
no more wield these weapons, which "are not carnal but mighty through God," than
he can "love his enemies," or "rejoice always," or "have the mind which was in
Christ Jesus," or fulfill any other Christian grace. He (the old man) may
imitate these graces, but actually possess their, never. They are "the fruits of
the Spirit." They conic from above. They are the out workings of the Christ
nature imparted to the believer and incorporated in his being on the basis of
the Cross, i.e. a removal of the old nature by a participation in Christ’s
death.

True prayer can only be inaugurated on the basis of "co-crucifixion." This is
the prime condition. "If ye abide in Me and I in you, ye shall ask whatsoever ye
will and it shall be done unto you." We must be "in Christ." But we cannot be in
Christ in the fullest sense, without that we commit to death in the power of the
Saviour’s death (which in the mind of God was corporate, we having been
crucified with Christ), the "old-life."

It is when we realize our oneness with Christ in death, and in resurrection,
that prayer becomes the marvelous force that we find it was in the life of the
Saviour; the invincible dynamic that it reveals itself to be in the book ,of
Acts; and the ineffable experience of the great saints of the ages. It is then
that our spirits, liberated by the power of the Cross, from the fleshly and the
soulish entanglements, "mount up on wings as eagles." It is then that communion
with the infinitely adorable One who inhabiteth Eternity, comes spontaneously
and naturally to its fullest expression. It is then that the injunction: "Pray
without ceasing," ceases to be an unintelligible command; for the spirit
released from the thralldom of the "flesh life," and freed from all Satanic
oppression by an appropriation of the full benefits of the Calvary victory,
rises to take its place with Christ in the Heavenlies where prayer is the
continuous in-breathing of the life of God. It is then that prayer, energized by
the Spirit of the living God, which it cannot be until it is freed from all
selfish ingredients, becomes at times a groaning which is unutterable, and which
does not fail to move mountains, and achieve the impossible. It is then that
prayer becomes a working out of the will of God, and therefore, must prevail, be
the difficulties what they may, however staggering the problem, however great
the need. It is then that the great disparity between what the Master said that
prayer would accomplish, and the miserable caricature that it is in the actual
practice of millions, is removed, and prayer blossoms out in all the glory of
its true nature.

Seeing prayer in the light of the Cross and our participation in the Saviour’s
death, and resurrection, we are not the least surprised over the achievements of
some of the great prayer-warriors of the Church viz. Hudson Taylor and a few
fellow-workers praying for a thousand workers to be thrust into China, with the
result that the Lord gave them not a thousand, but eleven hundred and
fifty-four; George Muller, of Bristol, receiving in answer to prayer, millions
of dollars for the support of his many orphans; David Brainerd wrestling with
God in the forests of New England for a great revival, not only among his
beloved Indians, but for great in gatherings of souls throughout the whole
world, and thus becoming, according to some of the historians of missions, the
prime factor in ushering in the great era of Modern Missions. Such achievements
abound in the life and work of those who have known the Lord Jesus, and the
power of His resurrection and who, like Paul, have had fellowship with Him in
His sufferings "being made conformable unto His death" (Php 3:10). May it not be
that the great world crisis, with its economic, financial and moral agonies,
which has enveloped the nations in the dark clouds of pessimism, is due after
all to the spiritual decrepitude of the Church? The Church is the Divine agency
for the redemption of the nations. What they are going through, inasmuch as they
are absolutely dependent upon Christ and His Church for the development of the
moral and spiritual life-forces, without which nations as well as individuals
become reeking carcasses of corruption-what they are going through, I repeat, is
a sure index to the state of organized Christianity. The pending suicide of
civilization which verily is causing men’s hearts to fail them for fear, can
only be averted by that Divine impact which is the Spirit of Christ operating
within the hearts of men, and which again and again, as history only too clearly
reveals, has brought the nations out of chaos and charged them with new vigor
and hope. The crying need of the day, as it has been of all times, is the
expulsion of the monster of selfishness from the hearts of men and the opening
up of the floodgates in the life of the nations for the free circulation of the
great love of Christ. There is no other healing for the nations, there is no
other hope for the individual soul. Shall we not then give place to a pure
Christianity? Christ cannot possess us, and cause the rivers of Living Water
which He has promised, to flow forth from our hearts with healing, renovating,
transforming, abounding force, unless we are willing to be dispossessed of our
own life. Christ will not rear His edifices upon the old foundations of
selfishness. It is not a case of simply denying ourselves certain things; but of
a complete renunciation of ourselves. Christ took us with Himself to the Cross.
The so-called Adamic life was potentially terminated at Calvary. Shall we not,
drawn by that love which so moved the Saviour that He was willing to be spat
upon, willing to hang between two criminals while the mob jeered, willing to be
trampled under foot as though He were a despicable thing, that we might have
Life-shall we not respond, with glad surrender to the unfathomable yearnings of
the Crucified?

He would have us share His Cross-He would have us divorced from the carnal mind,
which is enmity with God, by a participation in His own death. Into His death we
have been baptized (Romans 6:3). If we are followers of Christ, then His death
to sin is our death to sin-His resurrection, our resurrection-His victory, our
victory His ascension, our ascension. God grant to us the grace to claim our
full heritage that thus we may be more than conquerors. "Now unto Him that is
able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence
of His glory with exceeding joy, To the only wise God our Saviour, be glory and
majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever. Amen" (Jude 1:24-25).


========================================================================
Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/huegel-f-j-bone-of-his-bone/
========================================================================