The Death of Christ is a type of the Christian’s life, which is to be one long, protracted, and daily dying to sin, to self, to the world. The crucifixion of the old manhood is to be the life’s work of every Christian, through the power of faith in that Cross by which ‘the world is crucified unto Me, and I unto the world.’ That thought comes over and over again in all forms of earnest presentation in the Apostle Paul’s teaching. Do not slur it over as if it were a mere fanciful metaphor. It carries in its type a most solemn reality.
The truth is, that, if a Christian, you have a double life. There is Christ, with His power, with His Spirit, giving you a nature which is pure and sinless, incapable of transgression, like His own. The new man, that which is born of God, sinneth not, cannot sin. But side by side with it, working through it, working in it, leavening it, indistinguishable from it to your consciousness, by anything but this that the one works righteousness and the other works transgression, there is the ‘old man,’ ‘the flesh,’ ‘the old Adam,’ your own godless, independent, selfish, proud being. And the one is to slay the other!
Ah, let me tell you, these words—crucifying, casting out the old man, plucking out the right eye, maiming self of the right hand, mortifying the deeds of the body—they are something very much deeper and more awful than poetical symbols and metaphors. They teach us this, that there is no growth without sore sorrow. Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man’s path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour. In long lingering agony often, with the blood of the heart pouring out at every quivering vein, you are to cut right through the life and being of that sinful self; to do what the Word does, pierce to the dividing asunder of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and get rid by crucifying and slaying—a long process, a painful process—of your own sinful self.
And not until you can stand up and say, ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,’ have you accomplished that to which you are consecrated and vowed by your sonship—‘being conformed unto the likeness of His death,’ and ‘knowing the fellowship of His sufferings.’ Phil 3:10.
*****
Ponder over the precious words above. It is always good to study the Bible for oneself, rather than receive a faulty doctrine from popular Bible schools. We have become too theoretical, and the practical Christian life is missing in many of us. Unless we deny ourselves and carry the cross given to us, we cannot be the disciples of Christ who are heirs to the glorious inheritance.
Your views on the above?
The truth is, that, if a Christian, you have a double life. There is Christ, with His power, with His Spirit, giving you a nature which is pure and sinless, incapable of transgression, like His own. The new man, that which is born of God, sinneth not, cannot sin. But side by side with it, working through it, working in it, leavening it, indistinguishable from it to your consciousness, by anything but this that the one works righteousness and the other works transgression, there is the ‘old man,’ ‘the flesh,’ ‘the old Adam,’ your own godless, independent, selfish, proud being. And the one is to slay the other!
Ah, let me tell you, these words—crucifying, casting out the old man, plucking out the right eye, maiming self of the right hand, mortifying the deeds of the body—they are something very much deeper and more awful than poetical symbols and metaphors. They teach us this, that there is no growth without sore sorrow. Conflict, not progress, is the word that defines man’s path from darkness into light. No holiness is won by any other means than this, that wickedness should be slain day by day, and hour by hour. In long lingering agony often, with the blood of the heart pouring out at every quivering vein, you are to cut right through the life and being of that sinful self; to do what the Word does, pierce to the dividing asunder of the thoughts and intents of the heart, and get rid by crucifying and slaying—a long process, a painful process—of your own sinful self.
And not until you can stand up and say, ‘I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,’ have you accomplished that to which you are consecrated and vowed by your sonship—‘being conformed unto the likeness of His death,’ and ‘knowing the fellowship of His sufferings.’ Phil 3:10.
*****
Ponder over the precious words above. It is always good to study the Bible for oneself, rather than receive a faulty doctrine from popular Bible schools. We have become too theoretical, and the practical Christian life is missing in many of us. Unless we deny ourselves and carry the cross given to us, we cannot be the disciples of Christ who are heirs to the glorious inheritance.
Your views on the above?
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