I have been crucified with Christ: it is no longer I who live,
but Christ lives in me.
Galatians 2:20
We have been united together in the likeness of His death.
Romans 6:5
‘‘I have been crucified with Christ’’: Here the apostle expresses his assurance of his fellowship with Christ in His sufferings and death, and his full participation in all the power and the blessing of that death. The apostle Paul was so convinced of this and the fact that he was now indeed dead that he adds: ‘‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.’’ How blessed must be the experience of such a union with the Lord Jesus—to be able to look upon His death as mine, just as really as it was His, to look upon His perfect obedience to God, His victory over sin, and complete deliverance from its power as mine, and to realize that the power of that death works by faith daily with a divine energy to put to death the flesh, to renew the whole life into perfect conformity to the resurrection life of Jesus! Abiding in Jesus, the Crucified One, is the secret to the growth of that new life, which comes from the death of our old life.
Let us try to understand this. The suggestive expression ‘‘united together in the likeness of His death,’’ will teach us what abiding in the Crucified One means. When a graft is united with the stock on which it is to grow, we know that it must be kept fixed; it must abide in the place where the stock has been cut and wounded to make an opening to receive the graft. No graft is possible without wounding, laying bare and opening up the inner life of the tree to receive the foreign branch. It is only through such wounding that access can be obtained to the fellowship of the sap and the growth and life of the stronger stem.
This reality holds true for the relationship between Jesus and the sinner. Only when we are united together in the likeness of His death will we also be in the likeness of His resurrection, partakers of the life and the power that are in Him. In the death of the Cross Christ was wounded, and in His opened wounds a place was prepared where we might be grafted in. And just as one might say to a graft as it is fixed in its place, ‘‘Abide here in the wound of the stem, it will now bear you’’; so to the believing soul the message comes, ‘‘Abide in the wounds of Jesus; there is the place of union, life, and growth. There you will see how His heart was opened to receive you; His flesh was torn so that the way might be opened for your being made one with Him, and having access to all the blessings flowing from His divine nature.’’
You have also noticed how the graft has to be torn away from the tree where it naturally grew and cut into conformity to the place prepared for it in the wounded stem. Even so the believer has to be made conformable to Christ’s death—to be crucified and to die with Him. The wounded stem and the wounded graft are cut to fit into each other, into each other’s likeness. There is a fellowship between Christ’s sufferings and your sufferings. His experiences must become yours. The disposition He showed in choosing and bearing the Cross must be yours. Like Him, you will have to give full assent to the righteous judgment and curse of a holy God against sin. Like Him, you have to consent to yield your life, the old nature full of sin and its curse, to death, and through it to pass to the new life. Like Him, you will experience that it is only through the self-sacrifice of Gethsemane and Calvary that the path to the joy and fruit-bearing of the resurrection life can be found. The more clear the resemblance between the wounded stem and the wounded graft, the more exactly their wounds fit into each other, and the more complete will be the union and the growth.
It is in Jesus, the Crucified One, I must abide. I must learn to look upon the Cross as not only atonement to God but also a victory over the devil; it is not only deliverance from the guilt but also from the power of sin. I must gaze on Him on the Cross, seeing Him as the One who offered himself in order to receive me into the closest possible union and fellowship. Through Him I can partake of the full power of His death to sin and the new life of victory to which it is but the gateway. My part is simply to yield myself to Him in undivided surrender, with much prayer and strong desire, asking to be admitted into the ever-closer fellowship and conformity of His death by the power of the Spirit in which He died that death.
Let me try to understand why the Cross is thus the place of union. On the Cross the Son of God enters into the greatest union with man—enters into the experience of what it means to become a son of man, a member of a race under the curse. It is in death that the Prince of life conquers the power of death; it is in death alone that He can enable me to partake of that victory. The life He imparts is a life from the dead; each new experience of the power of that life depends upon the fellowship of the death. The death and the life are inseparable. All of the grace that Jesus the Saving One gives is given only in the path of fellowship with Jesus the Crucified One.
Christ came and took my place; I must put myself in His place, and abide there. And there is but one place that is both His and mine—that place is the Cross: His place because of His free choice; my place because of the curse of sin. He came there to seek me; there alone can I find Him. When He found me there, it was the place of cursing; this He experienced, for ‘‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’’ (Galatians 3:13). But He made it a place of blessing; this I experienced because Christ delivered us from the curse, being made a curse for us. When Christ comes in my place, He remains what He was, the beloved of the Father; but in fellowship with me He shares my curse and dies my death.
When I stand in His place, which is still always mine, I am still what I was by nature, the cursed one, who deserves to die; but since I am united to Him, I share His blessing and receive His life. When He came to be one with me He could not avoid the Cross, for the curse always points to the Cross as its end and fruit. And when I seek to be one with Him, I cannot avoid the Cross, either; for life and deliverance are to be found only in the Cross. As inevitably as my curse pointed Him to the Cross as the only place where He could be fully united to me, His blessing points me to the Cross too as the only place where I can be united to Him. He took my cross for His own; I must take His Cross as my own; I must be crucified with Him. It is as I abide daily, deeply in Jesus the Crucified One that I will taste the sweetness of His love, the power of His life, and the completeness of His salvation.
It is a deep mystery, this Cross of Christ. I am afraid there are many Christians who are content to look upon the Cross, with Christ on it dying for their sins, who have little heart for fellowship with the Crucified One. They hardly know that He invites them to it. Or they are content to consider the ordinary afflictions of life, of which the world’s children often have as many as they do, as their share of Christ’s Cross. They have no understanding of what it means to be crucified with Christ, not knowing that bearing the Cross means likeness to Christ in the principles that propelled Him in His path of obedience. The entire surrender of all self-will, the complete denial to the flesh of its every desire and pleasure, the perfect separation from the world in all its ways of thinking and acting, the losing and hating of one’s life, the giving up of self and its interests for the sake of others—this is the disposition that marks him who has taken up Christ’s Cross, who seeks to say, ‘‘I am crucified with Christ; I abide in Christ, the Crucified One.’’
Would you please your Lord and live in as close fellowship with Him as His grace could maintain in you? Then pray that His Spirit will lead you into this blessed truth, this secret of the Lord for those who fear Him. We know how Peter knew and confessed Christ as the Son of the living God while the Cross was still an offense to him (Matthew 16:16–17, 21, 23). The faith that believes in the blood that pardons, and the life that renews, can only reach its perfect growth as it abides beneath the Cross and in living fellowship with Him seeks for perfect conformity with Jesus the Crucified.
Jesus, our crucified Redeemer, teach us not only to believe on you but also to abide in you. Help us to take your Cross not only as the ground of our pardon but also as the law of our life. May we learn to love it not only because on it you bore our curse but also because on it we enter into intimate fellowship with you and are crucified with you. As we yield ourselves fully to be filled with the Spirit in which you bore the Cross, teach us how to be made partakers of the power and the blessing found only in the Cross.