The Cross - Where Your Victory was Won, Part 2

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing; and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living One among the dead? He is not here, but He has risen. Remember how He spoke to you while He was still in Galilee.”  Luke 24:1-6

At the moment we become (by faith in Christ’s death) the children of God, something happens to us. We begin to desire things we have never even considered before, and we sense a compulsion to share this new life with anyone and everyone.

We are motivated by the realization and the understanding of what the grace of God really means. The emptiness we once felt deeply has given way to a sense of peace and acceptance. Oh, there are people who still won’t accept or love us, but the pain of their rejection is absorbed by the joy of experiencing total acceptance by God our Father.

You see, it’s true that every living man or woman has a God-shaped vacuum on the inside, and nothing but God Himself can fill that aching void. We are drawn to God. If you have never placed your trust in Christ for the forgiveness of your sin, you’ll never experience the filling of that God-shaped vacuum in your life.

With Christ as your life, you will find abundant motivation for serving Him with your whole heart and with all your energy. Why? Well, don’t you just love to do things for someone you really admire or look up to or love? Who should we wish to please and serve more than our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ?

He is Risen!

The Cross - Where Your Victory was Won

“For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is the one who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”  1 John 5:4-5

Jesus Christ’s crucifixion was not the end - it was the beginning of God’s great redemptive plan, which He offers by grace to all humanity. Your salvation could never be a reality apart from Christ’s death. That event was a necessary part of the plan of salvation. His death was the sacrificial, substitutionary, all-sufficient payment for sin.

We sing songs such as “There is Power in the Blood” and “Victory in Jesus,” but how often do believers find themselves confessing that they are living in anything but power and victory? How does Christ’s cross translate into power for daily living?

The truth is that, as a believer, you and I take part in Christ’s victorious death and resurrection because in the eyes of God, when He died - we died; when He arose - we arose. His death is our death to the power of sin and the flesh, and His resurrection is our resurrection to new life, a new way of thinking and new desires.

That’s the issue as viewed from God’s perspective. In turn, we are by faith to accept this truth - even though it may be beyond our ability to comprehend its magnitude. This truth shines light into our souls as we “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).

Living the Crucified Life, Part 2

“For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly.” Galatians 2:19-21

“Christ for me! Yes, it’s Christ for me.
He’s my Savior, my Lord and King.
I’m so happy, I shout and sing.
Christ for me! Yes, it’s Christ for me.
Every day as I go my way, it is Christ
for me!”

Because of Christ’s sacrificial death on Calvary, you and I can confidently voice the words to that chorus, which for years served as the theme song of the Youth for Christ organization. In light of our current theme of study, we might want to change one word in that chorus. Instead of “Christ for me,” we should be more inclined to say it is “Christ IN me.”

Certainly, Christ is for me. Paul teaches, “...If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31) But far more than Christ being for us, what a source of confidence in assurance to know that Christ is IN us. “For it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:13).

That knowledge, combined with the experience and awareness of “Christ in me,” produces a perfect trust in God so that we can say with the Apostle Paul, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21).

Living the Crucified Life

“Nevertheless knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the Law; since by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified. But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have also been found sinners, is Christ then a minister of sin? May it never be! For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, I prove myself to be a transgressor. For through the Law I died to the Law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.”  Galatians 2:16-20

Living the “crucified life” is a life of complete surrender, depicted rather well in the thoughts of George MacDonald:

“I said: Let me walk in the field.
God said: Nay, walk in the town.
I said: There are no flowers there.
He said: No flowers, but a crown.

I said: But the sky is black, there is nothing but noise and din.
But He wept as He sent me back, ‘There is more,’ He said.
‘There is sin.’

I said: But the air is thick, and fogs are veiling the sun.
He answered: Yet souls are sick, and souls in the dark undone.

I said: I shall miss the light, and friends will miss me, they say.
He answered me: Choose tonight, if I am to miss you, or they.

I pleaded for time to be given;
He said: Is it hard to decide?
It will not seem hard in heaven to have followed the steps of your Guide.

I cast one look at the fields,
Then set my face to the town;
He said: My child, do you yield? Will you leave the flowers for the crown?

Then into His hand went mine,
and into my heart came He;
And I walk a light Divine,
the path I had feared to see.”

The Believer's Journey to the Cross

“Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?”  Romans 6:8-16

John Bunyan’s classic The Pilgrim’s Progress depicts the power of the cross:

“...Up this way therefore did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the Load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending, and upon that place stood a Cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a Sepulchre...As Christian came up with the Cross, his Burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do, till it came to the mouth of the Sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.

Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, ‘He hath given me Rest by his Sorrow, and Life by his Death.’ Then Christian gave three leaps for Joy, and went on singing:
Thus far did I come laden with my sin;
Nor could ought ease the grief that I was in,
Till I came hither: What a place is this!
Must here be the beginning of my bliss?
Must here the Burden fall from off my back?
Must here the strings that bound it to me crack?
Blest Cross! blest Sepulchre! blest rather be,
The MAN that there was put to Shame for me!”

Destined for the Cross

“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.”  Romans 6:1-6

In order to enjoy the liberty and freedom gained by Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross, we too must make our journey to the cross and put to death the deeds of the flesh (“the old self”).

Of this, Oswald Chambers says:
“No one enters in the experience of entire sanctification without going through a ‘white funeral’ - the burial of the old life. If there has never been this crisis of death, sanctification is nothing more than a vision.

There must be a ‘white funeral’: a death that has only one resurrection - a resurrection into the life of Jesus Christ. Nothing can upset such a life, it is one with God of one purpose, to be a witness to Him.”

The message of the cross - and the supernatural power which Christ’s death released - continue to be the foundation of our Christian faith. But if we are to benefit, we must know and understand and appropriate its truth.

“Dying with Jesus, by death reckoned mine;
Living with Jesus a new life divine;
Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine,
Moment by moment, O Lord, I am Thine.” -Daniel W. Whittle

How We View the Cross

“For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”  
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
                       
“At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day!”
                                                     - Isaac Watts

What a declaration. What a statement of confident faith in the atoning death of Jesus Christ. Have you come to the place where those words mirror the joyful cry of your heart?

Much of our Christian life (the depth of our walk with Christ, the strength of our faith, the impact of our witness, the genuineness of our example, the holiness of our lifestyle, etc.) will be determined by how we view the cross. Many who have only a surface understanding of the events of the crucifixion lack a foundational element to their Christian faith.

A monumental event took place at the cross. The Lamb of God was sacrificed for the sin of the world. From His wounded side flowed forgiveness and reconciliation between sinful men and Holy God. The chasm which separated men from God was spanned forever by the cross.

Do you know the reality of the cross in your life today? Has the cross enlightened you? Rolled away the burden of your heart? Given you sight and understanding? Look to the cross and receive all that Christ died to give you.