Matthew 16:24 “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.”
It is in Jesus, the Crucified One that I must abide. I must look at the cross not just as atonement to God, but also as a victory over the devil; not just a deliverance from the guilt, but also as deliverance from the power of sin. I must gaze on Him on the cross as wholly mine, offering Himself to receive me into the closet union and fellowship and to make me a partaker of the full power of His death to sin and the new life of victory. I must yield myself to Him in undivided surrender with much prayer and strong desire, begging to be admitted into the fellowship of His death.
On the cross the Son of God enters into the fullest union with man. It is in death that He conquerors the power of death; it is in death alone that He can make me a partaker of that victory. The death and the life are inseparable. Jesus came and took my place; I must put myself in His place and abide there. There is only one place that is both His and mine, that place is the cross. His, by His free choice; mine by reason of the curse of sin. He came here to seek me; there alone is where I can find Him.
The cross of Jesus is a mystery and I am afraid that there are many Christians who are content to look on the cross with Jesus dying for their sins and they have very little heart for fellowship with Jesus. They are content to consider the ordinary attractions of life as their share of the cross. They do not understand that to be crucified with Jesus, bearing the cross means likeness to Jesus in the principles that led Him down His path of obedience. The surrender of His 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 a life without Jesus, the giving up of self for the sake of others. All of this is the attitude that marks one that has taken up the cross and says “I am crucified with Christ; I abide in Jesus, the One that died for me.”
Would you please the Lord Jesus and live in close fellowship with Him as His grace guides you? Pray that the Holy Spirit will lead you into this truth: this secret of the Lord for them that fear Him. We know how Peter knew and confessed Jesus as the Son of the living God in Matt. 16.
The faith that believes in the blood that pardons and the life that renews can only reach its full potential as it abides beneath the cross and, in living fellowship with Him, seeks for perfect conformity with Jesus the Crucified One.
Lord, teach us not to just believe on You, but teach us to abide in You, teach us not to just take the cross as the ground of our pardon, but also as the law of our life. Teach us to love it not just because You bore our sin, but because on it we enter into the closest fellowship with Jesus, and we are crucified with Him. Teach us that as we yield ourselves to be possessed of the Spirit in which He bore the cross, we will be made partakers of the power and the blessing that only the cross gives.
Dale
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