All Things Crucified

"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 2:20

Taken from Milton Vincent's "A Gospel Primer":

The Gospel is not simply the story of "Christ, and Him crucified"(1 Cor. 2:2); it is also the story of my own crucifixion. For the Bible tells me that I, too, was crucified on Christ's cross. My old self was slain there, and my love affair with the world was crucified there too. The cross is also the place where I crucify my flesh and all it's sinful desires. Truly, Christ's death and my death are so intertwined as to be inseparable.

God is committed to my dying every day, and He calls me to that same commitment. He insists that every hour be my dying hour, and He wants my death on the cross to be as central to my own life story as is Christ's death to the Gospel story. "Let this attitude be in you," He says, "which was also in Christ Jesus...who became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."

Crucifixion hurts. In fact, its heart-wrenching brutality can numb the senses. It is a gasping and bloody affair, and there is nothing nice, pretty, or easy about it. It is not merely death, but excruciating death.

Nevertheless, I must set my face like a flint toward the cross and embrace this crucifixion in everything I do. I should expect every day to encounter circumstantial evidence of God's commitment to my dying' and I must seize upon every God-given opportunity to be conformed more fully to Christ's death, no matter the pain involved.

When my flesh yearns for some prohibited thing, I must die. When called to do something I don't want to do, I must die. When I wish to be selfish and serve no one, I must die. When shattered by hardships that I despise, I must die. When wanting to cling to wrongs done against me, I must die. When enticed by allurements of the world, I must die. When wishing to keep besetting sins secret, I must die. When wants that are borderline needs are left unmet, I must die. When dreams that are good seem shoved aside, I must die.

"Not my will, but Yours be done," Christ trustingly prayed on the eve of His crucifixion; and preaching His story to myself each day puts me in a frame of mind to trust God and embrace the cross of my own dying also.

Thankfully the Gospel teaches me that dying is not an end, but a beginning also. For after Christ too up His cross and died, God raised Him from the dead, exalted Him to the highest heaven, and drew Him into His bosom. These facts surrounding Christ's resurrection stand as proof positive that God will not leave me for dead, but will raise me similarly, if I would only allow myself to die. Indeed, on the other side of each layer of dying lie experiences of a life with God that are far richer, far higher, and far more intimate than anything I would have otherwise known.

In God's economy, death is the way to life. "Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it," Jesus says, "but whoever loses his life for My sake, he shall find it." Indeed the more conformable I am made to the death of Christ, the more I experience freedom from sin and taste the power of the resurrection of Jesus Himself. The path to such power is achieved with each incident of dying to myself and reckoning myself dead to sin.

The more I contemplate the Gospel, the more I understand that this "word of the cross" stands as a blueprint for my own life story. The death that Christ died is the death to which I also am called, and the death to which I am called is my entry point to union with Christ and life at its fullest. So, come what may, I'll let no one take this death from me!