Luke 9:23-26 – “Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? 26 Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.”
Rom 8:17-18 – “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
It’s a fresh realization of the life of Christ within me. As O.C. puts it, “Immediately Christ is formed in me, His nature begins to work through me.” I long for more of Christ to come naturally through me. Do you ever struggle with that? I do, as I battle the “old self” of sin that I have been (Rom 6:6, included below). I believe the more identified we are with Christ’s death, lived out by our death to sinful nature, the more purely His life is worked out within us, as Paul wrote in Phil 2:12: “Continue to work out your salvation.” I believe this is what he means: Not that we’re earning it, but that we’re learning to die for Christ more every day—we have to work that out by intentional submission and fixing our eyes upon Jesus (Heb 12:2), forsaking personal selfish and sinful desires of old. Therefore, instead of striving to do more good, especially when we see the bad we’ve done—hasn’t this been our strategy, trying to make ourselves do more good and less sin?—instead, we need to seek to identify with Christ in the cross…we need to seek to die to self each day.
To seek the fruit before the plant is mature is backwards and irrational. When we seek good works and pureness of heart without first abandoning all for the sake of Christ, experiencing a full death of the “old self,” we have the same irrational expectation. The seed must be planted, it must be watered, it must soak in the sunlight, and its roots must run deep. In the Parable of the Sower (Matt 13:1-9, 18-23), the sun and the rainstorms killed the plants in shallow soil, but they serve to grow those with fertile soil. So we see that to grow we must embrace the rainstorm of trial and difficult circumstances, driving our roots deep into the Word and prayer and truly personal relationship with Christ. We must endure the sun that seems harsh as we are “in the light as He is in the light” (1 John 1:7), exposing our every sinful desire. We must see God as sovereign and holy, as well as loving, to endure the sunlight. And if we do, we will then grow. And if we grow, we will see much fruit. This growth comes by death first, then trial (or really, an intention of death followed by actually death, one piece of me at a time)—both are identification with Christ. So if our goal is to be like Christ, not just superficially, but inside our very hearts every private or public moment of the day, we must realize that the only way is sharing in His sufferings. We will not experience Him without that, but we will experience the infinite amazement of His presence within us if we do. When once we get a taste of His presence, just a little fuller than we did the day before, we will realize there is no circumstance in this world worth trading for, and our present sufferings grieve us less, giving us more joy, as we “consider it pure joy… when you encounter trials of various kinds” (James 1:2) because we know that we are being grown even closer to the purest and abundantly fruitful love of Christ. Moreover, when we are concentrating on the following: "I must do good, I must not do evil," our focus is on self. When we acknowledge, embrace, and enjoy the Lord growing within us, our focus is rightly on Him.
Gal 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Rom 6:3-11 – “Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
(See also Rom 8:9-11, Gal 5:24, Gal 6:14)
Finally, have you ever wondered exactly what Paul meant by “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21)? Dying is easily seen as gain with Heaven in mind, but what about “to live is Christ?” I used to think that this meant to live as Christ by Him living through me, doing good things and acting in a proper manner. However, I have a new perspective: to live is Christ because to live as one born again is to be crucified with Him daily. The essence of life becomes sacrifice, just as Jesus sacrificed all. The essence of life becomes submission to the Father, just as Jesus submitted, as seen in His prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, saying in effect three times, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt 26:39, 42, 44). The essence of life becomes service, just as Jesus served our sentence of death in our place. The essence of life becomes love, just as Jesus loved us literally to death. The essence of life then and only then becomes pure joy, as Jesus' joy was made complete by His resurrection and the redemption of our willing souls who accept Him. Therefore to die is gain, but to live as a true believer is certainly Christ. Amen.
"My Utmost For His Highest," Dec 25:
HIS BIRTH AND OUR NEW BIRTH
"Behold, a virgin shall bring forth a son, and they shall call His name Emanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us."Isaiah 7:14 (R.V.)
His Birth in History. "Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God." (Luke 1:35.) Jesus Christ was born into this world, not from it. He did not evolve out of history; He came into history from the outside. Jesus Christ is not the best human being, He is a Being Who cannot be accounted for by the human race at all. He is not man becoming God, but God Incarnate, God coming into human flesh, coming into it from outside. His life is the Highest and the Holiest entering in at the Lowliest door. Our Lord's birth was an advent.
His Birth in Me. "Of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you." (Gal. 4:19.) Just as Our Lord came into human history from outside, so He must come into me from outside. Have I allowed my personal human life to become a "Bethlehem" for the Son of God? I cannot enter into the realm of the Kingdom of God unless I am born from above by a birth totally unlike natural birth. "Ye must be born again." This is not a command, it is a foundation fact. The characteristic of the new birth is that I yield myself so completely to God that Christ is formed in me. Immediately Christ is formed in me, His nature begins to work through me.
God manifest in the flesh - that is what is made profoundly possible for you and me by the Redemption.
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