Born Crucified

Every believer has been baptized by the Spirit into Christ. "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit"--one with the Crucified. When Christ took upon Himself my humanity, apart from which He could never have borne the penalty for m sins, He made me one with Himself. I am identified with Him. He not only died for me, but I died with Him. He took me with Himself into death, and His death was my death to sin. [page 24]

Regardless of our feelings, we are to reckon on this great fact: our union with Christ in death and resurrection. Note that Paul does not say, reckon sin dead to you. God's way of victory over sin is not through the suppression of sinful desires, nor thought the eradication of the old nature, nor yet through the cleansing of inbred sin. God's way of victory is through crucifixion -- deliverance is only through death.

There is a vast difference between reckoning myself dead to sin and reckoning sin dead to me. Every attempt to make sin dead to me, through self-effort or struggle or blessing or make-believe is not following the scriptural pattern. God says I am to reckon myself dead to sin. If I am willing to be rid of sin, let faith fasten on the fact of my death to sin through my actual life-union with Christ.

I am "in Christ" And to be in Him is to be "dead to sin." Oh to believe it! Never mind the feelings. Each time I come up against some particular sin, let me there say: I died to that in Christ.

If it be a worldly attraction: "I am crucified to the world and the world unto me." If it be a proud, haughty self, again let me reckon: I have been crucified with Christ, now Christ lives in me. Then I should not, and need not, live unto myself. I am dead to my selfish pride and conceit and haughtiness.

It means everything to me, as a Christian, that I was "born crucified" -- born all over again through death -- the death of Jesus Christ.... I must be either "dead in sins" or "dead to sin." If I am lost in Adam, I am "dead in sins." If I am saved through union with Christ, I am "dead to sin." (Romans 4 - 7)

When I accepted Christ's death for my sin, I could not avoid accepting my own death to sin. Christ died, not only for sin, but unto sin. I am committed to the cross. To attempt any other position is to involve myself in an infamous moral contradiction. My only logical standing is one of death. I have been "born crucified." It is the first principle of the Christian life. (Gal 2:20)

That Christ indeed "liveth in me" is a glorious truth. If I am saved, that is no mere cold, lifeless imputation. It is a fact. But it is a truth that calls for my most cordial "Amen."

Our post-modern society is easily offended by God's truths about sin, guilt, judgment and our need for redemption. Such Biblical absolutes clash with the relativism, rationalizations and self-affirmations that have spread like leaven through the church. Those who seek popularity rather than purity tend to downplay -- or even dismiss -- the facts about our human condition and eternal destiny apart from the cross. Instead, the emphasis is on marketing a more humanitarian church to the world. Oswald Chambers summarizes it well:

"The key to the missionary message is the remissionary aspect of Christ's life [paying the penalty for our sins], not His kindness and His goodness.... The great limitless significance is that He is the propitiation of our sins....

"A missionary is one who is wedded to the charter of his Lord and Master. He has not to proclaim his own point of view, but to proclaim the Lamb of God. It is easier... to become a devotee to diving healing, or to a special type pf sanctification, or to the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

"Paul did not say, 'Woe is me if I do not preach what Christ has done for me,' but 'Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel!' This is the gospel--'The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

The Oswald Chambers Daily Devotional Bible, page 1142

Reckoning, in order to be real, includes self-renunciation. Our reckoning is doomed to failure unless we renounce self. In the power of Christ's death, I just refuse my old life. On the basis of Calvary and of my oneness with Christ in His death, I must refuse to let self lord it over me.... The life that "Christ liveth in me" must have a happy "yet not I" at its very heart.

How can I have the benefits of Christ's death wile I still want my own way? Self must be dethroned. I am indeed promised newness of life, but only on the basis that I put off the old. If Christ went into the abysmal depths of self-emptying and self-renunciation, I must sink my old self-life into harmony with His ignominious departure. (page 28)

We need not let sin reign, since we died and passed through death into resurrection beyond sin's dominion. Sin has no claim over those united to the Crucified, and sin "shall not have dominion" over those who yield themselves entirely to the Holy Spirit. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from he law of sin and death." (Romans 8:2)

But as long as we have nay controversy with the Holy Spirit we cannot escape sin's dominion.... The offending member is to be reckoned dead to sin -- not pampered. It is indeed good to pray for blessings, and to cry out for clean hearts, but not when God say "cut off" and "pluck out." God has truly cut us off from all evil at the Cross. He now says: It is yours to break with sin-- "let not sin therefore reign."

In the cross, in the cross,
Be my glory ever;
Till my raptured soul shall find
Rest beyond the river.