I hope these excerpts are a blessing to you and help in your understanding of all that Christ has done for us at Calvary, I know they are to me, that is why I share them with you. Christ’s Meaning of the Cross Third, what does Christ mean by the cross? What is Christ’s own witness in the Gospels to the cross? As you study the Gospels you will find at least a fivefold witness that the Lord Jesus Christ gives to you and to me with regard to His death on the cross. The very first thing that He emphasizes is that it is the secret of all fruitful living. “And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for My sake shall find it” (Mat_10:38-39); “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. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it” (Mat_16:24-25). The word “life” there, in the Greek, is just the word that we translate today into “psychic.” We use it so much these days, psychic or psychical, it is just the natural life. This is the difference between all these false cults of the world today and the message of the Lord Jesus Christ, that they all have to develop the psychic, they are all putting emphasis upon the natural life in man, the natural thing in man, and there is a sort of deification today of this human element in man. But the message of the Lord Jesus Christ is not to develop the psychic, but to send it to the cross. That is the only pathway of safety for you and for me, “Whosoever will save his life, whosoever will develop the psychic or the natural in him [and that is what spiritism and all those things are doing], shall lose it” (Mar_8:35). That means it will come to ruin, and he will find it goes from him and he does not get out of it what God means him to get. “Whosoever will lose his life [whosoever will let these things that are merely human and natural, and that can be worked on by the devil; whosoever will let these things go to the cross, keep the cross between himself and those things] for my sake shall find it.” That means he will discover the place and the purpose and the power of the natural, and he will get out of the natural all that God means him to get. Let us remember that fruit never comes through the development of the natural in us, but through the development of the spiritual, through the supremacy of the Holy Spirit in life. The source of fruit in the believer’s life is Christ, living in him. When I say that the fruit never comes through the natural I do not mean that God does not use our natural gifts, our minds, our faculties, but fruit never comes through fleshly energy, never comes through soulish power, it never comes through the natural becoming supreme over the spiritual. Fruit is only the result of the Lord Jesus Christ living in you and me, working in you and in me, and putting His power through us, our minds, our gifts, our faculties and everything else. Therefore, in Joh_12:24; Joh_12:32, and you have these gifts by the Lord Jesus Christ, “Verily, Verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die,” there is the natural, “it abideth alone,” it brings forth nothing for God, nothing for men, “but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” There is the secret of a fruitful life for you and for me. It is the cross at work in our natures, our characters, doing in us, and for us, and through us, what is done in, and for, and through that grain of wheat as it lies in the grave of the ground. Christ was the first grain of wheat to fall into the ground and die, and out of His death has come everything that we know today of Christian life, Christian faith, Christian power, Christian influence, Christian hope. He says, “Follow me. If anyone will be my disciple let him take up the cross, let him lose His life, and follow Me” (Mat_16:24). It is so possible for us to have redeemed lives, with which perhaps little or no fault could be found, and in which little or no fruit can be discovered, simply because there is no death to that which God cannot use—no death to that which Satan is always trying to use. It is possible to save your life and get nothing out of it. It is only as we go in the steps of the Savior that there can go out from us in disposition and service the life that reveals Christ and the life that reproduces the Christ life in all its wondrous power to bear fruit for God and for men. What does it mean? I wonder if I can make it simple enough. You remember how it is said that Christ poured out His soul unto death. He took His natural life and He laid it down in death. Now the soul is the seat of our senses, is the seat of our personality, the seat of our self-life. That is the source of all the mischief and all the weakness in our lives and in our selves. Think of the forms in which that self-life appears even among Christian people, in pride, in temper, in pettiness, in quickness to take offense, in misjudgment of others, misinterpretation of the words of others, self-love, self-pity, self-preservation, and so on. Oh, the forms are innumerable in which the self-life can appear. The Lord Jesus Christ says that whenever anyone of those forms appears we are not to develop them, but to say, “That is for the cross. That must go to the cross. That goes to the cross. I die to that, I take the position of death to that.” May the blessed Holy Spirit make the victory of Calvary real to you, and the moment that you take up that attitude in your heart and your will you are opening the door for the Holy Spirit to come in with the life of Christ and Rom_8:2 becomes a perfect reality and a blessed experience to you: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom_8:2). The moment you take up that attitude of saying, “That is for the cross. I am not going to let self-love get the better of me; I am not going to let temper get the better of me. It goes to the cross, I die to it, I put the cross between that and me, and I ask the Holy Spirit to make the power of the cross real in my experience”—the moment we take up that attitude the Holy Spirit finds the open door into our lives with the life of Christ which produces fruit, and the corn of wheat dies, and the fruit comes for God. That attitude will mean for you and for me just what the death of the Lord Jesus Christ meant for Him. What was that? “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore” (Rev_1:18). Before He went to the cross He said, “I lay down my life. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” He took it again in resurrection power, and that is the result of your taking up this position of death to sin, it is resurrection life and power. Paul, in Php_3:10, declared this to be his ambition—that he might know Christ more and more in the power of His resurrection. So as you definitely and deliberately, cost what it may, send the forms of the self-life to the cross you come to know the resurrection of Christ; dying to sin, you are alive unto God. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit” (Joh_12:24). Dying is the gate of life, it is the pathway of power, it is the secret of victory, it is the source of heart rest, it is the secret of all that can make life what God means it to be and what God wants it to be. That is the witness of Christ to the cross. It is the secret of a fruitful life for God and for men. Gordon Watt the meaning of the cross
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 02:38:55 +0000
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