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Born Crucified

Moody Publishers

Contents

Foreword..........................................................7Author's Preface..................................................15Biographical Introduction.........................................171. The Believer's Identification.................................212. The Secret of Victory over Sin................................273. The Cross and Death to Sin....................................334. The Cross and the World.......................................395. The Cross, Conflict, and Final Victory........................456. The Cross and Consecration....................................517. The Cross and the Crucified One...............................578. The Cross and Self............................................659. The Cross: Contrary to Nature.................................7310. The Cross and the Two Natures.................................8111. The Cross and Dying to the Old Nature.........................8912. The Cross and the Flesh.......................................9713. The Cross and Relationships...................................10914. The Cross, Suffering, and the Will of God.....................11515. The Cross and the Will of God.................................12516. The Cross and Discipline......................................13517. The Cross and Daily Discipline................................14518. The Cross and Fruitfulness....................................15519. The Cross Day by Day..........................................16320. The Cross and Attainment......................................17121. The Cross, Contentment, and Complacency.......................17922. The Cross and Satan...........................................18523. The Cross and Kingship........................................19524. The Cross and the Crown.......................................20125. The Cross and Methods.........................................211Acknowledgments...................................................223

Chapter One

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During the Civil War, George Wyatt was drawn by lot to go to the front. He had a wife and six children. A young man named Richard Pratt offered to go in his stead. He was accepted and joined the ranks, bearing the name and number of George Wyatt. Before long Pratt was killed in action.

The authorities later sought again to draft George Wyatt into service. He protested, entering the plea that he had died in the person of Pratt. He insisted that the authorities consult their own records as to the fact of his having died in identification with Pratt, his substitute. Wyatt was thereby exempted as beyond the claims of law and further service. He had died in the person of his representative.

There we have the truth of identification in a nutshell. God's way of deliverance is through death-through identification with our Substitute in His death and resurrection.

After setting forth the truth of our justification through faith in Christ's death for us (in Romans 5), the apostle Paul sets forth at once (in Romans 6) the believer's identification with death. In chapter 5 it is Christ's death for us; in chapter 6 it is our death with Christ. Christ's death for us in chapter 5 is foundational and essential, but we should move on immediately into the next chapter. It is in chapter 6 we learn that our justification is no mere formal or legal transaction (although it is essentially a legal matter), but that it is also in essential union with Christ.

When God declares the ungodly sinner just, He makes no mere legal and lifeless imputation of righteousness apart from a real and deep life-union of the believer with Christ. God has indeed declared righteous "the ungodly," but not apart from Christ, not outside of Christ. We are justified only in Christ; that is, having come into vital life-union with Christ through faith in His atoning death. Those whom God declares righteous are "created in Christ Jesus." We are actually new creatures "in Christ."

After Paul's declaration in Romans 5:20 that "where sin abounded, grace abounded much more," the question naturally arises in Romans 6:1, "Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" The emphatic "Certainly not!" is based upon our identification with Christ in His death. Having been joined to Christ, it follows that we have been "baptized into His death" (6:3). Since we have been united to Christ crucified (in our justification-Romans 5), our position must be one of death "in Him." Paul says, "One died for all, then all died" (2 Corinthians 5:14). The death of Christ for all inevitably involved the death of all. We therefore died in Christ to sin. Shall we continue in sin? Perish the thought! "In sin" and "in Christ"? What an ethical contradiction!

Christ dying for me makes inevitable my death with Him. The very character of Christ's work on Calvary renders inseparable this double aspect of the once-for-all atonement. "Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate." The cause of Christ suffers greatly today through what has rightly been termed a "dissected Cross, a decapitated gospel."

In taking upon Himself my "likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 8:3), apart from which Christ could not have borne the penalty for my sin, He took me up into Himself-made me one with Himself. I am legally and ethically involved; I have been sentenced to death in Christ. It is my judicial position. Think a moment. Did I not accept death in order to be saved? When I realized I was death-doomed, I trusted the death of Another. Christ's death for sin is automatically my death to sin. God's way of victory and deliverance is to cut us right off from the old Adamic tree and to graft us into Christ, joining us to Him in death.

Apart, then, from any choice of my own, as a believer "I am crucified with Christ." My being a Christian makes inevitable a crucified life. It is the Christian life-not the deeper spiritual life. As an old theologian puts it, I have been "born crucified" {that is, when I was born again).

Has the reader labored and agonized to please God? You have resolved to read your Bible, to be more meditative and prayerful -all without effect. You are conscious of crushing failure and defeat. In spite of all your effort, you are not like the Lord Jesus. The commands of Christ seem grievous. They come with no glad welcome. They haunt you. You are conscious that your life is an utter contradiction of the standards erected by the Lord Jesus as the normal Christian life. You may actually have wondered why the Savior made such demands. They only tantalize and torture you. And no matter how deeply you are shamed, pained, and repentant, your struggles avail you nothing.

Christ's requirements are indeed unattainables-that you must learn first of all. In His demands Christ goes far beyond the natural. He asks for no mere imitations. On the one hand He well knows your incapacities; on the other hand He demands the utterly impossible. And the necessary shock that has to come to the believer is that Christ's standards are completely beyond the reach of the flesh. Who naturally loves his enemies, rejoices in persecution, hates himself, and goes the second mile? Yet these things are native to the true Christian life.

We are at once indicted and hopeless. There...