GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 11

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES:

   JESUS, YOU…… MAKE ME DWELL IN SAFETY—Psalm 4:8

    JESUS, YOU……MAKE ME DEAD TO SIN——-Romans 6:11

   JESUS, YOU……  HAVE STRENGTHENED THE BARS OF MY GATES—Ps 147:13

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THE WORD FOR TODAY

Galatians 2:20

 “ I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”

We’re “with” Andrew Murray, in chapter 11  (entitled, “The Crucified One”) of his book,  “Abide in Christ.”

“I am crucified with Christ.”  Thus the apostle expressed his assurance of his fellowship with Christ in His sufferings and death and his full participation in all the power and the blessing of that death.   And, showing he did truly mean what he said and knew that he was now indeed dead, he added, “Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.”

How blessed must be the experience of such a union with the Lord Jesus!  To be able to look upon His death as mine, just as truly as it was His – upon His perfect obedience to God, His victory over sin, and complete deliverance from its power as mine;  and to realize that the power of that death does, by faith, work daily with a divine energy in mortifying the flesh and renewing the whole life into the perfect conformity to the resurrection life of Jesus!  Abiding in Jesus, the Crucified One, is the secret of the growth of that new life that is ever begotten of the death of nature.

Let us try to understand this.  The suggestive expression, “Planted in the likeness of His death” will teach us what abiding in the Crucified One means.  When a graft is united with the stock on which it is to grow, we know that it must be kept fixed; it must abide in the place where the stock has been cut, been wounded, to make an opening to receive the graft.   There is no graft without wounding – the laying bare and opening up of the inner life of the tree to receive the graft.

 Just as there is no graft without wounding – the laying bare and opening up of the inner life of the tree to receive the stronger branch.

It is only through such wounding that access can be obtained to the fellowship of the sap and the growth and the life of the stronger stem. 

Even so with Jesus and the sinner.  Only when we are planted into the likeness of His death will we also be in the likeness of His resurrection, partakers of the life and the power there are in Him. In the death on the cross, Christ was wounded and in His opened wounds a place was prepared where we might be grafted in.  Just as one might say to a graft, and does practically say as it is fixed in its place, “Abide here in the wound of the stem that is now to bear you”;  so to the believing soul the message comes, “Abide in the wounds of Jesus; there is the place of union, and life, and growth.  There you will see how His heart was opened to receive you; how His flesh was torn that the way might be opened for your being made one with Him and having access to all the blessings flowing from His divine nature.

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