GOD’S WORD FOR MAY 13

OUR PERSONAL PROMISES:

     JESUS, YOU……  BECAME SIN FOR ME THAT I MAY BE YOUR RIGHTEOUSNESS –2 Cor. 5:21

     JESUS, YOU……KEEP ME IN PERFECT PEACE –Isiah 26:3

    JESUS, YOU……  ARE THE AUTHOR AND FINISHER OF MY FAITH –Heb. 12:2

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THE WORD FOR TODAY

1 Corinthians 1:18

 “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

We’re finishing chapter 11, “the Crucified One” in Andrew Murray’s classic 1800’s book, “Abide in Christ.”

When He found me there, (at the cross), it was the place of cursing; this He experienced, for “cursed is every one that hangs on a tree”  (Galatians 3:13 ~ ~ “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’”).

  He made it a place of blessing; this I experienced, for Christ has delivered us from the curse, being made a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13).

 When Christ comes in my place, He remains what He was, the beloved of the Father; but in the fellowship with me, He shares my curse and dies my death. When I stand in His place, which is still always mine, I am still what I was by nature, the accursed one, who deserves to die; but united to Him, I share His blessing and receive His life.  When He came to be one with me, He could not avoid the Cross, for the curse always points to the Cross as its end and fruit.  And when I seek to be one with Him, I cannot avoid the Cross either, for nowhere but on the Cross are life and deliverance to be found.  As inevitably as my curse pointed Him to the Cross as the only place where He could be fully united to me, His blessing points me to the Cross too as the only place where I can be united to Him.   He took my cross for His own;  I must take His Cross as my own;  I must be crucified with Him.  It is as I abide daily, deeply in Jesus, the Crucified One, that I will taste the sweetness of His love, the power of His life, and the completeness of His salvation.

Beloved believer, it is a deep mystery, this Cross of Christ.  I fear there are many Christians who are content to look upon the cross, with Christ on it dying for their sins, who have little heart for fellowship with the Crucified One.  They hardly know that He invites them to it.  Or they are content to consider the ordinary afflictions of Life, which the children of the world often have as much as they, as their share of Christ’s cross.  They have no concept of what it is to be crucified with Christ, that bearing the cross means likeness to Christ in the principles that animated Him in His path of obedience.  The entire surrender of all self-will, the complete denial to the flesh of its every desire and pleasure, the perfect separation from the world in all its ways of thinking and acting, the losing and hating of one’s life, the giving up of self and its interests for the sake of others – this is the disposition that marks him who has taken up Christ’s Cross, who seeks to say, “I am crucified with Christ; I abide in Christ, the Crucified One.”

Would you truly please your Lord and live in as close fellowship with Him as His grace could maintain you in?  Pray that His Spirit lead you into this blessed truth: this secret of the Lord for them that fear Him.  We know how Peter knew and confessed Christ as the Son of the living God while the Cross was still an offense. (Matthew 16:16-17 and 21-23).  The faith that believes in the blood that pardons and the life that renews can only reach its perfect growth as it abides beneath the Cross and, in living fellowship with Him, seeks for perfect conformity with Jesus the Crucified.

Oh, Jesus, our crucified Redeemer, teach us not only to believe on You, but also to abide in You;  to take Your cross not only as the ground of our pardon, but also as the law of our life.  Teach us to love it not only because on it You bore our curse, but because on it we enter into the closest fellowship with Yourself, and are crucified with you.  And teach us that, as we yield ourselves wholly to be possessed of the Spirit in which you did bear the Cross, we will be made partakers of the power and the blessing to which the Cross alone gives access.

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