10. The Cross is the Secret of Life

The Cross is the Secret of Life

Thirdly, and this is what I want to emphasize most of all, the cross is the secret of life, and it has got a double secret for you and me. First, it is the secret of our own personal life (Galatians 2:20), “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” It is the secret of one’s own personal life. The I is the representative of the self life, which has been the cause of all the enmity in the human heart towards God, and the source of all the weakness of human service for God ever since the fall, and that I has to be dealt with by the cross.

You will note what the apostle says, it is not self-crucifixion that the cross works by, but co-crucifixion. We are crucifiedwithChrist, and that is a fact of God on which our faith is to rest for continuous deliverance and victory. Christ’s cross is my cross. I want to get into the very heart of that and know what it means, for I believe that is the secret of personal life for the Christian—Christ’s cross is my cross. I consent to share Christ’s cross. I consent to share death with Christ through the cross to everything which is opposed to the Father’s will, that everything of the Father’s purpose may be accomplished. When I take up that attitude I find the I dispossessed and Christ living in me. That does not make me a machine; it makes me a new creature, with my own temperament and disposition and personality, but with a new source for my life, a new spring for my being, out of which flows the life of Christ, and then others see—not me, but Christ living in me. A gentleman was walking down one of the streets of our city, Glasgow, when he saw a crowd at a shop door. Curiosity took him there, to find a man inside the shop selling a beautiful picture. He was describing the merits of the picture to the people before him, pointing them to this corner and to that corner and showing them this, that, and the other thing, and all the time he was speaking of the picture he was never seen, he was behind the picture, and only the picture in its beauty was visible to the people. That is the way to witness for Christ; that is the mark of the crucified life, the life that has entered into the secret of life, it is crucified with Christ. Christ crucified is revealed by it. That is the way to witness for Christ, “Christ liveth in me,” Christ seen through me—I crucified.

I want to read a few words from a Scottish theologian, Denney. I found them in the church vestry of a friend of mine, and if I may venture humbly to say it, I think they are words that everyone of us preachers and teachers ought to have continually before us for the service to which God has called us: “No man can bear witness to Christ and to himself at the same time. No man can give at once the impression that he himself is clever and Christ mighty to save.” That is the secret of life. That is the mark of the man or the woman who has entered into the great secret of the cross in relation to his or her personal life. The old saints were very fond of mottoes and symbols. One of their favorite symbols was a picture of the face of Christ with a lighted candle before it, and the motto: “May I waste so I show the face of Christ.” “I am crucified, Christ liveth in me.”

Let me carry you on to the second secret. The cross is the secret of life for others in service. Read two verses in 2 Corinthians 4:11-12 : “For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you.” Life for others only as death works in us. It is that which makes work tell, and which makes preaching fruitful.

One of the first principles of God regarding service seems to be to work into you and me the truth which He needs us to proclaim to others. Paul knew that. It began in the street called Straight with him, it deepened and developed in the solitudes of Arabia, and Paul went forth knowing a fellowship with Christ in His death that perhaps few have ever known, but that you and I would need to know in these days if our work is to prove fruitful for God and for others. “Death worketh in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:12).

I was once speaking with an Egyptian Christian student, and he told me this, that when the priests of the Coptic Church in Egypt are ordaining a man to the priesthood they recite over him the prayers that they recite over the dead, inferring that he is dead to everything of the world and alive only to God. That is exactly what Paul speaks of here, death in us, life for others.

You know the substitutionary power of the cross. You may have apprehended your death position in Christ so that you are getting victory over the forms of the self life, but you and I need to enter into a fellowship with Christ in his sufferings, into a conformity with Christ in His death, which brings into us the spirit of the cross, the spirit of Calvary. Death requires to be wrought in us in a real death fellowship which will produce life that ministers to others.

Paul strikes here the keynote of such a life, “Always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake.” The Greek word means “handed over,” always handed over, as the Lord Jesus Christ was handed over, as the Lord handed over Himself; always handed over to death for Jesus’ sake. You will notice that it is we who live who are to be handed over. It is the corn of wheat that has to die, but death means the gate of life, the gate that leads into a richer, fuller, abundant life. As death knocks at the door of that corn of wheat in the ground it breaks open the hard shell and there comes out of it what we see above the ground. Just in the same way as the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, touches in us everything that is against God, everything that belongs to the old creation, which is the material on which Satan is ever working, so that work of the cross breaks open the hard shell of our nature and character and gives an outlet for the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Death working in us, life works in others. Are you and I willing for this? Are we willing to let the Holy Spirit hand us over to death? Do you know it is as true of me as it is of Christ, “No man taketh My life from Me, but I lay it down of Myself” (John 10:18)? And the question is today whether you and I will exercise the power that we have. Are we willing to be handed over to death, whatever that may mean for us, in order that there may be life flowing out of us for others and for Him who gave Himself for us?

What will it mean? What will it mean, if we allow the work of the cross to be wrought out in our characters? It may mean for us that we have to be willing to be set aside, slighted, put in the background, when others are being put forward; willing to be misjudged while others are praised; willing to get no credit in our work while others are getting much credit. For some it might mean to be willing to go to a place in the foreign field or in some land that is being shunned by others; willing to tread a path that means sacrifice; willing to receive treatment that is unpleasant, but receiving it in a Calvary spirit. It may mean no longer asking God to deliver from hard circumstances, but asking Him to make those hard circumstances the instrument, through the cross, that will break open the hard shell of your nature and let the light of Christ flow out.

It may mean, it must mean, loving everyone with a love that is like the love of Christ and dealing with infinite patience and tenderness with every member of the Body of Christ; that the Body of Christ may grow strong and ready for the coming of the Lord.

There is only one way in which you and I can win souls for Christ; there is only one way in which you and I may have a fruitful service; it is the way of sacrifice. That is the only way in which the life of Christ can be made manifest and flow out of us to others.

I believe this age is rapidly closing up, and God needs men and women filled with such a spirit as that, the spirit of Christ, the spirit of the cross, and the spirit of martyrs. Are we willing? Will God find us ready and faithful and obedient? What will be the result if we are willing? Life for others, perhaps revival in the Church, the ingathering of the heathen, the gaining again for many of that which they have lost—the vision of the present Christ, the receiving on the part of many of the assurance of things that are essential; and above all, glory to Him who was handed over to death for you and for me.

O beloved men and women, to make others see Him and know Him, and believe in Him and love Him, and follow Him and go after Him, even though it means for you and for me travail of soul and death to self—“so then death worketh in us, but life in you” (2 Corinthians 4:12). That is the secret of service for others, and the cross holds the secret. But oh, how are we to be handed over? Not one of us can do it, but will you turn toHebrews 9:14 : “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God”? The same power by which Christ handed Himself over to the cross is the power by which you and I can hand ourselves over, that life may be for others.

Oh, thank God for it. The only thing that God needs is a willing heart; that you and I should be willing to tread the path, to choose the life that He has pictured for us in His Word. And then, when we are willing, the Holy Ghost does what we cannot do, He takes us and hands over us and everything in us that is against God, to the cross, and the moment that He hands that over to the cross, the door opens and the life of Christ finds an outlet, the pitcher gets broken and the light is seen, the light shines out.