49. The Mold of Dying Daily
The Mold of Dying Daily
How the mold of the cross works is this: God has taken the old creation and He has condemned it in Christ, and He is now at work on a new creation. There is no place in the plan of God for the betterment of the old creation. He does not bring about some kind of transformation of the old man so as to produce some kind of resemblance to Christ in Christian character and conduct. There is only one place for the old creation, and that is the cross. But it is not enough for us to say it is there crucified with Christ. Crucifixion was a lingering death, and while we stand once and for all upon the fact of God, which is eternal and unchangeable, that when our Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross He took more than our sins with Him; He took our old man and dealt with the source of all our sin, and dealt with it satisfactorily; while we stand on that fact, there has to be the daily working out of the victory which Christ has won for us; there has to be the daily dying to this old self. The Holy Spirit has to work into us the death of the Lord Jesus Christ in all its wonderful power and purpose.
In 1 Corinthians 15:31 the apostle says, “I protest by your rejoicing, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily;” and 2 Corinthians 4:11, “For we which live are alway delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” There has to be the daily dying, the daily working out in our own lives of the victory won for us on Calvary.
I was walking with a friend in the grounds around his house, and I noticed a very notable tree, a laburnum tree. It is very beautiful, with long, drooping branches covered with a yellow bloom. In Germany it is called the Golden Rain, and it is just like that, like cascades of golden rain.
What attracted me to the tree was that I saw on some of the branches pink blooms. I found that the previous owner had been very much interested in tree culture and he had grafted on to this laburnum tree a pink laburnum, and here and there all over the tree you saw the pink among the yellow. When I looked more closely I found that on some of the branches that had been bearing pink blooms the yellow was again beginning to appear, and I found out that the tree had been neglected, it had not been pruned, nothing had been done to it for some time, and the old nature was beginning to reassert itself. The old yellow bloom was beginning to push out the pink bloom and to reassert itself in those branches that had been grafted in.
Take it as an illustration of the fact that the Holy Spirit has to be continually at work in our lives, with the cross, because the old habits, the old disposition, the old man is continually reasserting or attempting to reassert its supremacy, and the only way in which the new creation can hold its crown and bring our lives to victory is by our allowing the Holy Spirit to work the purpose of the cross into us day by day, so that in the face of every manifestation of the old life we learn to die daily, to hand ourselves over to the Holy Spirit for the working of the cross to be wrought in us.
Therefore Romans 6:3 (“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?”) shows the necessity of entering into an ever deeper union with the Lord Jesus Christ if those things are to be dealt with and kept under. Just as that is so we begin to understand what the apostle means here when he says, “We share in the likeness of His death.”