50. The Mold of Suffering
The Mold of Suffering As the Holy Spirit works out the power of the cross in each member of the Body of Christ, the real life of Christ is imparted to the Body and to each member of the Body, the very life that is in the heart and nature of Christ, at this moment, in heaven, and it is that which creates the spirit of revival; it is that life which convicts sinners; it is that which the Holy Spirit uses in order to bring about the conditions in which He can create revival, when the life of the Head is imparted to the members of the Body and is manifested through the members in the daily life and the daily act.
Therefore there is a co-passion with Christ into which you and I must enter if we are to know the full power of the cross to mold us into the likeness of His character. At the conversion of Saul that co-passion was revealed to him. We read inActs 9:15-16 : “But the Lord said unto him [Ananias], Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.” That was revealed to him at his conversion, and that became the great aim of his life. He accepted it as such (Colossians 1:23 b,24), “Whereof I Paul am made a minister; who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for His body’s sake, which is the church.” Notice how Paul rejoiced in that co-passion. He never shrank from the cross; he never shirked the consequences of witness; he never refused to face the full claim of the cross.
Read 2 Corinthians 12:9, “And He said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” And so, as the great apostle entered himself into the meaning of the mold of the cross, he proclaimed that as the great necessity for the development of Christian character and the building up of the Body of Christ, for the accomplishment of the purpose of God on earth, and for making certain the life of victory.
In Php 1:29-30 he shows us this, that this co-passion of the members of the Body with Christ is the essential feature of their relationship with Him, “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake; having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.” There the Holy Spirit, through Paul, makes very clear the connection between this co-passion and blessing. In 2 Corinthians 1:5-6, we are told, “For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope of you is steadfast, knowing that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation.”
Partaking with Christ in the sufferings of the cross is the way into the partnership with Christ in everything that He has to give us. So let me try to put the mold of the cross into something of a practical form. Every time we die to sin, every time we die to the temptation of temper, or to the sin of the irritating word, or to the tendency to worry, or to the meanness and the trickery and the unrighteousness and the corruption of the old nature, every time we die to the spirit of retaliation or to the desire for self-vindication, or to what seems to us a perfectly legitimate self-defense, every time we follow in the steps of the Lord Jesus Christ and allow what is against us to take us deeper down into the death union with Him; every time we enter deliberately into this co-passion with Christ and allow what has caused failure in our lives to make more real to us the necessity and meaning of His death; every time we act in that way we are putting ourselves into the mold of the cross, and we are giving the Holy Spirit the opportunity to impress the character, the image of the Lord Jesus Christ upon our character. And it is that that is going to get to the conscience and heart of the world. The Christian who is going to do God’s work today in the world must be a cross-molded Christian.