and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge
in the image of its Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised
or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is
in all. Colossians 3:10-11
Beloved, the Cross was intended only to make the Lord Jesus all,
and in all, for us; and is it not true that, because of the way that the Lord
has dealt with us, the way in which He has applied the Cross, planting us into
that death and burial, we know Him in a way in which we never knew Him before?
Is it not by that way that He has become what He is to us, ever more and more
dear to our hearts? The increase of the Lord Jesus in and to us is by the way
of the Cross. We know quite well that our chief enemy is ourselves, our flesh.
This flesh gives us no rest, no peace, no satisfaction; we have no joy in it.
It obsesses, engrosses, and constantly struts across our path to rob us of the
very joy of living. What is to be done with it? Well, in and by the Cross we
are delivered from ourselves; not only from our sins, but from ourselves; and
being delivered from ourselves we are delivered into Christ, and Christ becomes
far more than we.
It is a painful process, but it is a blessed issue; and those
amongst us who may have had the greatest agony along this line would, I
believe, testify that what it has brought to us of the knowledge and riches of
the Lord Jesus has made all the suffering worthwhile. So the work of the Lord
for us and the work of the Lord in us, by the Cross, is only intended in the
Divine thought to make room for the Lord Jesus.
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