Crucified with Him: by Andrew Murray

 

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me…But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
—Galatians 2:20, 6:14

While the Lord was still on His way to the cross, the expression—taking up the cross—was the most appropriate to indicate the conformity to Him to which the disciple was called. But now that He has been crucified, the Holy Spirit gives another expression: to be crucified with Christ. One of the chief elements of likeness to Christ consists of being crucified with Him. Whoever wishes to be like Him must seek to understand the secret of fellowship with His cross.

Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” Through faith in Christ we become partakers of Christ’s life that has passed through the death of the cross, and in which the power of that victorious death is always working. When I receive that life, I receive the full power of the death on the cross working in me in its never ceasing energy. “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” The life I now live is not my own life. The life of the Crucified One is the life of the cross. Being crucified is a thing past.

I have been crucified with Christ; I have crucified the flesh. If I am crucified and dead with Him, then I am a partner in His victory. There is still a great work for me to do. But that work is not to crucify myself. I, the old man, was crucified. But what I have to do is to always treat it as crucified, and not to allow it to come down from the cross. I must keep the flesh in the place of crucifixion.

I gave myself to my crucified Savior, sin and flesh and all. But here a separation took place. In fellowship with Him, I was freed from the life of the flesh. In the innermost center of my being, I received new life: Christ lives in me. But the flesh, in which I remain condemned to death, is not yet dead. It is now my calling to see that the old nature is kept nailed to the cross. All its desires and affections cry out, “Come down from the cross. Save yourself and us.” It is my duty to glory in the cross, to maintain the dominion of the cross with my whole heart, to make every uprising of sin dead, and not allow sin to have dominion.