We
were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of
life. Yes, we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust
in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8,9)
It
is a part of the nature of things that we never learn in a vital way by
information. We really only come into the good of things by being "pressed
out of measure." So the Lord has to take much time to make spiritual
history. When at length our eyes are open, we cry, "Oh, why did I not see
it before!" But everything else had to prove insufficient before we could
really be shown, and that takes time. Thus it was that we were turned in that
dark hour to Romans chapter six, and, almost as though He spoke in audible
language, the Lord said: "When I died, you died. When I went to the Cross
I not only took your sins, but I took you.
When I took you, I not only took you as the sinner that you might regard
yourself to be, but I took you as being all that you are by nature; your good
(?) as your bad; your abilities as well as your disabilities; yes, every
resource of yours. I took you as a 'worker,' a 'preacher,' an organizer! My
Cross means that not even for Me can
you be or do anything out from yourself, but if there is to be anything
at all it must be out from Me, and that means a life of absolute dependence and
faith."
At
this point, therefore, we awoke to the fundamental principle of our Lord's own
life while here, and it became the law of everything for us from that time.
That principle was: "nothing of (out from) Himself", but "all
things of (out from) God." "The
Son can do nothing of (out from) Himself, but what He sees the Father doing:
for what things soever He does, then the Son also does in like manner" (John
5:19). Such a revelation, if it is to be a staggering and breaking thing, so
that there is no strength left in us, requires a background of much vain
effort. But then, it carries with it a great implication. While an end is
written large in the Cross, and while that end is to be accepted as our end indeed, so that there can be no more of anything so far as we are concerned, Jesus lives! And
that means boundless possibilities.
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