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 so ever 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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