“Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” -Luke 12:56

Easter weekend is hardly the time to write commentaries on Obama’s relationship with his pastor, or progress in Iraq, or the financial meltdown in America’s economy - there will be plenty of time for that sort of thing later.  This is the special time in the Christian calendar year when we Christians need to focus on the crucifixion and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and hear what God is saying to us about those world-changing events.

For the last 35 or 40 years I have read Oswald Chambers’ classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest every morning before I get out of bed.  This year Good Friday happened to fall on the day when the book offers some of Chambers’ thoughts on the Apostle Paul’s inspired statement of union with the Savior: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20).  It struck me that this was as appropriate a reading for Good Friday as one could hope to find, and the more I pondered it and prayed over it the more it seemed that I should write this week’s commentary on it, for in this one Bible verse the Holy Spirit gives us the essence of how we Christians should view our relationships with Jesus.

“I have been crucified with Christ.”  What a starkly dramatic and riveting statement!  What is Paul saying to us?

The Apostle is, of course, speaking for every Christian.  And he is telling us that he has come to realize that when Jesus died on Calvary’s Cross for our sins that He put to death our former sinful life.  When He died, we too died - not a physical death like His, but a very real death nonetheless - a death to the power exerted over us of our naturally sinful ways of acting, thinking, and feeling.  When we accepted Jesus as our personal Savior and Lord a supernatural transaction took place - we were joined to Him in His death on the cross, and then joined to Him in His resurrection from that death!  This is true for every believer, even if we don’t understand it, or feel it.  Paul states this explicitly in the next clause: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”  The old Paul is dead and gone.  The old “I” is dead - crucified with Christ.

What does this mean for us?  It means that if we want to experience the power of the Risen Christ (”Christ who lives in me”) then we need to fully embrace the reality of “It is no longer I who live.”  In other words, we can only experience the fruits of Jesus’ resurrection to the extent that we are willing to accept the reality of our old life having been put to death with Him on the Cross.

It strikes me that many of us Christians are living in a kind of “half-way” dead position vis-à-vis our old life.  We’ve accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior, and we’re trying to live the Christian life as best we know how, but in many ways self is still in the center of our lives instead of Jesus.  For example, for much of my Christian life I have made my own plans, or dreamed my own dreams, and asked the Lord to enable those to come to fulfillment.  When I do this, I’m actually still trying to stay in control, and asking the Lord for His help to enable me to do so!  But, the reality is that because I have been crucified with Christ, I have to start operating from the place of not having plans of my own.  If I belong to Him, if I am His disciple, then I have to stop making my own plans.  I am to be available to His command; not to seek for Him to be available for my command.  I am in His service, not He in my service.  I have been crucified with Christ, and dead men don’t have any plans.

This sounds terribly unpractical and irresponsible and disorganized to those of us who are used to making plans about things.  But, I’m not suggesting that we never make plans - I’m saying that first, last, and always we had better learn to seek His plans, and then plan on the basis of them.  Isn’t that what Paul means by “It is no longer I who live”?

But it’s more than learning not to make plans of your own.  To accept “It is no longer I who live” means that I no longer have the right to live for my own fulfillment.  Now, how honest are you willing to be with yourself, and with God?  Isn’t it true for you, as it surely is for me, that most of the time we are living for our own fulfillment - pleading with the Lord to give us the things that we consider essential for a fulfilled life - whether those things are more income, or a loving spouse, or a better job, or whatever they might be?  Truth be told, when you and I became Christians we gave up our right to live for ourselves, in exchange for all that Christ is coming to live in us.  But, we don’t live like that much of the time, do we?

How can we live that way more than we do?

The key is in the last part of the verse: “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  This weekend the Holy Spirit has impressed on me that Jesus’ giving of Himself for you and me was personal, not abstract.  Jesus didn’t die for “mankind,” He died for you and me by name.  Paul isn’t just using poetic and pious language here to generalize the truth of Christ’s death.  No, we are being individually addressed by the Holy Spirit in this verse.  Ever since I became a Christian I have always believed that if Jesus and you or I or any other single individual were the only people alive at the time (except for the Roman soldiers who crucified Him) He would have willingly gone to the Cross just for that one person.  I don’t think that we appreciate that enough; I suspect that most of the time we view Jesus’ death as if He just died generally, for everybody.

And notice that the Apostle says that “He loved me” before he writes “and gave Himself for me.”  Jesus went to the Cross because He loved us - each of us.  That personal crucifixion for each of us was because He loved each of us.  The whole thing was done out of love, not because He had to.  Yes, the Bible makes clear that the Father sent His Son to die on the Cross, but Jesus didn’t have to do it, He could have avoided it, if He had chosen to do so.  In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was arrested (after Peter had impetuously tried to defend Him with the sword) he told Peter that He could summon twelve legions of angels to defend Him if He chose.  Earlier, Jesus had said “No one takes (my life) from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John10:18).  Jesus chose to go to the Cross for each one of us, because somehow, in ways I don’t understand, He had each of us in mind, and loved us.

Paul says “The life which I now life in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God.”  How can he do that?  Because he knows that Jesus loves him so much that He willingly endured the horrible rejection and shame and agonizing torture and death of the Cross in order to save him.  And so also for each one of us.  The Jesus who died for you and me is the Jesus who loved you and me.  That’s why He did it.

And if He loves you and me that much, then it is “safe” for us to relinquish our plans, dreams, demands, and all the rest that comes with our right to ourselves and a life the way we want it.  If I truly know that He loves me that much, then all my “stuff” is safe with Him.

In another place, Paul expresses this truth like this: “For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His” (Romans 6:5).  “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”  Because in my heart I have received Jesus as my Savior and Lord He now lives in me - by His Spirit living in my human spirit.  So, to the extent that I consciously accept the reality of my position in Christ - the “it is no longer I who live” part - to that extent I can experience the “Christ lives in me” part.  If I am accepting my dying in Him, I can experience His resurrection in me, and everything the Risen Christ is can be expressed in my life by His Spirit.

But, until I embrace the Cross, and my death in Him, I’m not going to experience the fullness of the Christian life.  The Cross comes before the Resurrection, dying to self comes before rising to new life.  The signing away of my rights to myself has to come before I can lay claim to all that Jesus won for me in His resurrection.  Until I’m willing to have my independence from God broken, and seek to live in true union with Jesus as His bondservant, I’m not going to prove to be a very good saint of God.  As Chambers puts it in another devotional on this same verse: “Has that breaking of my independence come?  All the rest is religious fraud.”

In this Easter season, may you and I so learn to live as bondservants of Jesus that we may be true sons and daughters of the Resurrection!