Wednesday, November 12, 2008

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Crucified, Resurrected, and Much More

Recently I wrote a challenge entitled, "Crucified, Now What?" (see the November 4/08 challenge), that grew out of a new understanding or a new apprehension of Galatians 2:20:

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).

We have been crucified with Christ and having identified with him in this way, we are dead.  Crucifixion inevitably leads to death.  But it didn't stop there for Jesus and it shouldn't stop there for us either.  There is something after crucifixion and death.  We must go forward.  Crucifixion.  Death.  A grave.  Then what?  Resurrection is what, as the Father speaks into Jesus and into us a life force that conquers death and the grave and anything else that can be thrown against it.  It is the life of Christ in you and me and it cannot do anything else but live!  It must live because it is an indestructible kind of life!  The life of God!  Eternal life!  Abundant life!

I have been crucified with Christ.  That is a theological statement of identification in what Jesus did for me so that I share in the benefits of what that did.  My sin was nailed to the cross.  The price of death for sin was paid, his death for my sin.  I am forgiven as a result.  Dead and buried with him, nevertheless I live, now living out the Christ life that has taken up residence in me.  And, it is a life that is by faith from first to last.  I asked then whether I allow him to make the implications of my resurrection in him and his life in me as real as the implications of the fact that I have died with him and been set free and forgiven from my sins?  What difference does it make in my actual here-and-now life today that I have been crucified with Christ and now live out his life by faith?

I'm still trying to fully understand this, so as I write today's challenge:  crucified, dead, buried, raised to life, I am still asking the question, "now what?"  There is resurrection and still there is some more, or rather because of that, there is definitely "much more."  What does that much more look like?  A. W. Tozer says that there are at least three things that distinguish the person who has been crucified with Christ and raised to newness of life:

1. They are facing only one direction.  And that direction is towards Jesus.  "Looking unto Jesus — with our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith . . ." (Hebrews 12:2).  Sorrow looks back.  Worry looks around.  Faith looks up.  And, when we look to Jesus there is only one direction that we can go:  forward.  Faith Forward!
    
   "Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God" (Colossians 3:1-3).
    
2. They can never turn back.  Jesus said that the one who puts his hand to the plow and then looks back is unfit for service in the kingdom of God (Luke 9:62).  To truly die with Christ and be raised with him to the new life, the new creation, is to experience something from which it would be ridiculous to turn back.  Paul says,
    
   "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 3:13-14).
    
3. They no longer have plans of their own.  This is probably the one that hits us hardest.  It certainly did for me.  This is simply recognizing that the Lord has plans for us and they are his plans (Jeremiah 29:11).  They are excellent plans.  Plans for good.  But the only way that I get to enjoy them is by laying down my own plans and embracing his.  What else can we do really?  We have died with Christ.  We no longer live.  The only thing that remains is the Christ life within me and he says, "Not my will, but Thine be done."  Is this not simply recognizing that, "There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death" (Proverbs 14:12), and that, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:9)? 
    
   "You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body" (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Will we ever fully explore or understand the mystery of our identification with Christ?  Probably not while we are on this earth.  It is immeasurably more than all we could ever ask or imagine.  Maybe it is enough to say simply that I will give my all for the One who has given all for me.  And in his hands my death and resurrection becomes the gateway to abundant living.  "I am come," Jesus said, "so that you might have life, and have it to the full" (John 10:10).  When he lives his resurrection life out through you and me, that abundant life is the only life that can result!

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