FACING THIS HOUR
Read John 12:27–33. When problems seem overwhelming, what do we say? “Father, save us from this hour”? If we answer honestly, we say like Christ, “For this cause came I unto this hour” (verse 27). Sometimes there are problems that you can’t avoid, because the whole destiny and purpose of your life is involved in what you face; and if you pray for deliverance from that, you’re asking, “Deliver me from the will of God.”
We have a destiny to fulfill, and sometimes it means the cross.
Satan will do everything that he can, and put every challenge before you, to get you to avoid the cross or the difficulty in your destiny.
Sometimes you are challenged, and the challenge comes as to who you are, your place, and anything else, just to get you to avoid the cross that God has for you to fulfill. Jesus didn’t do that; He backed away from anything that would be detrimental to fulfilling the will of God, the will of the Father.
Do you want to miss the cross? There are many who do not even see the significance of this hour, this walk, and what God is bringing forth upon the earth. They don’t understand it yet, and they still want to say, “Save me from this hour.” It is an hour of travail upon the whole earth—an hour of travail that has to be lived, that you have to walk through, that you have to face. The moment you say “yes” to that, you can say the same thing that Jesus said: Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. John 12:31, KJV.
The fire starts burning out every hindering thing—every little hidden source of a later defeat. Every deep thing of a wrong motivation, everything of the old nature, God will begin judging and uprooting. Jesus said, “Now judgment is upon this world; now the ruler of this world shall be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.” He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die (John 12:31–33). Satan will have no place in your life; and up out of this earth (you) comes the exaltation of Christ, and men are drawn to that. Isn’t that what you are asking?
THE DOUBLE CROSS?
Until the soul-flesh dies on the cross, it struggles to preserve its existence in its feeding on the flesh-life of another. The flesh can simulate a cross experience, but that counterfeit is deadly.
We still do not understand the deceptiveness of the soul-flesh. The soul-flesh comes on so diabolically clever that it looks as if the person has experienced years of the work of the cross; but if the work of the cross is not honestly done so that the soul-flesh dies, the person will come out of it with the soul-flesh alive and parading.
In some ways the soul-flesh looks more dedicated than a right spirit as far as appearances are concerned. It is very deadly, because it looks like the work of the cross has been done when in reality it is only a counterfeit appearance. This becomes a double cross to the Kingdom.
A phony work of the cross can look so good, but it is not the pure spirit that God is after. And let’s face it—we will be self-defeated if we are open to this terrible deception that looks like the work of the cross but is really a phony, counterfeit thing.
There is no better way to appropriate the work of the cross than to stand in His presence. Waiting on the Lord does more than just tune you into God; it also tunes you out of your dependence on other people.
The cross is a vicarious experience that our faith as disciples of Jesus Christ enters into. His cross and all that He suffered and won on it for us is becoming a real thing to us.
Have you had the work of the cross in your life? Perhaps you have had the sufferings of it; but is there any murmuring, bitterness, complaining, or position-seeking still in your heart? Those are all the evidences that the soul-flesh is still alive. If that is the case, then you may have been put on the cross and you hung there and suffered; but you never really died. And while the soul-flesh has the least bit of life, it has hope of still dominating and defeating what God wants in your spirit. That soul-flesh is enmity against God; it isn’t subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be (Romans 8:7–8).
SHRINKING INTO A GREATER PLACE
Self-esteem is the fat on your spirit. The self-life that you nurture along and build up, that ego thing, is unhealthy.
The soul life has to shrink until the Lord is everything.
This walk does not lead to the exaltation of any flesh; it leads to the crucifixion of the flesh. Crucify the old nature. Put it to death. Stomp on it. Mortify it. Bring it down in every way, so that He will be everything.
THE ENEMY WITHIN
The victory in which we walk is the victory of Christ, won at the cross. Do not think of the cross merely as an instrument of His torture and humiliation, but as the area of conflict where the victory of the Lord was wrought.
The cross is an instrument of Christ’s victory and of His authority and rule over the hearts of men.
How can we be instruments of the Lord’s ultimate victory if anything within us is warring against the cross and the processes of grace that operate through it? The victory was won by Christ on His cross; Colossians 2:15 tells us that He made an open show of principalities and powers, triumphing over them in His cross. What a beautiful thing He did. We must submit to that cross.
Satan doesn’t matter—he is going to be destroyed anyway—but your carnal mind can stop the process of grace and make you an enemy of the cross of Christ.
The carnal mind remains the one thing which can rise up and defeat the plan of God. We can’t give way to foes within our old nature—moods and dispositions, temper, the lust of the flesh. They must be brought to the cross.
Christ’s victory on the cross is not some mystical hocuspocus. Not only do you identify yourself with the cross, but you must also experience it. Be prepared; you will die or you will become an enemy of the cross of Christ.
As you walk in the Spirit, Christ’s cross and the victory He won on it will become a real, living experience.
Christ’s victory must be manifested in a people who willingly submit first to the victory of His cross being worked within them.
ARE YOU A CROSS-DODGER?
The vicious soul-flesh nature has many tactics to evade the work of the cross. Philippians 3:18 identifies those who choose to walk on that level as enemies of the cross although they are professing Christians. The enemies of the Kingdom are the enemies of the cross.
We have not understood the depth of this work of the cross. You don’t go up to a cross and die on it without saying, Oh God, my God why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Even Jesus Christ Himself could not approach the work of the cross without it looking just like the Father had forsaken Him.
The work of the cross is being completed by an Isaac experience. We have to go through an experience, like Abraham, in which we take an Isaac—with all the promises over him—and put him totally in the Lord’s hands, to live or to die; then God comes back and He fulfills everything that He said over Isaac (Genesis 22:1–18).
God has to say, “Abraham, I promised you all this. Now you put a knife in it.” This Isaac principle is coming forth as never before. Everything has to die of your expectations, or your soul-flesh is not being crucified with its affections and its lusts (Galatians 5:24). Otherwise you have a counterfeit crucifixion and you become an enemy of the cross (Philippians 3:18).
The enemies of the cross will phony this thing: “Oh, I went through it—hallelujah!” Yet the flesh is more alive than ever; it comes out smelling like a rose: “Look how I suffered.” However, the only way you can tell the true work of the cross from the false is, “Did they die?”
You have to take a thing of promise, something that God has done and lay it on the altar, because you’re expecting a fulfillment on a level that has to die. This brings the real, final work of the cross. When you get to the place where nothing is left but pure spirit, then things start coming alive and you begin to find that promises and Words from God begin to revive.
The ulterior motivation of the soul has to be faced, because you have to die. You cannot hang on to your soul-life in the name of the promises and the provisions and the prophecies that God gave.
Out of this time before the Lord, we began to realize that soulish people dodge the cross. They dodge it. They are not of us because they are not submitting to the work of the cross.
For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. Philippians 3:18–19.
Those who dodge the cross won’t let the flesh die so that there can be a takeover by God as He penetrates into our soul and physical being. The Spirit that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead is going to make alive these mortal bodies (Romans 8:11), but only after we have experienced the work of the cross.
We’re going to submit ourselves to the work of the cross; and once that happens, the wicked one will touch us not (I John 5:18)
The counterpart to this is the phony, counterfeit crucifixion that has paraded among us. I don’t know the percentages, but there are people out there who are talking about devastation and what they went through, but they’re still alive! The cross-dodgers never died.
You will only get from God in that experience what you want. If you want to keep the soul-flesh alive, that’s what is going to stay alive. The Word says, “Reckon yourselves (dead to sin but alive to God” (Romans 6:11). When it says reckon, that’s a strong word. You declare it, absolutely, “This is the way it’s going to be!” You have to be that violent about it, because we know what a lying thing that soul-flesh is.
The soul nature is a killer; and because it’s a killer, it refuses to die. Self-preservation is really a killer instinct. You’ll even commit suicide to preserve self. Remember that Judas chose a rope instead of a cross.
If it’s a counterfeit crucifixion, you see to it that you build a monument to yourself and that you’re not really dead! You say, “See what I went through.” It’s all self—self-pity, self-preservation, self-condemnation—name it!
If you have really experienced the cross, you don’t want to write a book about it. You’re not trying to solicit sympathy for yourself.
Unless the cross is a glory, it wasn’t a cross. And Paul says, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14) He was talking about glorying in it; and if the cross isn’t a glory to you, it never happened.
If you summarize the soul-flesh, you would say this: It will fight to keep alive; and if it can’t keep alive, it will try to die without facing death.
You cannot revert to legalism and accomplish the work of the cross, because the work of the cross in simple definition is an appropriation of grace—grace to change.
I think we’re going to be rather surprised at the way we handle problems. Start working with these people. Start laying right before them the will of God: the cross. They’re going to cling to it, or they’re going to run from it.
WITNESSES
How we repent, Lord, of our selfishness, of the arrogance of our spirits, of that conceit which has refused to see any horizon beyond our own sight, or any destiny beyond that which is of our own fulfillment. O God, put to the cross the arrogance of our flesh and help us to submit our hearts to You.
THE FLESHLY WALK
Philippians 3:18–19: For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.
This walk is not to be walked on a human level; it is to be walked on a spiritual level, a divine level. It doesn’t work otherwise. These ones who do differently are enemies of the cross.
The cross was the instrument on which Christ died. The cross is an instrument of death; and unless you are accepting your cross in Christ Jesus for the old flesh to die on it, you don’t know what the cross is. You’re an enemy of the cross.
No man ever picked up his cross except to die on it.
If we’re an enemy of the cross and we sow to the flesh, the end is destruction.
We crucify the old flesh and think about the victory. Don’t be an enemy of the cross—face it.
THE CROSS-WORK PUZZLE
Whenever a commission is given anyone in the work of the Kingdom there should also be a careful check on the commissioned person. Has he submitted to and experienced the work of the cross? Charges and commissions are fulfilled in the crucified ones.
There will be no successful commissions without a successful crucifixion of the soul-flesh. Wouldn’t you call it “doing your homework”?
When you give a person a charge, you should also give him a cross and a handful of nails and say, “Get the work done. Let’s end this thing.”
You’re going to have to cling to the Word and submit to the cross, or the Word will never be fulfilled in your life. It’s not enough to get a Word; you have to die on the Word.
Joseph got a Word from God; and until the Word of the Lord came to pass, it tried him (Psalm 105:19). The Word is first a cross before it becomes a throne. You die on the Word that you get.
DESCEND—ASCEND—LOVE
There has to be a descension if we begin to walk feeling adequate for anything. We may think that because of our few abilities we can walk with God. Then we watch God slowly apply the cross to us, putting us through a death and a burial. When we feel we will never do anything, then the Lord begins to revive us, and we begin to ascend. First the work of the cross takes place—we descend, and then we ascend.
Dying (the work of the cross) and coming into the resurrection life as Christ did is something we follow also. If He descended into the lower parts of the earth and ascended far above all heavens, leading captivity captive (Ephesians 4:8–10), then that spiritual process must become real in our minds and hearts. We have to experience it.
Sometimes you may feel that you have done this and it did not work for you. You thought the flesh was dead, but it is not dead. Reckon it dead, because what you believe in your mind is going to be the fact that presents itself in your life. And if you believe with all your heart that the old flesh is crucified with Christ, and you accept that as a valid experience of identification with Him, it will work in your life.
Suppose you want the ways of the world to drop off: there are things to get rid of and things to rise into. How do you do it? It is by the cross that you come down, and it is by His resurrection that you come up. You have to go through both processes. Someone who has had bitter experiences, without the work of the cross in his life, is a person who has never risen very high in the Lord. If you become an enemy of the cross of Christ, you will also fail to walk in the resurrection life of Christ and to glorify Him in your life.
This is important to grasp. In other words, you come to the place where you hate the restrictions, the relationships, the appetites, and the desires of the old nature so much that you want them crucified. And how do you know that you want them dead? If you would rather be dead, literally, than to live in those things, then you have reached that desire which God works in a man so that the cross can be accomplished in his life.
He descended; then He ascended, and He gave gifts (Ephesians 4:8). And if we want to move into the grace of God, into the gifts and the ministries of the Spirit, we have to go the same route. The route is the death to our lives by the cross, and then we ascend; we aspire.
Do not dodge the cross. It is the instrument that brings about the death of everything that hinders you from moving more fully into the life of Jesus Christ. It is not far off or vague; it is very real. Apply it to your own spirit. By the cross we descend; by His resurrection life we ascend. Then we are partakers of His grace and we begin to move and flow in love to one another.
WE BLEED BEFORE WE BLESS
In the spirit world you don’t find anything of authority where you’ve not seen death. You’ll find no resurrection, you’ll find no Kingdom, where there hasn’t been a dying. If you find the greatest authority coming through, you hear the Apostle Paul say, Always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you. II Corinthians 4:10–12.
There can be no authority without the work of the cross taking place in an individual’s life. There can be no King of kings and Lord of lords, there can be no Lion of the tribe of Judah, unless you first see the Lamb that’s been slain (Revelation 5:6). He is the One who has entered into the suffering, the sacrificial giving of Himself completely and totally; if you don’t see that you don’t see the authority. It was the resurrected Christ who stood before His disciples and said, “All authority is given to Me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:19).
When you’re identified with Christ’s cross, you face it; that body of sin will be done away with. It’s a real, living experience that happens to you. It’s more than just assuming it by faith. It becomes a process. It becomes a literal experience. It becomes something that you claim and possess by faith.
The enemies of the cross in Paul’s day walked as Christians, but they were illegitimate children because they followed the things of the world. They were enemies of the cross of Christ because they wouldn’t die on it. They wouldn’t meet it as an instrument of death to the old nature.
WHAT BELIEVERS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THESE TIMES
Anytime someone can furnish a religion without a cross, people will buy it. They will pay anything to avoid the cross experience; they do not want that.
GALATIANS: THE GOSPEL OF THE CROSS
The work of the cross is the shortest way into the righteousness of God, and it’s the only way. In the book of Galatians, Paul was talking about several groups which fell into the fallacy of wanting to make Jews out of every Christian; and so they made the rite of circumcision almost an initiation rite into the Church, which cannot be. Paul said, “If you’re circumcised, then Christ is of no avail to you (Galatians 5:2).
We find that many people are willing to go the route of superficial, religious circumcision rather than face the cross of Christ, because their soul-flesh does not want to be crucified. It does not want to die or to end its domination of that whole life.
Circumcision was introduced because it was a way of giving an initiation rite into the Church which would be without reproach. And Paul says, “You can’t follow that line because you can’t dodge the cross.” You’ve got to face the cross. The experience of the cross is the way that you come into righteousness. There will be no righteousness in you but by the change in which you die out to what you are and come alive to what Christ wants to make you. That becomes the whole key of it.
You are not going to become righteous by the discipline of your soul-flesh; instead, you will become righteous by the crucifixion of it and the impartation of righteousness through Christ. That is the only way you’re going to change. When you seek first the Kingdom and His righteousness (Matthew 6:33), you do not seek it by disciplining your actions and your behavior; you seek it by faith.
Of what value is the teaching in the book of Galatians on the cross? The cross does not become a little piece of metal hanging on a gold chain around your neck. The cross does not become something that you eulogize; instead, it becomes a personal experience in your life.
You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? Galatians 3:1. He asked, “Did somebody bewitch you? You saw Christ crucified among you.” Whether they had a literal vision of Christ on the cross or not isn’t important, but we know that the cross of Christ had been presented to the Galatians in a very real manner. It was their refusal to experience it that concerned Paul.
Anybody can say, “Well, I believe in the cross of Jesus Christ; He died for my sins.” But you have got to go further than that. You’ve got to see that by your participation in that work of the cross in your life, you become a partaker. Participate and partake of the cross.
The true sons do not submit to the legalism of circumcision, but they do embrace the cross experience. Galatians 5:24; Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
There is a certain initiative that we have in the work of the cross. Have you ever faced that? One by one these things come up and you say “I’m going to nail that to the cross, too. There is no reason why I should be troubled with this passion or this desire that troubles me. There is no reason why I should be defeated by it. By faith I can nail it to the cross and appropriate Christ’s provision for that, too.” Every time you find something wrong in your spirit or in your old soul-flesh, crucify it. Crucify it; it can be done.
The work of the cross does a lot for you. It works a mutual death: You die to the world, and the world dies to you. Paul said, “If there’s going to be anything to glory over, that is it” (Galatians 6:14). I don’t want to glory in anything that I am or anything I can do or anything that I have done. I don’t want to rest my case, “Lord, look at how faithful I’ve been,” because God is the only One who can evaluate that. I just want to glory in the cross, because everything that I am and everything that I’ve ever done and everything that I ever will do is a result of the miracle of that cross.
THE CROSS AND THE CARE THAT WE SHARE
Colossians 1:24 says, Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body (which is the church) in filling up that which is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.
Why did Paul say that? Didn’t Christ die for us? Didn’t He go to the cross for us? Yes, but the whole of the New Testament is constantly talking about the work of the cross. “Oh,” you say, “I’ve got to go through it. I’m going through the work of the cross; and after I suffer a little more and I die out to a few things of the flesh, then I’m going to be all right.” I think that you misunderstand the work of the cross that Paul was talking about.
We understand the suffering and the work of the cross for ourselves as individuals, but now we begin to understand the deeper work of the cross in each of us for our brother. I’m suffering for you. I’ll go to the cross for you.
That’s the true thing of the cross, because doesn’t the Word say that Jesus suffered for us? He didn’t go to the cross for Himself—although it does say in Hebrews, “That though He were a son, yet He learned obedience through the things that He suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). There was a realm of obedience that Christ entered into, not because He was a rebel in doing the will of the Father, but so that He could become completely obedient and identified with us.
When you go through the work of the cross you’ll suffer many things, but they’ll bring you to the place where you’ll be completely obedient to your role of being a bondservant to the Body of Christ—where you’re willing to serve the Body and give your whole life for it. You’re not going through this work of the cross so you can say, “Now I’m going to have a ministry. I’m going to be a big prophet of God; I’m going to do something.” You go through the work of the cross so you can die a little more, and so you can serve your brother a little more.
You’re going through the work of the cross for your brother’s sake.
THE PROBLEMS OF PROPHETS
God must free His prophets and reverse the downward pull of their old natures. It is the cross experience that accomplishes this.
Now, the sons of the prophets said to Elisha, “Behold now, the place before you where we are living is too limited for us. Please let us go to the Jordon, and each of us take from there a beam, and let us make a place there for ourselves where we may live. So he said, “Go.” Then one said, “Please be willing to go with your servants.” And he answered, “I shall go.” So he went with them; and when they came to the Jordan, they cut down trees. But as one was felling a beam, the axe head fell into the water; and he cried out and said, “Alas, my master! For it was borrowed”. Then the man of God said, “Where did it fall? And when he showed him the place, he cut off a stick, and threw it in there, and made the iron float. And he said, “Take it up for yourself.” So he put out his hand and took it. II Kings 6:1–7.
If there is going to be a miracle that reverses the downward pull of our old natures, it will come because the cross of Christ is thrown into our lives. At Marah the waters in the wilderness were so bitter that Moses had to cut down a tree and throw it into the waters in order to heal them (Exodus 15:23–26). This symbolizes the work of the cross in our lives.
What can keep you from becoming so discouraged with yourself that you go into a valley of defeat? Can anything change that force? Yes, the work of the cross. God wants to defy gravity for you and reverse it, so that instead of a downward pull in your nature, there will be an upward pull.
Instead of your being defeated by the harassment and futility of circumstances, the iron will float, and your desire for expansion and for doing the will of God can be fulfilled. This will happen through the work of the cross in your life.
God will be with you and help you only if you submit to the work of the cross being done in your life. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Galatians 5:24. You come to an end of the flesh because you are believing for God to give you that deep experience of the work of the cross in your life. But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Galatians 6:14. Paul is speaking of a mutual death.
We must be righteous before God and come to live in the Spirit. We must have a mutual crucifixion. The world is crucified to us, and we are crucified to the world. We look at the world, and it is dead to us, and we are dead to it.
Your crucifixion is not just an identification with Christ, but it is an identical experience with Christ.
It is the Christian who will determine the outcome of his life by the way he believes and the way he experiences the cross in his life.
IT STARTED IN EDEN
When Christ came right up to the hour, those around Him were overwhelmed with a heaviness. Peter was one of them. He had a Word, a matter of minutes or hours before, “Peter, I’ve prayed for you, for the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41; Luke 22:31–32). Right there Christ was trying to give the key of how people get caught in this thing. Even when Peter said, “I’ll die with You; I’ll never deny You,” Jesus said, “Three times you’ll do it” (Matthew 26:33–35; Luke 22:33–34). That was just before the cross, and just after the cross that thing was taken care of and Peter never did fall again. I’m wondering if we can’t say something here. “Lord, at the cross of Christ, we commit our flesh to that cross—all the flesh and its affections. We’re never going to see ourselves put in jeopardy for we have determined, born of the Spirit, that we’re going to live by the Spirit.”
I’m going to believe for this work of the cross—for it to be done finally, irrevocably. Now, you say, “Suppose it’s not.” I believe it is done so much that if there’s any evidence that it is not, God will show us. We don’t have to worry about it. God will help us again in our faith to deal with it.
WE’RE IN HIS FAMILY NOW
The man Christ Jesus, the Son of the living God, who was so blessed—what do we do with Him in order that the fellows who were excluded everywhere could suddenly be included in God’s plan? Well, it’s a matter of transference. We’ll take the curse that’s upon those who could not keep the Law and we’ll put it on Him upon whom all the covenants and all the blessings rest, and we’ll make Him a curse. (Galatians 3:10; Deuteronomy 21:23; Galatians 3:13).
Don’t get the idea that Christ’s death was unjust. It was absolutely righteous and just that Jesus Christ should suffer as He did and die, because the Father had granted Him to be so identified with you that your guilt was really His and He had to die for it. There couldn’t be any other way.
Now if He had to die for that guilt, for you, for your sin, and if He had to take the place of your accursedness and your estrangement and your alienation from God, and if all of that had to be heaped upon Him as He hung on a cross, then it was just and right that the Father should turn away from such a wicked thing, such an abominable thing. God turned away, and in the hour of His death Christ cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). It had to be that thorough and that complete, for it was not a sham; it was a real thing.
I have been crucified with Christ. I died with Him (Galatians 2:20). He identified Himself with my curse, and I’m identified with that death that He went through and thereby I’m completely vindicated; I’m righteous.
If you believe that Christ took your place on the cross, then you must believe that you take His place standing before God. As many as are in Christ, they are the seed of Abraham, and heirs according to the promise, (Galatians 3:29). Everything that God promised Abraham and everything that God ever promised David and everything that ever centered on Jesus Christ now is mine. It’s a matter of substitution. He took my guilt that I might take His righteousness. He took my nature, condemned and lost as it was, in order that I could actually partake of His nature. It’s a complete exchange. You have a relationship together.
The blood of Christ makes a thicker bond than any racial relationship. It’s the blood of Christ that has made us one.
As He laid down His life for us, so also we ought to lay down our life for our brother (I John 3:16).
OUR DELIVERANCE, OUR DEDICATION, OUR DESTINY
The carnal Christian is an enemy of the cross of Christ (Philippians 3:18). The cross of Christ is the means by which, through identification, we become crucified with Christ and we die. When we are in Christ, we crucify the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof (Galatians 5:24).
To be an enemy of the cross of Christ means that you refuse to experience it yourself. You may wear a chain around your neck, or go to church. You may be honoring the cross in every way except in the way that God said to honor it, and that is this: 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 6:14 KJV. These enemies of the cross are the ones who refuse to face the cross of Christ in its tremendous work in their life. Oh, let the work of the cross be done in every one of us! He died in order that we can enter into being dead to the world, dead to the flesh.
That work of the cross and the authority of it is to extend even to the place where this whole body, that humble state of our body, is to be brought into conformity to the body of His glory (Philippians 3:21). We’re going to have at body just like He has. It isn’t just to get rid of a few instincts and drives that tend to push you toward sin; the ultimate goal is not that negative. The goal is a very positive thing, that our bodies are going to be just like His body.
Putting things to the cross is half the battle. The other half is appropriating the risen Lord to fill in your nature that which was faulty before.
SONS, SONS, SONS, NOT PIGS, PIGS, PIGS!
What is the real message of the cross? “Oh, I have to go through the sufferings for the work of the cross.” You don’t understand. The work of the cross and what Christ did in the cross is not understood by people. The stumbling block of the cross is something I’d like to define for you. The cross was an instrument by which one Man suffered for all of us, and the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). It involved a suffering that He had to go through vicariously on our behalf. One Man suffered for the sins of another, in order that He could see those sins forgiven and could put that man in a place where, without condemnation, He could minister life from God to him, that he could become a new creature.
It’s the work of His cross in you. Don’t you ever get the idea that it’s your cross, or you will go back into a legalistic trip: “Well, Christ died and now I have to go and die.” No, you have to appropriate His death. The work of the cross, then, is the pressure God puts on you so that you won’t stop short of going right on to the perfection that He provided for you.
THE JOURNEY FROM YESTERDAY TO TOMORROW
We read in the Scriptures that death is working in us (I Corinthians 15:31). That is true, because in the experience that we have, we are actually moving in two directions: We are believing for crucifixion and for creation. We are believing that death has to work in us. We are constantly being delivered over to death, for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh (II Corinthians 4:11). We believe that the history of Jesus has to be real. We have to identify with His death so that there can now be a death working within us. Unless there is a death working in us, a dying out because of the crucifixion of Christ working in us, there is no reality in this at all. We go along, singing in the Spirit, having a wonderful time in worship; but one day we wake up to the fact that the self-life is alive, and the walk with God is not working.
You have to believe that the lust of the flesh can die. You must believe that greed and selfishness can die. You must believe that the whole carnal way of human thinking can die. You do not reach out with a supreme confidence that you can accomplish something by the discipline of the flesh but you reach back to what Jesus was and what He did, and you literally believe that the Holy Spirit makes that alive in your life now.
We are carrying in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ, in order that the life of Christ can be manifested in us. There can be no new creation without the crucifixion. Unless there is the dying of the flesh-life, there cannot be the creation of the Christ-life and the nature coming forth in us. We must never forget this, lest we begin to reach in and try to discipline and work things out—becoming a great movement, but failing completely. It is all based upon this death and life from the past working in us, as well as the future being made real to us.
The Holy Spirit comes and gives us all the truth. What is the truth? The Holy Spirit reveals to us the truth about the Lord Jesus Christ—how He suffered, how He died, how He rose again, how the Father committed all things into His hand. The Holy Spirit reveals His commission, His mighty victory and exaltation. We have nothing until we see that.
OUR RIGHT RELATIONSHIP TO HIM
It’s one thing to submit to the work of the cross; it’s another thing to love it and want it—to want it desperately, to want it above everything else in your life.
It’s one thing to just be tolerant of this stripping off of the flesh as far as the teaching is concerned. It’s another thing to come until you just demand that it be the thing that happens in your life.
There’s a loneliness in a man who has the work of the cross being done in his life.
There’s a loneliness in the man who is determined to lose individuality and become just a member submerged in the Body: just an extension of Christ in the earth.
I want to love the loneliness of the work of the cross. I want to love the loneliness of the loss of individuality. I want to love the loneliness of the loss of any personal pursuit in my life. I want to yearn for the day that the ego trip is thoroughly dead, that there is nothing grabbing, nothing grasping, nothing wanting anything save only His glory alone. We have to want that.
“FROM DEATH INTO LIFE”—JOHN 5:24
Because we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have bypassed judgment. Do you know that there is no judgment day for us? At the cross Christ died for our sins and we have accepted it. What about those who haven’t accepted Christ as their Savior? They’ve got their day awaiting them. They’ll get their day in court. They’ll face God in answer for all their sin because they did not accept Christ who came and was judged for their sin.
Did Christ come and take our place at the cross? Did He face the judgment for us or not? He did. And we believe upon Him. We’ve passed from death into life and we’ll not come into judgment because we have believed. This is not just a mental assent; it is a believing in it with all your heart. We live by that. “Lord, You’ve forgiven me; You’ve cleansed me.”
The cross of Jesus Christ actually was a judgment. Why else would He have to die for our sins? His was a pure life; He was called the Lamb of God without spot or blemish.
He died for a specific purpose. Gethsemane: “For this hour came I unto the world” (John 12:27). He was there to die for a reason—a purpose. He was dying in the place of a sinner.
DIE A LITTLE-LIVE A LOT
The way of the cross for the flesh will lead it to the stage where it’s going to be lifted up into the resurrection life of Jesus. Your bodies are going through the same experience that Christ went through. His physical body was crucified, buried, and, on the third day, resurrected for our benefit, so that we can go through a mystical experience which is reality itself.
We go through a period where we can identify with the cross, and this flesh, too, dies-not literally, inasmuch as we do not relinquish this mortal existence, but it goes through the work of the cross just the same in a vicarious appropriation of that death. We become just as dead as if we had died physically. And because we die, there is a little period of burial, and then we are resurrected (Hosea 6:1–2).
We go through the deep work of the cross and we die like Jesus died. We are buried like Jesus, and then we begin to come alive. This mortal body begins to take on life because the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead begins to reach in and raise us up from the dead (Romans 8:11).
To go into the marriage supper of the Kingdom, you must be filled with life. You have to go through the working of the cross. We have to suffer a little in order to live a lot. Those who suffer with Him will reign with Him (II Timothy 2:12).
Authority cannot come as long as sin is reigning in this mortal flesh! The work of the cross has to be done. The identification with the suffering of Christ has to be made in our life. Identified with Him, we have to come into that newness of life. Our motivation is pure. Then we are sons!
YE MUST ALL FACE THE CROSS TOGETHER
The Lord shall set before thee the way that shall lead to glory, and thou shalt discover there a cross (Matthew 16:24–25). It shall be the hour that thy God shall lay before thee a cross, and thou shalt lift it upon thine own shoulder, and thou shalt begin to climb with it, knowing that shortly thou art to die thereon. It shall be the end of that which thou hast loved, and that which thou hast been ambitious for.
Dost thou not know that His body or His life bringeth death unto the flesh and its desires, its ways? (Galatians 5:24.) Shall not the old man be crucified; and shall not the desires of the way of the flesh be brought to nothing so that He might come forth, so that He might reign in thy heart and sit upon the throne of thy heart and lead thee and speak to thee His will for thy life?
He shall prepare thy heart by a work of the cross, that thou mayest be able to walk in the things that are set before thee. Knowest thou that thy God would cause thee to walk in many things were it not that He knew that thy heart would be puffed up in pride and ye would stumble and fall? But when thou hast faced the cross together, behold, when thou hast entered into the reproach of thy flesh and thou hast found the grace of God great upon thy soul, then thou shalt no longer be tempted to walk as an individual, but ye shall walk together as one Body.
Shall the Lord ask one thing of him that goeth into the warfare, and not ask the same thing of those that stay at home? For ye shall enter into the same consecration. “Ye shall all face the cross together,” saith the Lord. There shall be like surrender in thy heart unto the Lord, and a willingness to walk with the Lord at any price. This shall not be required of some that go forth while the rest of thee shall not pay the same price. For the Lord shall raise up a Body that is quick to do His will. He shall cause every one of thee to face the cross together, that there shall be a willingness to go forth in the name of the Lord. There shall not be one standard for him that goeth with the message, and another standard for him that stayeth home. If ye shall all share in the reward together, it shall be because thou hast yielded thine all unto the Lord as one man.
A LONELY BIRD ON THE ROOF
Psalm 102 reveals the heart of man who felt isolated and alone. He was afflicted, and he poured out his soul to the Lord, saying, I lie awake, I have become like a lonely bird on a housetop. Verse 7.
Three Scriptures speak of the time Jesus faced alone, before and during His crucifixion: John 16:32. Jesus prepared His disciples for His separating from them. “Behold, an hour is coming, and has already come, for you to be scattered, each to his own home, and to leave Me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me.” Mark 14:50 tells what Jesus’ disciples did when He was taken captive: And they all left Him and fled.
Matthew 27:45–46 is a powerful Scripture which speaks of that last hour of the crucifixion. Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?”
Everyone forsook Christ, which means that in Christ the time will come when we will see everyone standing together and not forsaking each other. Because the Father turned His back on Him, we can be in a place where the Father never turns His back on us. The redemptive work of Christ has made it possible for us to see the oppression of the satanic spirit of isolation come to an end. Isolation is broken by the redemptive blessings of the Lord. Not one of us has to be a lonely bird on a housetop. We can appropriate blessings from one another and absolutely refuse to be cut off from one another.
THE LITTLE FLOCK AND THE BABES
Philippians 2:8–9: And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him …
See, you can’t get any lower than that: “I’ll be a bondservant; I’11 die; and when the work of the cross is all finished, I will say, ‘Into Thy hand, Father, I commend my spirit.’ ” The Father did not permit Him to be defeated. He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand; and I can see that if we suffer with Him, we’ll reign with Him (II Timothy 2:12).
“Oh,” you say, “I’m going through so much. It’s just agony.” Then you’re not dead yet. You should have a dedication to die. You should have a dedication to littleness. It’s the opposite of ambition.
I’M JUST DYING, TO LIVE
You come to the place where even self-preservation has to be uprooted as a prevailing instinct in your life. The desire to succeed, to have possessions and security, has to be destroyed. You have to take up your cross. It’s an instrument of death. You take it upon your shoulders to mount up whatever hill the Lord chooses—to make an exhibit out of you in your death, in your humiliation, in that which brings the flesh down to its end.
Discipleship is so total in the giving of yourself. How do you serve Him unless you take up your cross? That means you not only die on it, but a lot of relationships die on the level they are on, only to be resurrected in a purity on another level.
There is no way to encourage yourself except to set your will to take up the cross and to die on it.
God will keep dealing with you until you take up that cross and you start to die. Die to self-seeking, and the ego trip is going to end; and with it we will hit the spot where we will ask God for anything and He’ll give it to us—there will be no limit to what our faith can appropriate (Matthew 21:21–22 John 14:13–14). At the present time it’s still the old flesh that’s shorting out the full current. We’re going to get that flow.
Would you like to bypass the death process? Then be a friend to the cross process—not an enemy of it.
The unlimited supply source of His life to us depends on us laying this life down.
Don’t concentrate on how much you want to die but on how much you want to live. That becomes the motivation for dying.
If you try to keep the old flesh alive, you’re going to die spiritually.
Become a friend of the cross. Enter into discipleship with all your heart.
WHAT IS HE WORTH?
The work of the cross that He is doing in us is not to convince you that God is going to do something special for you. The work of the cross is done because God is going to do something special through you.
Genesis 15:10–11: Then he brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds. And the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, and Abram drove them away.
Every time someone is going through the work of the cross, you can see the vultures circling over him. It’s a work of death that is being done upon his life. Have you been dying a little bit lately? Look up-the vultures are there. They’re trying to prevent you from becoming that living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto Him (Romans 12:1). The devil is not going to take away what we give to God.
THE CROSS AND THE CROWN, PART I
The work of the cross is not deadly until you begin to cry, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46.)
You have to come to the place where you understand the loneliness of the cross. I don’t think that everybody forsakes you; it just looks that way.
It has to become a real thing to you. You have to come to the place where you accept relationships and communication by faith.
The oneness is based upon a Word from God rather than anything else. The war is over the Word. What has God said?
It really is the work of the cross that brings us into the Kingdom. You have to come to the end of flesh in order that you see what is the spirit. We’re going to come to the place where we know one another after the spirit and not after the flesh.
Hosea 6:1–3: “Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us. but He will heal us.. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn, and He will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” Rejoice that you’re coming to the place that you’re going to live in His sight
We’re going to choose the cross!
FRIEND, YOU SLAY ME
A Judas can come along and betray everybody—and we know that Jesus said He was given into the hands of sinners—but remember that the bottom line was that the cross was initiated by the Heavenly Father. God had willed it.
The hardest way to die is when the nails are driven in by one whom you love the most. But the next hardest thing is to know that you’re the one who is driving nails in the hands of the one you love the most. That hurts too. In fact, I think that it hurts a little worse sometimes to watch how the Lord uses you as an agent to bring forth the work of the cross in one that you love the most.
I don’t believe the marriages that are coming forth now are principally for sexual fulfillment or to produce families only. The principal purpose is that two people are raised up to perfect each other by executing and destroying the flesh of the other, by nailing it to the cross.
You can’t love another person unless you’re dedicated to bring forth Christ in him; and the way Christ comes forth is through crucifixion.
I love you enough to be the agent of God to crucify everything in you that stands in the way of the perfect will of God. But it goes the other way around, too. I love you enough to submit to you to be the agent of God to crucify everything in me that stands in the way of the perfect will of God.
Relationships are designed so that as Christ comes forth in one another, it has that work of crucifixion and resurrection life.
I’m interested in a brother who can help me into His sufferings that I might reign with Him, who will give me the Word that will be an instrument of the cross of Christ in my life so that the crown can follow.
The final work of the cross is going to be worked through those who love us the most, only if we’re submissive to it. Say to your brother and to your sister, “Pierce me; pierce my side. Make me bleed, because as I go through the work of the cross, that rib will create you. For I know that I can never be to you and that you will never be to me anything short of the perfect will of God.” And that is only wrought by the demonstration that God works upon each of us through the other.
The cross is a lonely experience; but it is inflicted upon us in the will of the Father, so let’s submit to it.
The father of the faithful could never really inherit the promises for generations to come until he was willing to put a knife in his own son (Genesis 22:1–18).
PRINCIPLES VS. PRINCIPALITIES
A key to an experience of the cross and not failing is to know the difference between earnestly desiring the gifts and ambitiously seeking the ministry. The difference is that we seek to be a channel, and do not seek after a position. It’s the work of the cross that makes you a channel. A ministry is not based on worthiness, but on becoming a channel for the divine grace from God to flow to the whole Body.
Christ set His ministry at the cross. It is a principle—if it came from the Father, it must go back to the Father. Christ reigns when everything is made a footstool for His feet then He gives it all back to the Father (I Corinthians 15:24–25).
THE PROGRESS IN THE KINGDOM
No one knows what Christ went through to purchase our redemption. On the cross He said, “It is finished” (John 19:30). No one needs to go again and die on a cross for his salvation; it is a free gift from God (Romans 5:15; 6:23).
But we still look back and remember the sufferings of Jesus Christ, and we say, “How we thank God that He was so faithful. He died for us. He suffered for us, but by His stripes we are healed Isaiah 53:5). A door of grace has been opened to us.” Now as Christ comes forth in the apostolic ministries, there is a real work of the cross that is done in them; there is much suffering. Few of us can evaluate the price. Blessed is the man in this day who does not rebel against a man in his sufferings, but says, “This man suffers for me so that the grace of God can be opened to me and that I might flow into it.”
“I WON’T BE A SAD SACK”
Your attitude should be that of believing that God is going to meet you, and that it is not going to be a sad or a heavy experience. It will be good—even though it may just about ruin you, and you will probably be crucified in the process as a lot of the old man dies. That should happen anyway, but God wants a difference in your attitude. As you are burying the old man, He does not want you to look over into the grave and weep over him. He wants you to hit him in the face with a spade, rejoicing that the rascal is dead.
Do not complain that it will be the death of you. This is the purpose—that you be crucified and come forth in newness of life (II Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 2:20). Your problems and difficulties are for your good. Are you going to let God work out His will through them? Or will you perversely sit around and cry because of what the Lord has done? After He has circumcised your heart, will you sit around and cry about it hurting? Do not stop with circumcisions go on to crucifixion. Then it stops hurting! After you have suffered awhile, the Lord will establish, strengthen, and settle you (I Peter 5:10). Open your heart and start repenting over the lack of faith and joy, and determine to be joyful.
THE BITTER HAVEN’T LEARNED YET
The Lord has put us through the work of the cross; and a lot of you have felt, “I’ve been chopped to pieces, but there still seems to be a lot of the old nature wiggling around.” I’ve got news for you—you’re dead but you don’t know it yet. It’s out of these days of devastation that the resurrection life is going to come.
There was no way for us to be anything else than co-conspirators in the crucifixion of one another. God intended it to be that way.
I’m just saying that if you start chalking up grievances and reasons for bitterness, you’ll find them. Anyone who is bitter did not learn from God what He intended for you to learn when He put you through all those things.
WILL WE BE RELIGIOUS OR RIGHTEOUS?
If you want to be a pharisee, get some circumcision going. Why? Because then you won’t be persecuted for the cross (Galatians 5:3, 11). You won’t have to face devastation. You will have an appearance of humility that is entirely a facade, and you won’t be persecuted anymore.
Go ahead—face the cross, and know that the Cross of Jesus Christ was the place where the price was paid for your sins, for your eternal salvation. But know also that it’s an experience to you. It is a work of God that can be appropriated. You can be identified with it until it’s a real experience to you, and the world dies to you and you die to the world (Galatians 6:14).
If you want to walk on with God with a real Living Word in your heart, you’ll experience the cross. It will be a real experience to you. But you’ll know, too, that you will never be allowed, if you follow the Word, to go back to a legalism of teaching. You’ll never be allowed to go back to circumcision, a religious rite, religious observances, and thereby think that you can please God, when God said, “It’s not circumcision or uncircumcision; it’s a new creation” (Galatians 6:15). You are part of a whole new line. God makes you over; He makes you a new person. And you come to the place where you realize that you live because of the devastation of that experience of the cross.
The biggest thing that ever happens to you is the devastation that comes to your life by a work of the cross. It does more than teach you how to live by rules. It teaches you how to appropriate righteousness by faith.
Until God has devastated you and the work of the cross has brought you low, you do not realize that there is no other source of righteousness but by the grace of God.
The cross is not a doctrine; the cross is a real price that was paid for our eternal redemption. It’s a real experience. It’s a real appropriation. We become something. We have life because of the work of the cross within our life that brings the work of Jesus Christ and His very life within us. His death works in us so that His life can come forth.
The more devastated you are, the less religious you are and the more righteous you become, because the rightousness is appropriated.
Christ, our Passover, was crucified for us (I Corinthians 5:7). The Passover means a cross. They put that lamb on the spit and roasted it in the fires of judgment, and they ate it.
They ate the lamb in an act of faith right in the midst of a concentration of judgment.
WE DRINK, WE DIE
The flesh is not going to submit; it has to be crucified. It has to be crucified. You can try to minimize it: “Well, something within me is a little perverse.” The truth is, there is something within us which believes that God’s will is not going to happen. In fact, it will do everything possible, even if only on an unconscious level, to see that God’s will does not happen.
In the Communion there is an identification with Christ. We eat His flesh and drink His blood; we become identified with it. But identification remains vague until you really know what it means and you say, “I completely, totally bring myself to the crucifixion of the flesh through His cross. I identify myself with the cross of Christ until it becomes an experience to my flesh.”
Communion has to be a crucifixion.
The day may come in which all of this will be an instantaneous experience; it will all be finished at once. But now we have a determination to experience it as much as we can today. It may not be a total thing because we may not know all that has to be crucified yet, but we will experience it to this extent: Today we take a very decided step of death in us. The uprooting is a death of things.
“If your hand offends you, cut it off” (Matthew 18:8). How can a man’s hand offend him unless the offense is in his nature, in his heart? Christ was not talking about a man’s hand; He was talking about the flesh nature of a man. It has to be cut off. It has to be totally crucified. We have to experience it.
We take the body and the blood of the Lord, which means that we take His cross to be ours. It is our cross; we are going to die on it. The flesh is going to die; it is not going to live.
The provision of Christ is so great that our identification with His cross, our revelation of our need, and our deliverance from this flesh are absolutely in His heart to accomplish it all.
Philippians 3:18–19 tells us about the enemies of the cross of Christ. Why are they enemies of the cross? Are they against Jesus? They are not against the religious pseudo-Jesus they have manufactured. They are against the Christ who would crucify their flesh. They are enemies of the cross. They will not be identified with it. But we are making friends with the cross. We are not going to be enemies of the cross. We have died today. God only knows how much we have died to. We have given the flesh a gut-shot wound. It may take several hours for its death to be manifested totally, but we received the gut-shot wound today.
If we could only die in private! If we could just do this without God making us, as the apostle said, “the spectacle of men and of angels, the offscouring of the earth” (I Corinthians 4:9, 13, KJV).
For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. Philippians 3:18–19.
“So then death worketh within us, but life in you” (II Corinthians 4:12, KJV). You have never had any life worked in you unless there was a death in the apostle first. There is not going to be any life in those people out there in the world unless they see you die too. In no way will it look glamorous. It is written of Jesus Christ that He was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him” Isaiah 53:3). Will we hide our faces from each other in this hour, too’?
Some will say, “Devastation is not of God.” Actually devastation was just the beating we took before taking up our cross to go up to be crucified.
If you follow Him, you are going to take up your cross (Matthew 16:24–25). Don’t fool yourself. The cross is not some little ornament that hangs around your neck on a gold chain. You are taking up the cross of Christ with the intention, the dedication, the revelation, the full commitment: You are going to die on it. A cross is for death. But we have this privilege: We can be the ones who by our faith judge ourselves and identify ourselves with the cross and experience it. That is our privilege.
It is our choice to say, “If we suffer with Him, we will reign with Him” (Romans 8:17; II Timothy 2:12, KJV). And the cross is the “suffering” that Paul was talking about here. There will be no true spiritual authority in the earth that is a blanket rubber stamp of approval on men’s flesh; it will be Christ’s authority manifested through those who have known the work of the cross.
Read Philippians 3:18–21. What Paul was saying is that if we welcome the cross, the Lord will kill everything that stands in the way of His being glorified in the earth through us.
With our spirit we love Him; with our flesh we hate Him (Romans 8:5–8). He becomes our enemy because He will pursue us until we are identified with His cross. But that is really what our spirit is crying for.
Our flesh must be laid upon the altar when we partake of His flesh that was crucified for us.
The cross of Christ is an instrument of death—yours and mine, in fact.
Communion and the cross must be more than theories; they must be experienced, because our expectation is too great to settle for anything less. If any provision emerges, we are going to get it. We’re believing for the perfect, finished work. Our faith has claimed it to the full extent. The key is not to focus on your need but to focus on the perfect provision. You might ask, “Do I have enough faith to believe for this?” But remember that in the perfect provision, He also provided enough faith to appropriate the whole finished work of redemption.
AFTER THE FLESH-RULE IS OVER …
The problem of the flesh is that it wants to avoid crucifixion.
The cross has become the medium by which we experience a perfect end of the domination of the soul and flesh.
There is no detente with spirit and soul. Resurrection life starts with your spirit that comes alive when Christ is preached. Your spirit then brings the soul and body to the cross to die, so that the whole spirit, soul, and body goes through a transformation to bring forth new life (I Thessalonians 5:23).
THE LAW OF THE ALTAR
There is no way that a human being can add anything of his own works in his approach to God. There is no way that he can do anything to have a better hearing-audience in the sight of God. The old song says, “Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to Thy cross I cling.” When you come to God, don’t try to say, “Lord, I’m working this out and that out so that You’ll accept me.” No sir! The Word says, “By grace are you saved, through faith, not of works, lest any man should boast (Ephesians 2:8–9). There is nothing we can do to please God but believe (Hebrews 11:6).
God had to see His own Son as a repulsive thing, made sin for us, even though He knew no sin (II Corinthians 5:21). He turned His back and the heavens were darkened, and His Son cried out in His dying agony, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mark 15:34.) It had to be something so repulsive, because it was your sins and mine. Every foolish, rotten thing that you have ever done or been had to be laid upon Jesus Christ. He took it all, but He did that so that you could come before the Lord at the altar of the Lord. You are a redeemed person, redeemed by the blood of the Lamb by this eternal sacrifice for you. Now you can come and stand before the Lord.
DEATH BY FIRE
I’m going to set something before you that I have never spoken in a message. But it dawned on me that the day of the Lord is going to be the same for us as it is going to be for those who are visited in judgment. The only difference is that it comes upon them in judgment; it comes upon us in an experience by our own invitation, and we’ll have to live through it.
This walk with God has to do with a sovereign preparation of a remnant who will walk with Him, who will be totally immune from the normal human instinct of self-survival (Revelation 12:11). What God says about a disciple is that if he would save his life, he’s going to lose it. If he loses his life for Christ’s sake, he’s going to find it. We’ll have to come to such a total, basic discipleship that we lay ourselves before God, and our life is no more our own.
“And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life shall lose it, and he who has lost his life, for My sake shall find it.” Matthew 10:38–39.
You say, “What is everybody in this for? Why are they always rejoicing?” Because there’s a joy in doing the will of God, even when all the human level of satisfaction is gone from your life and every ambition and every joy of the flesh is gone. Then you live for the Lord and you live for Him alone. “I am crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). It will be an experience for our people.
Something in you has to die. When will we learn that everything that God does follows the pattern of Jesus: death, burial, resurrection, and glory?
The dealings of the Lord are such that it is at the end of the second day that He resurrects us, and on the third day we live in His sight.
“Come, let us return to the Lord. For He has torn us, but He will heal us; He has wounded us, but He Hill bandage us. He will revive us after two days; He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him. So let us know, let us press on to know the Lord. His going forth is as certain as the dawn; and He, will come to us like the rain, like the spring rain watering the earth.” Hosea 6:1–3.
You’re going to come to the place, like Paul, where there is only one thing that counts: “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, being made conformable unto His death. Everything that was counted gain, I count it loss. I’m going to be a disciple of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:8, 10). This baptism of fire is a necessary thing.
We have to die out to the thing on the fleshly plane, and the only way is to be filled with the Holy Spirit and with fire (Luke 3:16).
The oneness of the Body is entirely dependent upon the work of the cross that’s being done in us.
Most of the people came in with the idea that the Holy
Spirit was a gift (Acts 10:44–45). Would you embrace this, that the fire is a gift too?
WHEN OUR LAST ISAAC DIES
Read Hosea 6:1–3, 6.
There is not a Word that God gives that does not follow a certain spiritual course. This has been true even from Old Testament times. The Lord gives a Word and the Word is like a cross—you die on it, and you’re buried; then you’re resurrected and you walk in it.
Things don’t take five years anymore to be worked in our lives, because you hear a Word one day and you start dying on it; and three days later there is a resurrection and you’re walking in something.
“I want to be like an offering unto the Lord. I want to give my whole body as a sacrifice!” (Romans 12:1.) Nobody ever gave anything to Him that He didn’t break, whether it was an alabaster box of ointment that was broken upon Him (Mark 14:3), or whether it was a little boy’s gift of five barley loaves and two small fishes (Matthew 14:15–21). The miracle of multiplication begins with the miracle of death, burial, and resurrection.
You will not have any ministry of value without first being placed in a position where God gives you a Word, you hide it in your heart, and you die.
HOW TO DISPOSE OF THE BODY
Put the old flesh in a cage and starve him to death. Get some synthetic catsup, make some hash out of sawdust, and let him think he is getting fed; but all the time he is not getting a thing. Then get out the good meat of the Word and meditate on it, and let that spiritual man begin to grow (I Timothy 4:6; I Peter 2:2).
You have to make a choice, whether you’re going to be circumcised or crucified. If you come to the crucified walk, then you’ve identified yourself with Christ and His grace and His righteousness, and you walk free (Galatians 2:20; 5:1–2; Romans 6:5–11).
The cross was your release for sin to be taken away and the sin nature of the flesh to die. Believe it. Experience it. Make it a reality in your life.
You don’t dare to focus on the old flesh; you’ll keep it alive. When you focus on Christ, then you make real the appropriation. Don’t submit yourselves to all this discipline, all these decrees; just reach into the finished experience. Don’t discipline the flesh; reckon it dead. Consider that you died with Christ and you’re resurrected with Christ.
You come to the place where you can mortify the flesh by faith. You can reach into this. You can have a death, burial, and resurrection in about ten seconds time. He can do a quick work within your life.
DON’T THINK ABOUT IT!
I don’t think it should take so long for us to reach the end of the old flesh-life. When Jesus died on the cross, He died so quickly that while they broke the legs of the two thieves crucified with Him, they did not have to break His because He was already dead (John 19:32–33).
In other words, Christ did a quick work on the cross. And He’ll do a quick work in the earth today and cut it short in righteousness (Romans 9:28); but it’s going to mean your quick appropriation of a great, fine thing in your life. This means that God is putting you through an experience of the cross also.
You say, “It’s not very comforting to say that it’s a quick work, because I’m just hanging here. What do I do about dying?” Well, just don’t think about it.
You don’t win a race by looking back. You don’t get a spiritual experience by always going back in your mind. When the Kingdom principles are established, how true this will be: If you put your hand to the plow and look back, you’re not fit for the Kingdom of God (Luke 9:62). Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 12:2–3.
You say “The Lord is doing a real work in my life—a work of the cross.” Good. Then get busy. Be so busy that you are distracted from that absorption with self-pity, where you feel so sorry for yourself. It isn’t a good thing to dwell upon your problems.
You’re not worrying as you come up to this tremendous, tremendous experience. You say, “I’m reaching into Christ, my Passover, who is crucified for me (I Corinthians 5:7). I want it to be a living thing.” It will be a living thing, by faith, if you just press on in the Lord.
The greatest blessings are appropriated when you know that the resurrection life of Jesus Christ does not come by brooding upon the cross work in your life. Resurrection life comes to those who suddenly realize that they’re in a new dimension. And they say, “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory” (I Corinthians 15:57).
I don’t want you overcoming the habits of your life by will-power, because then it will be something that you’ve accomplished; and somewhere that appetite will come up again, and you will be back into it again. I want you to overcome because you get into the victory Christ won for you on the cross.
Often religion starts out with “faith in Jesus Christ,” and then it becomes a yoke of self-discipline instead of an appropriation of His death and His life, in that order.
A SEMINAR TO TEACHERS:
CORRECTING THE DRIFT
If there ever was a time when you really needed to focus some intercession and prayer on me, it is now; because it is a time when I have been shamed. The word isn’t “humiliated”; it’s “shamed.” Maybe there is one thing that I need in order to enter into what is coming, and that is the shame of the cross. There isn’t anything as great as the shame that comes when you are identified with His cross (Hebrews 12:2; 13:13; Galatians 6:12, 14).
We talk about the cross, the work of the cross, and there is almost in element of pride in what we say about it when we go through it. But when we come to participate with the shame and with the sufferings of the Lord, it is not that we feel sorry for ourselves; it is quite the opposite. We find that there is a time when we appreciate what He did for us.
Everything that has been vague about the Lord is going to become very real to you: how much He loves you, what He has gone through, the sufferings, the agony. You’ll experience it step by step. When you go through it, the heaviness seems to hit all around you, and you know that you would like to see that hour disappear (Matthew 26:39). As determined as the disciples were, they could not even watch for one hour (Matthew 26:40). When that heaviness comes, it is almost an unendurable thing to go through Gethsemane and the cross.
We are coming into an experience with the Lord, an identification with His sufferings (Philippians 3:8–11). It is the prelude to the living works, the greater things that are going to come. It is the prelude also to the prophets coming forth, to everything that we want.
THE FEAR OF REJECTION
How rejected can a man be? We read of Jesus that He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). While He was hanging on the cross, He prayed, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
We may cry, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46.) But with the next breath, God leads us to say, “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46).
FIRST LIVE IT: THEN SPEAK IT
The Lord Jesus Christ performs a miracle; then He explains it. First He puts you through the work of the cross, and then He lets you understand it. There are very few people who ever go into or through an experience and understand what is happening to them. That begins with His saying, “Leave all and follow Me” (Luke 18:18–30).
This priesthood means that you stand before the Lord. You have had one life to live and you’ve chosen to send it to the cross.
Death is working in us so that the life of Jesus can come forth (II Corinthians 4:12). How can we talk about the Kingdom, about the priesthood, about the worship and the Word, and not wind up again facing the cross? There is no Kingdom without the cross. First the death has to work in us; then the life is going to work through us (II Corinthians 4:12).
There’s a death—there’s a work of the cross working in you and working in your relationships and working in the Body.
“What shall I say?” Jesus said. “Shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? No, for this hour came I forth into the world. Father, glorify Thy name” (John 12:27–28).
Satan shows you only one side of the cross. But for the joy that was set before Him Christ endured the cross (Hebrews 12:2). I think that even Christ had to draw on the future joy of completing the redemption for us. He might not have gone through it otherwise.
HOW LONG, DOES IT TAKE?
Have you ever asked yourself this question: “How long is this going to take? I believe in the work of the cross, but how long does it take?” That is exactly what this teaching will unfold for you.
Mark 15 records the crucifixion of Christ. The cross was raised up with Jesus on it at the third hour, or 9:00 a.m. (verse 25). Verse 33 says that darkness came over the land from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, or from twelve noon until three o’clock in the afternoon, as we tell time. The ninth hour is significant because it is the hour of prayer; it was about the ninth hour when Peter and John went up to the temple to pray (Acts 3:1).
The cross experience of our Lord ended at the ninth hour. At three o’clock in the afternoon, the cry came forth, “It is finished” (Mark 15:34, 37; John 19:28–30). Then the darkness seemed to fade away into the twilight of a sunset. Christ was crucified.
The cross of Christ means so much to us. When we read the New Testament and look into the cross and see what He really did, we find that it was a perfect provision for us.
The cross is an experience for us, a way that our faith can identify with what He did and we can possess it (Galatians 2:20). The greatest appropriation a person can make is to appropriate the work of the cross that Christ accomplished.
It took Christ only six hours from the time that He hung there until He said, “It is finished,” and gave up His spirit. John 19:14–18 indicates that the time might be as little as three hours, that Pilate’s judgment was made at the sixth hour, or 12:00 noon.
The soldiers who came to break the legs of the three who were crucified marveled that He had died so quickly, because people had been known to hang for four to six days on a cross, dying an agonizing death.
Now let me ask you a question: If it took Christ six hours or less to die, and in three days He came forth in resurrection, how long is it going to take you to appropriate the work of the cross?
Nowhere in the New Testament does it say that the work of the cross is a process that is an interminable or an intermittent or a repeatable experience. The work of the cross as it is proclaimed in the New Testament is to be an experience that happens. It is expandable, I will agree—everything God does for you can grow and expand—but it is to be a definite, exact experience. Don’t miss this point. Every experience in God is expandable, but not necessarily intended to be repeatable.
We are believing that what Christ did on the cross was complete, that He was offered once for all time (Hebrews 7:26–27).
The nephilim spirit works right along with the religious spirit to hinder, delay, and discourage the appropriation and the experience of what God has provided for us. It will hold you back. It will always make you feel that you are nothing; that you never can quite attain what God has provided; that if you work at it, after a while you might be ready to claim it. That is such a lie! You will receive it because you appropriate it, because you just reach up and take it in the name of the Lord.
If Satan cannot instill unbelief in the provision of Christ, he will attempt to instill the acceptance of a prolonged process or a delay, or a spirit of resignation.
The quickest way to receive something from the Lord is to believe God for your brother to receive it. Then you will impart it to him and let him impart it back to you. This will break the deadlock of your accepting a delay in the full appropriation of what God has given you, of what you are to be, and of what you are to claim from the Lord. Something has to break that once and for all time.
THE REQUIEM FOR OUR FLESH
God was in Christ redeeming the world unto Himself (II Corinthians 5:19), and what He really did was to make a provision for us to be redeemed—spirit, soul, and body.
God does not want a spirit that is made alive existing in a soul and body that has not been made alive to Him; but it has to exist that way to the point where the soul and the body can come to the end by the death of Christ working in them. And then they come alive (Romans 8:10–13, 23, 29).
The work of the cross has to bring every aspect of your being—spirit, soul and body—into a blameless state before God (I Thessalonians 5:23).
Two things have to take pace. First you must see that Christ died for you, and you accept Him. Immediately, salvation takes place. The second thing is that we see the end of the flesh, and we see our soul and this mortal body, made alive to God.
I think the beginning of all procedures is that we just have to get furious with the fact that our flesh is an enemy; it is an enemy of God (Romans 8:7).
THE LAST RITES BEFORE PENTECOST
Some of you have been brought to a hopeless situation where there is not going to be any escape-answer for you. You are not going to find any answer anyplace. There will be no ministry that will come to you, because God has chosen you to be the terminal cases. You’re going to have the work of the cross worked in you.
Two things are happening. There is a burning drive for us to do the will of God, until we are just standing and crying, “Thy Kingdom come.” But there is also a drive to die, to see the work of the cross really completed in us.
The Lord had to walk through the cross experience by Himself(Matthew 26:31; John 16:32). Dying is always a solitary experience. No one can tell you how to die, because there isn’t a person living who has died yet. When the hour comes, you walk in it by yourself.
There is no resurrection life until you are dead (Romans 6:3–10; I Corinthians 15:36). Lazarus couldn’t have died unless the Lord had tarried (John 11:4–6). And you can say, “I want to enter into resurrection life”; but until the work of the cross is completed in you and you really die out to a lot more, you won’t get it.
Paul said that we have been crucified with Christ; but we still have this convulsive reaction, don’t we?
Two things must work in you: Press into the Kingdom; and at the same time determine to come to the end of flesh, of futility, of frustration, and to be born anew in His likeness (Romans 6:5).
The work of the cross is never accomplished until you say, “Let’s get this thing over with. Let’s get it done so that I can walk with God without limitation. Let’s press in!”
We have to appropriate the death that Passover means, so that we can see the open door of the Kingdom that Pentecost means. It can’t work in any other sequence.
If you are harboring any little secret things within your life that have to go, get rid of them. If there’s any duplicity in your life, get rid of it. Say, “There are only two things I’m doing: First, I’m pressing, toward the Kingdom; and second, I’m pressing toward the work of the cross being completed in me.”
The cross is one of the most bitter, vicious experiences that you will ever go through in your life. All we can point to is that when it’s finished, you’re dead. Don’t be fooled on this. If there is anything in you that is willingly ignorant of this, rebuke it!
You are not going to be worth anything in spiritual warfare until you face the first warfare. The flesh wars against the Spirit so that you can’t do the things you would (Galatians 5:17). The frustration and futility have to end. Drag that old carcass up and nail him to the cross.
The only one who died quickly was Christ and the soldiers marveled because what sometimes took days, took just a few hours (John 19:30–33).
Satan is totally defeated when you are crucified. Christ’s victory was attainable by His death (Hebrews 2:14).
You can’t have a have a resurrection without a corpse.
WE COMPLETE THE WORD OF GOD
First you have to walk in the death life before resurrection life means anything to you.
What you need is the experience with Christ for the flesh to die not just to suppress it or regulate it.
We’re on the wrong track if we are still trying to merely discipline the flesh. We have to reach into something else: to find an experience of the cross until we die to the world, and to come into an experience of resurrection in Christ. As it says in Colossians 3:1–4, If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
If you have gone through this work of the cross and have embraced this risen life in Christ, then any manifestation of Christ’s glory is automatically going to be yours too.
Repent of the old nature! Come to believe God to condemn it also, and let it be crucified. Then begin to reach into that righteousness of Jesus Christ.
First comes the death, then comes the resurrection, then comes the appropriation of His very attributes and nature, and then comes Christ speaking in you (Ephesians 2:13–22; 3:10–21; 4:15).
PROTEST AGAINST BABYLON
Just before a new truth comes, God puts us through a real heart-searching time with a work of the cross in our lives; but the people who try to bypass that are not prepared to receive the new revelation when it comes (Matthew 3:2, 8–11). It takes a great deal of dedication to the Lord and a real work of the cross for you to be prepared to accept a revelation of a new truth. If you don’t do it, you’ll be left behind. We will continue to preach repentance, the work of the cross, the vision of the Lord; and then when a new truth is brought, you will either stand or fall on it.
RECONCILED TO GOD
The flesh is still with us. We are to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts (Galatians 5:24). We are to see it literally die—not just be suppressed or trained, or brought to some acceptable standard of conformity which makes it acceptable to another (Colossians 2:8, 18–23).
What are we going to do with the flesh? Crucify it. What do we do with the Christ in our brother? Minister to Him. What do you do with the Christ in yourself? Minister to Him.
EVEN CHRIST FELL UNDER HIS CROSS
Christ had someone to help carry His cross (Matthew 27:32).
Every one of us has times in which we fall under our cross and there is some humble person there to carry it.
No matter how dedicated I am to get under the load and carry my cross up to Golgotha and die, there always seems to be someplace along the line that I will fall under it. No matter how deeply the work of the cross is being done in my life, there’s something beyond what I can bear. What am I going to do? I am willing enough to die, but to fall short means that somebody is going to have to help me.
No man ever takes up his cross without knowing that he is going to die on it. Nobody ever starts to really serve the Lord without knowing the possibility of that total demand which God puts upon him.
Would you like to have somebody help you? Are you saying, “That’s where I am; help me”? You don’t have any pride when you’ve already fallen under the cross anyway.
THE MIRACLE MEAL
We are identified with His cross to the extent that it becomes a final, perfect experience for us.
We are going to take one step further and be risen with Him, for the application of resurrection is surely as valid as the application of crucifixion (Romans 6:5).
If we have applied the cross, we are going to have an empty tomb, too.
THROUGH THE CESSPOOL TO THE THRONE
Don’t be ashamed of your chains. Christ bore shame with the criminals on the cross (Luke 23:32–33).
The price that we pay for not bearing the shame is barrenness, like Michal, David’s wife (II Samuel 6:14–23). Fruitfulness comes from bearing it.
We must face the fact that pride is the thing which causes us to be ashamed.
Pride will make us ashamed of one another when someone is overtaken in something, whether it is justified or not justified (Philippians 2:3–4).
We embrace the cross. Pride is the enemy of the cross.
IT HAS TO BE IMPOSSIBLE BEFORE IT HAPPENS
Are you between a rock and a hard place? I’m not going to say that you’re going to get out of it alive. Hopefully you’ll have the work of the cross worked in you, and you’ll stop wiggling and die gracefully.
“WHERE, YOU DO NOT WISH TO GO”—JOHN 21:18
The cross begins with a Word that crosses you.
Submission is dedication to a Word or a commission, but it does not eliminate your will. However, it will cross your will until you cross it out and orient it to the will of God.
HIS FLESH TO END OUR FLESH
We are appropriating the fullness of the Lord, something that is very positive. What we cannot do in the present balance of the flesh and spirit, we are going to do when the flesh is brought into the cross of Christ and we are released into more of Christ. In our spirit we are free. Freedom is not the freedom from suppression; freedom is a capacity to move in the authority of Christ. Whatever limits our moving in His authority is a bondage (Galatians 5:1).
There is no manifestation of the cross left on the earth except your experience of dying on it. You’re the ones who will show forth His death. You will manifest His death until He comes (I Corinthians 11:24–26).
You’re going to show His death in your life. You can’t be an enemy of the cross. You can’t dodge it. You can’t hate it, or you’ll wind up hating Him. You have to come to the place where there’s no glory left. 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 6:14, KJV. They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh (Galatians 5:24).
We can have only one motivation: “He must increase and I must decrease” (John 3:30). Some way it has to work until He is all in all (Ephesians 1:22–23). If I’m exposed, it is only so that the Christ within me can come forth and glorify the Lord. He will be glorified in the work of the cross within me.
We do not take the flesh as a futile thing. We hate it! And we have a motivation to believe God for the cross. The flesh must die. We must experience Christ’s cross.
IDENTICAL WITH CHRIST
The work of the cross is not just an event which causes you to rejoice that Christ died for you. Rather, you have an identical experience. You may not physically hang on a cross; but as far as the spiritual reality of it is concerned, you do go through an identical experience. You are made conformable to His death (Philippians 3:10). There is no greater privilege than to be a partaker of the sufferings of Christ. When I read how Paul had to fulfill in his body what remained of the sufferings of Christ for His Body’s sake (Colossians 1:24), it means much more to me than it ever has before. Paul suffered the same agonies that Christ did—maybe not to the same measure or extent, but it was an identical experience (II Corinthians 4:7–11).
I am not only identified with Christ as He hung on the cross for me, but the cross becomes a real experience in my life. Although I do not go through it literally with nails in my hands, yet God brings me through a work of the cross so that an identical experience is worked in me. I am not just identified with that cross, but I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (Galatians 2:20).
THE COMING STONE AGE!
Everything that man has done is going to be destroyed. The only thing that will remain in the Kingdom of God to show the handiwork of man will be the scars in the Lord’s hands where they drove in the nails (Zechariah 13:6).
Judgment always precedes the creativity of God. And when we talk of the new nature, it has to be the same way. There has to be the judgment of Satan in your life; there has to be the work of the cross.
When you accept Jesus Christ you accept what He did on the cross (I Peter 2:21–24). When you really accept it properly, you’re accepting it to be a real experience in your whole life. You come to Jesus to die (Matthew 16:24); then to live.
You have to come to the place where you’re willing to lose your life for His sake, and then you’re going to find it (Matthew 16:25).
The will to live has to die; the struggle to live on a human level has to die.
We have to come to Jesus Christ to be crucified with Christ, that the world may be crucified to us, and we unto the world (Galatians 6:14).
You cannot judge Egypt properly until your own heart is judged and you come to the work of the cross.
We will not see the manifestation of the sons of God until we go into the sufferings of Christ first (Romans 8:12–17).
Every prophecy that ever came to you only drove you to the work of the cross that much more.
This work of the cross has gone on further than you know. It is deeper than we think. But there has to be a finality.
We will be immune from the condemnation that we will speak to the world only because we have applied the work of the cross to our hearts and we are dead. We must die to the world and it to us. If you have divine order without the work of the cross, you can easily slip into a form of something that does not work at all.
DON’T BOTHER ME—I’M DEAD!
We can be circumcised so that our flesh appears to be religious (Galatians 6:12). We can be circumcised, and then we don’t have to emphasize crucifixion (Galatians 5:2, 11). But you have to have more than religious flesh; you have to have righteousness of spirit. We must crucify the flesh, not try to make it religious. Crucify it.
It’s either circumcision or the cross. We are crucified with Christ that we might live in righteousness—not in a simulated righteousness, not in that which has an appearance but which amounts to nothing more than a discipline of the flesh.
When Christ died on the cross, He took the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, nailing it to His cross (Colossians 2:14, KJV). By His death the Law is obliterated to us. How? Because He was our representative in death. And the transgressions that we had known, He died for. It’s a principle of law that you cannot bring a man into double jeopardy for his transgressions.
I was crucified with Christ. I’m a dead man. You can’t kill me twice. You can’t put me back under the Law for I died to the law (Galatians 2:19–20). It no longer has any jeopardy over me. It doesn’t have any bearing over me. I’m not in its jurisdiction, because when I died, I began to walk in the Spirit (Romans 7:1–6).
No longer are you to be a victim of those who would lay you under bondage. Say, “Don’t bother me; I’m dead.”
We do not go back to the regulations and regimentations of legalism. We don’t have a simulated righteousness that appears by circumcision. In Christ neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything; instead, it’s that new man which comes forth, created for righteousness (Galatians 6:15). The old flesh was crucified with Christ; and as we are completely identified with His death, we become completely identified with His righteousness. Therefore we are righteous by faith. It is not a thing to be imputed to us as you would mark a thing upon a ledger. It’s more than that. It is a literal nature. The flesh nature can die and the spiritual nature of God Himself can come forth (Galatians 3:26–27; Romans 8:12–17).
If He has made you righteous, you will appear in the sight of God (and that’s all that counts) as righteous, and you will reject everything else (Philippians 3:7–9). Crucify the flesh; mortify its deeds. Reject it completely, and accept absolutely the righteousness that He brings (Colossians 3:1–10). With it, you will stand justified before God and be immune to those outrageous things that Satan would bring to the child of God.
GOD’S AGENCY OF DEATH
Throughout the New Testament we find that God has an agency of death by which He brings about survival and the fruitfulness of the life He would bring forth.
This agency of death is best described by the Lord Himself when He said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it abides alone; but if it falls into the ground and dies, it brings forth much fruit” (John 12:24).
The agency of death is that we gladly glory in the cross. It brings about a death to the world, as Paul writes in Galatians 6:14, “by which the world is crucified to me and I unto the world.” The agency of death brings about the only way we can survive without contamination. When we are dead to the world through the work of the cross, then the world is not effective in reaching us anymore; but we become quite effective in all that we would bring forth in God.
Christ will never be exalted or lifted up as long as He is buried in our heart. The devastation breaks down the shell, the barrier, the outer protective coating of the wheat, so that the little germ of life can begin to grow and expand. Then everything good can happen.
If we fight death, we abide alone; but if we fall to the earth and die we bring forth much fruit (John 12:24).
Desolation is the agency of death. No longer will you abide alone, but every good thing in relationships will come forth.
We ought to endure the cross and despise the shame for the joy that is set before us (Hebrews 12:2).
We do not work our way from battle to battle into the fulfillment of all that God has for us. We move there by a strange process: an agency of death brings about our hopes, our destiny.
We face resurrection life as an ultimate result of having gone through the period of desolation with Christ (Philippians 3:8–12). We can’t resist it. We have to face the great principle—that unless we lose our life we are not going to find it (Luke 9:24).
This agency of death is the only way by which we will survive and pass into the days of the Kingdom.
“PROCLAIM HIS DEATH”
Almost every experience that you receive from God involves a judgment. Most of you are expecting to miss the great judgment with all of its horrors. Upon what basis do you believe that? Some people believe that God is going to bring every one of us before Him and that our future is yet to be determined. I do not believe that our future is yet to be determined. If we are in Christ Jesus, we have passed from death into life (John 5:24).
We have already been judged. Our judgment took place nineteen hundred years ago when Jesus Christ died on the cross (II Corinthians 5:14; Hebrews 2:9; 10:10–14). He died on the cross, and so you say, “Well, that was my salvation” That was your judgment. There would have been no salvation without judgment.
The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6). When you believe that Jesus died for your sins and that He arose from the grave, you have accepted and made yourself an identified person with that. In the person of my Savior and Lord, I paid the price for my sin (Romans 6:3–7).
We come and expose ourselves to a judgment that God would put us through. This doesn’t mean that you’re going to be judged for it; but you are going to acknowledge and see where you have failed and where you have sinned, and then you cast that upon the Lord.
Read I Corinthians 11:23–26. We still must proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. In the Communion we are going to proclaim the Lord’s death. We are determining that it is as real to us as though He were hanging right in our midst and His blood were dripping down upon us. It will be that real to us. How can we do that? We can do that because He is alive, not because He is dead (Revelation 1:17–18). He died and rose again and it is because He ever lives to make intercession for us (Hebrews 7:25) that the miracle of the Communion can take the death of Christ and the shedding of His blood nineteen hundred years ago and proclaim it anew to us. It is just as valid and just as real for you when you drink that wine and you eat that bread as though this were the day that He died.
In this period, until we come into fully glorified bodies and He is ruling and reigning, there will be the necessity of our proclaiming His death. We will have no life without the proclamation of His death. He died for us so that we could live for Him (II Corinthians 5:15).
In the Communion, you go back to the judgment Christ experienced for you. At the cross, He died for your sins. He was judged for your sins. The cross was a judgment. Every time you come to the cross, you have to discern that. You come to judge yourself (I Corinthians 11:27–32). Take everything that is wrong and say “At this particular moment of judgment, I place this in the complete, total judgment that Christ underwent for me. I bring it up real to the present moment.”
SERVE US! LET US SERVE YOU!
I do not like for us, at this present hour, to picture Christ in the humanity of His limitations. I want to see Him in exaltation as Lord of lords and King of kings. This has to be. All of the efforts toward a mystical approach to Christ have dead-ended with looking at a crucifix hanging on a wall.
Of course we remember His sufferings. But even He despised them, for the joy that was set before Him in bringing many sons to glory, in the great exaltation (Hebrews 2:9–10; 12:2). He despised that Himself! He is not asking us to glorify it. We should have reverence and tears over His cross. And we should submit to the experience of His cross being worked in us, that we might die to so much.
I think it is very interesting that when you see Orientals who become Christians, many of them will not even accept crucifixes. When they turn from Buddhism, they immediately reject all images, even a crucifix. And I think that’s wise. That’s the purest form of Christianity.
Some people, in their immaturity, want something that they can hang on to or something that they can look at; but I want to know Him. The Word says, “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh, for though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet we know Him so no longer” (II Corinthians 5:16). By the Holy Spirit we are made to know Christ—not after the limitations of the flesh, but to know Him as the Son of Man in power and glory, Lord of lords and King of kings who is risen as our sole, absolute Lord.
EGO OR NO EGO—THAT IS THE QUESTION
The living Word has been working the work of the cross in us. One of two things happens: Either you become very, very offended at the means or circumstances which God uses to nail you to that cross, and you lash out at them; or you go through the process of slowly but surely dying.
The work of the cross is very essential to those who are risen with Christ and are seeking those things which are above. One thing has to die so that the other thing can take over. What about that old Adamic nature? Let it go (Colossians 3:1–10).
Are you discouraged about the inability of the old Adamic nature to function? It’s not supposed to function. Do you see it twitching? There is something of a snake in it. It will twitch until the sun goes down; then hopefully it will die. The trouble with most of us is that we are already dead, but we don’t realize it. And we are alive in Christ but we don’t have confidence in it. It’s these twitches of the old nature that discourage us. These evidences that something is still alive can be rather deceptive. I don’t think they are as valid as we think.
The twitches that Satan brings to the old nature can be very deceptive. What you have claimed is true; stand upon it. Watch God verify and vindicate the Word you have stood upon, and bring it into a real, living reality in your life.
THE CROSS OR “DON’T CROSS ME”
The work of the cross not only brings us into a salvation experience, but we also have an experience of the cross.
The work of the cross is the key of righteousness. Don’t nullify the grace of God (Galatians 2:20–21). Don’t despise the thing you’ve been going through. Because of a work of the cross in your life, you are appropriating more righteousness.
Really, what we are being persecuted for is the Lordship of Jesus Christ, which requires that we experience the work of the cross in our lives (Galatians 6:12).
If you run away from the work of the cross, you are right back under the Law (Galatians 5:1–5, 11). Righteousness comes through the work of the cross, not through a religious spirit (Galatians 3:2–5).
Stop groaning because of the cross, and start glorying in it (Galatians 6:14). Have you noticed how much you are dying to this world? I can do all of the wicked things I want to do, but I find that the work of the cross has slowly but surely taken away all of those desires. Happy day! We are going on with God by the work of the cross.
Woe unto those who are enemies of the cross (Philippians 3:18), because they are despising the very experience that is going to bring them forth.
It seems sometimes that you can’t go on. Good, just die. You are entitled to; you have a right to die. Don’t struggle to keep alive something that God wants dead.
THE DEDICATION-REVELATION
Deception is easier to submit to than the cross; the cross involves dedication.
You can talk about all the crosses that people bear, but the greatest thing that happens to us is that we get a Word from God and we die on that Word—but we will also be resurrected on that Word. That Word is our life.
Deception is easier to submit to than the cross involved in dedication-revelation.
The demands of dedication have to be that you’re going to “take up the cross” (Matthew 16:24). Every revelation Word is going to be a cross that you’re going to die on in your dedication.
You will either perish by the way, or you will find that you die on the cross and come into resurrection life with the Lord.
Every relationship that God gives, including the relationship to Himself as well as the relationship to others, is a cross.
Once we no longer have revelation, then our dedication stops and the pace is too great. At that moment we reject the cross.
How did Jesus endure His cross? For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, despising the shame (Hebrews 12:2). If you don’t see the Kingdom coming, what you have to pay now will seem to be too great a price.
A REVELATION OF OURSELVES
As God exposes the old nature, all you have to do is crucify it; reckon it dead (Romans 6:11). That’s what the cross accomplished for you; you need only to claim it. If it doesn’t seem to work, go back and claim it again. We say “yes” to God progressively. Say “yes” as much as you can right now.
The work of the cross would not take as long as it does if people would take the revelation of their inner self more honestly and sincerely, not dwelling in self-condemnation over it but repenting deeply at once to get rid of it.
“LORD, YOU’RE FILLING ME”
The work of the cross changed the relationship between the disciples and Christ. They could believe upon Him before to be their Savior; but after the cross, the relationship was within them (John 14:19–23).
God allowed man to be placed in a position of inadequacy. The only way that man is going to fulfill the perfect will of God is through God invading a fallen creation, crucifying the aspects that must die, changing it, regenerating it, and bringing forth His own life and nature in it.
When He died He became the source of our death. When He rose He became the source of our life.
Just as surely as He died, He also opened the door to the crucifixion of the old nature.
IS GOD ENOUGH FOR ME? #1
The Lord is again bringing the cross to us. What does the cross mean to us? It simply means that He is crossing us up. Fasting and prayer are bringing everything right out in the open to test the purity of our motivation, to find out how much self-seeking remains, and to see whether or not God is really enough, without anything else. If you are on some ego trip in which you must have something besides God to satisfy you, you will be in trouble.
There is a reason behind what God is doing; there is a reason why He is bringing us to a crisis.
Don’t tell me that those disciples were not on an ego trip! They certainly were on an ego trip; but when they finally came to the end of it, and God brought them through the crisis, they were willing to go all out. Then they could say like Paul, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified to me and I unto the world” (Galatians 6:14). It is something to see self die and its motivations come to an end! There was a little bit of Judas in all twelve of them.
Can we follow Him through this transition? Not if there is anything we want to hang on to, or if there is anything that means more to us than the Lord.
Lord, we really want You to be enough. We want You to be everything to us.
IS GOD ENOUGH FOR ME? #2
As long as you need the applause and approval of man, as long as you must have possessions and position, you are saying in your heart, “Jesus, You’re not enough for me. Your visitation in the earth isn’t enough for me. I must have something else, God. You can’t satisfy my heart. You’re not enough for me.” That is because you have not entered into the work of the cross. They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and its lusts (Galatians 5:24). Include in that also its ambitions its needs, its insecurity.
You can’t walk with God, truly, until the cross has put an end to the ego trip; and once it has, you walk with Him.
Don’t think that the religious world is stupid; they are studying us. They are reading our literature and saying in their hearts, “I wonder just how they do that? I think I can make this work, too. Let’s see, we will analyze this. We’ll get the key of how it is really working and we’ll do it too.” But they are overlooking something important. They seem to forget how much the self has to die every day after you come into this Spirit-led walk. They are forgetting how you had to renounce everything else that holstered and supported you in the old flesh-life. They don’t take into account the deep dealings of God and everything you have been through since the day God met you. Will they pay the price for that? Of course not. They have too many personal goals, too many desires to be gratified.
He does not add blessings to us without putting the fire to us, and He is taking it all—all, the sum total. And you know what you’re going to do? You are going to finally be able to keep the first commandment to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, with all of your strength (Matthew 22:37).
O God, we have nothing to prove. We don’t need the distraction of, the flesh; we just need Your blessing.
THE CUTTING EDGE
THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH SERIES
The only way by which the true, anointed ministry of the Spirit returns to the house of God is by a fresh work of the cross in our life. It’s the old rugged tree that does it.
The work of the cross in your life is always given to reverse the consequences, results, and effects of many things that you brought on yourself.
When the Lord begins to make real the miracle of His cross in your life afresh, and you start believing, then all of the consequences of those things in the past are reversed.
OUR FLESH LIMITS GOD
The New Testament is never stressing that you be very zealous and religious and keep storming heaven until you get an answer. The New Testament keeps saying that Christ came to die for one purpose—that as you are identified with His cross, your flesh can be crucified.
The new nature is not to work a detente with the flesh. Everything that comes to your spirit is designed for one thing: that you mortify your members which are on the earth (Colossians 3:5, KJV). Crucify them. They that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its affections and its lusts (Galatians 5:24). We glory only in the cross, by which the world is crucified to us and we are crucified to the world (Galatians 6:14). Over and over the work of the cross is emphasized as the instrument of death by which the old nature dies.
We are eating of Christ; we are feeding the divine nature. And we’re going to do more than starve the flesh nature; we are believing for God to crucify it. As He was crucified for us, we partake of that sacrifice and believe for the crucifixion of the flesh, the end of the flesh, to come.
The answer is that the new nature is adamant, and it will see to it that the flesh is crucified. The Spirit and the flesh are warring against each other (Galatians 5:16–17). Do not use the flesh to war against the flesh; instead, feed your spirit and make it strong, and it automatically wars against the flesh. Totally feed the new nature (Colossians 3:1–2). As it becomes strong, it automatically functions in a realm which crucifies the flesh.
THE CROSS
(FROM THE FIRST PRINCIPLES)
I.WHY IS THE CROSS IMPORTANT TO US?
The preaching of the cross is the power of God. I Corinthians 1:17–18.
II.WHAT DIR THE LORD JESUS CHRIST ACCOMPLISH ON HIS CROSS?
A.On His cross, Christ reconciled us—even the whole universe—to God. Colossians 1:15–21.
B.On His cross, Christ abolished the law of commandments and ordinances, and reconciled both Israel and the Gentiles to God. Ephesians 2:11–22.
C.On His cross, Christ cancelled the demands of the Law against us; He disarmed and defeated principalities and powers (Satan); He brought us to fullness of life, having forgiven all our trespasses. Colossians 2:9–23.
D.On His cross, Christ tasted death for every man, that He might destroy him who has the power of death (Satan) and deliver us from the fear of death. Hebrews 2:9–18.
E.By His death on His cross, a new “testament” or will is in effect for us. Hebrews 9:13–28.
This new testament or covenant is given in Hebrews 8:8–13.
F.On His cross, Christ offered the perfect and final sacrifice for sins, and by a single sacrifice He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Hebrews 10:5–25.
III.WHAT THE CROSS OF JESUS CHRIST MAY MEAN TO US:
A.Through His cross, Christ brings a new life to us, i.e., the Christ-life. Galatians 2:16–21.
B.Through His cross, Christ brings the blessings and the covenant of Abraham to us. Galatians 3:1–14, 29.
C.Through His cross, we may see the flesh, with its passions and lusts, crucified. Galatians 5:13–24.
D.Through His cross, we may be crucified to the world, and the world crucified to us. This is our “circumcision.” Galatians 6:12–16. What great spiritual results are wrought in us by the cross of Christ!
IV.THE PROCESS BY WHICH ALL OF THESE THINGS BECOME AN ACTUAL EXPERIENCE TO US:
Romans 6:6; II Corinthians 4:11; Galatians 2:20; II Timothy 2:11.
A.In Philippians 3:7–21 we see that the “enemies of the cross of Christ” are those Christians who refuse to let the victory of the cross be worked in them. They would rather follow their carnal appetites.
B.Instead, we must not serve sin, but submit to this “work of the cross” in us.
WHAT LUTHER SAYS ABOUT THE CROSS
The following excerpts on the cross are from the book, What Luther Says, Volume 1.
… you should not take the cross of Christ to mean this or that wood on which Christ hung suspended; but the cross of Christ is the shame and the great indignity which Christ innocently suffered. When I lie in bed and am sick, or when a person is put to death by fire, water, or the sword because of his misdeeds, this is not the cross of Christ. But the shame and persecution endured for righteousness’ sake is the cross of Christ. This is why true Christians must be dubbed heretics and evildoers. They must be so condemned, despised, and judged by all that everybody wipes his feet on them.
The Christian does not carry his own cross, but the Lord Christ’s. He must suffer for the Lord Christ’s sake.. The suffering and cross of Christians should be of such a nature, too, that, as Peter says, they suffer not as thieves and murderers but as Christians (I Peter 4:15 f.), that is, for the sake of the Lord Christ, for the sake of His Word and confession.
For where the Word of God is preached, accepted, or believed, and where it produces fruit, the dear, holy cross cannot be wanting.
Now, this treatment hurts our flesh and the old Adam.
Hence we need to pray also this petition, … Dear Father, Thy will be done, not the will of the devil and of our enemies nor of all those who would persecute and suppress Thy holy Word or hinder Thy kingdom; and grant that with patience we may bear and overcome all we have to suffer because of our faith, lest our poor flesh yield or fall away in weakness or sluggishness.
The cross or suffering is the sort of dish few people are able to digest. It requires very strong stomachs.
If you wish to be a joint heir with the Lord Jesus Christ and yet not suffer with Him, to be His brother and yet not become conformed to Him, He will certainly not acknowledge you on the Last Day as a brother and joint heir. He will ask you where your crown of thorns, your cross, nails, and scourge are, and whether you have been an abomination to all the world, as He and all His members have been from the beginning of the world. If, then, you cannot produce this evidence, He will not be able to consider you His brother. To sum it up, we must suffer with Him, and all must be made to conform to the Son of God, ..or we shall not be exalted with Him to glory.
Do not, therefore, worry about where you may find affliction; there is no need to be concerned. Only be a pious Christian, preacher, minister, townsman, peasant, nobleman, and lord; diligently and faithfully perform the duties of your office. Let the devil worry about where he may find wood from which to make a cross for you; let the world worry about where to find a stick from which to make a scourge for your skin.
We are neither to seek the cross nor to flee from it.
But we do, indeed, not make our suffering meritorious before God. No, far, far from it! Christ alone has earned merits through His suffering, and besides Him no one has done so. To Him alone this honor should belong.
We should learn to make a distinction between Simon and the Lord Christ. Simon bears the Lord Christ’s cross to the place of execution; then he leaves. This illustrates the real difference between the Lord Christ’s and our suffering. We do not earn forgiveness of sins with our sufferings. Only the suffering of the Lord is sufficient for that. He alone is the true Sacrifice and the Lamb of God that has paid and rendered satisfaction for the sins of all the world. That is why He hangs suspended on the cross. But Simon merely walks under the cross, that is, the cross we bear serves to weight down the old Adam and to curb sin. But the fact that sins are forgiven we owe solely to the labor and merit of our Lord Christ.. If the cross is to achieve forgiveness of sins, it must not bear Simon; but Christ must hang on it and die on it. And this is the reason why Simon goes free, for through Christ’s death we are freed from death and come to eternal life.
Be sure to knock suffering and cross out of your heart and mind as much as you possibly can; otherwise, if you think about it for a long time, bad will become worse. When in spiritual trouble and tribulation say: After all, I did not choose and prepare this cross for myself; the good Word of God and the fact that I have and teach Christ are the reasons why I am suffering it. So let it go in the name of God. I will let Him take care of this matter and fight it through. Long ago He predicted such suffering for me and promised me His divine and gracious help.
Whoever does not want the cross must be without the Word also. True it is, nothing in heaven and on earth would be more pleasant than the Word without the cross.
Whoever is a Christian must also bear a cross; and the more injustice you suffer, the better it is for you. Therefore you should receive such a cross from God cheerfully and thank Him for it.