Andrew Murray's Secrets Of Faith Chikamu

Scripture teaches us that there are two points of view from which we may regard Christ’s death upon the cross. The one is the redemption of the cross: Christ dying for us as our complete deliverance from the curse of sin. The other, the fellowship of the cross: Christ taking us up to die with Him and making us partakers of the fellowship of His death in our own experience.

[We know] the law of God pronounced a curse on all sin and on all that is sinful. So Christ took our curse upon Him—yea, became a curse—and destroyed its power, and in that cross we now have everlasting redemption from sin and all its power. The cross reveals to us man’s sin as under the curse, Christ becoming a curse and so overcoming it, and our full and everlasting deliverance from the curse. In these thoughts the lost and most hopeless sinner finds a sure ground for confidence and hope.

However, the thought of fellowship with Christ in His bearing the cross has often led to the vain attempt in our own power to follow Him and bear His image. This is impossible for man until he first learns to know something of what it means to say, “I have been crucified with Christ.”

The life that He gives is the crucified life, in which He entered heaven and was exalted to the throne, standing as a Lamb who had been slain (see Rev. 5:12). The power of His death and life work in me, and as I hold fast the truth that I have been crucified with Him, and that now I myself live no more but Christ lives in me, I receive power to conquer sin. We have here a deep and very precious truth. Most Christians have but little knowledge of it. That knowledge is not gained easily or speedily. It requires a great longing indeed to be dead to all sin. It calls for a strong faith, wrought by the Holy Spirit, so that the union with Christ crucified—the fellowship of His cross—can day by day become our life. And the life that He imparts to the believing disciple is likewise a crucified life with its victory over sin and its power of access into God’s presence.

O Christian, when the world crucified Christ, it crucified you with Him, When Christ overcame the world on the cross, He made you an overcomer too. He calls you now, at whatever cost of self-denial, to regard the world, in its hostility to God and His kingdom, as a crucified enemy over whom the cross can ever keep you conqueror. What a different relationship to the pleasures and attractions of the world the Christian has who by the Holy Spirit has learned to say: “I have been crucified with Christ; . . . [the crucified] Christ lives in me!” (Gal. 2:20).

Let us ask God fervently that the Holy Spirit, through whom Christ offered Himself on the cross, may reveal to us in power what it means to “boast . . . in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me” (6:14). For the preaching of the redemption of the cross is the foundation and center of the salvation that the gospel brings us. To those who believe its full truth it is a cause of unceasing thanksgiving. It gives us boldness to rejoice in God. There is nothing which will keep the heart more tender toward God, enabling us to live in His love and to make Him known to those who have never yet found Him. God be praised for the redemption of the cross!