Crucified With Christ

Horatius Bonar God's Way of Holiness

A Christian is one who has been "crucified with Christ," who has died with Him, been buried with Him, risen with Him, ascended with Him, and is seated "in heavenly places" with Him (Romans 6:3-8; Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 2:5,6; Colossians 3:1-3).

Standing by the cross, we realize the meaning of the text: "Our old man is [was] crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin" (Romans 6:6); where the crucifixion of our old man, the destruction of the body of sin, and deliverance from the bondage of sin, are strikingly linked to one another, and linked, all of them, to the cross of Christ.

George Muller

There was a day when I died, utterly died, to George Muller and his opinions, preferences, tastes and will; died to the world, its approval or censure; died to the approval or blame of even my brethren and friends; and since then I have studied only to "show myself approved unto God". (2 Timothy 2:15)

A.B. Simpson

Every true life is death-born, and the deeper the dying the truer the living.

God often has to bring us not only into the place of suffering, but also into the place where our righteousness breaks down and our character falls to pieces in order to humble us in the dust and show us the need of entire crucifixion to all our natural life. Then, at the feet of Jesus we are ready to receive Him, to abide in Him, depend upon Him alone and draw all our life and strength each moment from Him, our Living Head.

It was thus that Peter was saved by his very fall and had to die to Peter that he might live more perfectly to Christ. Have we thus died, and have we thus renounced the strength of our own self-confidence?

The church is full of half-dead people who have been trying to slay themselves for years and have not had the courage to strike the fatal blow. Yet if they would just put themselves at Jesus' feet and let Him do it, there would be accomplishment and rest. On the cross He provided for our death as well as our life, and our part is just to let His death be applied to our (sin) nature as it has been to our sins. When we have done this we must leave it all with Him, think no more about it and count it dead. Recognizing it as no longer ourselves, we must refuse to obey it, fear it, to be identified with it, or even try to cleanse it. We must consider it utterly in His hands, dead to us forever, and depend on Him for every breath of our new life.

If you have ever noticed the type on a printed page, you must have seen that the little 'i' always has a dot over it. It is that dot that elevates it above the other letters in the line. Now, each of us is a little 'i', and over every one of us there is a little dot of self-importance, self-will, self-interest, self-confidence, self-complacency-or something to which we cling and for which we contend. But it just as surely reveals self-life as if it were a mountain of real importance.This 'i' is a rival of Jesus Christ. It is the enemy of the Holy Spirit and of our peace and life. God has therefore decreed its death.

We must recognize the true character of our self-life and its real virulence and vileness. We must consent to its destruction, and we must take it ourselves, as Abraham did Isaac, and lay it at the feet of God in willing sacrifice. This is a seemingly impossible task for the natural heart, but the moment the will is yielded and the choice is made, we are astonished to find that the agony is over and death is accomplished. Usually the crisis in such cases hangs upon a single point. God does not need to strike us in a hundred places to inflict a death wound. There is one point that touches the heart and that is the Point God usually strikes. It will likely be the dearest thing in our lives, the decisive thing in our plans, the citadel of our wills, the center of our hearts. And when we yield there, there is little left to yield anywhere else. But when we refuse to yield at that point, a spirit of evasion and compromise enters into all the rest of our lives. Let us take Him to enable us to will His will in all things in our lives.

F.B. Meyer

The Cross of Christ stands with open arms to welcome every sinful soul. The nails are not rusted or blunted by the years that have passed since they were driven into the flesh of Christ our Lord. And as we humble ourselves, and submit our proud and selfish soul-life to be nailed with Him to the Cross, in the power of the Eternal Spirit, out of suffering comes life...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer Discipleship and the Cross

The cross is not random suffering, but necessary suffering. The cross is not suffering that stems from natural existence; it is the suffering that comes from being Christian. … A Christianity that no longer took discipleship seriously remade the gospel into only the solace of cheap grace. Moreover, it drew no line between natural and Christian existence. Such a Christianity had to understand the cross as one's daily misfortune, as the predicament and anxiety of our daily life. Here it has been forgotten that the cross also means being rejected, that the cross includes the shame of suffering. Being shunned, despised, and deserted by people, as in the psalmists unending lament, is an essential feature of the suffering of the cross, which cannot be comprehended by a Christianity that is unable to differentiate between a citizen's ordinary existence and a Christian existence. The cross is suffering with Christ.

A.W. Tozer

In every Christian's heart there is a cross and a throne, and the Christian is on the throne until he puts himself on the cross. We want to be saved but we insist that Christ do all the dying.

People who are crucified with Christ have three distinct marks:

1. they are facing only one direction,

2. they can never turn back, and

3. they no longer have plans of their own.