To Be Deeply Crucified – Part 2

Posted on November 3, 2023 by Elizabeth Welte in Freedom Fighters

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”- Galatians 2:20 (NKJV)

 

The last time I was with you I was sharing my struggle with head and my heart and compared it as if there was a fist fight going between them. I think I have it boiled down to where the struggle lies in the reason we think Jesus came in to this world. I have been spending my morning devotional time with Aiden Wilson Tozer and he really has me re-thinking what it means to be crucified with Christ. Even though I have no problem with saying there is a deep love for Jesus within me I am wondering if I have been truly and deeply crucified with Him. So with that said, let’s examine the two contradictory schools of thought on why Jesus came to earth. (per A.W. Tozer)

 

Jesus came to help us!

That’s right, Jesus did come to help us, but some of us think that means to make us successful. If we simply believe in Jesus, He will turn around things in our lives that aren’t going well and make them new. It also means that we should focus only on those good parts in Scripture and claim them for ourselves, after all, God wants to makes us a good people. We don’t really want to hear about the messiness of The Cross of Christ because that was a brutal way to die; even if it was for us, and since it was done once and for ALL we really don’t to revisit it, right? “This feel better Christianity has fostered an entire new industry of religious self-help.” – Tozer

 

Jesus came to put an end to self!

This sounds like a death sentence, don’t it? After all the apostle Paul sets the bar when he wrote, “Not I, but Christ” (Gal 2:20) If we are looking to Jesus to make everything new, to become that new person, then from now on we have to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ. This could mean that the old you doesn’t become educated, polished, or cultivated if it does nothing more than gratify the flesh. But so often we forget that we were made to bring glory to God and that will only happen when we realize that comes with the sacrifice of our “self.” “The ‘I’ must be eliminated in its entirety for Christ to hold His rightful position in our lives.” – Tozer

 

“Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ.” – Philippians 3:8

 

Jesus came to help us put an end to self!

This is more like it, isn’t it? Jesus came to make everything new, so any finding of self-value you had before He came are now false. All that wisdom you thought you had before He came is called into question. And here’s the kicker… all that “do-gooder” stuff that had been going on – consider it all rubbish!! There is nothing redeemable from the old self-life. Sometimes I wonder why I am living in the same house that I got before He came into my life. But in essence it isn’t the house that has to go, but what I keep in the rooms that have to go… and that’s when the fist fight breaks out. “No matter how much the old self is cleaned up, it still contains an irredeemable core of corruption.” – Tozer

 

I guess the on-going battle within me will slowly dwindle down to a dull roar the deeper I get rooted into the Vine of Christ. Nevertheless ,I live but the “I” doesn’t have to be the “I” that sits on the throne. When I yield self over and exchange that for Christ, I get the privilege of Christ living in me. “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25) To end this on a Tozer note, “The purpose of God is not to save us from hell; the purpose of God is to save us to make us like Christ and to make us like God. God will never be done with us until the day we see His face, when his name will be on our foreheads; and we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is.”

 

Amen?

 

Written by Chris Hughes: Chris is a child of El Elyon, a son, a husband, a father, and has recently become a grandpop. He has an education in Biblical doctrine and is a graduate of The Colony of Mercy, 11/2003. He has been a Freedom Fighter contributor since 2008. You can email him at cphughes515@verizon.net.

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This Week’s Verse to Memorize:  “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, ² looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:1-2