Take up your cross

Many years ago I was greatly challenged by the testimony

of a
young American called Jim Elliot. He was murdered by
members of the Auca tribe in Ecuador while he and fellow
missionaries were attempting to contact them with the
gospel.
Not long before he died, he wrote these words in his diary:
''He is no fool
who gives what he cannot keep
to gain what he cannot lose.''
The cost of commitment
Those words epitomize Jesus’ call to us:
‘‘Those who would come after me must deny themselves
and
take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to
save
their lives will lose them, but those who lose their lives for
me
and for the gospel will save them.’’ (Mark 8:34–35)
This is the challenge of the Cross. It is the call to radical
living
and a new set of values. At the heart of the Cross, all
other
things are brought into perspective. The Cross has
become the
supreme symbol of self-sacrifice, but it is not
sacrifice for its own
sake. It is commitment to the perfect will of God.
Many have looked upon the crucifixion of Jesus as a noble
sacrifice, but a waste, a pity, and a shame. God’s
sacrifices are
never wasted, though: they bring great fruit. The writer of
the
49
letter to the Hebrews knew this when he exhorted his
readers to
follow the way of Jesus:
Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of
our faith,
who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning
its
shame, and sat down at the right hand of God.
(Hebrews 12:2)
In God’s economy, after every crucifixion, there is a
resurrection.
The end of the old
Paul puts it in his own words when he says:
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but
Christ
lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the
Son of
God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians
2:20)
In a very personal sense, Paul sees himself as being
involved in
the crucifixion of Jesus. This crucifixion is the end of the
principles which dominated his old way of life. The very
Cross
which stands as a bridge between fallen man and holy
God, also
stands as a separation between the new person in Christ
and his
old way of life.
A.W. Tozer put this very well when he wrote:
''The old cross is a symbol of death. It stands for
the abrupt,
violent end of a human being''. In Roman times, the
man
who took up his cross and started down the road was not
coming back. He was not going out to have his life
redirected, he was going out to have it ended.
Through the work of the Holy Spirit in us, we enter into the
reality of this death to the old. The release of the
resurrection
power of God cannot be a reality unless there is this
radical
break from the powers that dominated and directed our
old
lives. It is this process of identification with the death of
Jesus
which Paul says leads to that experience of his new life.
50 Explaining the Cross
If we have been united with him in his death, we will
certainly
also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know
that our
old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin
might be
rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves of
sin –
because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
(Romans 6:5–7)
The cross spells the end of our old way of living – following
the
impulses of our old nature and the dominion of the powers
of
evil. Through the dislocation which the Holy Spirit effects
in us
as we open ourselves to him, we are cut off from the old
and
opened up to the power of a new life in Jesus.
Something or nothing
God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the
wise;
God chose the weak things of the world to shame the
strong. He
chose the lowly things of this world and the despised
things –
and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are.
(1 Corinthians 1:27–28)
I am so often aware of how much needs to change if I am
to
know God’s power at work within me, to the extent he
desires.
Satan is always appealing to that inbuilt urge to ‘‘be
something’’,
and it often motivates our very service for God.
From the first day that I became a Christian, my ambition
has
been to be something for God: preacher or evangelist.
Looking
back, it’s easy to see how much of the flesh was mixed
with that
desire. Even in recent times, much of my Christian life has
been
really the old life lived in religious or spiritual guise.
The tragedy is that even in Spirit-filled Christians the flesh
and the Spirit is mixed together to the extent of annulling
or
dissipating the work of the Spirit. How sullied our lives are
by
self-interest and pride, and how closed we are from the
real
God! Even much of our so-called spirituality and
charismatic
practice has done little but develop a heightened
consciousness
of self which we never rise above to glimpse the glory of
God.
The fact is that God can’t use us when we are
‘‘something’’: it
is in the lives of those described in Scripture as ‘‘nothing’’
that
Take up your cross 51
he has chosen to manifest his power and glory. We need
to die
to ourselves in a very radical way.
God’s visual aid
Angie, the wife of one of my team members, met me one
day
after an experience that affected her profoundly. She had
been
driving on the road and saw that a collie dog had just been
run
over by a truck. At first she was deeply upset, thinking it
might
be her own pet collie, Jess. But as she gazed at the terrible
mess,
she felt the voice of the Holy Spirit whisper in her ear,
‘‘That’s
you down there. You’re dead.’’
By the time she saw me, Angie knew it wasn’t her own
dog
that was killed. But she had undergone a transformation in
that
moment. It was like a personal crucifixion leading her to a
whole new sense of God and a willingness for the release
of his
power in her life. Previously she had been very concerned
with
her place in life and the status of her husband’s ministry,
but
now she saw that to have any true ministry, we all need to
die to
those attitudes.
Angie entered into an understanding of the reality of
death
deep within her spirit, one that others on the team had
been
experiencing in the previous months. This was not a death
of
the spirit, but a deep inner awareness that to see and
know the
power of God, much that we had previously counted as
valuable
in our lives would need to go. God used this harrowing
incident to bring home to Angie’s spirit the need for such a
death within herself.
This illustrates a basic truth. We all need to come through
to
that point of brokenness and death until we feel there is
nothing left. Only then can we begin to be open to the new
thing that God wants to do within and through us.
This is exactly my own experience. It is not our
weaknesses
that God needs to deal with, but those facets of our
personalities
that we often regard as our strong points. They are often
the places where we don’t feel the need to depend on God
and
in which we feel strong and self-confident.
The ways of God are deep and mysterious, and they start
with
the demolition and death of everything in our lives and
ambitions
that come from the flesh. The New Testament identifies
52 Explaining the Cross
the flesh as our greatest enemy and God’s biggest
problem. It has
continually to be dealt with and overcome. Even though
we are
to count it as dead (Romans 6:11), there is no doubt that
in real
terms it is still active. If we want to know God’s power
within
our lives, something radical needs to change.
Ointment poured forth
I have come to see in a completely new light the words
which
head this section about the ‘‘things that are not’’. God has
chosen
the things that are nothing. Not only those who have
nothing,
but those who are nothing. It is not a matter or social
status or
degree; it is much deeper than that. If we really want to
know
God’s power in our lives, then we need to walk the way of
Jesus.
It is the way of death.
We need to be broken. Only after that can God put healing
into our lives so that he can then pour his healing out for
others. So often what pours out is not the healing balm of
God,
but the sheer blatant arrogance of the flesh – the old
nature
wrapped up in religious guise. The pride of life is dressed
up to
make it look godly and the ambitions of the old self are
revamped to make them sound holy.
God wants to put his fragrance into our lives. Yet just as
when
Jesus was anointed at Bethany (Mark 14), the jar has to be
broken before the ointment of the Holy Spirit can flow out
from
us.
God’s way may seem absurd to the world. But it is the
only
way. Unless you become nothing, God will never make you
anything.
The mark of God
I often reflect on Jacob’s experience at the brook of Jabbok
(Genesis 32:22–32). That is where he wrestled with the
messenger
of God all night until the day broke. Jacob refused to let
God
go until he had blessed him. To stay in that struggle cost
Jacob
everything he was and had. It cost him his old name and it
cost
him his strength. No longer was he called Jacob (the
usurper)
but Israel, because he had struggled with God and with
people
and had overcome. The messenger struck him in the
tendon
Take up your cross 53
of his thigh and from that day he physically carried the
mark of
his divine meeting.
The new Jacob was lame, but his lameness was his
strength.
No wonder he called the place Peniel, ‘‘face of God’’, for
he had
met God face to face and yet lived to tell the tale.
No story portrays more profoundly how we need to meet
with
God, to be touched by his power and seared by his
holiness. To
know that God has looked into our lives and in his live has
spared us – that is true brokenness. This brokenness is not
really
weakness in spiritual terms, but the very source of
strength in
the spirit. After such a meeting, there is a deep sense of
dislocation. Things never look the same again.
In fact, this is the source of the greatest power in the
world. A
person who has been touched deeply by God has nothing
left to
prove and nothing more to fear. The old fight has gone,
and the
old aggression has been laid to rest. Inside there is an
emptiness
that can only be filled by God, and outwardly there is a
weakness that only God can make strong. The old values
don’t
seem to matter any longer.
Satan can lead us into an extreme, which is to devalue
everything. Yet the Holy Spirit comes as God’s great
assayer.
He is here to lead us into a new and deeper appreciation,
not
only of ‘‘spiritual’’ or ‘‘religious’’ things, but every good
and
perfect gift that comes from the creative hand of the
Father.
This brings us to thankfulness and true satisfaction with all
that
God has freely given us.