"But
unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ
the power of God..." (1 Corinthians 1:24).
"For I determined not to know anything among you,
save Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (1
Corinthians 2:2).
In many ways the explanation of Christ being the power of
God consists in the fact that He is Christ crucified.
This second reference by Paul to his emphasis on Christ
crucified is immediately linked with the reminder that
Christ is the power of God and largely the explanation of
it.
The whole subject of spiritual power is most important.
So many Christians find themselves involved in a
continual struggle to live up to what they know to be
God's standard. For them Christianity is a manner of life
composed of various rules and regulations. They know what
ought to be and what ought not to be, and they therefore
struggle to attain to this level of living. Their
consciences play a large part in this constant effort,
and for this reason they suffer many fears and fail to
experience the promised joys. Life for them has become a
strenuous business, fraught with much disappointment and
many failures. They may from time to time have a sense of
attainment and success, with much resultant gladness, but
with the fluctuating emotions of the soul, things seem to
collapse and go all wrong. So it is that people find the
Christian life burdensome; they long to know real
victory, true deliverance and the joy of the Lord,
whereas they experience the ups and downs of a constant
struggle. The Christian life depicted in the New
Testament seems so different from their actual experience
that the Devil is never slow to pounce in with his
suggestions that a life of constant victory is quite
impossible, so that all their hopes are but unreal
dreams. Satan wants God's people to despair of knowing
His power.
But there is an altogether different life, different
because it is based on the entering into something
already completed in Christ; not something to be attained
to but rather that which has already been accomplished.
It is not a standard to be lived up to, but a Person to
be lived with. It is impossible to measure the vast
difference between these two kinds of life. The former is
one of self effort and defeat, while the other consists
in enjoying the reality of Christ the power of God.
We must beware of thinking in terms of advanced or
special doctrines. Scriptural teaching is not
departmental or sectional. We may hear of 'higher truth'
or 'advanced teaching', as though there were something
special reserved for the few. So there arises the idea of
'higher life' with 'higher teaching', as opposed to being
a simple believer, content with 'the simple gospel'. I
want very emphatically to contradict any such notion.
Wherever you look in the New Testament you will never
find any support for this idea. It is true that we have
to face the call for overcomers, but surely the
'overcomer' in the book of Revelation is only the ripe
and full product of the work of Christ on His cross; it
is only Christ in His fuller manifestation and
expression. Overcomers are made possible because Christ
is "the power of God". Just exactly as in the
commencement of salvation, so in its triumphant
consummation, everything is linked with the Lamb slain
and the blood of the Lamb.
Nobody should make a special kind of 'Overcomer'
teaching, for this is what God intended Calvary to mean
for every believer. God had spiritual victory as His
thought when He first forgave us our sins, and in His
mind this is to be the normal development of every
Christian's life. Every movement forward, however, is
related to the cross, and there is a sense in which there
is not one step forward in the spiritual life which is
not preceded by a step backward. What I mean is this,
that there has to be some undoing before there can be any
upbuilding. The Christ who is the power of God to us is
the crucified Christ who progressively applies the cross
to us also, so that being released from the flesh which
so holds us back, we may advance in the realm of the
Spirit. So spiritual progress is not conditioned by
special teaching but by ever deeper experiences of the
inworking of the cross of Christ.
This being true, we must recognise that everything is
bound up with the Person, and must never be regarded
merely as spiritual truth. Everything is bound up with
Him. It is Christ who is the power of God - Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. This explains the working of the
gospel, which surely is that Christ crucified is revealed
in the heart of the sinner who believes. We are not
constituted gospel preachers because we have read
somewhere the historic facts that Christ was crucified,
raised from the dead and ascended, but because God has
revealed in us not just facts but a Person in relation to
the facts and the facts in relation to the Person. This,
then, brings me back to what I said at the beginning,
namely that the life of struggling and failing in self
effort is really due to a failure to appreciate the
wonder and power of Christ crucified.
When the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts He brings
Christ in the completeness of His finished work on the
cross, and then proceeds progressively to conform us to
Christ. Do you realise that the Christ in you is not an
imperfect Christ? When the Lord Jesus wrought His Calvary
work He not only dealt with the matter of forgiveness but
He went right on to the perfection of redemption, finally
reaching the throne as the great Overcomer. In Him, the
Person, the whole ground of spiritual experience is
covered and completed. There is no experience that can
ever come to you or me which makes impossible the
reaching of God's end, for Christ has already met and
overcome it. So we are not to struggle in vain attempts
after perfection, but to co-operate with the Holy Spirit
as He seeks to make good in us the power of Christ's
finished work on the cross. It is Christ in you who is
the hope of glory. Anything less or anything else will
bring no hope of glory but rather despair.
I would like to close on this positive reminder that the
Holy Spirit has been charged with and has accepted full
responsibility for the conforming of us to Christ. But we
must recognise that power in relation to the Holy Spirit
is not just an impersonal force but is vitally connected
with Christ, and especially on the basis of the cross.
For us the power of the Holy Spirit is inseparably bound
up with the Person of Jesus Christ and depends on our
willingness to accept the implication of union with Him
in His cross. When the Lord was discussing this cross
with Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration,
the word rendered 'decease' should really be 'exodus'
(Luke 9:31). Doubtless, then, we can correctly say that
Christ's cross is a deliverance, a way out. It is the way
out from condemnation, an elementary truth for the
Christian but none the less a precious and important one.
It is the way out from the power of sin. How can I escape
from the bondage of sin which threatens me and seeks
still to make me a slave even though I am a forgiven
sinner? Only by death-union with the Lord Jesus, for it
is His death which has made the escape, the exodus for
all who trust in Him. Such trust involves the
appropriation by faith of the power of that death as I am
led into it in practical ways by the Holy Spirit.
In addition we notice that the Scriptures say that Jesus accomplished
this exodus. It was an accomplishment on His part,
something which He achieved. When we recognise this to be
the nature of that death, we get a different conception
from that of His just being killed, merely being
crucified by men, and realise that this was a mighty work
which He completed. He voluntarily took upon Himself all
those powers which produce man's failures, defeats and
bondage, and then broke through them all and accomplished
a perfect way out by His triumphant death upon the cross.
So it is for us to recognise that all our problems and
enemies have been dealt with by the Lord Jesus in His
cross. The Holy Spirit is given to us as the Spirit of
His triumphant victory, full of energy and power to bring
our besetting weaknesses to that grave where Christ has
brought them, so that we may be freed for the will of
God. I cannot master my sins but Christ has done it, and
can draw me into the power of His delivering death. I can
claim my share in the exodus. And this is not just coming
into the light of some new doctrine, but sharing the
power of a Person. It makes all the difference whether we
are trying to deal with our troubles doctrinally or in
the power of that Person.
Christ's death is also the way out from the bondage of
law. You can have Christian law just as much as you can
have Mosaic law; you can be in bondage in Christianity
just as much as men were in Judaism. Christianity can be
made into an imposed system just as much as Mosaic law
was, and there are many Christians today who live under
the fear of the 'Thou shalt' and the 'Thou shalt not' of
a legalistic conception of the Christian life. You can
take the Bible as God's standard for your life and try to
fulfil it and yet still be burdened with a sense of
constant failure. It is God's standard, and it is a very
exhaustive one which leaves no part of the practical life
untouched, but those who make the effort to try to live
up to it only end in disillusion. No, it is not just a
matter of a Book but of a Person, the Person who did live
up to that standard, absolutely fulfilling every least
demand with the most perfect success, so satisfying God
to the full. By His death He has delivered us from the
bondage of legal demands. This same Person now lives in
us by His Holy Spirit, seeking to work out that perfect
will of God not on the basis of some binding instructions
from without but as a living force within. We have the
law written in our hearts. To be in Christ is a matter of
life and not of legalism.
CHRIST, and Christ crucified, is the power of God to
bring deliverance from sin, from the flesh, from the law
and from the world. "God forbid that I should glory
save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the
world has been crucified to me and I to the world"
(Galatians 6:14). Paul was not glorying that he could
enjoy so much of the world and yet have a clear
conscience, but was enthusiastic about having been
delivered from the world. For believers the only possible
way of staying in this world is to know that they no
longer belong to it. Not that we can deliver ourselves.
No, it is much too strong for us. But in this matter, as
in all others, the cross of Christ has made a way out for
us. Alas that some Christians seem to want to hold on to
as much of the world as they can without losing their
peace of mind, giving up the minimum and holding on to
all that they can without having their conscience too
disturbed. This is not a powerful life, nor is it a
glorious one. The glory of true fellowship with Christ
crucified is the rich satisfaction of those who know the
delivering power of the Christ and the new fullness of
life in the will of God.
From "Toward
the Mark" Jan-Feb 1976, Vol. 5-1.