WE took a little side trip in the last two comments, looking at two critically important WLC questions dealing with sanctification (Q’s 78 & 75) in conjunction with considering the Christian imperative for continuous growth. This provides a good context for the closing of this chapter in Principles of Spiritual Growth dealing with The Cross. Before reading and in preparation for this last section, it might be helpful to go back and refresh your thoughts concerning what was previously presented in Parts 1 -3.
MAY the Lord draw you near in His love, His grace and tender mercies, in faith holding claim to all that is owned in Christ in his finished work on the Cross.
Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. The Blood procures our pardon for what we have done; the Cross procures our deliverance from what we are.” -WN (Col 2:6)
With highest regards in Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15, Jas 1:2
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Chapter 12—The Cross – Part 4 …conclusion
Our reckoning on the finished work of our death to sin, in Christ at Calvary, is God’s one way of deliverance—there is no other way because that is the way He did it. We learned not to add to a finished work in the matter of justification, and now we must learn not to add to the finished work of emancipation [sanctification]. We will be freed when we enter His prepared freedom—there is no other.
“The believer can never overcome the old man even by the power of the new apart from the death of Christ, and therefore the death of Christ unto sin is indispensable, and unless the cross is made the basis upon which he overcomes the old man, he only drops into another form of morality; in other words, he is seeking by self-effort to overcome self, and the struggle is a hopeless one” (C. Usher).
Marcus Rainford refused to stop short of God’s ultimate for freedom: “It is not to be a mere passing impression of the mind when we are undisturbed by active temptation; no mere happy frame of spirit when under temporary refreshing from the presence of the Lord; no self-flattering consciousness of a heart exercised in good works; from none of these is the believer to infer his practical mastery over sin, but on the ground that Christ died unto sin, and [he] liveth unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
“I must recognize that the enemy within the camp—the flesh, the old nature, self, I, the old Adam is a usurper. By faith I must reckon him to be in the place that God put him—crucified with Christ. I must realize that now my life is hid with Christ in God; that He is my life” (Ian Thomas).
