I’M adding to today’s None But The Hungry Heart reflection an additional scripture reference that deeply reflects the center, daily reality of the cross, the paradox and counter-intuitive reality that death to self is the path that yields to the promised abundant life.
“But Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain.” John 12:23-24
There is a radical aspect of the Christian Life, that alludes many a follower. Christ bids us to take up our cross and follow Him. As our reading will display by drawing on Christ’s own path—only through death did He return to glory; and as such we are encouraged to embrace daily crucifixion to self and the world as well, as the gateway to experiencing the fullness of His life.
AS I look at my desk copy of NBTHH, I see I’ve written the word “Radical” next to today’s devotional title. Synonyms define this word as “essential, deep-seated, extreme and uncompromising; basic, yet far-reaching.” …Well, as our author quotes in his lead-in Gal 2:20; “I have been crucified with Christ”- Christ calls us to an “essential and deep-seated” – not I but Christ! – “This is the way!”
SO, here’s today’s Lessons from the Garden reading from None But The Hungry Heart, 2-12 – “The Cross For Self.”
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10; Isa 30:15; Job 2:10; Jas. 1:2; Prov. 21:30
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2-12. The Cross For Self
“I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20, ASV).
The Cross is the height of paradox; it is at once God’s greatest agony, and His eternal glory. For the growing believer it means daily crucifixion, and at the same time freedom from the penalty and the power of sin and self. “But may it never be mine to boast of anything but the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world!” (Gal. 6:14, Wms.).
“We need to enter deeply into the truth that Christ the Beloved Son of the Father could not return to the glory of Heaven until He had first given Himself over to death. As this great principle opens up to us, it will help us to understand how in our life, and in our fellowship with the Lord Jesus, it is impossible for us to share the fulness of His life until we have first in very deed surrendered ourselves every day as having died to sin and the world.”
“Many believers appear to think that when once they have claimed Christ’s death in the fellowship of the Cross, and have counted themselves crucified with Him, they may now consider it as past and done with. They do not as yet understand that it is in the crucified Christ, and in the fellowship of His death, that they are to abide daily and unceasingly. The fellowship of the Cross is to be the life of a daily walk-His taking the form of a servant, His humbling Himself and becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross; this mind that was in the Lord Jesus is to be the disposition that marks our daily life.”
“Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5, ASV).
