“Not I, but Christ … This is the theme, or at least ought to be, of every believer.”
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless, I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” Gal. 2:20
THIS is not an easy lesson learned, and we need constant daily reminders to its fact and reality on our quest and kingdom journey. This is the task of the Holy Spirit – to take the Word and impress its truth on heart and mind unto the image of Christ (Rom 8:29).
WITHOUT saying more, let us pick up where our author left off in Chapter 63, the “The Spirit’s Goal – The Spirit of Truth.” May we find these things rich to our understanding and advancement in the stature of our Redeemer – to that end let us pray.
In the inexorable riches of Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15, Jas 1:2; Prov. 21:30
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Chapter 63—The Spirit’s Goal – Part 3
The Spirit of Truth …continued
The failing one finds that, just where he depended upon the Spirit most, and just when he needed Him most, He did not seem to respond. Rather, He seemed to make him all the more miserable and needy. The Spirit of God will never give power through faith in Himself, but will ever increase the believer’s realization of his need of Christ. In this He is faithfully carrying out His mission of glorifying the Lord Jesus, all the while speaking not of Himself but remaining hidden. He has not even revealed His name.
Throughout this discovery of weakness the hungry heart is slowly being turned to the truth of the Word, from which the Spirit of truth never deviates. When his faith is finally shifted to the dual growth center—the Cross and the ascended Lord Jesus—then the Spirit begins to respond accordingly.
The Spirit of the Cross
The Cross is to be gloried in, and the Son glorified. As the Cross is applied to the old life, the awakened one finds himself more free to concentrate upon the Lord Jesus above. This focused faith brings the very heart of the Spirit’s ministry into action. The joyful and dependent believer is resting in the positional truth that “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). Now he is beginning to receive the reality of that freedom in his daily life.
How is this Spirit-wrought “not I, but Christ” life experienced? When one is reckoning within the scope of identification with Christ, the Holy Spirit inevitably transmits the finished work of both death and life to the Christian. The self-life is going to feel the cut of the Cross, while the growing life of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus within will be manifested in sacrifice for others.
The hunger that the Spirit gives to the heart of the growing one is expressed in Paul’s determined cry, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, sharing the likeness of his death” (Phil. 3:10, Conybeare). To know Him is the very core and raison d’etre of one’s life in Christ. “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). The Spirit’s transmission of these truths into reality of life results in death working in us, but life in others (2 Cor. 4:12). …to be continued
