Abide in Christ
by Andrew Murray
The Crucified One
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." - Gal. 2:20
"We have been planted together in the likeness of His death." - Rom. 6:5
"We have been planted together in the likeness of His death." - Rom. 6:5
"I must learn to look upon the Cross ....not only a deliverance from guilt, but also from the power of sin."
"When Christs comes in my place, He remains what He was, the beloved of the Father; but in the fellowship with me He shares my curse and dies my death. When I stand in His place, which is still always mine, I am still what I was by nature, the accursed one, who deserves to die; but also united to Him, I share His blessing, and receive His life."
I never liked the image of "dying to myself." I felt that I would lose who I was. I felt I would no longer matter. I thought of it as I did a physical death. Yet, this death, is a death of the old man. My old self I hate. I hate the sin that reigns so freely sometimes. To abide with Christ on the cross means that I am freed from all of that. The freedom over physical death was not the only freedom that Christ secured on the cross and offers to believers now! I have freedom to love my God. I have freedom to not sin. I have freedom from the world and its passions and lust. The freedom Christ offers is freedom daily from the pulls of the world and sin.
My Sweet Saviour, my heart is full of gratitude for the Cross anew. I am awe-struck that You would save me once, but to rescue me from the chains day-after-day-after-day, I am indebted to You. My heart longs even more for a deep communion. The deeper the communion, the deeper the abiding, comes the deeper freedom from this world and sin. Amen.
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