April 26th, 2020 – Devotional With Pastor Dan
Always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4:10-12)
Paul seems to be bold in speaking of the intimate union of Christ living in him, and the life that he lived in the flesh, that came with much suffering. Paul talked about himself being “crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20), and Christ living in him. In our text, Paul tells us how he was always bearing about in his body the dying of Jesus; and it was through that that the life also of Jesus was manifested in his body. And notice Paul says that it was because the death of Christ was working in and through him, that Christ’s life could work in them. These are thoughts the Christian seldom thinks about. The Christian culture today is focused more on not having to suffer for Christ than suffering for Him, as if suffering for Christ held no eternal value.
We often speak of our abiding in Christ. But we forget that that means the abiding in the crucified Christ. Many believers appear to think that once they have claimed Christ’s death in the fellowship of the cross, and have counted themselves as crucified with Him, that they may now consider it as past and done with. They do not 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 daily experience, the self-emptying of our Lord, 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 Christ is to be the disposition that marks our daily life. “Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus.” This is what we are called to as much as Paul. If we are indeed to live for the welfare of men around us, if we are to sacrifice our ease and pleasure to win souls for our Lord, it will be true of us as of Paul, that we are able to say: Death worketh in us, but life in those for whom we pray and labor. It is in the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ, that the crucified Lord can live out and work out His life in us and through us.
Andrew Murray
We need to learn a lesson here, that abiding in Christ Jesus, for which we have so often prayed for and strived for, is nothing less than the abiding of the Crucified in us, and us in Him.