Human beings are only bearable when the last defenses of their egos are down; when they stand, helpless and humbled, before the awful circumstances of their being. It is only thus that the point of the cross becomes clear, and the point of the cross is the point of life.
~Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)
For if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.
~ Romans 6:5-7
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died He died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
~ Romans 6:8-11
For me, beloved, and perhaps i am not alone – i often see what Jesus did at the cross as payment for my sins and as a wonderful covering for the times when i still transgress His laws, and operate from my own flesh. It is the payment that keeps me from being paid the wage of death for my own sins, and enables me to see heaven and Jesus face-to-face one Day. And, oh this is wonderfully true!
However, there is a problem here. There is more to the cross.
Much more.
And if we miss it, we may in fact live a life of weakness that only serves to trans-temporally add to the agony of the One who hung on the cross as a substitute for us in the flesh.
The cross of Christ is more than a symbol. The cross is more than an event. It is a nexus. It is the time/place in the universe where all sin ever committed, being committed, to be committed was paid for and covered by Deity Himself. It is, however, also the place where the “old us” of those who are a new creation in Him were actually killed. This is a profound mystery of the Gospel. But mystery does not dismiss truth. Rather, mystery only makes a truth like this more profound.
Passage after passage of the New Testament tell us that the old man in a true believer is dead. He no longer needs to receive any attention from the new being into which G_d is making us. No, the screaming of our flesh is nothing more than old mental mis-firing brain wiring, or ideas launched into our minds by spiritual foes.
Oh yeah, we CAN sin. Any human being has that capacity. This writer can be distracted by a pretty female in a millisecond, and sometimes gets carried away by that distraction. But here is the difference: We no longer HAVE TO sin, nor do we maintain any right to do it. And in reckoning this old man dead as Scripture maintains – we blow away any basis from which the flesh may launch its campaign.
Don’t miss this friends. This is not a dog-fight to the end of life, with our old propensity to sin. Yes, we still have the capacity for great depravity. But, because of the cross, we are no longer compelled to pursue that depravity’s depths. We can, in the strength of His Spirit, simply walk away from the sin that so easily entangles us. We have but to keep our eyes on Jesus. He started the process, is working it now, and will bring it all to conclusion.
S0, when we do sin (and oh damn, i hate when i do – do you? Hating our sin IS a sign of our conversion), we have but to agree with G_d that we are sinners, and agree that what He has already done at the cross has taken care of the problem. HE will clean up the mess we have made. We do not (and should not dare think we should) have to do anything from there, but turn our eyes back onto Jesus, and keep moving towards His Light.
AND…
We can bathe in the truth that we never have to go back into sin again. Not ever. This is part of the full benefit of the cross of Christ. He has actually set us free from sin.
This is very Good News!
~C.S. Lewis
