This Week’s Recovery Application Challenge
Please click on TWIRL 033 for this week’s lesson before continuing with this application challenge.
Dying into New Life—Crucified with Christ
To be crucified with Christ is not to hang on a cross. You will not die in the sin of all mankind. To take up your cross daily does not necessarily mean that you will be beaten to within an inch of your life (although there are many in the world that have been and will continue to be beaten and martyred for their faith in Jesus) and expected to carry on our ripped open flesh a 125 pound chunk of lumber. You are not buried with Christ, nor are you condemned with Christ. So what does it mean to be crucified with Christ and to take up your cross daily?
Pastor Fran Leeman speaks of living a “cross-shaped life“. This means that we are to deny our selfish desires and intentions, willingly dying to what we have known to be the remedy of our discontent, to live a separated life—separated into the life committed fully to the will of God. He has commented on the gesture seen in Catholic mass and private prayer. (In general, the gesture of touching one’s forehead, then the chest, then the left shoulder, followed by the right shoulder, symbolizes in the religious sense Christ’s journey from heaven to earth, then his descent to hell following his death, and finally being exalted to the right hand of the Father. It also represents the triune God of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.) Pastor Leeman stated that in the early century church, the demonstrative gesture of the cross represented a commitment to Christ’s command to take up one’s cross in commitment to a lifestyle conformed to living the way Jesus lived, humbly and willing to deny oneself sacrificially to the point of possibly dying for the sake of the ultimate prize: resurrection.
To be crucified with Christ is to willingly surrender as Jesus did. Jesus did not want to experience the struggle and pain of crucifixion and condemnation. He prayed desperately that He not have to endure that. Yet, even while in a position of strength (remember His captors were pinned to the ground), Jesus willingly denied Himself, surrendering to the plan and purpose of God for His life, and for all life. The cross that Jesus carried possessed the weight of all of your sin, which knocked Him to the ground. The cross you carry contains the weight of your selfishness in your old nature. Your cross contains your desires of the flesh. The miracle is that you are no longer bound by them. In fact, Jesus says that His yoke is easy and His burden light. He is your Simon of Cyrene with one important difference. Jesus Christ is God and in reality bears the weight of your cross if and when……………. you let Him.
As you admit the obvious: you are not in control , that you have made a mess of things, and you cannot fix yourself; having believed that God is in control and that you are crucified with Christ in loving relationship with Him and under His merciful plan of grace; surrendered, you now deny yourself in your selfishness, empowered by Jesus Christ to carry the cross of your selfish intentions, and commit to the new life you have inherited in your experience of resurrection. When you experience the miracle of being crucified with Christ through your willingness to surrender yourself into the hands of the miracle maker we die into new life (Romans 12:1-2).
The truth of the crucifixion of Jesus, along with the eternal reality that you and I have been crucified with Him, unfortunately does not mean that we will never again make selfish mistakes (called sin), because we most certainly will. The miracle is that we have been absolutely forgiven of our sin (1 John 1:9), and our broken lives have been resurrected into new lives. The tragedy is for those who reject this truth and choose to align themselves eternally with their sin. Jesus, in His death on the cross, condemned our sin to the belly of the earth. To align oneself with sin outside of relationship with Christ is to choose an eternity of condemnation with that sin. To confess the sin and experience forgiveness in relationship with Christ is to be crucified with Christ, resurrected into eternity with Him. Hallelujah! Praise God for this!
14 So then, since we have a great High Priest who has entered heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe. 15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin. 16 So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most. Hebrews 4:14-16 (NLT)
Please, take the time to meditate on this truth. If you have not already, take the time to read the scriptures linked throughout this writing. Please take the time to talk to the Sympathetic Savior who has blessed you with this wonderful opportunity to live a cross-shaped life. Finally, pray to get to know Jesus Christ in the fullness of who He is so that you may realize by experience the fullness of who you are in relationship with Him.
Walk, not according to the old system of expectations that keeps you stuck and holds you down, but live in the Spirit of the truth of what you have realized today.
- From what you have learned from this lesson on dying into new life—crucified with Christ, what does that mean for you today, practically speaking?
- What does it mean for you to pick up your cross and follow Jesus, again practically speaking? How is your life different? What does it look like?
- What in your life are you consumed by trying in vain to work out and solve that is in the way of living the new life? What do you need to die to?
- More specifically, what might you be feeling shame for that has overwhelmed you or you have been overcome by that has had a paralyzing effect in your life?
- What do you need to do to be living a cross-shaped life? What do you need to load up upon your cross that you can trust Jesus to be your Simon and help you to carry it?
- Take a blank piece of paper and draw a large block cross that allows you to write inside the cross. In the cross, begin to list those things you identified in the previous couple of questions that need to be nailed to the cross you carry in life. Then ask Jesus to be your Simon of Cyrene to help you to carry it in all of His strength as God.
- Which of those things in the cross you are carrying are things in your past that you have been forgiven for, and which of them are the matters of selfish sin that continue to linger in your selfish nature? Ask for God to help you to make clear distinctions.
- Draw a single line through the items that you believe, or need to believe, that Jesus freed you from through His mercy at the cross.
- Write those items on a separate piece of paper. Then shred them and dispose of them.
- These are the things that Jesus removed from your record when they were buried with Him. Through Christ’s act of mercy at the cross, He put to death those things and they no longer have power over you. They no longer own you. Please pray that the miracle of Christ’s sacrifice will be experienced by you as you come to believe that you have been crucified with Christ into new life.
He has removed our sins as far from usas the east is from the west. Psalm 103:12 (NLT)
For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. 1 John 3:20 (NKJV)
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