Cross Bearing # 4 (and others)

Cross Bearing # 4 (and others)

Again, in the 20th chapter of John, Christ said to His disciples, "As the Father has sent Me - even so I send you." What was Christ sent here to do? To glorify the Father; to express God's love; to manifest God's grace; to weep over Jerusalem; to have compassion on the ignorant and those that are out of the way; to toil so assiduously that He had no leisure so much as to eat; to live a live of such self-sacrifice that even His kinfolk said, "He's out of His mind!" And, "as the Father has sent Me, even so," says Christ, "I send you." In other words, I send you back into the world - out of which I have saved you. I send you back into the world - to live with the cross stamped upon you. O brethren and sisters, how little "blood" there is in our lives! How little is there the bearing of the dying of Jesus in our bodies! (2 Corinthians 4:10).

Have we begun to "take up the cross" at all? Is there any wonder that we are following Him at such a distance? Is there any wonder that we have such little victory over the power of indwelling sin? There is a reason for that. Mediatorially, the Cross of Christ stands alone - but experimentally the Cross is to be shared by all His disciples. Legally the Cross of Calvary annulled and put away our guilt, the guilt of our sins; but, my friends, I am perfectly convinced that the only way of getting deliverance from the power of sin in our lives and obtaining mastery over the old man within us - is by the cross becoming a part of the experience of our souls! It was at the Cross, that sin was dealt with legally and judicially. It is only as the Cross is "taken up" by the disciple that it becomes an experience, slaying the power and defilement of sin within us. And Christ says, "Whoever does not bear his cross, cannot be My disciple." O what need has each Christian here this morning to get alone with the Master, and consecrate Himself to His service!

~A. W. Pink~

(The End)
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Growing Worse?

One of the last lessons we effectually learn,is that true godliness is a constant conflict in a believer's heart - between sin and holiness.

Some sincere mistake a clearer view, and deeper sense of their depravity, for an actual increase of sin. The Christian seems sometimes to himself, to be growing worse, when actually it is only that he sees more clearly what in fact he really is!

In the early stages of our Christian life, we have usually but a slender acquaintance with the evil of our sinfulness, and the depravity of our heart. The mind is so much taken up with pardon and eternal life, that it is but imperfectly acquainted with those depths of deceit and wickedness, which lie hidden in itself.

At first we seem to feel as if the serpent were killed. But we soon find that he was only asleep - for by the warmth of some fiery temptation, he is revived and hisses at us again!

Nothing astonishes an inexperienced believer more than the discoveries he is continually making of the evils of his heart. Corruption which he never dreamed to be in him, are brought out by some new circumstances.

It is like turning up the soil, which brings out worms and insects, which did not appear upon the surface.

Or to vary the illustration, his increasing knowledge of God's holy nature, of the perfect law, and the example of Christ - is like opening the shutters, and letting light into a dark room, the filth of which, the inhabitant did not see until the sunbeams disclosed it to him.

~John Angell James~