I have been crucified with Christ. It was no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son  of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if justification were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose. Galatians 2:20-21

After a day or so I the Lord laying heavily thoughts of my own self and flesh actually dying on the cross with Christ, I was able to see this truely affect my perception in a specific way. I had the opportunity today to go to a Church picnic with the young adults from Solid Rock, where the main focus of the tine was to bring in the graduating class of this year and make them feel welcome. It was kindof a coming of age gathering of sorts but it was definatly fruitful by all means. There came after dinner where we were to pray over the graduates and their college careers/life ahead. As we begun to pray, all the things I had been dwelling on up to that point on us dying with Christ came full circle. I realized the nececcity to daily die to ourselves to understand the fully understand the statement “in the world but not of it”. I prayed a specific prayer for them to fall less and less in love with the world with each passing day. But after I prayed that prayer I thought about it longer. We’ve already died to ourselves!!!! We have been freed of our bondage to the world!!

 

The source of this revelation cme ultimately from God but he exposed it to me through this book The Gospel Primer. Although I have not started book reviews on my blog yet I will briefly do one for this book because it deserves it. This book is simple, blunt, short, and full of encouraging sections (call them chapters) which give different descriptions of the gospel, its power, and the place it has in the believers life. This books sole purpose is to see why and how one is to remind themselves of the gospel daily and it does it superbly!

There’s a section in the book on page 39-41, were I derived the title of this blog “All things Crucified”. Theres a part of the section where the writer refers to our crucifying of our flesh as “our love affair with the world”. I think this is a dead on way of describing this event. Our bondage to the world, our daily corrupt behaviors are not who we now are. And although sin exists in our lives as Christians, we now daily crucify ourselves with Christ. The event of me nailing Christ with my sin and the death of myself are intimately interwoven.

Friends, we are on Satan’s home-field. We’re in his stadium and the crowd is cheering his name and jeering Christ while taunting us. The only thing separating us from this crowd is Christ choosing us. We should now have absolutely no feeling of separation or difference of heart since our hearts by themselves are just as theirs are. My point in saying this is to remind myself and others that the opposition is all around us as we have been liberated from Satan’s jeering crowd. In my quiet time today I read Ephesians 6 about the Armor of God. Oh how I long to be like the Psalmist to love God’s Word as he did and see it as our weapon against darkness and our tendency to sin. Praise the Lord we have been liberated though! We can now see that this word not our bride. Our Bride is Christ and he is coming!