Portion of Scripture read: Galatians 6
My dear friends, we are now to take for our meditation the fourth application
of Calvary in the experience of the child of God. Let it not be forgotten we
are not speaking so much of doctrine - though, of course, that is there - but
we are seeking doctrine that shall be determined in experience. The means that
the realities of the cross are to be realities in the life, and the objective
truths of revelation are to be the subjective experience of the believer. Not
truths that we may look at from a distance, but as realities that may be worked
out by the cross in our own lives, the Holy Spirit Himself translating the historical
cross until it becomes the personal crucifixion. So that the life also of Jesus
may be manifested in our mortal body. Therefore, let me refresh your memory
very rapidly.
On Monday night we considered the great truth of substitution, God meets the believer as an unbeliever and God meets him dead in sin. When that unbeliever, that sinner, sees Jesus Christ on the cross taking his place as a substitute and calls Him, "My Saviour,'' that is the first step. Then on the next night we considered identification. We saw that it was the absolute implicit truth that if Jesus Christ had represented me in dying at Calvary, then what Jesus Christ died to, I died to, because He committed me to it, and since He died to sin, in Him, I also died to sin. Therefore, I took up the attitude from which I can never again step back, that I am in desire, in intention, in purpose dead to all that God reveals of sin.
Last night we came to conformation. We saw not only- that we had to take our sin to Calvary, not only that we were dead to sin,- but we had to take ourselves in resurrection life, having received the Holy Spirit. We had to take our good self back to Calvary. Just as it was the will of God for the working out of His purpose that Jesus should offer up His sinless body at Calvary not because it was a wicked thing, not because it was an evil thing, but because God had some holier purpose in it. So God asks me to take myself to Calvary, offering up everything so that the Will of God can be done, because it is the offering of that which is the secret of Pentecost. Now tonight, having died to sin and being made dead to sin and self, the believer is called to recognise that he is dead to the world. God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which I have been crucified unto the world. A dead thing! So that my fellows about me say, he is dead. A dead thing! By which I have been crucified unto the world, and the world has been crucified to me. God forbid that I should glory in anything else, because by the cross I have seen the world dead and life always separates from death. Tonight I am not going to present an argument. I only want to say this, that if you have followed the experimental truths that we have already entered upon, then of course, this will be perfectly clear. It will not be an argument; it will be enlightenment. The simple essence will go through the mind. We shall see it clearly, and then may God in His mercy grant that every child of God here tonight shall be able to say at the close I have been crucified with Christ. I am dead to the world, and the world is dead to me.
May I just remind you first of all that in Christ all distinctions have been abolished. All the distinctions of the earth have been wiped out. In Christ, says St. Paul to the Galatians, there is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female. Wiped out! These divisions which are the Divisions of the natural mind are not the divisions of the heart of reality. They are on the circumference; they are not central to the child of God: they are not critical in redemption. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, so internationalism is wiped out. The child of God is not dabbling in internationalism, for in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. Have you got it, because it is absolutely vital? In Christ there is neither male nor female. It does not get down to the heart of reality so there is no need for the preacher to speak on the sex problem. In Christ there is a greater issue. These things, my dear friends, are absolutely vital if we are going to be delivered from weakness. If we are going to be endued as Pentecostal channels with the glory of Jesus Christ we must stand with Christ in His unities and in His divisions. There is but one division in Christ, one division only, and that is Calvary.
There are two sides to Calvary. There is the life side of Calvary, and there is the death side of Calvary, the only issue with which the Church of Christ on earth is concerned. Our sovereign Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ has given His eternal edict that He sends from the Throne, the Holy Ghost to the Church to deal with men concerning sin. There is no preacher on God's earth, naming the name of Jesus Christ who has received the commission from Jesus Christ on the Throne to deal with the world in any other issue, save sin. That is, if Jesus Christ be Lord. Vital! Absolutely fundamental! That is the issue and the great division in the world according to the Word of God is Calvary.
A life side, a death side of Calvary! Now you may ask what is the life side of Calvary, what is the death side of Calvary? On the life side there is the Church. Of course, when I say the Church, you know tonight that I am speaking to those who understand this term. You know what I mean by the Church, the Church of those redeemed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, who compose the Body of Christ on earth, the one living organism in a world of death and corruption. That is the Church of the New Testament, and the Church is on the one side of Calvary and on the other side there is nothing else but death, and that is the world.
Now, my dear friends on which side are you? This is the division. The division in time and eternity created by Calvary. Let me go through it rather quickly, more quickly than I ought to do. On the life side of Calvary there are sinners who have repented of their sin; on the death side of Calvary there are sinners unrepentant. On the life side of Calvary there are those who are redeemed in the Precious Blood of Jesus Christ, end who are under the Blood in mercy; on the death side of Calvary, there are those who have refused the Blood and have said, His Blood be upon us and upon our children. On the life side of Calvary there are those who have been saved by faith; on the death side of Calvary there are those who are unsaved because in unbelief.
On the life side of Calvary, there are those who are individually indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the personal and direct gift of Jesus Christ on the Throne to the individual believer, on the death side of Calvary, the whole world lieth in the Evil One. On the life side of Calvary there are the children of the light who walk with God in the light, in the cleansing Blood; on the death side there are the children of darkness. On the life side of Calvary they are alive unto God, their spirits have been regenerated, brought to life because the Holy Spirit has given them new life and they are alive unto God; on the death side of Calvary they are dead in sin. On the life side of Calvary self has been taken to the cross to be crucified; on the death side of Calvary self has to be nourished and satisfied. On the life side of Calvary it is the Will of God that must be done; on the death side of Calvary it is the will of self. On the life side the one concern is to manifest the indwelling Spirit; on the death side of Calvary it is the life of self. On the life side of Calvary holiness is desired, on the death side of Calvary sin is carelessly committed.
On the life side of Calvary the conscience is quickened about sin; on the death side of Calvary sin is cloaked. On the life side of Calvary the dominion is given to the Spirit; on the death side of Calvary there is the lust of the flesh when carnality sets its sway or the lust of the eyes when the emotions control the life. On the life side of Calvary we wait for the Son from Heaven; on the death side of Calvary we are under the judgement of eternal condemnation. My dear friends in God's name where do you stand? Do you wonder that as God reveals that to any one of His children, that he can put no other issue before the human race? Do you wonder that the Preacher can speak of nothing else but Calvary! Ten thousand times ten thousand should he be banished from the presence of God if he sees that truth and dabbles with the futile things of time. For on the life side of Calvary it is the Gospel of redemption, and on the death side of Calvary it is politics and social reform. The reorganisation of the unredeemed nature, dead in sin, and with no other possibility but eternal corruption except the life of God come by the Holy Spirit. Where do you stand, dear friends? On which side of Calvary are you tonight? 0h may God in His mercy enable every one of us by the revelation of the Spirit to know where we stand, because you must be on one side or the other. If you are on the life side, God help you if you cannot see now that you must be separated from the world of death.
On the day of the crucifixion the world was very easily detected. You could see the world because it amalgamated so many things. The world is such an amalgamation, everything is fluid in the world. There is nothing fixed. So on the day that Jesus Christ went to His cross Pilate and Herod were made friends together who had long had differences in politics. Perhaps the people of those times had prayed in the synagogue that God would reconcile Pilate and Herod and make things better for Judea, or that the outstanding differences between Pilate and Herod might be amicably settled. And they were settled Pilate and Herod were made friends together. And then they nailed Him to the cross and the soldiers who did not believe in all the deep things of eternal purpose, sat down before the cross and began to cast lots, because the world lives in the spirit of the gamble. Still in cooperation with the gamblers there were all the godly people of Jerusalem, the priests who knew religion and were brought up in it and the people who ought to know what the Old Testament taught. Somehow or other the gamblers and the godly people got together, And then the people went by the cross wagging their heads. He was not giving away loaves that day, so democracy did not want Him. My dear friends around the cross that day the autocrats and democrats were agreed, and the gamblers and the godly people were agreed. They were all agreed to drive in the nails to God's only Son. If you want to know where you are you have either got the hammer in your hands, or else you are stretching out the palms to receive the avalanche of blows from the world. It was the only occasion upon which the hands of Christ ever did cooperate with the hands of unredeemed flesh; the only occasion in history when Jesus Christ cooperated with the world, that was when He stretched out His hands on the cross and they hammered in the nails.
My dear friends, that is the one issue; concerning that one issue the man who stands on the life side of Calvary will be reckoned by the world as a dead thing. And you have got to consent to be regarded by the world as a dead thing. We do not like it; it is a very difficult thing to say: "Well, I don't mind if the world regards me as a dead thing, especially if it is the religious world that regards me so." Dear friends, God requires it of you that you must heartily consent to be regarded by your fellows and by religious people who ought to know, as a dead thing. And not to complain about it, nor to grumble about it, not to be surprised about it, but to say: "0h God, I take this place and consent to it without a grumble, to be regarded henceforth as a dead thing in the eyes of my fellow men." A dead thing.
Then, dear friends, God will show you how dead the world is to you. How dead its pleasures, because all the pleasures of the world are in the flesh, and in the emotional life. Of course, it has got nothing else to feel, because its spirit is dead. You have a man who has not been redeemed. The only thing, which is active, is his body and his soul. Therefore, he is craving for his emotional life to be satisfied, and for his body to be satisfied, and therefore all the arrangements for pleasure are on the grounds of the emotions of the flesh. Look around in the world and you will not find the world providing for anything else. It wants its emotional life satisfied, its intellectual life, and then it wants its fleshly life satisfied. God has redeemed you and your spirit is alive and your spirit is crying out for the living God. My dear friends, you must be strange Christians indeed if what the world provides to satisfy its soul and body can satisfy your spirit. I will not draw an illustration but if I did I should cover them with ridicule. It is impossible, if the Holy Spirit has regenerated you and your spirit is alive, it is impossible that you can be satisfied with what the world provides for the body and the soul. You cannot! The only way that you get anything out of it is because you are not living in your spirit towards God. You have taken salvation and have gravitated down into the flesh.
Of course, the worldling does not know it, he is blind. 0h my dear friends, fancy having the highest faculty of your being brought to life by God's Holy Spirit and then going back to live and to be satisfied in the flesh! And of course, you cannot ever fellowship with the world in its purpose, because all the purposes of this world end with time. In the Church of Jesus Christ God's purposes begin in time and fructify through all eternity. Therefore, what sort of fellowship can I have? I believe with all my heart that He has made peace by the blood of His cross, made peace concerning beings on the earth, under the earth and in the heavens. Therefore, I believe in peace through the Blood of Jesus Christ and the world believes in peace without it. That is the mark of the world that it says we believe in peace without the Blood. The child of God is bound to believe in peace in the Blood. Where are we going to have fellowship? Why because our purpose is eternal - that is the master fact about the Church - that every child of God who has come through in identification and conformation is on fire for souls. We can have no fellowship with the world in its purpose because all its reforms are inside unredeemed flesh, and all unredeemed flesh is under judgement and all its reforms are reforms in its sin, whereas the Blood of Jesus Christ is deliverance out of sin.
Therefore, how can you unite? Tell me, I am so often criticised on this point. Will you tell me if I am wrong, how I am to do it. The world says we are going to reform man in his sin. Jesus Christ says the very essence of Calvary is to be redeemed out of sin. How are we going to unite? It does not need two moments looking at the Word of God to see that modern criticism is absolutely wrong. Though I stand as almost one ~ and I am beginning to feel that I am one - though I stand as almost one, I will go down on it rather than I will consent to join hands where my Lord's hands never did. Because I believe the world can only come through to blessing by redemption out of its sin, and I will have nothing to do with reforms in its sin. Just be patient a moment because this was what St. Paul wrote to the Colossians and he wanted to speak about those people who were bound by ordinances. He said, Now there is a show of wisdom in it, but we want to get beneath it. So if you died with Christ, to the principles of the world-- because when you died in Christ that is one of the things you did -- now why do you act as though you are still living in the world. Because you are not to go on as though you are living in the world, you are to go on as though you are dead to the world.
But I am frequently told that my ministry is wrong in its emphasis, and is therefore weak. Paul does not say we are to live in the world; he says we are to be as those who are dead to the world. The apostolic injunction is that I am to live not as being in the world but as dead to it. You and I are to live as being dead to the principles of the world; therefore, what is my relationship to the world? It is this, that every, day wherever I go I am to be a witness to what God's Holy Spirit can be and do in a redeemed sinner. My second duty is to point and to plead with men as I have the opportunity to point them to Calvary. Do you understand this dear friend? Our Lord mixed with publicans and sinners, though He always had a message for them. But that did not do the world much good; our Lord healed the sick, but that did not do the world much good; it just relieved a local circumstance here and there.
But when Jesus Christ died on the cross to the world He opened Pentecost for the world. If Jesus could find no better thing for the world than to die to it, am I to suppose that being found upon all representative platforms and closely identified with all the social and other things that are going on, I shall do more? St.Paul could say: "God forbid that I should glory save in the cross by which I have become dead to the world." Will you say it tonight, dear friend? Will you now begin to think of all men as being on one side of Calvary or the other? And will your first concern be when you come in touch with men to find out on which side of Calvary they are?
God will soon teach you to know by a phrase where they stand and then will you offer yourself up to God to have a living contact with man, not by submerging Calvary, but by bringing Calvary that divides, to the place where it can unite in repentance and faith.
My dear friends, inside that lies tremendous suffering. We know what it means to be in the fellowship of His sufferings. We shall know what Paul said: "bearing about in our body the stigma of the Lord Jesus". But we shall be channels of life! Of Life! Will you not come out tonight, dear friend? I am not talking about theatres and cinemas and all that sort of thing. God forbid that any Christian should after tonight find the slightest satisfaction in them. God did not shed His Precious Blood by His Son to send us back to the world. Think of it! Men and women perishing, lost eternally!
To be without Christ, without home in these things as a young person and I wish to God when I had been younger that I might have seen these things more clearly and been delivered from all those futile years that have gone by. 0h may God enable me tonight by His Spirit so to press home this appeal to you. May God help me from tonight. This world is dead to me and I will be willing to be dead to it. And out of that separation God's Spirit will come to make your life fruitful. You will come out of the world to come back into it with Calvary, a burning evangelist with a spirit on fire for God. Crucified, but thanks be unto God, living by the Spirit. You just register that vow tonight-dear friend. It will mean untold blessing through you-- a life given up to intensive usefulness. You will be saved from spending your time on things that are going to perish with life. You will learn what Jesus meant when He said: "Let the dead bury their dead." In this dead world there are excellent men who can carry on the Borough Councils work; in this world there are excellent men who should go to Parliament, but in this dead world there is not a single man who can testify of the Blood of Jesus Christ. Therefore if God has given you the vision and you know the power of the cross, and the power of God's Spirit and you know that the cross can deliver from sin, then go thou and preach the Gospel. Can there be anything worse on economic grounds of waste than for a man who knows that message to waste his time in burying the dead when he might be a father to the living. 0h register that vow tonight, dear friends. You young people register the vow tonight: God helping me Calvary separates me from the world. It is dead to me; I do not want its knighthoods, its peerages or its money. It is dead to me and I am dead to it and all I ask is that God's Holy Spirit may use my body to glorify Jesus Christ and to bring men and women into the blessing of Calvary.
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