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Scripture Reading: Phil. 3:10; 2 Cor. 4:10-12; Rom. 8:13
In the previous chapter we saw that the cross brings Christ to us; that is, we receive Christ when we receive the cross. In this chapter we will see that Christ brings the cross to us. This means that when we let Christ live in us, we will experience the cross.
Philippians 3:10 says, “To know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” Knowing Christ is connected to being conformed to His death, and being conformed to His death follows knowing Him. Hence, being conformed to His death is the issue of knowing Him. Knowing Christ causes us to be conformed to His death. The meaning of the phrase being conformed to His death in Greek is “being made of like form with His death.” This does not mean that we should make an effort to imitate His death in order to know Him. Rather, it means that our knowledge of Christ puts us into His death. Christ’s death is likened to a mold, and we are put into the mold of His death so that our living and walk would have the same form as His death. This is to be conformed to the death of Christ.
Being conformed to Christ’s death does not mean that we use our strength to imitate Christ in His enduring of sufferings and in His being put to death. Rather, it means that in our living knowledge of the resurrected Christ, the power of His resurrection life enables us to live in His death and to live out the form of His death.
If we use our own strength to imitate Christ’s death, we will produce a type of behavior that is based only on our human effort. However, the power of the resurrection life of Christ puts us in His death and enables us to live out the form of His death. This life is lived out through His resurrection life, and our living matches Christ’s living because it is conformed to His death. Such a living has the form of His death but is full of the elements of His life, because it comes from the power of His resurrection life in us. When we know the resurrected Christ, live by Him, and let Him live in us, His resurrection life brings us into His death so that we may live in His death and live out the form of His death. Therefore, when Christ lives in us, we are brought into the experience of His death. When Christ lives in us, He brings the cross to us.
The life of Christ contains the element of death. This matter is difficult to explain, and it is not easy to comprehend. The life of Christ is a resurrected and indestructible life that contains the element of His death. This intrinsic truth is revealed in the Bible and confirmed by our experience (v. 10; 2 Cor. 4:10-12; Rom. 8:13).
Philippians 3:10 unveils that the resurrected Christ lives in us and brings us into His death so that we may live in His death and be conformed to it. If Christ did not have the element of death, then He could not bring us into His death, and we could not live in His death or live out the form of His death. Just as the life of Christ enables Him to live in us, His life brings us into His death. In other words, through His life Christ lives in us and brings us into His death. Hence, His life contains the element of death.
Second Corinthians 4:10-12 says, “Always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who are alive are always being delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death operates in us, but life in you.” According to these verses, the death of Jesus operates in us. In order for death to operate in us, it must operate through His life in us. The issue of the operation of the Lord’s death in us confirms this conclusion. Verse 10 says, “Always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.” This indicates that the result of the operation of the Lord’s death in us is that the Lord’s life is manifested in us. Since the operation of the Lord’s death results in the manifestation of His life, this operation must come out of His life; that is, His life must be the source. Hence, verse 10 reveals that the Lord’s life contains the element of death.
Romans 8:13 speaks of putting to death the practices of the body by the Spirit in order to live. The Spirit in verse 13 refers to the Spirit of life in verse 2. The Spirit of life dwells in us so that we would not be fleshly or live according to the flesh but that we would put to death the practices of the body (vv. 9-13). Since the Spirit of life can cause us to put to death the practices of the body, He must give us a putting-to-death power. Such a power can be related only to the power of the Lord’s death. This power is given to us by the Spirit of life who dwells in us; hence, this power is given to us by the Spirit through and from the life of Christ. On the one hand, Christ dwells in us as the Spirit of life, and His life saves us from living according to the flesh. On the other hand, His life possesses a putting-to-death power that operates in us to put to death the practices of our body. Hence, the Lord’s life contains the element of death.
If we consider our experience, we will realize that the Lord’s life in us has the element of death. When we live in His life and allow Him to operate and live in us through His life, we often sense the power of His resurrection reviving and strengthening us inwardly and also the power of His death killing and eliminating us. Such experiences prove that the Lord’s life contains the element of His resurrection as well as the element of His death.
The life of Christ contains the element of His death; therefore, this life has the effectiveness of His death, which is a killing power. This killing power operates in us through His life to kill everything in us that is not of Christ, that is, everything that is not spiritual or heavenly. To put to death (v. 13; Col. 3:5) is the application of this killing power in us. We put to death the practices of the body and our sinning members on the earth not by our own strength but by living in the Lord’s life. When we allow His life to operate as the killing power in us, our obedience issues in His applying the effectiveness of His death to us. This is the Lord working to put us to death. While the work of putting to death seemingly is done by us, it is actually an operation of the Lord as life in us. In truth, our obedience to the Lord is our acceptance of His death, and when His death is applied, we are put to death.
Second Corinthians 4:10 says, “Always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus.” This means that the death of the Lord Jesus is a putting to death, a killing, and that it will always do the work of putting to death, the work of killing. This killing is the issue of the element of death contained in the Lord’s life. Hence, this killing is an effect of the Lord’s death according to the power of His life. Because the Lord has passed through death and resurrection, His life contains the elements of death and resurrection. Therefore, the Lord’s life contains the power of resurrection and also a killing power; it gives life to man and also kills the negative things in man.
Many saints think that the Lord’s life contains only the element of resurrection. According to the revelation of the Bible and according to our experience, however, the Lord’s life contains the elements of His death and His resurrection. The Lord’s life has the element of His resurrection and the element of His death. Unless we see this, we will think that the Lord’s life has the power only to enliven but does not have the power to kill the things in us that do not match Him. If we see that the Lord’s life has passed through death and resurrection and that it possesses both the element of death and the element of resurrection, we will recognize that the Lord’s life not only gives us life but also kills the negative things in us. His life enlivens our spirit, soul, and body — our whole being — and fills us with God’s life. This life also puts to death the elements of the old creation, our flesh, and everything that is incompatible with Christ.
The blood in our body has the strength to supply nutrients and the power to kill germs. When blood circulates in our body, it supplies nutrients to meet the needs of our body and also kills the germs in our body. This is an example of the moving of the Lord’s life in us. The element of resurrection in the Lord’s life supplies us to meet our needs, and the element of death in the Lord’s life kills the things that should not be in us. Hence, the killing effect of the Lord’s death in us cannot be separated from the supply of the Lord’s life in us. We experience the Lord’s death through the supply of the Lord’s life. When we allow the Lord’s life to move in us, supply us, and live in us, His life spontaneously does a killing work in us so that we experience His death. Our having died with Christ in Romans 6:8 becomes our practical experience through the Spirit of life in Romans 8:2. The Spirit of life applies the killing of the Lord’s death to us so that there is a putting to death in our body. The Lord’s death on the cross can be applied to us only through His life in us. We experience the Lord’s death on the cross through experiencing His life in us.
When I first received light concerning the experience of the Lord’s death being through His life, I did not have the boldness to speak about it, because I had never heard anyone say this. Later, this revelation became clearer to me, and I received confirmation from the co-workers. I also read a book entitled The Spirit of Christ by Andrew Murray, which says, “The life of Christ in us brings with it the death, the unceasing making dead of sin” (Day 19, note 2). I was very happy when I read this. The life of Christ contains the element of death, and by this life a power continually kills and puts to death. As long as we are willing to let this power operate in us, it will work to continually kill, put to death, and eliminate anything in us that is contrary to Christ, that is, anything improper and inappropriate.
It is through the life of Christ that His death operates in us, and it is through His resurrection power that we experience His death and are conformed to His death. His life in us is His resurrection power. This resurrection power applies the death that the Lord accomplished on the cross to us so that we may live in His death and bear its likeness, thereby being conformed to His death. This is revealed in Philippians 3:10. In order to be conformed to the death of Christ, we need to know not only Christ but also the power of His resurrection. By knowing Christ and the power of His resurrection, we can be conformed to His death, because the power of His resurrection applies His death to us.
We can partake of Christ’s death because we partake of Christ. He enters into us in His resurrection. Since we are joined to Him, we can partake of His death. In His incarnation He was joined to humanity. Then through His death and resurrection He imparted His life into us so that we could be joined to Him. Through this joining, we can participate in His death, and His death becomes our death. We can die with Him because we are joined to Him as one (1 Cor. 6:17). We are joined to the Lord by His resurrection and in His resurrection life. In His resurrection we were regenerated (1 Pet. 1:3); His life was imparted into us so that we could partake of Him and be joined with Him as one. The Lord Jesus has made it possible for us to partake of His death and for His death to become our death. His resurrection has brought His death to us, and His resurrection life, His resurrection power, applies His death to us so that we may experience His death and be conformed to it.
When the resurrected Christ entered into us, we sensed the effect of His killing work in putting us to death. We also sensed many negative things within us being put to death. When we allow Christ in His resurrection life and power to live in us, we sense the operation of His killing power. This power kills our self, our flesh, and everything that He condemns. The more we allow the power of His resurrection to operate in us, the more His resurrection life applies His death to us. His resurrection life causes us to experience His death and be conformed to it; that is, His resurrection life puts us into the mold of His death so that we may bear its likeness.
The resurrected Christ enlivens us and also puts us to death. The more He lives in us, the more He puts us to death. The more His resurrection life lives in us, the more its killing power operates in us. Those who allow Christ to live in them experience the killing work of His death. The living Christ brings us to the killing of His cross. The operation of His resurrection life conforms us to His death.
If we do not allow Christ to live in us, we will be ignorant of our flesh, our self, and our natural constitution, but if we consecrate ourselves to the Lord and let Him live in us, our flesh, our self, and our natural constitution will be manifested to us. When our flesh, our self, and our natural constitution are manifested, the Lord will require us to put them to death. If we are willing to obey, His resurrection life will operate in us to bring forth the killing power of His death to our flesh, our self, and our natural constitution. Christ applies the cross to us so that we may experience His death in His resurrection life. When His death is planted in us and grows into our living, we will bear the likeness of His death with the full measure of His stature.
If we allow Christ to live in us, allow His resurrection life to operate in us, and allow Him to be our life and to live out of us, we will experience His death and be conformed to the mold of His death. The resurrection life of Christ will bring us to death and require that we pass through death. If we are faithful to live by the resurrection life of Christ and fulfill its requirements, everything that we are will be brought to the cross and gradually terminated so that Christ may be formed in us. Christ brings His death to us, and the death of Christ adds Him to us. Hence, Christ gives us the cross, and the cross gives us Christ.
Christ brings us to the cross, and the cross ushers us into Christ. Christ and the cross cannot be separated; one is the cause, and the other is the effect. When Christ comes, the cross comes, and when Christ reigns, the cross reigns. Christ’s work in us is measured by the effect of the cross in us. Christ always brings the cross, and the cross always ushers in Christ. The work of the cross in us determines how much Christ we gain. The extent to which we have been emptied by the cross is the extent to which we can be filled with Christ. The extent of the termination of the cross in us is the extent to which Christ’s life can increase in us. If we want to gain Christ, we must accept the cross, and if we want to experience the cross, we must let Christ live in us.
Christ’s resurrection life brings His death to us and becomes the power for us to experience His death. Hymns, #481 says, “’Tis not hard to die with Christ / When His risen life we know; / ’Tis not hard to share His suff’rings / When our hearts with joy o’erflow. / In His resurrection power / He has come to dwell in me, / And my heart is gladly going / All the way to Calvary.” This hymn expresses the meaning of Philippians 3:10. The resurrection life of Christ conforms us to the death of Christ. When we know Christ and the power of His resurrection, we experience His death, live in His death, and are conformed to His death.
