The Two Men and the Cross

There has been various teachings about what it means to take up your cross daily, or dying to self. Most of which gives the impression that death gives itself over to life, rather than death being swallowed up of life. It reminds me of something I heard many times when I was growing up, “the Lord helps those who help themselves”, Since I have been born of the Spirit, I have yet to find these words anywhere in Scripture. What I have found is the opposite to be true. “The Lord helps those who can’t help themselves”. Those who have come to the end of self, will find the Lord to be their helper and not only their helper, but their very life.

It is written, “they that sat in darkness have seen a great light”. When one sits in darkness they have given up on finding their own way. They have given up on darkness and they wait for a guide in the darkness, a deliverer if you will; the life that was the light of men. If this realm of death is to be overcome, it must be through life. Death will never overcome death.

Adam, after the fall had to die to re-gain entrance into paradise and partake of the tree of life, and that only after being raised from the dead, revived, re-generated or born from above! He was put out of the garden to return onto the earth from whence he was formed, delivered onto death and in need of a saviour, the last Adam, who through the life of God, could raise him from the dead.

Such was the fate of the first man, Adam. He became the plot of earth, or soil in which the seed of the Christ, the last Adam, or the second man, was planted. The first man, in his fallen state could not be a sin offering onto God, even if he would go to the cross and die for the sin of the world. It required a living sacrifice, not a dead sacrifice. It required the life of God to take him to the cross. It required God providing himself a lamb, as a perfect offering for sin. One born of a virgin birth, one who had not known a man, would provide the earth, or womb to bring him into the world.

Just as with us, when we where born from above, it was a virgin birth, “Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”. Not by any act of righteousness that we have done but by the grace of God, through faith and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any man should boast.

Now, through God, we have this treasure in an earthen vessel, the Christ that is planted in us, who is the inner man, renewed day by day as our outer man perishes.
But make no mistake, it is always the new man, the last Adam, that goes to the cross. It is He and He alone that is willing to lay down his life. It is the life of God that makes us willing to die for others, the old man does not go to the cross, he must be swallowed up of life.

Even as the apostle Paul stated in Romans chapter seven, it is the Christ in us which is the hope of glory, who shall deliver us from this body of death. Through the renewing of the spirit of our mind, we are to present our bodies a living sacrifice unto God. It must be a living sacrifice, not a dead sacrifice, for it to be acceptable unto God the Father. God will not accept an offering of un-righteousness or self righteousness.

We are in the day when He shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be plesant unto the Lord, as in the days of old, and as in former years. When every vestige of pride and self-righteousness, which is death, has been driven from us, and only praise and thanksgiving unto God remains, then and only then is the offering pleasing unto God the father.

It is the Christ that desires to do the will of the Father. It is the Christ that goes to the cross. It is the Christ in us that lays down his life for his brethren. It is the new man that swallows up the old. Even as in nature, the seed takes what it wants from the corrupt soil, or realm of death, it is planted in. That lessor realm is swallowed up into the greater realm of the life of the seed and eventual fruit bearing plant.

We are called to rest in the fact that God has began a good work in us and is able to complete it. He being the author and finisher of our faith, alone receives glory and honor and the praise of which He is worthy. The old man (Lucifer), would still be exalted without first being humbled, through death. This can only result in religious self-exaltation and left over, six day manna which only breeds worms and stinks. There is no corruption, in this golden pot of manna of the seventh day, because the old man cannot polute what God is doing. It is the feast of Tabernacles, a day of Holiness onto the Lord. The day that is spoken of when, “The loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day”.

In summery, it is the life of Christ that willfully dies for others and it is the Christ within that desires to do the will of the Father. We must be thankful for the measure of that life that we experience and the desire that it gives us to know Him. The fact that we desire to be like Him comes from God Himself as well as the transformation that will take place in God’s time. We must live unto God, not die unto God. It is the life of God that enables us to take up our cross daily. Taking up of our cross daily is the end of self exaltation and exalting the Lord, through praise and thanksgiving for what He has done and continues to do, through His life in us. “I am crucified with Christ, never-the-less, I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me.

Art Groesbeck