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self
and sin, how many natural choices and likes and preferences need to have
the death-mark of Calvary put upon them? The birth-mark of nature
must be contradicted throughout by the death-mark of the Cross. Let
us, then, ask the Lord to mark His Cross upon all our natural choices.
Lord
Crucified, 0 mark Thy holy Cross
On
motive, preference, all fond desires,
On
that which self in any form inspires
Set
Thou that sign of loss.
And
when the touch of death is here and there
Laid
on a thing most precious in our eyes,
Let
us not wonder, let us recognize
The
answer to this prayer.
--Amy Carmichael.
But, thanks be to God, this
yet-not-I kind of a Christian life is no lifelong funeral procession.
Nay, verily, for Jesus said, "He that loseth his life for my sake shall
find it." What could be more wonderful than that the Son of God, glorious
and eternal, Creator of all things, "who loved me and gave himself for
me," should stoop to make me His own, His very temple, allowing me to say,
in the language of a living faith and reality, "Christ liveth in me." Has
He not promised, "Because I live, ye shall live also"? Oh, the marvel
and mystery of "ye in me" and "I in you"! The branch is in the Vine
and the Vine is in the branch. Glorious life-union of life and love
and liberty! I am quickened together with Him, raised together with
Him, seated together with Him. I am rooted in the Eternal, with my
life already "hid with Christ in God." J. Gregory Mantle says:
In one of the Perthshire
valleys there is a tree which sprang up on the rocky side of a little brook,
where there was no kindly soil in which it could spread its root, or by
which it could be nourished. For a long time it was stunted and unhealthy,
but at length, by what may be called a wonderful vegetable instinct, it
sent a fibre out across a narrow sheep-bridge which was close beside it..
Then, fixing itself in the rich loam on the opposite bank of the streamlet,
it began to draw sap and sustenance, and speedily became vigorous.
What that tiny bridge was to the tree, the resurrection of Jesus is to
the believer.
If the roots of our life
are in our risen Lord, we shall '.neither be barren nor unfruitful in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Have we had the bitter experience
of trying to produce fruit? We have toiled and tried and prayed and
bled, but all to no avail? In spite of all our efforts the stream
of our life is mixed and muddy through our own unholy duplicity of motives.
We know that in Christ there is abundant fullness. The question is
how to get it out. With Hudson Taylor we say, "I knew full well that
there was in the root abundant fullness; but how to get it into my puny
little branch was the question." In a veritable paroxysm of despair we
finally cry out, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the
body of this death?" Thank God there is a life all-divine and powerful
that can contradict and liberate and set us free: "I thank God through
Jesus Christ our Lord . . . for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."
Look not for a true living
strength, in the life of the Me and the I,
With nothing to love but
its selfhood, and fearing to suffer and die,
As thou seekest the fruit
from the seed-planted grain,
Seek life that is living,
from life that is slain.
Then hasten to give it its
death-blow, by nailing the I to the Cross;
And thou shalt find infinite
treasure in what seemed nothing but loss;
For where, if the seed is
not laid in the ground,
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