When we live a crucified life, we can experience the power of resurrection; Christ is exalted in our daily life as we, by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, take Him as the crucified life to be the pattern of our life.
Our need is to experience Christ; on one hand we need to see a vision of the pattern that He has set up while He was on the earth, and on the other, we need to experience Christ as this pattern subjectively, for He as such a One lives in us.
As we seek to experience Christ, our only focus should be Christ; nothing should distract us from enjoying and experiencing Christ – not even the glory and exaltation that is the result of experiencing His crucified life.
God delights in Christ; Christ is everything to God and to man, and when we experience and enjoy Christ subjectively, we fulfill God’s purpose, for it is Christ who lives in us and is manifested through us.
However, we may not want to experience the humiliation that the Lord has experienced, and we may shy away from the experience of the crucified life; our portion in our Christian life is suffering, and whether we like it or not, simply by being human beings we experience sufferings.
But may we gain Christ as we pass through all the things allotted by God to us in our Christian life and church life. May we learn to enjoy Christ in our soul and experience Him in our spirit so that He may be wrought into us, and our soul would magnify Him.
May we get not only a deeper impression of the steps of Christ’s humiliation as detailed in Phil. 2:1-9, but also be inspired and motivated to allow this Christ to live in us.
May we take the lead to live a crucified life, the highest life, so that the resurrection power may be manifested. The mind of Christ – the mind which was in Christ Jesus – needs to also be in us, and the pattern of Christ needs to become subjectively real to us.
Paul testified that for him to live was Christ; for him to live was the living out of this pattern, the crucified Christ that was manifested in him.
He experienced Christ, he took Christ as his life and person,and he allowed Christ to live in him; therefore, Paul could empty himself of all his attainments and consider everything as dung on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ.
Oh, may we be those who consider Christ as the supremely precious One, and may we take the lead in our family life, daily life, and church life to live the crucified life, so that the resurrection power may be manifested in us and Christ would be magnified through us!
By Living a Crucified Life we can Experience the Power of Resurrection Daily
Why do we emphasize so much the matter of living a crucified life? Yes, it is by the resurrection power that we can live such a life, but why is it so important?
It is because this is the kind of life that the Lord Jesus lived; He as the first God-man took the lead to live a crucified life from His birth to His death, and He set a pattern for us.
Through regeneration this pattern was wrought into us, and in our spirit we have a crucified life. When we live the crucified life, we can experience the power of the resurrection of Christ, for resurrection power always follows the living of a crucified life.
As Paul pointed out in Phil. 3:10, our aspiration should be to know the power of Christ’s resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.
When we live a crucified life, we know the power of resurrection and the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings.
This is our urgent need today in the church life; we need to experience Christ as our pattern by living a crucified life.
When we turn to the Lord, exercise our spirit, and choose to live Christ, we will live a life with no rivalry and vainglory – we will live a life of magnifying Christ. But when we do not live a crucified life, we will have rivalry and we will seek vainglory.
To seek vainglory in the church life is something ugly, for there’s no glory for man in the church; even if we get some sort of “glory”, this is short lived, for only Christ gets all the glory.
This seeking for vainglory and living in rivalry among the saints in Philippi troubled the apostle Paul, so he wrote an epistle to them.
His antidote is for us to see the pattern of Christ in His self-humbling and self-emptying, and take this crucified life as our pattern; this will open the gate of resurrection and will bring us into the power of resurrection.
We may want to be exalted and be in glory, and this is what the Lord has destined us for; however, we should not seek glory but seek the Lord, pursue Him, experience Him, enjoy Him, and take Him as our pattern by living a crucified life.
The highest life on earth is the crucified life; whenever we as believers in Christ live a crucified life, God will bring us into resurrection (Phil. 3:10-11).
Oh, may we know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death!
This is not to seek to be “put to death” and to “put ourselves down” in an outward way, neither is this being ascetic or retreating from the world. This is to exercise our spirit in our daily life and live by another life, the crucified life in our spirit, so that we may experience the power of resurrection daily!
Lord Jesus, we want to be those living a crucified life daily so that we may experience the power of resurrection! Amen, Lord Jesus, we turn to You. We refuse to live by our natural life; we refuse to live in rivalry and vainglory, and we choose to live a crucified life one with You! Amen, Lord, we want to experience You and enjoy You as our pattern of living a crucified life; may You be wrought into us and be lived out of us for the church life today. May we choose to live a crucified life so that God may bring us into resurrection!
When we by the Spirit live the Crucified Life, Christ is Exalted in our daily life
The key to having Christ being magnified in us in our daily life is that we, by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, would take Him as the crucified life to be the pattern of our daily life (Phil. 2:5; 1:19-21).
Our seeking shouldn’t be that we would be glorified; we know that the result and consummation of our salvation is that we will enter into glory, but our seeking is the Lord Himself.
We seek to enjoy the Lord, experience Him, gain Him, and have Him formed in us and live in us. For this, we choose to take the crucified life as our pattern, and we experience the power of resurrection.
But when we don’t live a crucified life, we will be weak in our Christian life. Many times saints complain of being weak in their spiritual life, in their family life, and in the church life. Weakness indicates that we do not take the crucified life and therefore we are not in the power of resurrection.
The power of resurrection can be manifested when we experience Christ as the crucified life.
After Christ passed through the process of His humiliation and willingly submitted Himself to God and to the things arranged by Him, He was exalted and glorified; this also can be our subjective experience if we live a crucified life.
When we say Amen to the mind of Christ coming into us more, saturating us, and transforming us; the result is that resurrection always follows crucifixion, and we are energised and empowered by the resurrection life.
But sometimes our situation is that there’s discord among the saints, and there’s discord among the husband and the wife; both the husband and the wife know the teaching of living the crucified life, but none of them practice it, none of them takes the lead to live the crucified life.
In our marriage life and in the church life, as soon as one takes the lead to live a crucified life, resurrection comes in, and there’s the sweetness of the resurrection life.
Living a crucified life is the gateway to the resurrection; but if we remain in our situation and do not experience and live by the crucified life in spirit, we remain in our weakness and in our disobedience.
Our not being willing to take the life of submission means that we remain in rebellion toward God.
Christ created submission, and this is for us to experience even in our family life. It is possible, however, that Christ is exalted everywhere except in you or in me, in my personal universe.
How can we exalt Christ? How can we magnify Him? It is not merely by our words, by saying Praise the Lord, and Glory to God, but by letting the mind of Christ be in us, and living the crucified life in spirit.
The apostle Paul took the lead to let this mind be in him, and he lived the crucified life of Christ; therefore, he became a reprint and a reproduction of Christ as the pattern.
The Lord’s desire is that we all, wherever we are and whoever we are, would be reprint of the pattern. This is what the reality of the Body of Christ is; it is our corporate experience of Christ as the pattern.
Without experiencing Christ as the pattern, without living a crucified life, we will live a church life full of rivalry and vainglory, full of selfish ambitions and other motivations, and there’s no reality of the Body. But if we live the crucified life of Christ by living in spirit, Christ will be exalted in our daily life!
Lord, may You be exalted in our daily life as we live the crucified life of Christ moment-by-moment and day by day. Amen, Lord, may You be exalted in our personal universe as we experience Christ as the pattern and live a crucified life in spirit. May all the saints become the reprint of the pattern of Christ as we corporately live the crucified life of Christ. Amen, Lord, gain the reality of the Body of Christ, the magnification of Christ in humanity as the believers in Christ live the crucified life of Christ.
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Ricky Acosta for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Philippians, msg. 11 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, The Experience of Christ (2019 Memorial Day Conference), week 2, Knowing and Experiencing Christ as the Pattern.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Christ is a genuine man, / The perfect and finest man, / Obedient, serving, no appearance of evil, / The finest personality, / Divinity expressed through humanity. / Christ is the pattern for our human living. / His perfect life is filling us. / Christ is the pattern for our human living, / The fine and balanced humanity of Jesus! (Song on, Christ is a genuine man)
# Shrink not, O child of God, but fearless go / Down into death with Jesus; thou shalt know / The power of an endless life begin, / With glorious liberty from self and sin. / “Consider Him,” and thus thy life shall be / Filled with self-sacrifice and purity; / God will work out in thee the pattern true, / And Christ’s example ever keep in view. (Hymns #656)
# ’Tis the plan of life, for you die to live, / One with Jesus crucified; / With the life alone to be lived through you, / Of the Risen, the Glorified. (Hymns #630)
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