I am crucified with Christ

The Lord became a man in order to contact man, but His flesh, His outer man, His outer shell, posed a problem for Him to enter into man. His flesh was a barrier, a limitation. His flesh limited Him so that His life could not be released. Death was the only way to break the limitation of this flesh. The Lord used a metaphor to explain this in order for us to understand. His words implied that He was a grain of wheat, possessing life within and a shell without. On the one hand, the outer shell was the carrier of the inner life, but on the other hand, in order for the inner life to be released, the limitation of the outer shell had to be broken. This shell had to be cleft. Unless a grain of wheat dies, it abides alone. If the Lord did not die, God's life would be only in Him, an individual person. He would have been the only man in the universe with God's life. If He died, however, the life within could come out. Hymns, #482 says, "This the secret nature hideth, / Harvest grows from buried grain" (stanza 3). When a grain dies, it bears much fruit because the life within it enters into many grains. God's life could be increased because Christ died and resurrected.

Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me" (Gal. 2:20). We must consecrate to the Lord the "I" who has Christ living within. A. B. Simpson wrote a hymn that says, "Oh! it is so sweet to die with Christ,... / Oh! it is so sweet to live with Christ" (Hymns, #482, chorus). "To live for Jesus" is an awful thing, and it is a suffering, but "to live is Jesus" is an enjoyment without suffering. "To live for Jesus" is altogether a suffering, whereas "to live is Jesus" is altogether an enjoyment. Living for Jesus gives people the wrong understanding and makes them think that they have to do something in themselves for the Lord. In reality, however, He does not want us to do so many things for Him; He wants us to simply let Him live out of us.

However, every spiritual matter can be confirmed by practical things. We thank the Lord for this. This is God's sovereign arrangement. For example, Hymn #231 in the Chinese hymnal borrows the good wine and sweet honey of our daily life, the great sea and vast ocean on earth, and the sun and moon in heaven to depict the Lord's love. All these things describe the Lord's love. Furthermore, the third stanza of Hymns, #482, says, "This the secret nature hideth, / Harvest grows from buried grain; / A poor tree with better grafted, / Richer, sweeter life doth gain." This is true. Then, what can we find in nature to signify unceasing prayer? Eventually, I found that there is only one thing: our breathing.

Our Lord is truly wise; this illustration is both profound and easy to understand. Through it we see how Christ can enter into us to be our life and live in us. Stanza 3 of Hymns, #482 says, "This the secret nature hideth, / Harvest grows from buried grain." He is like a grain of wheat that falls into the ground, dies, grows, and produces many grains. In this way His life enters into many grains. Many great people have died, and even if they lived a legendary life on earth, their lives still ended in death. Andrew and Philip probably did not understand the Lord's word and thought, "Formerly, He wanted us to bring people to be His disciples, but now that these Greek Gentiles want to be His disciples, He ignores and rejects them. Moreover, He is speaking about dying. We do not understand this word. He is the Christ sent by God, and Christ exists eternally. How can He die? If He dies, everything will be finished. What does He mean?" This is the difference between Christ and man. Man's death involves the termination of his life, but Christ's death involves the release of His life. When Christ died, His life was propagated and began to flourish.

"This the secret nature hideth, / Harvest grows from buried grain" (Hymns, #482). No one can dispute this. The last Adam, the incarnated Jesus, lived on the earth for thirty-three and a half years, and then He died on the cross and was buried. People thought that He was finished. Little did they know that when they killed and buried the Lord Jesus, like a farmer who sows grain into the soil, they afforded Him the best opportunity to be resurrected. In this resurrection He took another form and became a life-giving Spirit.

In Romans Paul uses the illustrations of vessels, married life, and grafting. The illustration of the vessels shows that we are God's containers with God as our content. The illustration of marriage shows that a man and a woman with different minds, emotions, wills, personalities, characters, and dispositions are joined to form one unit. The illustration of grafting shows that two lives are joined and then grow together organically.

A stanza in a hymn written by A. B. Simpson (Hymns, #482) speaks of grafting:

This the secret nature hideth,
Harvest grows from buried grain;
A poor tree with better grafted,
Richer, sweeter life doth gain.

A. B. Simpson also knew the subjective aspect of the death of Christ. One of his hymns opens with these lines:

I am crucified with Christ,
And the cross hath set me free.
Hymns, #482

Both the writings of Mrs. Penn-Lewis on the subjective experience of the cross and the hymns of A. B. Simpson on being crucified with Christ are neglected by Christians today. This indicates that a great many believers have only a superficial understanding of Christ's death. Therefore, in His recovery the Lord is leading us into a deeper experiential understanding of the all-inclusive death of Christ.

In Christianity very few speak of the need for believers to die with Christ and to allow Him to be lived out. A hymn written by A. B. Simpson says, "I am crucified with Christ, / And the cross hath set me free; / I have ris'n again with Christ, / And He lives and reigns in me" (Hymns, #482). Here, set free means to terminate. If we live a life of the cross to die together with Christ, the Holy Spirit will have the opportunity to live and rule in us.

Every day I pray to confess my sins at least three to five times. When I rise up in the morning, I pray, "O Lord, thank You for another day in which You can be my life and my experience, and I can also live by You. I truly want to live and move with You." However, even before noon I may have an inward sense that my conversation with my wife or my fellowship with a brother was half in the spirit and half in my self. Thus, I confess because of this. When I pray again at four o'clock in the afternoon, I still need to confess. Without exception, before going to sleep, I always pray to confess, saying, "O Lord, forgive me for all the instances in which I did not follow the Spirit and for all the instances in which I did not receive the cross today."

What the Lord cares for is not whether we do good or evil but whether we, after being saved, live by ourselves or let Him live out of us. Stanza 3 of Hymns, #482 says, "This the secret nature hideth, / Harvest grows from buried grain; / A poor tree with better grafted, / Richer, sweeter life doth gain." Doing good or evil, right or wrong, is the principle of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God warned man not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that he ate of it, he would surely die (Gen. 2:17). God does not want man to eat of this tree of death but to eat of the tree of life, that is, to receive Him. Both Confucius and Mencius taught people to do good, but their teaching still belongs to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Whether we do good or evil, it is all under the principle of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and in the day that we eat of that tree, we shall surely die. Most Christians today have not seen this. I am very concerned whether we have made the right choice between life and death, that is, whether we are participating in God's economy.

The Christian and Missionary Alliance was established in 1887 by Brother A. B. Simpson. It was an alliance of Christian missionaries that sent out its members to preach the gospel. Brother Simpson was knowledgeable concerning spiritual matters. He wrote hymns such as "I am crucified with Christ, / And the cross hath set me free" (Hymns, #482), "Jesus only, Jesus ever" (Hymns, #511), and "O Lord, breathe Thy Spirit on me, / Teach me how to breathe Thee in" (Hymns, #255). His hymns are deep, and they contain spiritual experiences and spiritual values. His co-workers also had some spiritual weight, one of whom was the missionary John Woodbury, who along with his younger sister established Shou Chen Chapel in Shanghai.

Grafting is not a matter of putting two pieces of dead wood together in the way that two pieces of wood are joined together in carpentry. Grafting involves the joining of two similar lives so that they grow together as one life and have one living. In grafting, a branch is cut off from one tree and joined organically to another tree. A. B. Simpson's hymn (Hymns, #482, published by Living Stream Ministry) refers to this in the third stanza:

This the secret nature hideth,
Harvest grows from buried grain;
A poor tree with better grafted,
Richer, sweeter life doth gain.

In our case, Christ is the cultivated olive tree, and we were the branches of a wild olive tree. In grafting, the life of the branch is not exchanged for the life of the tree to which is it grafted. The two lives are united as one so that they can share one mingled life and one living. Romans 11:24 says, "You were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree and were grafted contrary to nature into the cultivated olive tree." This shows that the Christian life is not an exchanged life but a grafted life.