KNOWING CHRIST

The question for everyone is, Do you know that Christ lives in you? Are you joined to Him? There are many who are workers for Him professedly, who dare not say that Christ lives in them; they do not know that Christ is one with them. When we were bearing crosses after the manner we have described, we could not say, “Christ liveth in me.” So we were separated from Him, and thus separated from His cross. It was self in the place of Christ, “a form of godliness but denying the power thereof,” for the power of godliness is the cross of Christ. We denied the cross of Christ, and so denied the power of the gospel.CRCH 6.2

We are not crucified with Christ except we are one with Him in the crucifixion. He must be identified with us in the cross; for it is His. There is no crucifixion of the man that amounts to anything unless he is crucified with Christ. Crucified together with Him, there is virtue to us, because we get the virtue that is in Christ. That virtue is freedom, separation from sin, and redemption, life, joy, peace. So it is not so difficult a thing to bear the cross when we are crucified with Christ. He is with us and in us. Now it is Christ enduring the cross, and to us there is joy in the Lord in it. Christ is made peace for us through the blood of His cross.CRCH 7.1

Christ was crucified for sin. There was no cross except for sin. He bore our sins. There is wonderful joy that comes to us in this, that while we are yet in sin we are permitted to claim Christ as ours, and to say, “I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” If we could not assert this with all assurance while yet sinners, we never could assert it. But while in sin we may claim Christ as ours, and that He is in us. We know it because the Holy Ghost says that it is so. To the man who believes the Lord and dares assert it, it is everlasting strength. “God who is rich in mercy, not for the great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.” We could not be quickened or made alive together, unless dead together. So Christ identifies Himself with us in death, even the death in trespasses and sins, and it is He who bears the burden in His own body on the cross; and while we are crucified with Him we also live with Him, delivered from sin.CRCH 7.2