Life From Death

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body.

2 Corinthians 4:10-11

There are two factors at work here. One is an inner attitude to which we must consent: We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus. The second is an outward activity to which we are exposed: For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake. But notice that the result is the same. Each verse closes with these words: … so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body. That is, in our outward life, now. Not in heaven some day — now! …so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. Not our immortal flesh, not sunshine someday, but now!

What is the secret? It is the death of Jesus, the dying of Jesus, the cross of Jesus. The key to experiencing the life of Jesus is the death of Jesus. The key to discovering the glory of this treasure hidden within (the living out of the life of the Lord Jesus now) is the accepting of the meaning and practical result of his death.

The cross of Jesus had only one purpose: It was to bring to an end an evil man. That may be strange to say about Jesus, because we do not usually think of him as an evil man. But remember that Scripture says that he was made sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). And when he became what we are, there was nothing else God could do but put him to death. He brought him to an end. That is what God intends to do with what we are, apart from Christ. Jesus desires to bring it all to a crashing end in the death on a cross.

The cross puts to death the proud ego, that factor within us which, when we do good, wants to blow a trumpet so everyone can hear. Or when there is an opportunity to show off, it makes us eager to get in line. It is that faculty within which wants no one else to be as educated or as popular or as skillful or as beautiful as I, that faculty which resents it when another is chosen for what I want. It is the thing which struggles to be the center of my life, and expresses itself in self-pity, self-indulgence, and self-assertion, the ego which seeks constantly to be ministered to. And the secret of experiencing the life of Jesus is an attitude which welcomes the cross and gladly consents to having the ego crucified within us — put to death, allowed no expression, allowed no place of indulgence in our life. When we do that, then the life of Jesus becomes manifest immediately, and shines out.

I think of Gideon and his band of three hundred men who gathered around the camp of the Midianites. They had torches hidden in earthen vessels, earthen jars, which obscured the light. They circled the camp of the Midians and, at a given signal, broke the vessels, and the light flared forth (see Judges 7:20-22). There was a great victory over the Midianites who saw, as it were, an army surrounding and threatening them. That is what Paul is getting at. The vessel must be broken. There must be that which grinds down this proud ego within us, this self-expression. As we consent to that, the life of Jesus comes flowing out.

Lord, teach me to accept these snubs to my ego, these humiliating experiences which crush me, but which also produce the life of Jesus within me.