04/10/2025
We are about to enter into Holy Week, and during this week we live and are crucified with Christ during His final days. We follow Him through the joy of His arrival in Jerusalem, eat the last supper with Him, suffer through His anguish at Gethsemane, experience the capture, trial, and scourging of our Lord, and then we join Him on the cross for His crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension. Yes, over the course of this week we will have been crucified with Jesus... not in the physical sense of dying, but spiritually. Our crucifixion is such that our old selves die and our new lives in Christ come alive. Paul explains this to the Galatians in this scripture:
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Galatians 2:20 ESV
Why is this so? Why is it that we must be crucified with Jesus? Is faith not enough, and our sympathy with His final week not complete? The answer is no, because He did not go through this ordeal in order to prove He could suffer, die, and defeat death... He did these things to save us from our sins; to wash us clean of our iniquities. Paul speaks again, but this time in Romans...
“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.”
Romans 6:6 ESV
Before Jesus Christ there was the law. It defined sin and convicted us under it, but Jesus fulfilled the law and changed the playing field. He took the sting out of the legalism of the old law, and gave us forgiveness, not just once a year during the feast of atonement, but every minute of every day. He taught us about the true nature of the love of God that was hidden by the law to a great degree. So yes, we die on the cross with Jesus. We die to sin, and we die to the law...
“Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.”
Romans 7:4 ESV
As we spiritually travel with Jesus through the coming week, and then hear the hammer falls and feel the pain as we are nailed to the cross with Him, remember that it is not our efforts that allow us to be there... we are not righteous enough to be included of our own accord... it is by grace and grace alone that we are granted this privilege. His death, that we claim as ours as well, and his resurrection, that we too experience, are both beyond our grasp except through Him.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Ephesians 2:8-9 ESV
I read a wonderful account this morning that was written by Pastor Oswald Chambers. He talks about the very personal decision to accept our place on the cross with Jesus.
"Have I made this decision about sin - that it must be killed right out in me? It takes a long time to come to a moral decision about sin, but it is the great moment in my life when I do decide that just as Jesus Christ died for the sin of the world, so sin must die out in me, not be curbed or suppressed or counteracted, but crucified." - Oswald Chambers
Have we made this decision regarding our own sin that Chambers writes of? Have we accepted our place with Jesus on the cross? Let’s contemplate this daily over the coming week.
Prayer:
Father, thank you for the life, death, and resurrection of your Son Jesus Christ, but thank you too for allowing me to pick up my cross and follow Him to Calvary. Holy Father, as I struggle through Holy Week I am grateful for the cross and all it represents in my faith and life but am heartbroken by the suffering of your Son Jesus. I cry and wretch at the thought of His physical ordeal, and yet I shout with joy and jubilation as He defeats sin and death for me. He is your Lamb, and His blood is pure... through Him I am redeemed. In Him my sins are released... but the cost is almost too much to bear. Forgive me my weakness Father, forgive me the tears I cry as your will is done; forgive my broken heart as I look at your Son beaten and hanging in my place... and yet I thank you for allowing me to claim His death and resurrection as my victory over sin. I praise your Son Jesus and look towards the day when I can wash His feet with my tears and lovingly give Him thanks for redeeming my soul from sin and leading me to eternity in your presence. Holy. Holy, Holy, are you my God who was, and is, and is to come. Holy are you who loves me so much that you would send your only begotten Son to live, suffer, and die for me, then raised Him from the dead to grace me with eternal life. I praise your name Father and give you all the honor and glory as I bear my cross and follow Jesus to Calvary, and into righteousness and holiness. Great are you, and greatly to be praised!! I pray throughout the coming week in the name of Jesus and for your will to be done… just as He did. Hear my voice Lord as I shout out Hallelujahs and claim Amen to the prayers of the saints and Jesus.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah… and may all believers say… Amen! Amen! Amen!
“Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?”
Matthew 16:24-26 ESV
Rich Forbes