Does it make any difference in your personal life today what you believe about the sacrifice of Christ on His cross? If we "examine ourselves whether we be in the faith" as Paul says we should (2 Cor. 13:5), we will find it is very important what we believe.
What we believe about Jesus and what He accomplished, will seriously impact our character and our daily level of happiness. So important was the cross of Jesus to Paul's personal living that he said, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." After near-failure in his ministry in Athens, he told the Corinthians, "When I came to you, ... I determined not to know anything among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified." He told the Galatians that he had so closely empathized with Jesus on His cross that "I am crucified with Christ" (Gal. 6:14; 1 Cor. 2:1-3; Gal. 2:20).
The secret of Paul's constant joy in the Lord even in the midst of intense suffering was his identification with Christ in His sacrifice. He learned to appreciate the "breadth, and length, and depth, and height" of the love revealed at that cross (Eph. 3:18). He chose to believe that Christ "loved me, and gave Himself for me." He contemplated where he would be if Christ had not "given Himself," and concluded correctly that he would be "dead" (Gal. 2:20 again, and 2 Cor. 5:14). And death would be not merely blissful sleep but the horrors of judgment and hell itself (vss. 10, 11).
The result was like day following night. Paul saw himself as literally and truly redeemed from hell. He "look[ed] unto the rock whence [he was] hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence [he was] digged" (Isa. 51:1), and concluded reasonably and logically that he "thus judged" that his entire life was not his, but Christ's. It became a daily joy for Paul to "die daily" to self because he sensed vividly how Christ had died to self for him. It was a simple 2 + 2 = 4 for Paul: Christ died for me; I must live for Him! (see 1 Cor. 15:31; 2 Cor. 5:14, 15).
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: May 12, 2002.Copyright © 2010 by Robert J. Wieland.
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