The Cross of Christ

This writing is composed of excerpts taken from the book “The Normal Christian Life” by Watchman Nee.

The Blood of Christ deals with our sins. The Lord Jesus has borne them on the Cross for us as our Substitute and has thereby obtained for us forgiveness, justification, and reconciliation. The Blood can wash away my sins, but it cannot wash away my `old man’. It needs the Cross to crucify me. The Blood deals with the sins, but the Cross must deal with the sinner.     

A sinner is said to be a sinner because he is born a sinner; not because he has committed sins.  The teaching of Romans is not that we are sinners because we commit sins, but that we sin because we are sinners. We are sinners by constitution rather than by action. As Romans 5:19 expresses it: “Through the one man’s disobedience the many were made (or `constituted’) sinners”.  How were we constituted sinners? By Adam’s disobedience. We do not become sinners by what we have done but because of what Adam has done and has become.

I am not a sinner because I sin, but I sin because I am a sinner.  We are apt to think that what we have done is very bad, but that we ourselves are not so bad. God is taking pains to show us that we ourselves are wrong, fundamentally wrong. The root trouble is the sinner; he must be dealt with. Our sins are dealt with by the Blood, but we ourselves are dealt with by the Cross. The Blood procures our pardon for what we have done; the Cross procures our deliverance from what we are.

We are sinners. We are members of a race of people who are constitutionally other than what God intended them to be. By the Fall a fundamental change took place in the character of Adam whereby he became a sinner, one constitutionally unable to please God; and the family likeness which we all share is no merely superficial one but extends to   our   inward   character   also.   We   have been “constituted sinners.” How did this come about? “By the disobedience of one,” says Paul.

 We are sinners not because of ourselves but because of Adam. It is not because I individually have sinned that I am a sinner but because I was in Adam when he sinned. Because by birth I come of Adam, therefore I am a part of him. What is more, I can do nothing to alter this. I cannot by improving my behavior make myself other than a part of Adam and so a sinner.

In Adam all was lost. Through the disobedience of one man, we were all constituted sinners. By him sin entered and death through sin, and throughout the race sin has reigned unto death from that day on. But now a ray of light is cast upon the scene. Through the obedience of Another we may be constituted righteous. Where sin abounded grace did much more abound, and as sin reigned unto death, even so may grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5:19-21). Our despair is in Adam; our hope is in Christ.

 God clearly intends that this consideration should lead to our practical deliverance from sin. Paul makes this quite plain when he opens chapter 6 of his letter with the question: “Shall we continue in sin?” His whole being recoils at the very suggestion. “God forbid!” he exclaims. How could a holy God be satisfied to have unholy, sin fettered children? And so “how shall we any longer live therein?” (Romans 6:1,2).

God has surely therefore made adequate provision that we should be set free from sin’s dominion. But here is our problem. We were born sinners; how then can we cut off our sinful heredity? Seeing that we were born in Adam, how can we get out of Adam? Let me say at once, the Blood cannot take us out of Adam. There is only one way. Since we came in by birth we must go out by death.

To do away with our sinfulness we must do away with our life. Bondage to sin came by birth; deliverance from sin comes by death — and it is just this way of escape that God has provided. Death is the secret of emancipation. “We…died to sin” (Romans 6:2).

But how can we die? Some of us have tried very hard to get rid of this sinful life, but we have found it most tenacious. What is the way out? It is not by trying to kill ourselves, but by recognizing that God has dealt with us in Christ. This is summed up in the apostle’s next statement: “All we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3).

But if God has dealt with us `in Christ Jesus’ then we have got to be in Him for this to become effective, and that now seems just as big a problem. How are we to `get into’ Christ? Here again God comes to our help. We have in fact no way of getting in, but what is more important is that we need not try to get in, for we are in.

What we could not do for ourselves God has done for us. He has put us into Christ. Let me remind you of I Corinthians 1:30. I think that is one of the best verses of the whole New Testament: `Ye are in Christ’. How? “Of him (that is, `of God’) are ye in Christ.” Praise God! it is not left to us either to devise a way of entry or to work it out. We need not plan how to get in.

God has planned it; and He has not only planned it but He has also performed it. `Of him are ye in Christ Jesus.’ We are in; therefore, we need not try to get in. It is a Divine act, and it is accomplished. Now if this is true, certain things follow.

 When the Lord Jesus was on the Cross all of us died — not individually, for we had not yet been born — but, being in Him, we died in Him. “One died for all, therefore all died” (2 Cor. 5:14). When He was crucified all of us were crucified.     

When preaching in the villages of China, one has to use very simple illustrations for deep Divine truth. I remember once I took up a small book and put a piece of paper into it, and I said to those very simple ones, `Now look carefully. I take a piece of paper. It has an identity of its own, quite separate from this book. Having no special purpose for it at the moment, I put it into the book. Now I do something with the book. I post it to Shanghai. I do not post the paper, but the paper has been put into the book. Then where is the paper? Can the book go to Shanghai and the paper remain here? Can the paper have a separate destiny from the book? No! Whatever experience the book goes through the paper goes through with it, for it is in the book.’    

 “Of him are ye in Christ Jesus.” The Lord God Himself has put us in Christ, and in His dealing with Christ God has dealt with the whole race. Our destiny is bound up with His. What He has gone through we have gone through, for to be `in Christ’ is to have been identified with Him in both His death and resurrection. He was crucified: then what about us? Must we ask God to crucify us? Never! When Christ was crucified, we were crucified; and His crucifixion is past, therefore ours cannot be future.  We were crucified when He was crucified, for God put us there in Him. That we have died in Christ is not merely a doctrinal position, it is an eternal fact.

 It is God’s inclusion of me in Christ that matters. It is something God has done. For that reason, those two New Testament words “in Christ” are always very dear to my heart.  The death of the Lord Jesus is inclusive. The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is alike inclusive. We have looked at the first chapter of I Corinthians to establish the fact that we are “in Christ Jesus”. Now we will go to the end of the same letter to see something more of what this means.

In I Corinthians 15:45,47 two remarkable names or titles are used of the Lord Jesus. He is spoken of there as “the last Adam” and He is spoken of too as “the second man”. Scripture does not refer to Him as the second Adam but as “the last Adam”; nor does it refer to Him as the last Man, but as “the second man”. The distinction is to be noted, for it enshrines a truth of great value.      As the last Adam, Christ is the sum total of humanity. As the second Man He is the Head of a new race. So, we have here two unions, the one relating to His death and the other to His resurrection.

 In the first place His union with the race as “the last Adam” began historically at Bethlehem and ended at the cross and the tomb. In it He gathered up into Himself all that was in Adam and took it to judgment and death. In the second place our union with Him as “the second man” begins in resurrection and ends in eternity — which is to say, it never ends — for, having in His death done away with the first man in whom God’s purpose was frustrated, He rose again as Head of a new race of men, in whom that purpose shall be fully realized.     

When therefore the Lord Jesus was crucified on the cross, He was crucified as the last Adam. All that was in the first Adam was gathered up and done away in Him. We were included there. As the last Adam, He wiped out the old race. As the second Man He brings in the new race. It is in His resurrection that He stands forth as the second Man, and there too we are included. “For if we have become united with him by the likeness of his death, we shall be also by the likeness of his resurrection” (Romans 6:5). We died in Him as the last Adam; we live in Him as the second Man. The Cross is thus the power of God which translates us from Adam to Christ.

The finished work of Christ really has gone to the root of our problem and dealt with it. There are no half measures with God. “Knowing this,” says Paul, “That our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin” (Rom. 6:6). “Knowing this”! Yes, but do you know it? “Or are ye ignorant?” (Rom. 6:3). May the Lord graciously open our eyes.

This is what we need to know. Then, when we know this, what follows? Look again at our passage. The next command is in verse 11: “Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin”. This, clearly, is the natural sequel to verse 6. Read them together: `Knowing that our old man was crucified, … reckon ye yourselves to be dead’.  When we know that our old man has been crucified with Christ, then the next step is to reckon it so.     

God’s Word makes it clear that `knowing’ is to precede `reckoning’. “Knowing this … reckon.” The sequence is most important. Our reckoning must be based on knowledge of divinely revealed fact, for otherwise faith has no foundation on which to rest. When we know, then we reckon spontaneously.      

What, then, is the secret of reckoning? To put it in one word, it is revelation. We need revelation from God Himself (Matt. 16:17; Eph. 1:17,18). We need to have our eyes opened to the fact of our union with Christ, and that is something more than knowing it as a doctrine. It is not reckoning toward death but from death.     

We are dead not in ourselves but in Christ. We were crucified with Him because we were in Him.      We are familiar with the words of the Lord Jesus, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4). Let us consider them for a moment. First, they remind us once again that we have never to struggle to get into Christ. We are not told to get there, for we are told to stay there where we have been placed. It was God’s own act that put us in Christ, and we are to abide in Him.    

Now the point of all this is that there is a very real practical value in the stand of faith that says, `God has put me in Christ, and therefore all that is true of Him is true of me. I will abide in Him.’ Satan is always trying to get us out, to keep us out, to convince us that we are out, and by temptations, failures, suffering, trial, to make us feel acutely that we are outside of Christ.

So, in our walk with the Lord our attention must be fixed on Christ. “Abide in me, and I in you”.  How do we abide? `Of God are ye in Christ Jesus.’ It was the work of God to put you there and He has done it. Now stay there! Never look at yourself as though you were not in Christ. Look at Christ and see yourself in Him. Abide in Him. Rest in the fact that God has put you in His Son, and live in the expectation that He will complete His work in you. It is for Him to make good the glorious promise that “sin shall not have dominion over you” (Rom. 6:14).