“CONCLUSION”

The Basis of All.

Having pointed to the inclusive goal, we cannot close without a further special emphasis upon the inclusive basis.

The question that will be in most minds is, ‘How shall this be made good in the Church, the churches and the individuals’?

There is an answer, but it will challenge us to the depth and at every point in our lives.

Much - perhaps everything - will depend upon how seriously we are concerned for God’s purpose, and therefore how ready we are to put aside all prejudice, superficiality, scepticism, familiarity and perhaps our traditions.

It is the universal recourse of the Apostles.

Were things other than they should be in their days?

Was there a condition in the church in Rome that demanded such a tremendous corrective as that great Letter to them?

Was there a state of things in Corinth - divisions, carnalities, disorders, rivalries, dissentions, and worse, calling for such a corrective as the First Letter to the church there?

Was there beginning to appear a turning away from ‘grace’ to ‘legalism’ causing such a loss of glory in Galatia?

Was there a ‘fly in the beautiful ointment’ at Phillipi?

Was there a threatening of a false spirituality in the form of mysticism at Colossae?

Yes, all this and other things, threatening the testimony of the churches and their influences in the world.

The Apostles did not excuse, condone or accept it.

Their whole attiude was “These things ought not to be”.

How did they approach these situations?

Had they one common basis and means of approach and remedy?

Yes, they had!

In every case it was the same.

To Rome it was: Rom.6:3-10; 12:1,2.

“...do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism
into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection,
knowing this, that our old self (man) was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin;
for he who died is freed (acquitted) from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,
knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.
For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all;
but the life that He lives, He lives to God”. 

“I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable (well-pleasing) to God, which is your spiritual (reasonable) service of worship.
And do not be conformed to this world (age), but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable (well-pleasing) and perfect”.

To Galatia: Gal.2:20; 5:24; 6:14.

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives 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 delivered Himself up for me”.

“Now those who belong to (are of) Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires”.

“But may it never be that I should boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world”.

To Philippi: Phil.2:5-8.

“Have this attitude in (among) yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus,
who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped (held on to),
but emptied Himself (laid aside His privileges), taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross”.

To Colossae: Col.2:11,12; 3:3.

“and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ;
having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead”.

“For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God”.

Well, there it is, plain, clear and positive: the Cross of Jesus Christ brought by the Holy Spirit right to the root and foundation of the life of every believer.

A foundational crisis and thereafter an inworking and an outworking.

“We”, “You”, “I” - all the pronouns of direct application.

Christians believe in the Holy Spirit.

Very many desire to know the Holy Spirit as a reality and power in their lives. 

But we must really understand and recognize that the Holy Spirit is committed and wedded to the Cross.

His coming awaited the work of the Cross.

Only after the symbolic representation of the Cross in death, burial and resurrection with Christ in baptism - so understood - did the Holy Spirit take His place in power in the lives of the first believers.

Because the tap-root of everything that the Cross was meant to deal with is the self-life, the self-principle, the New Testament word for which is ‘the flesh’ the Holy Spirit leads those under His government into the experiences which are                                                                                                       
calculated to expose and bring to the Cross the self-life of the child of God.

It is a primary and inseparable part of the Holy Spirit’s business to make good and real the meaning of the Cross.

This is not popular to the flesh, but it is the gateway to spiritual fulness, and the deeper the Cross, the greater the measure of resurrection life, power and light.

This touches the whole realm and range of Satan’s authority.

Power over him is inseparable from the Cross. (Col.2:15)

Therefore he will do everything possible to undercut, set aside, belittle and discredit the Cross.

The Person of Christ and the Cross of Christ have been the ground of the most bitter controversy in the history of Christianity. 

Of course, they are really one thing.

It is the Person who gives the Cross its real meaning and value, and it is the Cross that vindicates the Person; provided that by the Cross is meant death, burial and resurrection to glory.

The Scriptures cited earlier and many others make it quite clear that the Cross of Christ is something more than an historic event of long ago.

It is something that has to become very real in the experience, and not only in the doctrine, of the Christian.

But who could survive the Cross in what it meant in the case of Jesus Christ?

It rent, devastated and desolated Him, soul and body, heart and mind.

All the eternal agony was concentrated into a few hours and a last terrible moment.

There is no other creature in God’s universe who could go through that and survive.

Thank God, no other creature is ever required to go all that way: He went it for us.

And yet there is an aspect of that which concerns our being “united with Him by the likeness of His death” (Rom.6:5) and “always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus” (2.Cor.4:10 Margin); and the “fellowship of (or, participation in) His sufferings” (Phil.3:10); a drinking at the cup which He drained.

This working of His death in the Church and in the believer will be progressive.

The law of nature, which is only another way of speaking of the law of God, is more life, more fruit, more growth, by recurrent Winter and Spring, alternating experiences of death and life, every cycle unto increase.

This is the law of the Cross (John 12:24).

God is not a God who believes in theories; He is immensely practical.

One of the greatest enemies to fulness is superficiality.

This is an age of ‘quick returns’, easy gains, least trouble, everything with as little effort, trouble and cost as possible.

Depth is a lost dimension.

Stamina is a minus quality.

That is why God allows wars and nature’s upheavals and difficulties. 

Heaven is only going to be entered through tribulation is the principle of the Cross which God is sustaining before men’s eyes.

It will be those who share His travail who will share His reign.