One Bible teacher remarked, "Christianity is the way of the cross...and your blood and sweat may mingle with Christ's before your life is finished." By this statement, Lionel Fletcher did not mean Christ's atoning work on the cross was insufficient to completely save a sinner, but rather that every believer is crucified with Christ both completely and redemptively at the moment of salvation but also progressively (day by day) and sanctifyingly throughout the earthly sojourn. The Apostle Paul stated it this way: "I have been crucified with Christ..." (Gal. 2:20). The perfect tense denotes an action and a continuance thereof.
Therefore, GOD'S WORD pointedly says to every believer in Christ:
"So kill (deaden,deprive of power) the evil desire lurking in your members [those animal impulses and all that is earthly in you that is employed in sin]: sexual vice, impurity, sensual appetites, unholy desires, and all greed and covetousness, for that is idolatry (the deifying of self and other created things instead of God)" (Col. 3:5 AMP.).
This instruction is radically different from a 'lovey-dovey' kind of popular Christianity attracting many in the twenty-first century Church. In fact, multitudes do not want to hear it.
But, faithful Bible teachers have proclaimed it for centuries. Listen to them:
"Our old nature is no more extinct than the devil; but God's will is that the dominion of both should be broken" (John R. W. Stott).
"In youth, mid-age, and now after many battles, I find nothing in me but vanity and corruption" (John Knox).
"I more fear what is within me than what comes from without" (Martin Luther).
"There may be persons who can always glide along like a tramcar on rails without a solitary jerk, but I find that I have a vile nature TO CONTEND WITH, and spiritual life is a struggle with me. I have to fight from day to day with inbred corruption, coldness, deadness, barrenness, and if it were not for my Lord Jesus Christ my heart would be as dry as the heart of the damned" (Charles H. Spurgeon).
These men of God are in perfect sync with the Apostle Paul who straightforwardly shared his testimony: "Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore I run in such a way, as not without aim; I box in such a way, as not beating the air; but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified" (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
- dick christen
