Secret of the Master’s Indwelling (9) ... Dead with Christ

by Dale Shumaker
Spirit Savvy Network
www.spiritsavvy.net

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The Secret of the Master's Indwelling is about digging our roots deep into God’s soil that bears fruit abundantly and gives us strength Supernaturally. Andrew Murray shows what we must do and be to become stalwarts of Faith.

Secret of the Master’s Indwelling, Chapter 9, Dead with Christ:

“I have been crucified with Christ.”

I doubt if we fully realize that the Holy Spirit is a heavenly life come to expel the selfish, and fleshly, and the earthly life.

What it is to be dead with Christ, and how it is that I can practically enter into this death with Christ. If we are to experience the full power of what Christ can do for us, we must learn to die with Christ. You are dead with Christ.” On the strength of that he says, “Reckon yourselves dead unto sin.” What does that mean—You are dead to sin?

“Reckon yourselves indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus.” You are to reckon it as true, because God says it—for your new nature is indeed, in virtue of your vital union to Christ, actually and utterly dead to sin.

It is a command: “Reckon ye yourselves indeed to be dead unto sin.” Get hold of your union to Christ; believe in the new nature within you, that spiritual life which you have from Christ, a life that has died and been raised again.

What is the life Christ lives in me?
Praise God, when a man begins to see what it is, and begins in obedience to say, “I will do what God’s Word says; I am dead, I reckon myself dead,” he enters upon a new life. On the strength of God’s everlasting Word, and your union to Christ, and the great fact of Calvary, reckon, know yourself as dead indeed unto sin. A man must see this truth; this is the first step.

The second is—he must accept it in faith.
The power of Christ’s death keeps from sin, and destroys the power of sin; the power of Christ’s death can be manifested in the Holy Spirit’s unceasingly mortifying the deeds of the body.

A man may at times be filled with the Holy Ghost, and yet there may be great imperfections in him. Why? For this reason: because his heart, perhaps, had not been fully prepared by a complete discovery of sin. There may be pride, or self-consciousness, or forwardness, or other qualities of this nature which he has never noticed. The Holy Spirit does not always cast these out at once.

“Lord Jesus, let the power of Thy death work through, let it penetrate my whole being.” As the man gives himself unreservedly up, he will begin to bear the marks of a crucified man.

What are the marks of a crucified man? The first is, deep, absolute humility. Christ humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. When the death to sin begins to work mightily, that is one of its chief and most blessed proofs. It breaks a man down, down, and the great longing of his heart is, “Oh, that I could get deeper down before my God, and be nothing at all, that the life of Christ might be exalted. I deserve nothing but the cursed cross; I give myself over to it.” Humility is one of the great marks of a crucified man.

Another mark is impotence, helplessness. When a man hangs on the cross, he is utterly helpless, he can do nothing. As long as we Christians are strong, and can work, or struggle, we do not get into the blessed life of Christ; but when a man says, “I am a crucified man, I am utterly helpless, every breath of life and strength must come from my Jesus,” then we learn what it is to sink into our own impotence, and say, “I am nothing.”

Still another mark of crucifixion is restfulness. There is no place of rest like the grave; a man can do nothing there, “My flesh shall rest in hope,” said David, and said the Messiah. Yes, and when a man goes down into the grave of Jesus, it means this: I am waiting upon God; my flesh rests in Him; I have given up everything, that I may rest, waiting upon what God is to do to me.” Remember, the crucifixion, and the death, and the burial are inseparably one.

Here is one of the reasons why the Church of Christ enters so little into the death of Christ; men do not want to believe that the curse of God is upon everything in them that has not died with Christ. My intellect, has that been defiled by sin? Terribly, and the curse of sin is on it, and therefore my intellect must go down into the death. Ah, I believe that the Church of Christ suffers more today from trusting in intellect, in sagacity, in culture, and in mental refinement, than from almost anything else.

The Spirit of the world comes in, and men seek by their wisdom, and by their knowledge, to help the Gospel, and they rob it of its crucifixion mark. Christ directed Paul to go and preach the Gospel of the cross, but to do it not with wisdom of words.

Brother, you and I need to take time to come to a much larger and deeper faith in the power of Christ, that the almighty Christ will indeed take us in His arms and carry us through this death life, revealing the power of His death in us. I cannot live it without personal contact with Christ every hour of the day. Christ must do it; Christ can do it.

Christ will carry you through the very process He went through; will make His death work in you every day of your life.

One thing to remember on the day of Christ’s death... on the cross.
That the whole world, with perhaps the exception of Mary and the women, was turned against Christ that day. Of the whole world of men as far as I know, there was but that one praying to Christ. Do not wait to see what others do; if you wait for that,—alas! I desire to say it in love and tenderness,—you will not find much company in the Church of Christ.

There was , for with the Son of God he entered the glory. What made him sonot a man upon earth during the thirty-three years of Christ’s life that had such wonderful fellowship with the Son of God, as the penitent thief separate from others? He was on the cross with Jesus and entered Paradise with Him. And if I live upon the cross with Jesus, the Paradise life shall be mine every day.

I maintain my position on the cross. Given up to Jesus, to die with Him, I can trust Him to carry me through.

“Lord, here is this life; there is much in it still of self, and sinfulness, and self-will, but I come to You; I long to enter fully into your death; I long to know fully that I have been crucified with You; I long to live Your life every day.” Then say: “Lord Jesus, I have seen Your glory, what You did for the penitent one at Your side on the cross; I am trusting You, that You wilt do it for me. Lord, I cast myself into Your arms.”

The complete chapter on Dead with Christ:
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/murray/indwelling.xii.html
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library and many great classic works on Christian Growth, by the best of the Saints of Old who’s works have been passed down through the ages.