The Apostle Paul wrote in Galations 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” If we are “crucified” that means we are DEAD. Dead to our old sinful ways. Dead to our past life. Dead to this world. Yet thousands of Christians cannot seem to understand this.
I like what A. W. Tozer wrote about this:
Some movie actor wrote a book one time called Try Jesus. I never read the book. I wouldn’t be caught dead reading it. “Try Jesus”? All this experimentation—I don’t believe in it. I believe we ought to be suicide bombers. We ought to tie ourselves in the cockpit and dive on the deck and if we go out, we go out. Sink or swim, live or die, irrevocably attached in love and faith and devotion to Jesus Christ the Lord.
Christians ought to be those who are so totally committed that it is final. This weak looking back over your shoulder to see if there isn’t something better—I can’t stand it. One time a young man came to an old saint who taught the deeper life, the crucified life, and said to him, “Father, what does it mean to be crucified?” The old man thought for a moment and said, “Well, to be crucified means three things. First, the man who is crucified is facing only one direction.” I like that—facing only one direction. If he hears anything behind him he can’t turn around to see what’s going on. He has stopped looking back. The crucified man on the cross is looking in only one direction and that is the direction of God and Christ and the Holy Ghost and the direction of the edifying of the church, the direction of sanctification and the direction of the Spirit-filled life.
And the old man scratched his scraggly gray hair and said, “One thing more, son, about a man on a cross—he’s not going back.” The fellow going out to die on the cross doesn’t say to his wife, “Good-bye, honey. I’ll be back shortly after five.” When you go out to die on the cross you bid goodbye—you’re not going back! If we would preach more of this and stop trying to make the Christian life so easy it’s contemptible, we would have more converts that would last. Get a man converted who knows that if he joins Jesus Christ he’s finished, and that while he’s going to come up and live anew, as far as this world’s concerned he’s not going back—then you have a real Christian indeed.
The old man went on, “Another thing about the man on the cross, son; he has no further plans of his own.” I like that, too. Somebody else made his plans for him, and when they nailed him up there all his plans disappeared. On the way up to the hill he didn’t see a friend and say, “Well, Henry, next Saturday about three I’ll come by and we’ll go fishing up on the lake.” He was going out to die and he had no plans at all.
Oh, what busy-beaver Christians we are with all of our plans, and some of them, even though they are done in the name of the Lord and evangelical Christianity, are as carnal as goats! It is beautiful to say “I am crucified with Christ” and know that Christ is making your plans. I tell you, ladies and gentlemen, twenty minutes on your knees in silence before God will sometimes teach you more than you can learn out of books and teach you more than you can ever learn in churches. And the Lord will give you your plans and lay them before you.