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CHAPTER 10

Dying DAILY INTO CHRIST
WHO LIVES IN YOU

or

CRUCIFIXION and ASPHYXIATION

of the Human Race at its own Hand

 

The Ways of the Devil and his hell have been exposed,
but occur for initial contrast here:

With the WAYS of the Lord and His Cross that Bred Life Inextinguishable

Then let us consider PARALLELS in the Death of CHRIST and PAUL

in the Events Surrounding

 

DEVIL'S FARE IS NEITHER FAIR IN JUSTICE NOR JUDGMENT

Much more on the latter than the former is the plan for this chapter, but let us begin at the unextinct end of morbid life, and proceed to the inimitable version that is endless.

Paul in II Timothy 2:26 refers to some whom the pastor should help escape from "the snare of the devil, having been taken captive to do his will", or more literally, TO HIS WILL. In II Corinthians 3:10-11, he refers to the need for open forgiveness following repentance on the part of a gross wrong-doer, saying, "I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ, lest Satan should take advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices."

How remorseless (literally), how banal in the original sense of BANE, blight, corruptive assault, how acrid is the atmosphere of the devil, how corrosive, and how seductive is his strategy, how vile are his intentions and how loathsome his subtlety! Reduce him to nothing and what blessedness would readily ensue! WOULD! For alas, it must be said, that if the devil were absent and man were as he now is, surely he would merit and almost cry out for a scourge like that evil personage, to entrap his listlessness, energise his cussedness, snare his vanity, pander to is pride, coat the squalor of his selfishness with the teflon of smoothness and altogether perform the parallel to the second law of thermodynamics on a creation misspending itself, and in need of reminder that it is helpless without the Lord.

Of his devices, much is relayed in the preceding chapter, as in Dastardly Dynamics, Delirious Daubs, Wandering Woes and Immovable Faith, Ch. 6, with which see Joyful Jottings Ch. 9; of his state, status and quality in Joyful Jottings Ch. 8, The Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8, and of his apparent musings and the biblical disclosures of his ambitions, in Barbs, Arrows and Balms 18, Divine Agenda Ch. 7. You see of this vile spirit in Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 29, I Peter 5, Matthew 4 as in II Timothy 2, II Corinthians 3 and 11, Ephesians 6, just as a commencement.

From Joyful Jottings 9, there follows a brief excerpt... (extended and adapted slightly for this purpose)...

This desolating spirit is seen sometimes in what could almost literally be called 'poor devils'. The other day I heard a lady in a bus go over her life problems so many times, and in words so nearly a paradigm repeated, that it was an amazing performance, perhaps suitable for a play, and were it less lugubrious, it would constitute an arresting tour de force.

Here one heard the groan, the moan, the complaint about this lady's employer, of her 'screaming at her'; while her daughter - that is the one of the employer - was evidently quite as well equipped in the screaming department; and she did not know ... no, she DID NOT KNOW. What could she do ? What was to be done in such a situation ? No, she could not tell.

The second mouthing of this non-knowledge datum was in a sort of groaning moan, a long, drawled disenchantment like a fever in words. She did not know where she was going, really. This was her own repeated announcement to her lady companion on the bus. Life, where was it leading her!

Forced to overhear, one could not fail to discern that she was in bondage, mental, psychological, emotional and almost certainly spiritual. She was lost, but moving. She was dead, but dying.
How ?

The spirit can be dead while the apparatus of the created mind-psychic-emotional structure continues in some sense to be active in a way which could be CALLED living, but which is as dead as someone whose heart has stopped beating for half-an-hour, physically. Not only this: she seemed over-shadowed by defeat, its realisation, its continuation, its colour, its flair. Her companion said: Oh, when you work (as distinct from collapsing into - in this case - voluntary unemployment as a visible option, not yet taken), you get a little money and then you can buy things and make yourself happy! What a prescription to end  mental loathing!

The evocative delusions of the devil, however, are not always those of what perhaps be called the 'poor devil' ; for the syndromes include the 'clever devil', the 'daring devil', the 'impudent devil' and many others. This is not just a verbal joust which some may make of others; it is in some cases a pathological reality. We can recall the extreme reluctance of some of the devils with whom Christ dealt, to be removed from the (relatively) pleasant abodes in the hearts of members of our human race.

No wonder! There is a certain tepid pleasantness for them, perhaps, in being the more powerful, the more dominant, the more directive, instead of mere rubbish, amongst rubbish, dead, defeated and FINALLY LOST, in their own final and decidedly unpicturesque end. For a devil, the human heart on its way to doom could be comparatively comfortable... for the devil, that is. What desolation, however, is the end of this account, when it is all totalled and reviewed.

It is not just a judgment that is horrible for such pulping devices for the human spirit; it is the nature of the case. As the Lord indicates at one point,

(Proverbs 1:31, cf. Proverbs 18:21, and contrast the beauty on the other side, in Christ, in Isaiah 3:10, 61:10). Without Christ, the spiritual realities of those doings, their ULTIMATE motivation and spiritual quality makes this word of Proverbs, as deep as any curse!

JOY! What is the man talking about! someone may say. I thought this was a joyful jotting. Ah but wait! Patience my friend.

The JOY is THIS: that all this is absolutely unnecessary. It is a disease for which cure is available, apt and powerful, free and lovingly applied. Why add your name to the population of the cynic, the sour when there is at hand, the  sweetness of divine love and power (which created you, so that you can feel for it and appreciate it, quite naturally, when sin is no longer dominant as well as prominent  II Timothy 2:19, I John 3:9, 1:7-2:2, for lack of perfection is far from being in its thrall)!
 

says wisdom, in Proverbs. You can lie in the soft spiritual muck of the pig-pen if you will, and doubtless it IS softer than gravel and shale; but it is not much better and the dirt is infectious. But see what Proverbs says NEXT.
 

Free supply AND free teaching! And your God is the teacher!  This is in Proverbs 1:22-23. It goes on to trace in some detail the negative trip which can so readily be made if one does NOT TURN, but remains adamant in delusion, festering in dis-faith and fevered in mental acrobatics which merely break the spine of thought and reason, without ending their rule; in fact merely ending their applicability in one's own deluded mind.

Reason does not capitulate because those made and created to use it, mentally do so! They may capitulate. IT continues. They may be confounded through the devious irrationalities and superfluous preoccupations which they fecklessly and needlessly turn to introduce in their scampering from reality, their vain seekings of refuges from God (cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 7), but reason smiles with indifference to these assaults, as vain raindrops seeking to intimidate stainless steel.

One of the aspects of the word of God is REASON, CAUSE: these are some of the translations of the Hebrew term which can also mean word. It frequently does mean 'word', being what the Lord 'speaks'; but this underlying rationality is within it. God has a mind and expects us to use our own, not hide (cf. Romans 1:18-20), worshipping the creation instead of the Creator who put the thing in place at the first (Romans 1:21-23).

But what is this "turning" of which Proverbs speaks ? It is to the wisdom of God which is available not merely as INSTRUCTION, yes and divine at that for it is written and conveyed personally by Him (cf. I John 2:26-27), but as RANSOM (Proverbs 13:8, 8:11,18; Isaiah 53:1-6, Matthew 20:28, Galatians 3:1-13, I Cor. 1:30-31, II Cor. 5:19-21).

It is CHRIST who is made to us, who believe, wisdom and righteousness and ... REDEMPTION. The price is high; it is the difference between heaven and hell; between peace and turmoil; between what is natural, though it has been distorted by sin, and what is unnatural. The supreme and superb phase is this: the SUPERNATURAL God who invented us, makes the unnatural, the distorted or deluded, to become natural, by CORRECTING it, like an inspired panel-beater, who goes one further, and reconstructs altogether not the body but the heart (cf. Ezekiel 11:19). It is a price, therefore, which He has paid for those with whom He does business in this way. Small wonder Peter speaks of "joy unspeakable and full of glory" in I Peter 1 (read it all ? yes, so you do not need the verse here, reading will find it for you, and find much more!).

It IS glory with which you deal in Jesus the Christ; for HIS IS GLORY, and if it were possible, it is magnified by being evidenced in a voluntary humility, which pointedly was His.

END OF EXCERPT

LIFE IS NOT FOR GRASPING BUT ASKING,
and then FOR GODLY LIVING IN SHEER ABUNDANCE,

THOUGH IT MAY HURT

Enough of the devil and his devices! It is worthy of thought as pathology is for a doctor in year 5 of Medicine: health demands awareness of the case!

The devil, that adversary, that Satan,  does however, though unintentionally, yet in the plan of God, serve. How on earth, you may ask, does he serve! The service is not merely in showing the foibles and follies of flesh, so that one may in sensitisation, be prepared to avoid them, revolted at his burrowing,  borrowing ways; for it shows this further aspect.

As the evil one, this devil is intent on demobilisation of resources, wastage of virtue, waning of godliness, withering of that independence which fears nothing in itself, since it first fears God. Does he not detest that healthy and robust faith, the love of its radiance, to see that life which God wishes to impart, that life upon life, that spiritual abundance to replace denudation and falling dynamics! What he has to offer, it is the very opposite of this. Where his value is decline, that of God is incline (Philippians 1:12-14), seeking and searching for that glorious and triumphant consummation in the mark of the "high calling" of Christ.

"Seated in heavenly places" (Ephesians 2:6), the Christian is ready, like a man in space with superb perspective and joy in the grandeur of things, to advance with wisdom and to act with insight (cf. Ephesians 1:17ff.). This "dying daily" (I Cor. 15) which is the way of life on this earth, it is not an exercise in moribundity (I Corinthians 15:31), or a gym work-out for the sake of conformity to the contours of a coffin. To be sure, it involves, pain, suffering and endurance: but what of that ? When Hilary was impressed with the given nature of Mt Everest, that "it was there", does this mean that the discipline and effort, the unusual circumstances and the uttermost challenge to which he then voluntarily submitted his body, was a folly ? Did this aim make of that a menace to reality ? did it enervate his passions, deplete his responsibilities, attenuate his life, mitigate his functions, or rather enhance them!

DYING daily is merely a routine result, though it is not without some pain, of living a life which is other than your own; and it is intensely healthy, since for the Christian, that life is the One which made you, and died for you, and was stricken for you to bring you back to normalcy from pathology, to truth from error, to comfort from dissidence. That to which you 'die' is dead already, though it has a fitful exercise from time to time, like a rooster, beheaded yet active for a time; that to which you 'live' is life itself.

Hence there is an abundance (John 10). Gone is the constriction of the artery for the 'blood' of life, the emphysema for the spiritual intake. Life flows like sap into the branches (John 15). It is productive, empowering, natural, normal and necessary. The alternative is a species of death, which continues as does a severed branch, perhaps for quite some time.

Being a "fool for Christ"  (I Corinthians 4:10), then, so that "being defamed, we entreat" and have "been made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things until now" is not a diminution but a devolvement of life: it attends to its highest rewards, most beneficent conclusions and most liquid refreshments.

HOW, and indeed HOWEVER can this be so! It is this, that when you are used to the uttermost for that to which your design directs, when in addition in love you are doing it not by force or compulsion, when again your companion in arms in all these things in God Almighty Himself, and neither idol nor demi-urge, then this hugely thrusting performance in His presence (Matthew 28:18-19) is like an aircraft that can dive and surge in all its acrobatics and design attainments, the very acme of its life.

In addition, if He gives a particular gift to someone already a Christian, this then becomes a case of SHARING, sharing with God! It is He who enables its exercise!

Let us return to our aircraft. Suppose now it were used to chug along in the skies at 200 mph, and this almost ordinarily in a horizontal line: then what is the use of its design for vastly more pressing matters ? When, and this is the crux, your use is not for the mere pleasure of occupants, but for the service of the Creator of the Universe, in the love which never compels, but constrains, in the artistic heights that amaze and the knowledge that astounds, then THIS is living.

It is neither the excitement, nor is it yet the mere valour needed as such: it is the companionship in a mighty venture, a vast and even prodigious plan, one as broad as and indeed broader than the whole human race (Colossians 1:19ff., Titus 2-3, II Corinthians 5:17ff.), even God made manifest as man, Jesus Christ. In Him, you have and come to that Father of spirits, that King of eternity in whose presence is a keen, clean joy, unspeakable comfort and immeasurable meaning.

As to those who are His: for them He presents equipment with that energy and purpose which is adequate, actualised and alive, so that instead of being a blotting paper for a pen which writes, so that you merely receive the imprint, or a sheet written with current culture, or a volume of your own productions from your own level: the case changes dramatically.

Now you WRITE and ACT in terms of a PLAY far better than any Shakespeare ever wrote (though his often are sheer magnificence of dramatic art), work of the PRODUCER for which earth has neither equal nor even comparison (Psalm 89:6-8. 73:25-26, Exodus 15), for a PURPOSE which intends and offers a love not merely divine in nature, but that of DEITY Himself, who deigns so to use man, with compassion and friendship,  for man's sake, for He loves His children, and for His own mercy's sake.

DYING is LIVING in this phase, for it means that you abandon utterly your own crimping regulations and desires, demands and smaller purposes, to this. If you DIE in the sense that your own leadership and determination of all things you can grab for so moulding, is something now left and indeed lost (Philippians 3:8ff.), in the fashion that your own self-will even when nobler in aspect, is not your lord, that GOD is your LORD and HIS SALVATION is your premiss for being HIS property (which you were anyway, but not before conversion willingly!): then you live.

He who keeps his life, loses it: he who loses it for Christ's sake and that of the Gospel, SAVES IT (Matthew 16:24-27). Indeed, as Christ says, as recorded in John 12:25-26:

bullet "He who loves his life will lose it,
bullet and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  
 
bullet If  anyone serves Me, let him follow Me;
bullet and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor."

To BE where the Lord is: what is the use of not having this ? Fancy as a child going through heavy London traffic without having your father with you, or someone of that order; and with GOD there IS NO OTHER! To be with His wisdom, with His purpose and plan is better than watching the foundations of geology and oceanics as they were formed and formatted by God. How one would LOVE to see a video of that - something that, in better ways than our technology can show, the Lord may one day show His saints in heaven: it would be intriguing and majestic, for one is stimulated even now by the observation of earth formations in the gigantic upthrusts and immense plateaux, yes often without signs of strain for the purpose, not overlays but underlays, out of order of course in nonconformites to the ludicrous theories of our Age - cf. News 1. With God, there is no limit to wisdom and knowledge, grace and place.

When you have tasted HIS life which is the original  and eternal, which by nature has neither beginning nor end, the premiss on which all life depends, the alternative to the irrational rubbish of NOTHING which has something to show: when this is your diet, what need of considering mere flesh! This life is a formatted, functional, fashioned thing, and the glory of it is in this, that GOD did it, and GOD is willing to receive it for those who receive Him, and that cost of the reproduction which He has already proferred on the Cross, with the energy which raised Him from the dead available now to His people (Ephesians 1:19).

He it is who brings again to persons in the human race, what they are made to be. The cost of acceptance  is ZERO to man, but infinitude to God, who is and deals at that level in majesty (Matthew 20:28, Philippians 2). Man's payment is not for the status, for the sonship, for place of daughter: that is paid and covers all who will ever be His. You 'pay' by laying down your life for your Lord, and in doing so you take it up for His service. But for whom else! Will you serve a toad when the King is before you...

It is time to be rid of the preconception that being a "fool" for Christ's sake - that is, not burrowing your head in endless schemes to make money, to make hey, to make a name or whatever else is to your taste, is a wimp's paradise or an idiot's preconception. It is the other way around. What greater foolishness is available to man than to exempt himself voluntarily from the kingdom of heaven in order to plunge instead into one of this earth, fraudulent, temporary, false, spurious, inundated already in the great deluge of deception, delusion and despondency, together with its manic-depressive surges of glorious 'hope' in nothing for no reason!

You see those intemperate and untrustworthy, mistaken and irrational times all but without number, in the philosophic compartments of geology, biology, psychology, anthropology, as in philosophy itself, that grand and discreet exporter whose words, like Nazi propaganda during World War II, spread widely, but signify nothing. These 'ascents' are always on a swiftly downward-moving escalator, so that the more the effort, the more ludicrous is the result. Such escalations are well  avoided!

If it hurts to be holy, what of that! Who is so afraid of pain that pleasure is his god! Who is so immersed in pleasure that his character is that of a log in a muddy river, without meaning, without value, except for a feeling!

Feeling and fantasy did not create the sub-structure in craniation, for your mind's earthly work; nor the physiological marvels in which this in turn is immersed; or the mathematical notations, the linguistic brilliances which underlie your very operational procedures (cf. Repent or Perish Chs. 2,   5, A Spiritual Potpourri Chs. 1-9, Wake Up World! ... Chs. 4,  5,  6 and Stepping Out for Christ Chs.   7,   10.

But let us proceed to a particular, fascinating and instructive illustration of what it means to die daily.

The way it will appear, DV, is this. We shall consider the actual DEATH of Paul and the preliminaries to the extent they show its nature, its quality, calibre, meaning and style. In so doing, we shall have the pleasure of comparing these things with the infinitely more significant death of the Lord Jesus Christ: yet for all its magnificence, this becomes also an event to emulate. How ? Not of course in any sense of redemption which is His and His alone (Psalm 49:7-15, Romans 3:23ff., Hosea 13:14, Hebrews 9, Ephesians 1:10), but in the sense of seeking to follow the pattern in spirit. This, after all, is precisely what HE recommended (Matthew 20:28)! It is no use playing about with Christianity; you have to die into the Lordship of Christ, whose friendship makes that the prince of all funerals (John 15:15 cf. James 2:23). 

This of course is what is in part implied in Matthew 20, where the TRUE service is not exaltation by or in the presence of man, but humbling oneself (not in ORDER to exalt oneself! but to be humble, an infinite difference) to serve in spirit where the Lord leads, FOR the Lord. His lordship is not merely in phrase, nor alone in service, but in spirit: for who is ashamed to have God as his Lord! Yes, it is a privilege inestimable, for who would not leap among the artists, to be apprentice or student to Raphael, or Constable ? but when it comes to knowing God, it is a thing incomparable in spirit and reality.

SINCE His is wisdom, HIS is creation, HIS is love, therefore this so far from doing anything to diminish, dim or deplete the purpose and use of talent,  rather fulfils it with a brilliance for the design which ONLY the Designer knows or can know. He can of course give to those concerned the awareness of His will (James 1): but the wisdom is HIS, to be imparted when and where and how He will, though of course, to faith when this is in need of it! Nor is this seldom!

 

PARALLELS IN THE DEATH OF CHRIST AND PAUL

What can parallel the unparalleled ? Obviously nothing.

What then is this phrasing: obfuscation or obscurity, palaver or paradox ?

None of these: it is merely to point out that the unparalleled has yet a mode, a fashion and a spirit, and although man cannot work the redemption by infinite purity through DEITY Himself, which Christ did, yet in dying, actual physical death as with Paul, there can be comforting, and even inspiring parallels in PART (in the part which suffers parallels, not in the part which does not)!

First notice that Paul and Christ BOTH knew of imminent death. You see this constantly with Christ, as in Matthew 17:22-23, 16:21, 9:20, Mark 12,  and in even more intensity, perhaps, in Luke 9:51 with its parallel in Luke 22:41ff., John 13:18, 6:70-71, all in conformity to John 1:29, a public announcement in the midst of a seething public, of what must take place!

As to Paul, you see it traced out in highly dramatic circumstances, from Acts 20:16 with 21:13, and with the parallel prophecies in Acts 21:4 and in that enacted prophecy, of 21:13 where the prophet's hands and feet were tied to show Paul what was coming.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY WEEPING AND  BREAKING MY HEART!" said Paul, "for I am willing not only to be bound, but to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 21:13). Reading this in the context of Paul's earlier CALL to service, one finds that Christ by His Spirit showed at the outset, to Ananias who baptised Saul (to become Paul, to show the change in name that had already occurred in heart),  that He would counsel Paul, showing him WHAT GREAT THINGS THAT APOSTLE WOULD HAVE TO SUFFER FOR HIM! (Acts 9:15-16).

That, in a mild circumstantial way, by comparison, but yet a poignant and powerful one in the intensity of it, was parallel to John the Baptist's declaration at the first, that there was the LAMB OF GOD who takes away the sin of the world, in John 1:29.

In each case, moreover, there was a journey to an important festival, with Christ of course, to the Passover, and with Paul, to Pentecost. Each had a tremendous sense of commitment and urgency about the journeys, as you see in Luke 9:51 on the one side, and in Acts 20:16.

To be sure, Paul was not at that time going to his death, as Christ was, but he was voluntarily going to imprisonment which, in those days with Roman Emperor's like Claudius, and later Nero about, was not so very far removed. In fact, as you see looming in II Timothy 4, the end was not disjoined from this imprisonment, even though it appears Paul journeyed to Spain after the first imprisonment. The stage from his first arrest, was set. He became notorious even in Rome; and when the axe of Nero looked for work, Paul was there.

Christ knew that there was to be a NEW COVENANT in His blood (Matthew 26:28), and Paul that he would be delivered from every evil work to the heavenly kingdom (II Timothy 4:17-18), as the drums (if we may anachronistically but graphically refer to these as in the French Revolution and its fascination with the guillotine and its drum roll) began to sound for him, amid the lustful political passions of Rome.

bullet "I have finished the race," said Paul (II Timothy 4:7), "I have kept the faith." Indeed, he declared,
"I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand."
 
bullet "I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do,"
said the Lord Jesus Christ.

"And now, O Father," He proceeded,  
"glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory
which I had with You before the world was."

Thus each had a burnished realisation of the completion of the work which was given to be done.

Paul, although of course not able to refer to the glory with the Father before the world was, as Christ could and did in John 17, yet could say, "I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day!" (II Timothy 1:12).

With each, there is the sense of the imminent eminence of the Father, and the movement to His side about to occur: with Paul, its ministration through the mediatorship of Christ (I Timothy 2), the Son by nature. As to all of us Christians, we are children by adoption (Ephesians 1:5).

With each, Paul and Christ Jesus, there is a sense of triumph, of patience, of gentleness, of grandeur, of mission, of commission and its conclusion with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. For the apostle, it is "for me to live is Christ, to die is gain" (Philippians 1:20ff.), and with Christ Himself, it is return to the glory of His Father which He had known from all eternity.

In each case, when the acrid realities of the dying come into focus, there is a traitor, one who had evidently shared in considerable degree, with the work and with the life of the other: with Jesus, it was Judas (foreknown - John 6:69-70), and with Paul ? It appears to have been Alexander the coppersmith, if we may put together references in I Timothy 1:20 and II Timothy 4:14. In any event, the latter shows that there was one who had in his ways, an OPPORTUNITY to do Paul "much harm". If he were the same as in I Timothy 1, then it was one who had already pushed false teaching, and now brought the venom or vice of it into the firing line, helping the marksmen, if you will, to shoot straight at their victim.

With Christ, Judas led the soldiers to Him in the dark, a work of inestimable value for the devil, in view of Christ's intense popularity. With Paul, it was at the trial!

In each case, moreover, ROME was involved, in its imperial sense. With Paul, its outreaches in Israel, in Jerusalem indeed, led to action there and in Caesarea, later terminated at Rome. With Christ, also, it was in Jerusalem. In each case, imperial power was the authority behind the axe, or the piercing, at the civic level.

Again, it was for each a matter of being attacked verbally during trial, with a view to a death sentence; and for each, it appears the attacks were perfectly false.

Each disregarded death as a terminus, seeing it rather as a transition phase, back to the Sending One who with Christ, had prepared His path as in the scriptures of the prophets for centuries, for men to read. With Paul, there was on that famous journey back from Macedonia and down the coast to Jerusalem, a sense of the impending, of the end of the race, so that the very air seemed to throb with the significance of it all. It is not enough to be willing to live for Christ; one must be willing to die for Him; and that, as an apostolic privilege, is precisely what Paul first STATED he was willing to do (Acts 20:13), and then did.

Christ Himself declared that not only was He going, but returning home in order to prepare a place for His friends, for the Christians, with Himself; and that He would come again (cf. John 14, Acts 1:8ff.).

Christ too made it clear that it was a SERVICE that He was performing in providing in Himself the ransoming sacrifice for sin (Matthew 20:28, 26:28), with its brilliant consequences in pardon and eternal placement; while Paul provided an epic spectacle of faith in irons, as he worked fearlessly on with the message of the Gospel, as II Timothy 4:17 shows so vividly, whatever and wherever the imminent end might be.

With neither is the least fear shown, in the public encounters leading to death, in the sense of concern for dying. With Christ, there is a horror of bearing sin (Hebrews 5:7), but He faced it as it was necessary, a "cup" or ordeal unique in all human history, since no one else being sinless, COULD do it (I Peter 2:22ff.), and no one else, being God as man, could feel it as He did!  The repugnance (Luke 22:41ff.) arises from the severity of suffering for an execution which was of necessity to touch His very spirit, since sin separates (Isaiah 59:1ff.). Unspeakable is the anguish of bearing what was so alien, so disgusting, so prevalent and so puny: sin!

As taking the sinner's place, Christ had to, and DID feel that (Matthew 27:46) to the very point of experiencing a sensation of being forsaken; but this, the task done, did not prevent Him declaring, "Father, into Thy hands I commit My Spirit" (Luke 23:46). Each moves towards the death, Christ as a ransom, Paul as an example and exhibition of loyalty when work is done, and of fearless resolve to the replacement of this mortality with eternity in individual reliance on the Lord, whose preparation of a place was assured (II Corinthians 4:16-5:5).

 

Duty was paramount; love was inextricable; patience was profound; courage was consistent; and the Lord who prepared and paid for the way, was to Paul as one always helping, cleansing, keeping, encouraging, transforming. With Christ, His Father was always well pleased with Him as the sinless servant sent from heaven's eternity to earth's commission (John 8:29, II Corinthians 3:18), completed His awful and awesome task.

 

Finally, one may see a parallel in the prophet Agabus' binding of his own feet and hands on Paul's way to Jerusalem, ready to be imprisoned for Christ, and Mary's pouring of perfume on the feet of Christ (John 12), and the other lady pouring it on His head, "for My burial" (Matthew 26:12-13).

It is not necessary to be an apostle in order to see the keen edge of dying daily for Christ, and if need be, in the course of service for Him, literally, if loyalty so decree. Death is no more a terror (Hebrews 2), and Christ has delivered not only from the accusations which make of it a sentence, as we see in this chapter, but from the very fear which it may inspire. Covered in life, it is not merely to but THROUGH death into a resurrected body, when the sunset at last comes on our Age, and alas, it is not a summery red but one of blood which anoints the suffering soil (cf. Revelation 19:12ff., 19:17ff.)!

When a bee, other than a queen bee, stings, it loses it power to pursue the activity! So death has lost its sting (I Corinthians 15:56ff.); and life has triumphed over it, for man, ONLY because God was willing to pay for redemption, the just price, for this purpose becoming a man, and that He might manifest His reality in a format suitable for man: so making comfort pure, and pardon holy, peace practical and something to be felt, experienced and valued, since it is so costly, so vital and so much the environment of the soul in Christ; and so vast is His payment, in HIS DYING ONCE ONLY, that all and any who come to Him may receive the receipt of the pardon in the testimony of the Spirit of God (Romans 8:16), being so sealed (Ephesians 1:13).

Thus does the Christian Pilgrimage in death find life, in living find the morbidity of alienated life devastated with divine dynamic, while the weeds of wandering and ill-kept paths, become a mere passing sight, deep like the Grand Canyon, but not for living in! The Lord it is who keeps the garden of the Lord, and beyond that, the eye of faith even now (Isaiah 33:17-21) sees "the land that is very far off."