Day 16

How the Self Dies — By the Cross, Not by Effort

Today's Scripture: Galatians 6:14 (NLT)

For two weeks, we have been talking about what dies. Now, for the second half of this month, we must turn to the harder question of how it dies. And the very first thing we must say — and it must be said with all the clarity we can muster, because everything depends on it — is that the self does not die by your effort. It dies by the cross of Jesus Christ. The most common error in the entire Christian life is to take the divine work of crucifixion and turn it into a project of self-improvement. To take what only the cross can do and try to do it ourselves. And every soul that has tried this — and most of us have tried it, more than once — has ended up exhausted, defeated, and quietly suspicious that the Christian life is impossible.

The Christian life is impossible. That is exactly the point.

Paul knew this with a clarity born of his own failures. He had once been a master of religious effort. He had been, as he tells the Philippians, "as touching the law, a Pharisee... touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless" (Philippians 3:5–6). If anyone could have killed the self by sheer willpower and religious discipline, it would have been Paul. And he is the one who tells us that he gave it all up and counted it dung (Philippians 3:8). He found that no amount of effort could produce what only the cross of Christ could give. He found that the road to death-to-self does not run through the gym of religious effort; it runs through the empty tomb of the Crucified One.

Listen to him in Galatians 6: "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." Notice the passive voice. The world is crucified unto me. I am crucified unto the world. It is not Paul doing the crucifying. It is the cross doing the crucifying through him. The cross of Jesus is not something that happened two thousand years ago, and now we are on our own; the cross is the active, present, ongoing power by which the self of every believer is daily put to death. We do not climb up on a cross of our own making. We are united, by faith, with the cross that has already been raised, and the death that happened there does its work in us, by the Spirit, as we yield.

This changes everything about how we walk through the second half of this month. We do not put the self to death by gritting our teeth. We do not put the self to death by making longer lists of things we will not do. We do not put the self to death by trying harder. We put the self to death by daily reckoning — Paul's word in Romans 6:11 — by daily counting as true what God has already declared to be true about us in Christ. The old man was crucified with Christ. That is a finished fact. Our work is not to crucify him again; our work is to walk in the truth that he is already condemned, and to refuse, by the Spirit, to obey him any longer.

This is what makes the Christian life possible. It is not a self-help program. It is not a religious diet of self-denial that you are supposed to muscle through by your own resolve. It is a participation in a death that has already been died and a life that has already been raised. The cross is not your goal; the cross is your portal. The cross is not what you are trying to achieve; the cross is what you are trying to enter. And every time you enter it — every time you say, "Lord, that work has already been done, and I claim it again today" — the death you could never have produced by effort becomes operative in your daily life by faith.

This is also why the Christian life cannot be reduced to law-keeping. Paul says in Romans 7 that the law could not produce holiness; it could only diagnose unholiness. The cross is not more law. The cross is the answer to law, the fulfillment of law, the place where the demands of law were met in Christ and where now, in union with Him, we are set free not to break the law but to walk in a righteousness that the law could only point toward.

So as we begin the second half of this month, lay down the project of killing yourself by yourself. The Father is not asking you to be your own crucifier. The Father is inviting you to enter, by faith, into the crucifixion of His Son, and to let what was accomplished there become real in you by the Spirit, daily, until the day Christ returns and the work is finally and finally complete.

Glory only in the cross. Try only the way of faith. Yield only to the Spirit. And watch the self that you could not kill begin to die, day by day, by a power that is not your own.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, I confess that I have often tried to kill the self by my own effort, and I have failed every time. Today I lay down the project of self-crucifixion and I take up the gift of Your finished cross. Make the death that happened there operative in me today by Your Spirit. Let me reckon what You have already declared. Let me walk in the death and life You have purchased. I cannot do this; You have already done it. Make it real in me again today. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Today, every time you find yourself trying to white-knuckle a victory over some part of the flesh, stop and pray instead: "Lord, I cannot kill this. You already have. Make Your cross operative in me right now." Notice the difference between effort and faith.

"The self does not die by your effort, but by your faith in the cross that already killed it."