Winter 1996
The Cross and the Manifestation of His Kingdom
Paul Sexton

We are living in a time of unfolding revelation and disclosure. This is an hour in which the wicked are exceedingly wicked; but they who have the Spirit of wisdom and revelation shall become wise and understanding of God's ways. A right attitude of heart and obedience to His will is a prerequisite for our participation.

"Who are kept by the power of God through faith
unto salvation ready to be revealed in the
last time" I Peter 1:5.

Peter is speaking of a salvation that will be revealed in a people. It is through the Lord Jesus Christ's work accomplished at Calvary that God is bringing many sons unto Glory (Hebrews 2:10). The truth of our union with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection is fundamental to the ultimate realization of His purpose in us.

We must see ourselves included in the death of Jesus Christ by our identification with Him in death. We also are to see ourselves raised up and seated together with Him in the heavenlies. This must be more than a theoretical or doctrinal knowledge; more than mere mental assent to the truth; it must come to us by revelation of the Spirit of God.

From the beginning, it has been the purpose of God to have a medium by which to express Himself. God is the "great Self" of the universe, but He is not selfish. Rather, He fulfills Himself in giving.

"For God so loved the world that He gave
His only begotten Son."

It was the love of God that prompted Him to make man. He sought to give Himself, to reproduce and share Himself. God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Adam was by creation a reproduction of God. He was created with all the potential that we see realized in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus, being obedient, did always those things which pleased His Father; whereas Adam defaulted through his disobedience to the word the Lord had given him in the garden.

"And the LORD God took the man, and put him into
the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of
every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou
eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" Gen 2:15-17.

Implied in this command to Adam and Eve was the knowledge of God's will, but they violated that will by their disobedience and forfeited all that God had capacitated them potentially to be.

The Lord has never rescinded His original purpose in making man. In His wisdom, He had fore-ordained the plan by which He could recover through the incarnation, all that His original intent for Adam had included. Thus, it has all been recaptured for us in our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. But in order for us to participate in God's purpose, He had to dispense with our Adamic nature.

Thus, the great need for the Cross.

"For the preaching of the cross is to them that
perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved
it is the power of God" I Cor 1:18.

The Cross is a great divine positive, by which God has destroyed all that was imposed on us through the first man, Adam. He gathered up all of mankind in Himself, in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, and eternally dispensed with our fallen Adamic nature through His death on Calvary (Rom 5:10-21).

There is the death-side and the life-side to the Cross, and these must be understood and appropriated in proper balance. An over emphasis on the death-side of the Cross will arrest our spiritual progress through a subtle form of legalism that negates the operation of the Spirit of Life in the believer.

Our new creation life originates and has its being in the One who is Life. But if on the life-side we ignore or exclude the deterring aspect of the Cross, we lose its power to deal with our fallen nature. The measure to which we embrace the Cross determines the measure of the Life of Christ that will come forth from us.

We are earthen vessels into whom has been made a deposit of the eternal purpose of God, as embodied in the Christ who now lives in us and finds expression through us. The old is shed through death. The new is born through the Cross and develops in resurrection life.

The Lord covets the inimitable features and characteristics of our soul, and yearns to combine them with the beauties of His own person. He does not intend to destroy our personality, rather, He desires to conform it to His own image, and fill it with the expression of His life.

The Lord longs to save our soul; but the soul is the seat of our independence, pride, and rebellion. Independence finds its assertion through our soul until we have experienced the work of the Cross and become aware of our weakness. Paul said that he would rather glory in his infirmities, for in them the power and sufficiency of Christ could be perfected.

Most of us are too strong. Therefore, God subjects us to things that weaken us. His dealings bring us into extremities which we would rather resist; but in them we come to appreciate the Lord. Only as we are broken and weakened; only as we come to that crisis and are thoroughly convinced that "in my flesh dwelleth no good thing" can God use us.

Jesus said, "I can of mine own self do nothing" (John 5:30). The literal Greek is, "I can do nothing out from myself." His acts did not originate with Himself, but with the Father.

We must recognize that there is a soul life that must surrender; for there is that which does act "out from" itself, independently of the Spirit of God, which must be denied in deference for God's will.

This does not mean that we are to do nothing. There is a terrible snare in that. Many people have wasted years of their lives because they abide by this principle: "I can do nothing of myself, and the Lord does not seem to be doing anything, so therefore I cannot be a witness because I have no leading."

The Lord does not desire any of us to be a do-nothing kind of person. If we can do nothing of ourselves and are convinced of it, then we should resort to prayer and waiting upon the Lord, expecting the Holy Spirit to initiate His activity through us. As we do this, our moving in the Spirit will become so habitual that we will scarcely realize that it is the Lord within us who is initiating the activity.

It is a principle throughout all creation that life comes out of death. At the foot of a great tree lies a grave in which the life of a seed was lost. That tree is growing from a grave where life has its incipience in death. Thus it is with us, we can never dispense with the Cross, for life springs forth from a grave.

This is a day in which it is imperative that the Lord alone be glorified. He has at this present time a people who both desire this and are abiding by the principle of the Cross, that it might be so.