THE CHRISTIAN LIFE AND WARFARE - by Watchman Nee (Appendix 1)
BACK TO THE CROSS!
(The following is an excerpt from Spiritual Equipment for the Last Days, a book by Charles Usher. It was originally published by Marshall Brothers, LTD., London, England, July 1920.)
We are in the last hours of this dispensation. The hand of the clock is approaching the hour of twelve. It is the dark hour of midnight, but the darkest hour is just before the dawn.
The Church is rapidly drifting into a state of apostasy, further and further away from God.
The War has left the world chaotic and the Church paralysed.
Dark forces have been liberated which are producing as evil an effect upon the Church as upon the world.
The late conflict has left problems for the Church to face, as difficult to handle as those with which the world is battling.
The Cross of Christ is the light that will illuminate the present darkness.
We need a fresh revelation of sin, for it is through sin that we have lost our way, and it is through Christ's death on the Cross that we are won back and restored to God.
See I Peter iii. 18—"Christ...hath once suffered for sins...that He might bring us to God."
The reason why many lose the sense of the sinfulness of sin is that they get away from the reality of Christ's atoning death, for it is only at the Cross that we get a vision of the depths and misery of sin.
Calvary is a revelation of man's hatred to God's authority—a hatred which manifested itself in the blackest, darkest deed ever committed.
We are told that the Cross is the "Touchstone of Faith"; that is blessedly true! but it is also true that it is the criterion of the human heart. It reveals man in his true character.
What astonishes one in these days is the sin in the Church. How awful it is that Christians can sin and be unmoved by it!
God's people are sinning—sinning in the heart, sinning in the mind, sinning in the pulpit, sinning in the pew,—sinning in spite of Calvary and of all that the Bible reveals of the horror and degradation of sin!
Child of God! go back to Calvary and take the sinner's place. Let the Cross melt the hardness and cause the tears to flow!
BACK TO THE CROSS!
The Place of our Reconciliation with God.
Sin brings separation.
This is a Divine law which we need to know, not only theoretically but experimentally, and the Cross is the only place where we learn that lesson thoroughly.
Listen to the words of Christ as He hangs on Calvary's tree, — "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" (Mark xv. 34).
This is not the expression of One suffering physical death merely, but of One passing through spiritual separation from God. The sinless Christ had never been separated from His Father. Throughout the countless ages of Eternity they were One.
This blessed oneness was seen throughout His earthly life, and it was that which sustained Him and enabled Him to bear the contradiction of sinners against Himself.
But on the Cross, Christ lifted the load of our sin upon Himself and went into the awful darkness of separation in order to reconcile us to God.
It is this spiritual separation which Christ endured instead of us, which constitutes the meaning of the reconciliation and makes the death of Jesus unique.
Christ was forsaken in that dark hour FOR ME. Oh! child of God, if you forget this, you lose the spirit of that which makes the Cross the power of God unto salvation!
We need to come back to this aspect of the death of Jesus until its spirit takes possession of us, and the very principle of Calvary becomes established in our lives.
How reluctant we are to own that not only was it necessary for us to come to the Cross for reconciliation when we were in sin, but that after we become Christians we need the atoning death of Jesus to keep us from departing from God.
We often talk of "grace" in cold, theological terms, but as we come into personal relationship to the death of Jesus, grace is revealed in all its loveliness, and we are fired with a passionate love for Christ.
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