Being Made Conformable to His Death

“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death.” Phil. 3:10.

We know that the death of Christ was a death of the cross. We know that that death of the cross was His chief victory. Without that death He would not be the Christ. The distinguishing characteristic, the one mark by which He is separated here in earth and in heaven from all other persons, both in the Divine and human, is this one: He is the Crucified Son of God. Of all the articles of conformity, this must necessarily be the chief and most glorious one—conformity to His death.

This is what made it so attractive to Paul. What were Christ’s glory and blessedness must be his victory, too: he knows that the most intimate likeness to Christ is conformity to His death. What that death had been to Christ it would be to him as he grew conformed to it.

Christ’s death on the cross had been the end of sin. During His life it could tempt Him: when He died on the cross, He died to sin; it could no longer reach Him. Conformity to Christ’s death is the power to keep us from the power of sin. As I by the grace of the Holy Spirit am kept in my position as crucified with Christ and live out my crucified life as the Crucified One lives it within me, I am kept from sinning.

Christ’s death on the cross was to the Father a sweet-smelling sacrifice, infinitely pleasing. And the closer I can get to Him, and the more like I am to His disposition, the more conformed to His death I can become, the more surely shall I enter into the very bosom of His love.Christ’s death on the cross was the entrance to the power of the resurrection life, the unchanging life force of eternity. In our spiritual life we often have to mourn the failures, falls, and deficiencies that prove to us that there is still something wanting that prevents the resurrection life asserting its full power. In the conformity to Christ’s death there is an end of self: we give up ourselves to live and die for others: we are full of the faith that our surrender of ourselves to bear the weaknesses of others is accepted of the Father. Out of this death we rise, with the power to love and to bless.

And now, what is this conformity to the death of the cross that brings such blessings, and what does it consist of? We see it in Jesus. The cross means entire self-denial. The cross means the death of self—the utter surrender of our own will and our life to be lost in the will of God, to let God’s will do with us what it pleases. This was what the cross meant to Jesus. It cost Him a terrible struggle before He could give Himself up to it. When He was sore amazed and very heavy, and His soul exceeding sorrowful unto death, it was because His whole being shrank back from that cross and its curse. Three times He had to pray before He could fully say, “yet not My will, but Yours be done.” But He did say it. And His giving Himself up to the cross is to say: Let Me do anything, rather than that God’s will should not be done. I give up everything—only God’s will must be done.

And this is being made conformable to Christ’s death, that we give away ourselves and our whole life, with its power of willing and acting, to God, that we learn to be and work, and do nothing but what God reveals to us as His will. And such a life is called conformity to the death of Christ, not only because it is somewhat similar to His, but because it is Himself, by His Holy Spirit, just repeating and acting over again in us the life that animated Him in His crucifixion. Were it not for this, the very thought of such conformity would be akin to blasphemy.

But now it is not so. In the power of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of the Crucified Jesus, the believer knows that the blessed resurrection life has its power and its glory from its being a crucified life, begotten from the cross. He yields himself to it, he believes that it has possession of him. Realizing that he himself does not have the power to think or do anything that is good or holy, or rather, that the power of the flesh asserts itself and defiles everything that is in him, he yields and holds every power of his being as far as his disposal of them goes in the place of crucifixion and condemnation. And so he yields and holds every power of his being, every faculty of body, soul, and spirit, at the disposal of Jesus. The distrust and denial of self in everything, the trust of Jesus in everything, mark his life. The very spirit of the cross breathes through his whole being.

And so far is it from being, as might appear, a matter of painful strain and weary effort to maintain the crucifixion position, to one who knows Christ in the power of His resurrection—for Paul puts this first—and so is made conformed to His death, it is rest and strength and victory. Because it is not the dead cross, not self’s self-denial, not a work in his own strength that he has to do with, but the living Jesus, in whom the crucifixion is an accomplished thing, already passed into the life of resurrection. “I have been crucified with Christ: Christ dwells in me;” this is what gives the courage and the desire for an ever-growing, ever deeper entrance into most perfect conformity with His death.

And how is this blessed conformity to be attained? Paul will give us the answer. “What things were gain to me, these I counted loss for Christ.” What is more, “I count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord, that I may know Him, being made conformed to His death.” The pearl is of great price; but oh! it is worth the purchase. Let us give up all, yes, all, to be admitted by Jesus to a place with Him on the cross.

And if it appears hard to give up all and then, as our reward, only have a whole lifetime on the cross, oh, let us listen again to Paul as he tells us what made him so willingly give up all, and so intently choose the cross. It was Jesus—Christ Jesus, my Lord. The cross was the place where he could get into fullest union with his Lord. To know Him, to win Him, to be found in Him, to be made like Him—this was the burning passion that made it easy to cast away all, that gave the cross such mighty attractive power. Anything to come nearer to Jesus. All for Jesus, was his motto. It contains the twofold answer to the question, how to attain this conformity to Christ’s death? The one is, cast out all: the other, and let Jesus come in. All for Jesus.

Yes, it is only knowing Jesus that can make the conformity to His death at all possible. But let the soul win Him, and be found in Him, and know Him in the power of the resurrection, and it becomes more than possible, a blessed reality. Therefore, beloved follower of Jesus, look to Him, look to Him, the Crucified One. Gaze on Him until your soul has learnt to say: O my Lord, I must be like you. Gaze until you have seen how He Himself, the Crucified One, in His ever-present omnipotence, tabernacles within you and breathes through your being His crucified life. It was through the Eternal Spirit that He offered Himself unto God; that Spirit brings and imparts all that that death on the cross is, and means, and effected, to you as your life. By that Holy Spirit, Jesus Himself maintains in each soul who can trust Him for it, the power of the cross as an abiding death to sin and self, and a never-ceasing source of resurrection life and power. Therefore, once again, look to Him, the Living Crucified Jesus.

But remember, above all, that while you must seek the best and the highest with all your might, the full blessing comes not as the fruit of your efforts, but unsought, a free gift to whom it is given from above. It is as it pleases the Lord Jesus to reveal Himself, that we are made conformable to His death. Therefore, seek and get it from Himself.