Following Jesus Christ

Jesus opened a way right through His own flesh—it was a new and living way. Because Jesus shared our identity, the way goes through man.

Just as Jesus received power to lay His life down according to God’s commandment and His own free will, so we who follow Jesus receive power to lay our life down to destroy Satan’s work in man—in us and in others—according to our and their free will. This is the Father’s commandment to Jesus. This commandment is in God’s Spirit—in the Spirit of Jesus Christ—the Spirit in which He received power to crush the serpent’s poisonous head.

Someone who enters into this Spirit and is obedient to Him will experience His revealed truth in his life. Therefore Jesus says, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.” Luke 9:23-24. We can only follow Jesus in His Spirit—in self-denial and in obedience until death. The person who refuses to go this way keeps his life—he keeps Satan’s foolishness in man. It is in the Spirit of Jesus Christ that we get to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, in order to be molded to be conformed to His death. Phil. 3:10. We are molded to be conformed to His death by crushing sin in the flesh like He did; by letting the old life perish; by crushing Satan’s power, by rooting out his poison—if possible to the very last—so that what is true in Jesus may be true in us, so that what was finished in Jesus can be finished in us. Let us run toward the goal, apprehended by the Spirit of Jesus Christ in which He received power to lay His life down, so that we can say with Paul: “So then death is working in us . . . .” The word “death” is here denoted by the word “nekrose,” which means a gradual dying or gangrene. When Jesus’s death is working in the old life, it will perish. The cross is working. Therefore the word of the cross is the power of God to us who are being saved. 1 Cor. 1:18. The word “power” is here denoted by “dynamit.” In other words, it is God’s dynamite. The word of the cross is the dynamite of God for the purpose of blasting away Satan’s deception in man. The deeper we enter into Jesus’ death, the more the old life perishes. However, to the same extent that the old life is perishing, the new life—the life in God—is manifested, pure and holy. It is the life of Jesus Christ manifested through the Spirit of Jesus Christ. “If anyone serves Me let him follow Me . . . .” He was the grain of wheat that was put into the ground. If anyone is Jesus’ servant, him the Father will honor.

Behold, the way to life is through death! The way up is the way down. Humiliation and denial come before exaltation.

The criminal in man must die. The first step is to receive forgiveness for the sins that the criminal has committed. The next step is to receive power to overcome him. The third step is to receive power to die—to lay my life down.

That I, the criminal, am pardoned is great grace. To be able to overcome him is even greater grace; but to die is the greatest grace of all. Paul says that he was crucified with Christ. Gal. 2:20. Why? The old man was crucified so that the body of sin might be destroyed, that we should no longer serve sin. Rom. 6:6.

Enter into Jesus’ death in the power of Jesus Christ; there you will be redeemed and set free from Satan’s delusion, and the more you press in, the more you will be set free. Each new light from God over our self-life will include a judgment of our self-life. If we enter into the purpose of the light, we enter into its most stringent demands. Its most stringent demand is a sentence of death together with Jesus on the cross. We can accept Jesus’ death on different levels. We can accept it as a substitute death and receive forgiveness for our sins, we can accept it as victory over sin and receive power to overcome, and finally we can accept it as a sentence of death to the old life and receive power to die.

Ever one can enter in by faith. Blessed is he who dies with Him. To the extent that we have entered into His death, to that extent we will be sanctified; to the extent that we have ruled with Him in the light over ourselves, to that extent we will rule with Him over others; to the extent and as far as we have judged ourselves, to that extent we will be able to judge others. On this way we receive an exercised sense to discern between good and evil, between light and darkness, between Satan’s deception and God. To the extent that we die to folly, to that extent the truth will be manifested. And as we receive power to press into God’s kingdom, this occurs at the expense of our life. The person who loves God’s judgments over his self-life loves the cross on which he can die to it. Nevertheless, Paul says that many are the enemies of the cross of Christ. The fewest among the believers will enter onto the way of the cross by dying to their own life. If death were working in them, one would not see so much of the old deception that we mentioned previously.