The Pathway to Death

If then, we are led by the Spirit of God into the death of Christ, He will allow us to partake of the life power of His resurrection. He begins at the centre of our being. We realize the liberation of the spirit, and how we are more and more freed from the law of sin and death, which enables us to be fruitful for God. In John 12:24 we read, “Most certainly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” Therefore, He tells them what He means; He translates it from the natural to the spiritual and lets them understand that the same law also applies here. The passage could be read thus: “He who loves his life will lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life.” “If anyone serves Me, he must follow Me.” It is then a question not of sin, Jesus speaks of us counting ourselves as dead to sin, but of the life by which they live and act. Not of parting with that which is wrong, but that which is lawful, that which we have by the natural man. “Skin for skin. Yes, all that a man has he will give for his life.” It is this ‘life’ which the Lord calls those who follow Him to lay down for His sake, and in fulfilment of the law of death for fruitfulness, i.e., the ‘life’ we have by nature has to go into ‘death’, to enable the ‘life’ of Christ in us to bring forth fruit. The Lord’s children are, to a great extent, mostly concerned with the question of victory over sin, and it is necessary that they should be; but when they know the way of victory over sin, they forget that there is another and deeper phase of the Cross beyond that. It is then a question not of sin, but of the life by which they live and act. As one has said, the life of the natural man has no power to carry out anything in the spiritual sphere for God. That is why some believers toil so much and get so little fruit. They know victory over sin, but the life of the natural man is their animating power in service and in the ordinary use of their faculties, e.g., the intellect is animated by the life of the natural man, as well as by the affections and the emotions! For Satan cannot be fought by the ‘natural’ man, with natural weapons. Therefore, in so far as we walk in the life of the natural man, to that extent we are powerless in spiritual warfare against the powers of darkness. Even though we may, up to the extent of our consciousness, have victory over known sin, we deeply need to learn the way to ‘hate’, or reject the life of the natural man, as the Lord Christ Himself poured out His soul. “If any man serves Me, let him follow Me,” said the Lord. He committed His spirit to God but poured out His soul unto death even the death of the Cross. So, the Spirit of God leads us in a path where we, too, pour out our soul life unto death. This is the meaning of God taking you in hand and leading you through experiences where you lose all conscious life in the senses; for example, all ‘conscious’ presence of God in the sense realm. In such a path it appears at times as if you had lost all your ‘spiritual’ life, and yet you are able to say, “I am trusting God absolutely, without any emotion, without any consciousness. I am walking in bare faith.” “I have chosen you that you should bring forth fruit,” said the Lord. So in due time, when victory over sin is known, the Holy Spirit leads the soul on into a path where the natural, emotional life subsides, and, in some measure, the active, troublesome, intellectual life, loses its power of wasteful activity. He does all this, in many different ways, with the one who wants to know the fullest life of fruitfulness and who is willing to follow his Lord as a grain of wheat falling into the ground to die! Let us think for a moment about that picture of the grain, as applied to the believer. The grain may have a beautiful coat, but it is hard. The germ of life is locked up in it. It cannot get out. Locked up in the grain, it produces nothing. The only way to make it fruitful in the production of other grains is to drop it into the dark earth, where it loses its outer shell, its beauty, and even the sunshine, and all that made ‘life’ beautiful, as it nestled in its place with its companions in the ear of wheat. It loses all as it becomes detached and drops down into the earth and is forgotten. After a time, if you take it up, you will find nothing of its polished shell, but there will be a tiny bit of life breaking out. If it is left in the ground to give its life entirely, a new life will, later on, press through the dark earth back into the sunlight and become an ear of wheat that will ultimately produce fruit, thirty or sixty-fold. It was the single grain of wheat falling into the ground that brought this about. The children of God so often shrink from this truth of the Gospel. They want to be ‘fruitful’, but they are not willing to die in order to be made fruitful. They are unwilling to part with these soulish experiences with God. Therefore, their lives are up and down. Let me say, however, that there is a consciousness in the spirit which is permanent. Walking in the spirit has no variations, but feelings in the soul are affected by circumstances, and by all kinds of external things. But as the ‘grain of wheat’ falls into the ground to die to all external things, it not only becomes fruitful, but in the believer the spirit rises into fuller union with God. Then when the inner spirit life has become steadfast in God, it moves according to the laws and orbit of its path with God, like the planets moving in their orbit in the heavens. This changeless life in God is never fully known until the believer parts ways with the activities of the soulish life of the natural man. When the life of Christ is the driving force within us, when we let Him reign so that we no longer stand in the way with our big ‘I’, then there will be life wherever we go. Even if you only say a few words, they will quicken everyone they touch. With all the activities being a pleasing aroma. That is infinitely more valuable to God than the most wonderful ‘sense’ experience, which ends in nothing of value, except the believer’s own joy. It takes the ‘ordinary’ everyday life full of God and makes it a celebration. It is so simple that the one who knows it is so occupied with being “faithful in that which is least,” that he does not think whether he is ‘used’ or not. Such a one cries for ‘power’ and ‘more power’, for he is continually preoccupied with ‘dying’, i.e., abiding in the death of Christ. Freely and naturally, the life of Jesus emerges and, without realising it, he bears much fruit. Silently, unobtrusively, the grain of wheat dies! This is the way that God always works. He does not make any noise over what He does and does not blow a trumpet telling of what He has done or will do. We should also walk with God, affecting the whole world without a noise, with no glory ever being attached to us or our personality being called ‘wonderful! But Christ glorified in us.

We are to be grafted into the death of Christ. What does the gardener do in his work of grafting? He cuts the bark of the stock and slips the graft into its place in the cut bark, binds it up, and leaves the bands there for some time. When he removes them, what has happened? Tree and graft have become united into one life. That is exactly what the Holy Spirit has to do for us. See how Paul laboured, with an utter recklessness of life. ‘Grafted’ into the death of Christ, in very truth, he laid down his life for the brethren that the life of Christ might be manifest. One of the effects of this ‘death’ is that we lose a certain exterior ‘hardness’ which most of us have by nature. The clay of the earthen vessel acted as a veil of the true life within. Too often others meet the “hard” clay exterior, and not the life of Jesus within. But as the ‘grain of wheat’ shell is broken away, there comes about a simplicity of manner and absence of reserve, which enables the inner life to shine forth and draws others to come to you without fear. Who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. He says to us: “Follow me.”