Crucified With Christ
by Ray Prinzing

"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."
 (Galatians 2::20)

Crucified with Christ, the vict'ry of His cross
Has turned to utmost gain, and not to utter loss.
Though former things are gone, Their memory fades away,
Yet new horizons come, the dawning of His day.

Crucified with Christ, the process reaches far,
All self be counted naught, even my feeble star.
But, oh, the life that comes, like sunshine after rain,
In Christ, my Lord and King, I, too, shall live again.

First and foremost, the Cross is always identified with Christ, it was His own crucifixion that opened the way, blazed out the path, and gained the victory.  But just because this was wrought  in Christ" does not mean that we are absolved from the process, rather it assures us of the route and the victory.  All that He did was, and is FOR US, in our behalf, to undergird our participation, and to guarantee that the results would be victorious.

"For though He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth by the power of God."  (2 Corinthians 13:4).  He offered no fleshly resistance to those who came to take Him to His cross, for it was His will to lay His life down. He willed to have the Father's will fulfilled, and self was brought into submission.  Thus did God send "His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin (by being a sacrifice for sin), condemned sin in the flesh."  (Romans 8:3).  It was through His own death He conquered all that pertained to the carnal mind, overcame all passions of the flesh, and the released the outflow of LIFE, the life of the Spirit.

The cross, His death, was but a means to a specific end.  And now our identification with the process is also with a view to an end - not to end in death, but as a transition from the low realms of our "self" into the higher realms of HIS life and glory, to be filled with His fulness.