Chapter 2: The Centrality of Death
Chapter 2
The Centrality of Death
Now we begin the first of three closely related chapters in which we discuss the basic considerations of the Christian life, or true spirituality. We have already referred to a negative and a positive aspect of the Christian life. We will return now to the negative considerations. These negative considerations can be summed up in the words of four Bible verses:
• Romans 6:4: “We were buried with him by baptism into death.”
• Romans 6:6: “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him.”
• Galatians 2:20: “I am crucified with Christ.”
• Galatians 6:14: “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom” [or whereby] “the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”
In these statements we find that as Christians we died, in God’s sight, with Christ when we accepted him as Savior; but there is more to it than this. There is also very much the demand that in practice we are to die daily. That is the negative aspect that we mentioned in chapter 1 and that we will now pursue further.
As we said there, the Bible gives us a very sharp negative indeed—one that cannot be made an abstraction but that cuts into the hard stuff of normal life. We saw that the Word of God is definite that in all things, including hard things, we are to be contented, to say “Thank you” to God. Here is a negative, and it really is a negative; it is a negative of saying no toward the dominance of things and of self.
We also see that the Bible tells us that we are to love men, not only in a romantic or an idealized sense, but enough not to envy. Here again it would be false not to point out that this is a meaningless word, a pure romantic word; it is a pure utopian word in the bad sense, unless we see that this also involves a very strong negative aspect. If we have this right attitude, it means that we are saying no in certain very definite areas to certain things, and saying no to ourselves.
Again we must say this is not just something to be taken romantically, to stir up some sort of an emotion within ourselves. It is a very strong negative word. We are to be willing to say no to ourselves, we are to be willing to say no to things, in order that the command to love God and men may have real meaning. Even in things that are lawful to me, things that do not break the Ten Commandments, I am not to seek my own, but I am to seek another man’s good. Now anyone who is thinking along honestly must say at this particular point that this seems like a hard position that is presented to us in Scripture. When we stand in the circle of mankind’s usual perspective of life, and honestly face these things in the Bible, we must say one of two things. Either we must romanticize, and claim that these statements are intended just to give a good feeling, and some day, way off, in the reign of Christ in the future, or in the eternal heaven, it will mean something in practice. Or, if we do not say this, but face in a real sense these words as the Bible gives them, we must feel that we are against a hard wall. You cannot listen to this type of verse, this negative thrust in the Word of God concerning the Christian life, in a comfortable way, unless you romanticize it. Surely this has always been so, since the fall of man. But surely also it is especially so in the things-mentality and the success-mentality of the twentieth century. We are surrounded by a world that says no to nothing. When we are surrounded with this sort of mentality, in which everything is judged by binges and by success, then suddenly to be told that in the Christian life there is to be this strong negative aspect of saying no to things and no to self, it must seem hard. And if it does not feel hard to us, we are not really letting it speak to us.
In our culture we are often told that we should not say no to our children. Indeed, in our society repression is often correlated with evil. We have a society that holds itself back from nothing, except perhaps to gain something more in a different area. Any concept of a real no is avoided as much as possible. We who are a bit older may feel that we can say this is the younger generation. Much of the younger generation surely is like this: they know nothing of saying no to themselves or anything else. But this is only half true, because the older ones are also like this. The present mature generation has produced this environment, an environment of things and of success. We have produced a mentality of abundance, wherein everything is to be judged on the basis of whether it leads to abundance. Everything else must give in to this. Absolutes of any kind, ethical principles—everything must give in to affluence and selfish personal peace.
Of course this environment of not saying no fits exactly into our individual natural disposition, because, since the fall of man, we do not want to deny ourselves. Actually we do everything we can, whether it is in a philosophic sense or a practical sense, to put ourselves at the center of the universe. This is where we naturally want to live. And this natural disposition fits in exactly with the environment that surrounds us in the twentieth century.
This was the very crux of the Fall. When Satan said to Eve, “You shall not surely die . . . but you shall be like God,” she wanted to be like God (Genesis 3:4-5). She did not want to say no to the fruit that was good to the eyes, even though God had told her to say no and had warned her of the consequences—and all the rest flowed from this. She put herself at the center of the universe; she wanted to be like God.
As I begin the Christian life I must face the fact with honesty. I must realize that there is, even for the Christian, an echoing equal wavelength within him with that which is all about him, where things and success are concerned. Consequently, it is false not to feel as if I were smashing against a strong wall when I consider this negative; it means I am fooling myself, I am not being honest. If I stand in the normal perspective of fallen man—and especially the normal perspective of the twentieth century—it is very hard indeed. But if I shift my perspective, the whole thing changes, and that is what I want to try in this second chapter—to begin to shift our perspective.
With this in mind, consider Luke 9:20-23, 27-31, 35:
He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God. And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing; saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. . . . But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God. And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering. And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias: who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem. . . . And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.
“And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny [or renounce] himself” (verse 23). That is the same thing we read in Corinthians—not seeking our own “things” even if we have rights to them.
“Who appeared in glory, and spake of his decease”—and this word “spake” in the Greek has a sense of continuing to speak; it is not just one short speaking. It is a continuing to speak of Christ’s coming death that is involved here.
Luke 9:35 puts us in a different perspective: “This is my Son: listen to him!” We have here at the Mount of Transfiguration a preview of Christ in his glory. We have here a preview of that portion of the kingdom of God in which we stand after we have accepted Christ as our Savior. But we are swept on beyond this to the Resurrection, not only Christ’s resurrection, but our future resurrection; we are swept on to the reign of Christ, and to eternity.
This is a different perspective. It is a perspective that is completely the antithesis of the world’s perspective, which normally surrounds us. When we begin to look at these words in this setting, this totally other perspective—the perspective of the kingdom of God rather than the perspective of the fallen world and our own fallen nature—it is different. Pressure is put upon us by a world that does not want to say no to self—not just for a minor reason, but out of principle, because they are determined to be the center of the universe. When we step out of that very black perspective and into the perspective of the kingdom of God, then these negatives that are laid upon us take on an entirely different aspect.
You notice that they kept speaking of Christ’s coming death. It was the topic of conversation. We are not told how long they talked, but it was not the speaking of a single phrase, it was a conversation that continued; they spoke, kept speaking, of his coming death. Remember that when John the Baptist introduced Jesus Christ, he said, “Behold the Lamb of God” (John 1:29). As he introduced Jesus Christ, he directed consideration to Christ’s death. Here on the Mount of Transfiguration, in this environment of the kingdom of God, the conversation was involved with an extended talk about Christ’s coming death.
Here then is the wonder of wonders, the wonder of the ages. Here is true perspective, in which the conversation is centered on one topic: The person who is God was to die. This one is the one who is referred to in verse 35: “This is my beloved Son: hear him.” Moses and Elijah kept speaking of “his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem” (verse 31). Here God, as a true man after the Incarnation, comes as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. It is not a false line in our poetry when we say: “Christ, the mighty Maker, died.”
Now let us think of this situation, in considering the question of true perspective. Let us notice that this is the very center of the Christian message. Its center is not Christ’s life, nor his miracles, but his death. The whole liberal theology today, seeing the problem of man as metaphysical, would put the solution in the concept of an incarnation. Not that they believe in a true incarnation, but they accept the concept of incarnation. But this is not the scriptural place of answer. The Nativity is the necessary thing to open the way for the answer, but the answer itself is the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. In Genesis 3:15, where the first promise of the coming of the Messiah was given, we are told that the Messiah, when he comes, shall be bruised. He shall crush Satan, but he shall be bruised in the process. In Genesis 3:21, how is man to be clothed now that he has sinned? With skins, requiring the shedding of blood. In Genesis 22 we read about the great event which shows Abraham’s comprehension concerning the Messiah who was to come. His son must be placed upon the altar, as a sacrifice—and then a ram is supplied, thus giving a double picture of substitution. In Exodus 12, in the Passover (looking forward to the coming of Jesus), the Passover lamb died. In Isaiah 53, this great prophecy made seven hundred years before Jesus came, what is the center of the matter? It is words like these: “wounded,” “bruised,” “a lamb to the slaughter,” “cut off out of the land of the living,” “poured out his soul unto death.” These words roll down through the centuries in prophecy, and we come to John the Baptist, who speaks these words: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (1:29). His death is the subject of thousands of years of prophecy. The center of the Christian message is the redemptive death of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ himself places the same center when, in John 3, speaking to Nicodemus, he says, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up” (v. 14). If this is compared with John 12:32-33, it will be seen that it refers specifically to Christ’s coming death.
For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forebearance of God; to declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. (Romans 3:23-26)
Who needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s: for this he did once, when he offered up himself. (Hebrews 7:27)
Turn where you will, it is the same. In the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, we have the exclamation point to this in chapter 5, verse 9, where it speaks of the book of redemption: “And they sung a new song, saying, Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.”
If you turn to the theology of the early church (and never make the mistake of thinking that the early church did not have a theology), the substitutionary death of Christ is equally the center.
What is central in the Christian message of good news, the Evangel to the world? It centers in only one thing—the redemptive death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
From the time of the Fall, and the first promise within twenty-four hours after the Fall took place, until the very end, this is the message.
So we are not to be surprised that Elijah and Moses, meeting with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, had this as their key topic of conversation. “And, behold, there talked with him two men, which were Moses and Elias: who appeared in glory, and spake [and continued to speak] of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9:30-31). Of course they talked about it, because they had a stake in this. It was important for them not merely as a theological proposition, but the salvation of Moses and Elijah rested upon this single point—the coming death of Jesus on Calvary’s cross. The disciples who were there that day had a stake in this, too, because if Jesus had not died upon the cross, they too would have had no salvation. And let us say to each one who reads this: We have a stake in this, for there is no salvation possible to us unless Jesus died on Calvary’s cross.
Now the death of the Lord Jesus is absolutely unique. It is substitutionary. There is no death like Jesus’ death. There is no parallel death to Jesus’ death—this must stand as absolute in our thinking. His substitutionary death on the cross, in space and time in history, had infinite value because of who he is as God. Thus nothing need be added to the substitutionary value of his death, nor can anything be added. He died once for all. Having said that as forcefully as we can state it, we add that, nevertheless, in Luke 9:22-24, we find Christ puts forth a chronological order. In verse 22: “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day.” The order is in three steps: rejected, slain, raised. This speaks of his coming unique and substitutionary death, yet this order—rejected, slain, raised—is immediately related by Jesus Christ himself, in verses 23 and 24, to us, the Christians. “And he said unto them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself [renounce himself], and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” Here Jesus takes this order that was so necessary for our redemption in the unique substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ and applies it to the Christian’s life. The order—rejected, slain, raised—is also the order of the Christian life of true spirituality; there is no other.
If we forget the absolute uniqueness of Christ’s death, we are in heresy. As soon as we set aside or minimize, as soon as we cut down in any way, as the liberals of all kinds do in their theology, on the uniqueness and substitutionary character of Christ’s death, our teaching is no longer Christian. On the other hand, let us remember the other side of this matter. If we forget the relationship of this order to us as Christians, then we have a sterile orthodoxy, and we have no true Christian life. Christian life will wither and die; spirituality in any true biblical sense will come to an end.
Jesus is talking here about our death by choice in the present life. He applies it to a specific situation to make it most concrete. In verse 26: “For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.” The Bible is not speaking of some romantic feeling, some idealization, some abstraction. Jesus carries this concept of facing the rejection, being slain, down into a very practical situation: facing an alien world. It is the saying no to self when our natural selves would desire acceptance by the alien world—a world in revolt against its Creator and our Lord. As we look in the New Testament as a whole, we find that this command of Christ is not limited to one situation, it is that which is to be the whole mentality and outlook of the Christian’s life. What is being presented to us here is the question of the Christian’s mentality in all of life, and the order stands: rejected, slain, raised. As Christ’s rejection and death are the first steps in the order of redemption, so our rejection and death to things and self are the first steps in the order of true and growing spirituality. As there could be no next step in the order of Christ’s redemption until the step of death was taken, so in the Christian there can be no further step until these first two steps are faced—not in theory only, but at least in some practical practice. Rejected, slain.
How central was Christ’s death for our redemption? See Moses and Elijah standing there on the Mount of Transfiguration with Christ, all talking about this, discussing at length his coming death. They kept speaking about it. Equally it can be said how central and fundamental is our individual and continuing death by choice as Christians.
The death was central to the work of Christ and therefore it provoked conversation; the prophets spoke of it in the Old Testament, and Moses, Elijah, and Christ conversed about it in the New. In the Christian life, it is just as central, and should it not provoke continuing thought, continuing consideration and conversation, and continuing prayer on our part? So I must ask, very gently: How much thought does the necessity of death by choice provoke, how much conversation? How much prayer does this provoke for ourselves and for those we love? Is it not true that our thoughts, our prayers for ourselves and those we love, and our conversations are almost entirely aimed at getting rid of the negative at any cost—rather than praying that the negatives might be faced in the proper attitude? How much prayer do we make for our children and those we love that they may indeed be willing to walk, by the grace of God, through the steps of rejection and being slain? We are infiltrated by the world with its attitudes, rather than the attitudes of the perspective of the kingdom of God. Not that we should live only in the negative, as we shall see as we go on in this series of studies, nevertheless it is important that we have an understanding of the order. We must not think we can rush on to the last step without the reality of being rejected and slain, not just at that point in our lives when we become Christians but as a continuing situation in our lives.
With this new perspective of the kingdom of God, let us look at the negative aspects of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20.
In the first commandment is set forth a call to say a strong negative toward wanting to be in the place of God. This is the key to the whole thing: wanting to be in the center of the universe. We are, by choice, to die to this.
The rest of the commandments show the same thing, as we have them set out in Exodus chapter 20. We are, by choice, to die to the time God has kept for himself, his special day. We are to say a strong negative toward grasping any authority that is not properly our own. We are, by choice, to say no to personally taking human life. We are to reject the concept of taking any sexual things which are not rightfully ours. And we are to say no to marring, by false accusation, reputations that are not ours.
The last commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” shows that these negatives are related not just to outward behavior, but also to inward attitudes. Here is our death, in reality. But when is that death to be died? Certainly not after such a long delay that our physical bodies have lost their desire and zest for things. We are to say no by choice—to die to self—at the point when we are in the midst of a living, moving life that could want the things and find enjoyment in them. This “death” is not to be pushed out or pushed back, nor is it to be related only to the moment of physical death. We can indeed say that we shall be perfect when Jesus comes, when he raises us from the dead, but that is not the point at issue here. Here, in the midst of life, where there is battle and strife, there is to be a strong negative, by choice and by the grace of God. It is not, for example, a matter of waiting until we no longer have strong sexual desires, but rather that in the midst of the moving of life, surrounded by a world that grabs everything in rebellion, first against God and then against fellow men, we are to understand what Jesus means when he talks about denying ourselves and renouncing ourselves with regard to that which is not rightfully ours.
There will be some pain here. Indeed, there are splinters in the Christian’s cross as we are surrounded in this present life by an atmosphere alien to the kingdom of God. But this is the way of the Cross: “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day” (Luke 9:22). We can see how the order of events has meaning for us as Christians after justification: rejected, slain, raised. Here the reference is to rejection specifically by the religious leaders of his day—men who had taken the world’s way instead of God’s. But at heart it is rejection by the world itself, and this rejection must precede any possibility of knowing anything about the risen life.
We see further that this rejection is not a once-for-all thing. Christ called his followers to take up the cross daily. True, we accept Christ as Savior once for all; we are justified and our guilt is gone forever. But after that there is this daily, moment-by-moment aspect. The existentialist is right when he puts his emphasis on the reality of the moment-by-moment situation. He is wrong in many things, but he is right here.
In Luke 14:27 Jesus says a similar thing: “And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.” He is not saying that a man cannot be saved without this, but that you are not Christ’s disciple, in the sense of following him, if this is not your way of life: rejected and slain—daily! And he puts the command not in an abstract but in an intensely practical setting, in verse 26 relating it to his followers’ fathers, mothers, wives, children, brothers, sisters, and their own lives. He sets it among the realities of daily life. This is where we must die.
“For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he hath laid the foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him, saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish” (Luke 14:28-30). This is a unit with what has gone before, a unit tied together by Jesus himself. “Count the cost,” he says. And surely, in our preaching to lost man, we must emphasize the fact that part of being a Christian is the element of bearing one’s cross daily. We are in an alien world built upon man’s rebellion against God, and in this life the Christian himself is not yet totally free from elements of this rebellion within himself.
As I have said, Romans 6 begins with many strong negatives, and though we may want to rush on to the second half of verse 4 (“As Christ was raised up from the dead . . . even so we also should walk in newness of life”), actually we are in peril if we ignore the element of “dying.” “Buried with him by baptism unto death,” “dead to sin,” “baptized into his death”: the way into the freedom of the second part of verse 4 is through these, not around them. The order is absolute: rejected, slain, raised. It is the same in verse 6 of the same chapter. We must walk through the first half (“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him”) before we can get on to the second half (“That the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.”) I think I perceive that most Christians even read the first half of these verses faster, in order to get to the second, “happy” part of the verses, but this is a mistake. We love to skip along, but one does not get on the other side of a door without going through it, and we do not get to the joyous second part of these verses without passing through the first part.
This is, first of all, true absolutely and once for all at justification, but then it is true moment by moment in practice in the Christian life. Let us not be confused here. The moment we accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior, we were justified and our guilt was gone once for all. That is absolute. But if we want to know anything of reality in the Christian life, anything of true spirituality, we must “take up our cross daily.” The principle of saying no to self lies at the heart of my attitude toward the world as it maintains its alien stand in rebellion against the Creator. If I use my intellectual capacities to make myself respectable to the world, as it is in revolution against the one who created it, then I have failed. It is equally true if I use my ignorance for the same purpose. I am to face the cross of Christ in every part of life and with my whole man. The cross of Christ is to be a reality to me not only once for all at my conversion, but all through my life as a Christian. True spirituality does not stop at the negative, but without the negative—in comprehension and practice—we are not ready to go on.