ENGRAFTED INTO THE CRUCIFIED CHRIST --
ANDREW MURRAY

"I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ
liveth in me." (Gal 2:20)
"We have been planted together in the likeness of death" (Rom 6:5)
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"I am crucified with Christ" (Andrew Murray writes)  Thus the apostle expresses his assurance of his fellowship with Christ in His sufferings and death, and his full participation in all the power and the blessing of that death.  And so.. really did he mean what he said, and know.. that he was now indeed dead, that he adds: "It is NO LONGER I THAT LIVE, but Christ that liveth in me!"

How blessed must be the experience of such a union with the Lord Jesus! To be able to look upon His Death as mine, just as really as it was His -- upon His perfect obedience to God, His Victory over sin, and complete deliverance from its power, as mine;  and to realize that the power of that death does, by Faith, work daily with a divine energy into mortifying the flesh, and renewing the whole life into the perfect conformity to the Resurrection Life of
Jesus!

Abiding in Jesus, the Crucified One, is the secret of the growth of that new life which is ever begotten of the death of nature.

Let us try to understand this:  The suggestive expression, "PLANTED INTO the likeness of His Death" will teach us WHAT the abiding in the Crucified One means.

When a graft is united with the stock on which it is to grow, we know that it must be kept fixed.. it must ABIDE in the place where the stock has been cut.. been wounded.. to make an opening to receive the graft.  No graft without wounding -- the laying bare and opening up of the inner life of the tree to receive the "stranger branch".  It is only through such wounding that access can be obtained to the fellowship of the sap and the growth and life of the "stronger stem".

Even so with Jesus and the sinner.  Only when we are PLANTED INTO the likeness of His death shall we be in the likeness of His Resurrection... partakers of the Life and the Power there are in Him.

In the death of the Cross, Christ was wounded.. and in His opened wounds, a place prepared where we might be grafted in. And just as one might say to a graft, and does practically say as it is fixed in place, "Abide here in the wound of the stem, that is now to bear you"... so to the believing soul the message comes, "Abide in the wounds of Jesus; there is the Place of Union and life and growth. There you shall see how His Heart was opened to receive you; how His Flesh was rent that the way might be opened for your being made "One with Him".. and having access to all the blessings flowing from His Divine Nature."

You have also noticed how the graft has to be 'torn away' from the tree where it by nature grew.. and to be cut into conformity to the place prepared for it in the wounded stem. Even so, the believer has to be made conformable to Christ's death -- to be crucified and to die with Him.  The wounded stem and the wounded graft are cut to fit into each other.. into each other's likeness.  There is a fellowship between Christ's sufferings and your sufferings. His experiences must become yours. The disposition He manifested in choosing and bearing the Cross, must be yours.

Like Him, you will have to give full assent to the Righteous Judgment and Curse of a Holy God against sin.

Like Him, you have to consent to yield your life, as laden with sin and curse, to death... and through it, to pass to the New Life. 

Like Him, you shall experience that it is only through the self-sacrifice of Gethsemane and Calvary that the path is to be found to the Joy and Fruit-bearing of the Resurrection Life!

The more clear the resemblance between the wounded stem and the wounded graft, the more exactly their wounds fit into each other... the surer and the easier.. and the more complete will be the Union and the Growth.


It is IN JESUS, the Crucified One, I must abide. I must learn to look upon the Cross as not only an atonement to God... but  ALSO A VICTORY OVER THE DEVIL-- not only a deliverance from the guilt, but also from the Power of Sin.  I must gaze upon Him on the Cross as wholly mine... offering Himself to receive me into the closest union and fellowship, and to make me a partaker of the full power of His Death to sin and the New Life of Victory, to which it is but the Gateway! I must yield myself to Him in undivided surrender, with much prayer and strong desire, imploring to be admitted into the ever closer fellowship and conformity to His death, of the Spirit in which He died that death.

Let me try and understand why the Cross is thus the Place of Union.