! 1! Title: The Crucifixion of Self Text: Romans 6:6-11; Galatians 2:17-21 I talked to a minister in our conference, who had worked for a time in the office of E. Stanley Jones. One day after E. Stanley Jones counseled a person, my friend approached him and said, "I have finally seen the secret of your effective ministry." Stanley asked him what it was, and he said, "You tell everyone to surrender themselves." Jones did not argue the point. He only had one message, which he shared in many different ways. We as Christians should all carry the same message. Just as the fingers of the hand are rooted to the palm, so our sins, failures and emotional problems are rooted in ourselves. The answer to the self-problem ultimately provides the solution to other complications. There is cloudiness and confusion here, because the answer to the problem is a paradox. Certain texts from the scriptures seem contradictory in themselves. In Romans 12 we read, "I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice." Technically, there is no such thing as a "living sacrifice." In the biblical sense, for something to be presented, it must be slain. It's life and blood are offered up in death, yet God asks us to be living sacrifices. In Colossians 3:3 we hear the same type of paradox,
! 2! "For you are died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Dead and alive at the same time? Is this confusing? Yes it is! Is it theological double talk? In Galatians 2:20 Paul says, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live, in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." This is one of the greatest verses on surrender in the new testament. It, at the same time, is one of the most "self-filled" verses that one can find. There are eight first personal pronouns used in this one verse. Five times "I" and three times "me." Does this mean that self-surrender is an impossible ideal? Are we caught on the horns of an impossible dilemma? Is the very declaration that we are crucified with Christ sure proof of the fact that we are not? Is there no answer to the tyranny of the self? In the words of Romans 7:24 (Phillips), which speaks of an agonizing situation, Paul cries, "Who on earth can set me free from the clutches of my own sinful nature?" And the next sentence gives the answer, "I thank God that there is a way out through Jesus Christ." It will help us if we take Galatians 2:20 and look at what is obviously some different characteristics of the self. There are three different kinds of egos (Self) that Paul calls to our
! 3! attention. First, my self has been crucified. This is one ego. Second, nevertheless I live. This is a second "I." Third, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. If you take them in the order of this text, First of all we have a self which needs to be and can be, and has ultimately been crucified with Christ. Secondly, we have a self which is eternal and indestructible, which is not meant to be put to death, because it is still living after the crucifixion. Third, there is a "Christfilled self," or a "Christ-centered ego." This is the ultimate way out of the paradox. Let us begin with the second ego. This is our eternal, imperishable and indestructible self. This can also be called our "selfhood." This affirmation of Paul, which says, "nevertheless I live," is very important to the life of the christian, especially if we understand the thrust of eastern religions, in comparison with christianity. In the eastern religions, "sin" is understood to be the delusion of belief that "I" am a separate being. Salvation for them requires a surrendering of this "illusion," while realizing that my soul is one with, and the same as the world's soul (Who is God). They surrender to God, but it is a surrender of absorption into this world s spirit (god). In other words, my selfhood disappears as a drop of water when it falls into a flowing river. After a christian
! 4! crucifixion, there is still a selfhood. We have not been absorbed or wiped out. Let us fix in our minds forever on the fact that we have a self, and that it is imperishable and indestructible. God cannot and will not destroy it, anymore than He would violate our freedom. God can allow us to determine our own eternal destinies, but He cannot, and will not destroy this eternal self. I believe that this selfhood starts at conception. Here we possess a capacity to develop into a person, but we are a basic self at this point. This selfhood is not neutral. It is very specific and personal. It is us! It is what makes us different and unique. It is formed by an inheritance which is physical, mental and spiritual. It is molded by our families and environment. We learn much from our responses to heredity and environment. If we want to make a triangle of this eternal self, one side would be heredity, another environment and the third side would be responsibility, or our choices of how we respond to these different paradigms. Though it is limited, there is still enough play there, to be held responsible to God for what we do in our creation of self. This self of ours, unlike all of the other creatures God has made, has the power to transcend itself. I am now speaking to you, and you are listening to me, but I am not only speaking to you, for I am
! 5! also conscious of the fact that I am speaking to you, and you are not only listening to me, but you are conscious of the fact that you are listening to me (Or at least I hope you are). As a human being, I not only say or do something, but I am also aware of what is taking place. We can transcend ourselves. Self-transcendence is a great power that we possess. Many of us are confused when it comes to this whole area of self-crucifixion. One young man told his pastor (In figurative language) that he thought he crucified himself at the altar of a church one night. He thought he beat the funeral procession home, yet when he came through the front door, his old self was sitting there on the couch smiling at him. Therefore, he was still conscious of himself. There were some farmers who took a wagon down the road. On the way, the axle broke and the wheel came rolling off. They realized that it was impossible to repair. They decided that one farmer would stay by the wagon while another would hitch hike a ride into town, to bring back someone who could fix the axle. Nothing came along for awhile, until a hearse drove by. The hearse had been out in the country working with a funeral procession and was making its way back into town. The hearse stopped and saw their trouble. The funeral directors told him that they had a full load. One farmer
! 6! said he was desperate, and so they let him ride in the back with the casket. He got in the back and fell asleep on the way. When they got into town, the traffic light changed red, and the hearse came to a screeching halt. The jolt woke up the farmer. The hearse pulled out into the intersection, and the pedestrians had to walk up close to the vehicle. About the time they looked in, the farmer sat up. One of the pedestrians was confused, as he tapped on the driver s window. He rolled his window down, as the bystander said, "Sir, your corpse is sitting up." This is the way some of us get confused about dealing with the crucifixion of self. There is no kind of "real" spiritual experience which obliterates the consciousness of self. If we are unconscious, we are sick people, in a comatose state. Our transcendent state is our glory. It makes us different. I can be subject and object at the same time. This is our selfhood, and God does not want to destroy this. Now, let us look at No. 1. The self of which Paul said, "I'm crucified with Christ." Paul says that this selfhood is not neutral, but it is a fallen self in which something has gone wrong. It is an infected self, which is twisted, distorted and perverted. In this self, there is a tendency toward self-will. Here, Paul is not talking about consciousness, but self-centeredness and
! 7! selfishness. Morton Kelsey used to speak of this when he said, Unconsciousness truly defines evil. There is a malignant egocentricity that measures everything in terms of itself. It's selfcentered desire to glorify itself, and to make myself the center of the world. God's problem is how to redeem that, and to save the true imperishable self, without destroying it. It is like a power steering mechanism on a car that is broken. Somehow, it has the tendency to pull in one direction, and to put us in the ditch. God seeks to fix this mechanism, while not wanting to destroy the ability to steer (Our choice/transcendence). He seeks to wash out the fallen ego without destroying any precious part of our human personality. What is God's cure for this fallen ego? This is a problem for all of us, and can only be dealt with through the grace of God. God's grace holds the remedy for the acts of sins as well as our inner condition of sin, which created them. Paul called this his "living in me sin." The only prescription, as Paul puts it, is found in the cross of Jesus Christ. First, we must realize that we don't have to crucify this self-centered self, indeed we cannot, anymore than you and I can be fully released from our guilt. We cannot forgive ourselves of our sins. We cannot wipe away our own guilt. When
! 8! Christ died, He died to take away the guilt connected with our sins, and the penalty for our sins. He also died to break the power of sin, and cleanse the inner corruption of our fallen self. Romans 6:6 says, "Don't we know that our old selves were crucified with Christ?" That crucifixion and death is in the aorist tense. It indicates a definite act. In other words, it took care of a crisis in history, and continues to handle present-day crises, through the offering, of a surrendered will to Jesus Christ. First, we must see that this has been done for us in the death of Jesus Christ. When he died, my old self died. I need to realize it, reiterate it, affirm it and sign the treaty, which has already been signed on my behalf. Then in Romans 6:11, which is in the present continuous tense, speaks to us of a daily yielding to God, a moment by moment surrendering of ourselves to Him. Paul speaks of dying daily. The earlier passage spoke of crisis, But this speaks of process. This is what life is all about. Wesley always mixed the instantaneous and the gradual. Galatians 2:20 is a wonderful verse, because it contains both tenses in the one verse. This is in a perfect tense, which denotes a present state of being dependent on a past action. I have been crucified with Christ, or I am crucified with
! 9! Christ. I am presently in the process of being crucified with Christ. Because I have been crucified with Christ, He lives in me. During the civil war, there was a man by the name of George Wyatt. He was a married man who had six children. He was drawn by lot and drafted into the union army. But because he had this large family dependent on him, there was a single man by the name of Richard Pratt who offered to go in the place of George Wyatt. He joined the army under the name and draft number of George Wyatt. A few months later, in a vicious battle, Richard Pratt was killed. About a year or so later, the army was still desperate to get recruits. They tried again to draft George Wyatt into service. George Wyatt protested, and entered a legal plea that he had already died in the service. He asked the authorities to consult the records. When they did, they discovered that technically speaking, he was already dead. They ruled that George Wyatt was exempted from all claims of the law, and any further service in the military. Don't we know that our old selves died with Christ on the Cross? Let us reckon and consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Have we affirmed this in our lives today? The first two parts of Galatians 2:20 are negative. Yet, in the next part, Paul says, "Christ lives in
! 10 me, and the life I live, is being lived out in and through Christ." So the ultimate goal is not some negative, morbid selfcrucifixion from the past, or the daily present. The goal of the past is a freed up self who is a Christ-filled self and a Christcentered self. Paul refers to this in Philippians 1:21, "For to me to live is Christ." He is stating that Christ's life has taken over the living of my life. The Holy Spirit takes over the living of our lives. Sam Shoemaker, in his book, "How You Can Find Happiness," said, "I can remember a time in my life, long after my first decisive spiritual experience, when I was facing a need to take another big step forward. I could almost see myself shrinking out of sight under the withering effect of the honest facing of my sins. Like Alice in Wonderland, when she was shrinking, I wondered whether I wouldn't go out like a light if this process continued. But this was not the real case. When I let go deeply inside, my true self was never more fulfilled. I realized that all the fanfare of resistance and self-will was the protective device of my ego to keep my true self from emerging and becoming victorious. The fear of giving in is a ploy of my fallen ego. But until that false ego dies, the true self cannot live. The death of an ego is the greatest of all human crises." Do we know
! 11 the reality of this kind of life in Christ? If we don't, let us take the risk of surrendering our wills to Him, even as He surrendered His life for us. IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER, AND OF THE SON, AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. AMEN.