English version of Tape C 116, "Source de Vie", BP 25, F-30920 Codognan, France.

This message is the second of a set of 5 (C 115 to 119)

The Twofold Message of the Cross

The Holy Spirit wishes to speak to our understanding and to our hearts. When our understanding is filled with light from the Holy Spirit, we can understand God’s Word. Then the Holy Spirit makes the Word sink into our hearts, so that we actually become one with the Word ; but we need to understand it. That is why the Holy Spirit says : "I will guide you into all truth". He will give us light concerning all things, if our hearts are open. He will speak to our understanding, and allow us to apprehend the deepest mysteries of God in such a way that they will sink into our hearts ; he will plant the truth in our innermost beings and enable us to walk in the truth.

I am going back to the message of the Cross to insist on certain truths, so that through the Holy Spirit they will sink into the depths of our hearts and generate faith. Only through faith can we walk as Jesus wants us to walk.

Now here is the foundation, the very bedrock of the Gospel : the Cross is central to the whole of God’s Word. There is a twofold message in the Cross : "Jesus died for us, and we died in Him." We shall be reading from Romans, chapters 5, 6, 7, and 8, which clearly set forth this twofold message.

The first message is that the sacrifice offered up by Jesus on the Cross fully atones for our sins. The blood of Jesus has the power to blot out all sin. Jesus Christ the Righteous One poured out all of His precious blood when He took upon Himself the chastisement we deserved.

The second message is no less momentous : the Cross does not only provide forgiveness for our sins ; it also puts to death our old sinful nature. There would be little profit for us if we had to keep coming back to seek forgiveness, if we kept falling over and over again into the same old sins.

However, some Christians spend their lives doing just that. Indeed, it is precious to know that we can always come to God to be forgiven for our sins if we confess them and apply the blood of Jesus to them. But the Lord wishes us to go further, and to understand that the Cross is the means of slaying our former nature which keeps urging us to sin. Both aspects of the message of the Cross are equally indispensable. They are irrevocably linked, and we need to understand those things spiritually.

We often stop at the first message : "Through His blood, Jesus has blotted out our sins on the Cross. Come to Him, confess your sins and be forgiven !" But the Cross also provides the slaying of our former nature. In and with Christ, we died when He died, and were resurrected when He was resurrected ; which means that all of our former nature, with its flaws, its hang-ups, and its difficulties was swallowed up by Jesus’ death and destroyed by it. Through the resurrection of Jesus, we are granted a new nature, planted in us through His Spirit. Our flesh is like a shell that needs to be completely shattered, so that the sweet smell of this new nature can be released.

Our flesh was crucified on the Cross with Jesus ; but unless our understanding — and our hearts — have truly taken in the work of the Holy Spirit, we can still be walking in defeat. Unless we understand that our flesh was actually put to death in Christ, and accept the reality of this through faith, we cannot walk in victory over sin. If we have only grasped the first part of the message of the Cross, that is to say the forgiveness of sins, without realising that our former nature has been put to death, we cannot fully benefit from the message of the Cross and we will be constantly walking in defeat, in the flesh, without the revelation that our flesh is dead and that we can walk in the newness of the life that God has granted us. However, as soon as the Holy Spirit grants us that revelation through faith, we become fully aware of our position in Christ. Through faith, we enter a new world, created for us by God, a world in which nothing remains of the former world we have just stepped out of.

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