Our Union With Christ

By L. L. Legters

    What was done by God the Father and accomplished by the Son becomes a reality and a personal experience only as we assent and consciously, believingly look to the Holy Spirit, who lives in us, to make it a vital experience in our lives. The Holy Spirit can do nothing until by faith we lay hold of it. For example, the knowledge that our old man was crucified with Christ, my old self, the "I," my self-will, my ambitious self, my self-pride, in fact all that I received from Adam by my birth, all that I am apart from Christ. When we give assent to this truth – that my old man was crucified with Christ – though we cannot see the reality of it in our lives, the Holy Spirit is able to and does make this an actual experience for us. As we stand on this truth, the Holy Spirit is able to lead us into a personal, practical experience of crucifixion with Christ…Our having been crucified with Christ was to make the body of sin of none effect while we live by faith, but self can instantly become active and dominate in the life of a believer when faith becomes dormant and inactive….

    Will you not now bow before God and thank Him that you were crucified with Christ, begin to thank Him regardless of feeling? It may take a month or a day, I do not know how long, but I do know that when any child of God will believe and begin to express that faith in thanksgiving, day by day thanking Him for the fact which one may not yet have experienced, the Holy Spirit will lead that one into a glorious personal experience. Then from the heart he can say, "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2).