Until we are nailed to the cross, let's not boast about being filled with the Spirit, or carry on about the "victorious Christian life" and "spiritual growth."What does all this crucifixion talk mean? Not that the self is dead, but rather that we are dead to self. It is not enough to survey the cross, to be near the cross, to kneel at the cross, or even to bear the cross. According to Scriptures we need to be nailed to the cross. Don't be fooled. Spiritual growth as human achievement is not the gospel. Crucifixion is the gospel. When we join Christ at Calvary it means we are all through being off-again, on-again Christians, picking up the cross one day, dropping it the next. Our nominal Christianity has a nail driven through it. Crucifixion becomes for us neither a great victory nor a crushing defeat. It simply means we are no longer playing church, selecting whom we like or dislike, using evangelical terminology to smokescreen our blatant self-interest.
Excerpts from the book, "The Inner Life of the Believer" by Sherwood Eliot Wirt.
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