Scripture: "The blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish unto God, shall cleanse your conscience to serve the living God."—HEB. ix. 14.
The connection between the cross and the Spirit is inconceivably close and full of meaning. The Spirit brought Christ to the cross and enabled Him to die there. The cross was to Christ and to the Spirit the culminating point of their desire on earth. The cross gave Christ the right to pray down the Holy Spirit on earth, because He had there made reconciliation for sin. The cross gave Christ the right and the power to grant us the power of the Spirit, because on it He freed us from the power of sin.
To put it briefly: Christ could not have attained to the heavenly life, or have poured out the Holy Spirit, if He had not first died to sin, to the world, and to His own life. He died to sin that He might live to God. And that is the way the Holy Spirit brings the cross into our hearts. It is only as those who have been crucified with Christ that we can receive the full power of the Spirit. It is because we do not realize how necessary it is to die to all earthly things, that the Spirit cannot gain full possession of us.
How is it so few Christians understand or experience that the fellowship of the Spirit is a fellowship of the cross? Simply because they do not feel the need of praying for the Spirit of wisdom to give them a deep, spiritual insight into the oneness of the Spirit and the Cross. They try to use their human understanding, but there is too little waiting upon God to teach them divine truths through the Spirit.
My brother, begin today to ask God to grant you a sight of how the Spirit will take you to the cross of Christ, in fellowship with Him, to die to the world and to sin, so that all things may become new, and you will actually live and walk and work and pray in the Spirit, to the glory of God.
