The Cross we preach
to others should first crucify us.
To proclaim the
Cross is relatively easy, but to be a crucified person preaching the Cross is
not so easy.
A person who desires
to preach the Cross should adopt the way of the Cross.
So often what we
preach is indeed the Cross; but our attitudes, our words, and our feelings do
not seem to bear witness to what we preach. This is because much of the
preaching of the Cross is not done in the Spirit of the Cross. Only a crucified
person preaches the message of the Cross in the spirit of the Cross.
How can we give to
other people what we ourselves do not have? Unless the Cross becomes our life,
we cannot impart that life to others. The Lord Jesus was lifted up on the cross
for the sake of giving spiritual life to men. If we desire to cause people to
have spiritual life, we too, must be lifted up on the cross so that the Holy
Spirit may flow out of us as well. It is only as the Cross is allowed to burn
into our own hearts through the fire of sufferings and adversities that we will
be able to see it reproduced in the hearts of other people. Whatever work is
done by depending on our natural life is in vain, but work performed in the
power of supernatural life bears much fruit. Death is the indispensable process
of fruit-bearing. In fact, death is the only way to bear fruit
(John 12:24-25 ERV)
24 Truly, truly, I
tell you, unless a grain of wheat drops into the soil and dies,
it remains a single
grain, but if it dies, [then] it will produce many grains.
25 The person who
loves his [earthly] life will [eventually] lose it [forever],
but the person who
hates his life in this world will retain never ending life.
