This is a very important topic, God will have a Holy People in these last days.
ENTERING THE NEW COVENANT BY DEATH TO SELF - David Wilkerson
The question then becomes, How can we ever hope to achieve a life of obedience, a life that is not dominated by sin?
You will recall that in forming the New Covenant, God promised on oath to supply all the enabling power and strength we need to fulfill every condition and demand of the New Covenant. So, when God says by oath, "I will do it,” faith in us responds, "Let it be so.”
Just as God made a way for our salvation through the cross of Christ, He makes a way for us to take up our crosses and walk in this new life. The New Covenant is all about our Lord’s commitment to keep His children from falling, and to console, comfort and assure us that the power and dominion of sin can and will be broken by the Holy Spirit who indwells us.
The Holy Spirit will supply all the resources we need. This truth is the sole hope for those believers who have lost heart in their struggle to walk in obedience. Only by having the New Covenant unveiled to us can we learn the secret to having victory over sin.
LESSONS FROM THE DEPTHS
So I offered my life and ministry to the Lord as a kind of spiritual laboratory in which to test and prove the truths He was showing me. Now I can tell you, His unveiling of the New Covenant to me has been the most life-giving, sin-destroying truth I have ever known and experienced.
For years, since the day God promised to reveal to me the truth of the covenant, I had been praying, "Lord, when will You open to me its meaning?”
He answered, You must experience the cross before you can understand it. The doctrine of the New Covenant and your understanding of it will come only after you go through the process of taking up your cross and dying to all that is of self.
I do not believe we can truly understand the New Covenant until we have gone down into the depths of what it means to die with Christ.
I have always known the details of the cross of Christ. Ever since I was a young minister, I preached the cross in vivid pictures. I spoke with sincerity about the sadness of Jesus when He heard of Peter’s denial, the crown of thorns
pressed into His skull, the mockers, the taunting cries of the mobs, the nails piercing His hands, the sword in His side. I preached passionately, taking the people from the Garden kiss of Judas to the final cry, "It is finished!”
But all of that detail””including the pathos of the Calvary scene””is not the deepest meaning of the cross. Most of us know about the physical episode of Calvary””but few have experienced and understood the real spiritual meaning of the crucifixion of Christ, let alone our personal cross and what
it means to die with Him
Jesus had crowds following Him everywhere He went. On one occasion, He stopped suddenly, turned to the masses and said, "You can’t be My disciples unless you take up your cross and follow Me” (see Luke 14:27).
Many believers have heard this phrase all their lives: Take up your cross and follow Me. We read Jesus’ words, "He who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:38). "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow
Me” (Matthew 16:24). Then Paul declared, "But God forbid that I should boast (glory, KJV) except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14).
Here is the issue: I cannot be Christ’s disciple unless I take up my cross. I cannot obey Him unless it is by the way of the cross. I am not worthy to be His child except by embracing the cross. I am called to glory in the cross.
Obviously, it is the key to understanding the New Covenant. But how can I take up the cross, embrace it and yield to it, if I do not know what it means?
TAKING UP THE CROSS
How many definitions of the cross have you heard in your lifetime? I freely admit that for many years I never had the cross shown to me in a way that satisfied my deepest longings about it. I could not preach its fullness
because I had not experienced it. And theologically it remained a mystery to me.
In desperation I challenged the Lord, "Father, You know I’m anxious and willing to take up my cross and follow You. But where is it? And what is it? You say it is my cross. And Paul said I must be crucified, I must die. But, Lord, how can You call me to embrace a cross I don’t understand? And if I don’t understand it, how will I ever come into the knowledge of the New Covenant?”
Answer honestly: Do you understand the meaning of the cross, your cross, your dying, in a personal way? Can you explain to me what taking up your cross means to you, and what happened as a result of your doing it? Here is the most prevalent explanation I have heard: The cross is some
burden””some disturbing element, some kind of painful yoke””such as a chronic illness or a thorn in the flesh. But that definition does not come close. The cross Jesus is talking about is much deeper and darker than all of that. I have heard people say, "Her cross is her wicked, cursing husband.” Or, "He hasn’t had a day free of pain in twenty years. That’s his cross.” No ””the cross is much more than all of these things.
I am not going to tell you what I know doctrinally about the cross, but I will share with you what I have experienced of the cross. (I am still working on the theology of it all; that will come.) What I am about to share may not make sense to many, but perhaps those who struggle for freedom in their
own strength will understand it. Here is my experience of the cross.
DOWN INTO NOTHINGNESS
Down to nothingness””where you know nobody on this earth can help you. No counselor, no loved one, no friend, no minister. It is a place where you know that unless the Lord comes to change you””to open your eyes and show you the way””it cannot be done. It is a place where you know beyond any shadow of a doubt you can do nothing on your own. It is where you once and for all face the truth that all your struggling and striving in the flesh have gotten you nowhere, and now everything depends on Him. If there is going to be revelation, He has to give it. If there is going to be deliverance from besetting sins, the Holy Spirit has to do it. If things in my life need fixing, He has to fix them. If I am to be a blessing and joy to Him,
He has to make it happen. If I am to walk in the Spirit, He has to show me how. If the Holy Spirit is to empower me to defeat lust or passion, it must happen by imputed faith alone. I am now out of the picture. Out of nothingness must come His supernatural strength. My promises are worthless because I cannot keep any of them. My striving is in vain because I have nothing to work with.
Down to nothingness””where I no longer have a will of my own. On my own I am helpless, "will-less.” I have given up my will because it has failed to accomplish any spirituality in me at all. At this place, I found myself on solid ground to remind Jesus that He Himself could do nothing on His own.
Then Jesus answered and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. . . . I can of Myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is righteous, because I do not seek My own will but the
will of the Father who sent Me.” John 5:19”“20, 30
It was there in my nothingness that I told Jesus, "You were God in flesh, yet You needed the Father’s direction. You could do nothing on Your own. How could You expect any more of me? If You needed help and direction with every step, how much more do I need You to guide me in everything?
How much more helpless am I without the same love and guidance from the Father? Jesus, You said Your Father loved You, and, therefore, He showed You ‘all things that He Himself does.’”
If I am in Christ, and His Father is my Father, then I am also loved. And He must show me all that He wants to do through me, for Him.
Then said Jesus to them, "When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself; but as My Father taught Me, I speak these things. And He who sent Me is with Me. The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please
Him.” John 8:28”“29
Nothingness””a place where you feel abandoned. You love Him, you
desire Him, you know that He is, but you feel that for some unknown
reason He is silent. His revelation is not coming to you. He is not answering your heart’s cry for a clearer vision of what you are going through. In such an hour, Jesus cried to the Father, "‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which is translated, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’” (Mark 15:34). I made the same cry: "Father, all I want is to
do Your will and please You. Why must I bear this sense that I’m on my own? Why do You not respond in my desperate time? Why is my soul so cast down with feelings of rejection and confusion?”
BREAKING THROUGH THE CLOUDS
When Jesus said to His followers, "Take up your cross and follow Me,” He meant, "You will go down the same path to death.” A cross experience is when you think God has turned a deaf ear to your cry for righteousness and holiness. For a season your prayers go unanswered, and your heart rises up
and begins to reason: "All I wanted was to be like Jesus””to walk in victory, to be a joy to Him, to enjoy sweet communion. But this? Why is there no clear way, no reassurance? Why is this darkness in my soul””this
feeling of speaking into God’s ear, yet He appears not to hear? Why does it have to be so complicated?”
It is at this point in His crucifixion that Jesus broke through the devil’s cloud and cried aloud in faith. "When Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, ‘Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ Having said this, He
breathed His last” (Luke 23:46).
Here is where the cross is most powerfully experienced. It happens when in my nothingness, I surrender my will””I quit struggling and striving. I now become wholly dependent on Him. The matter is now out of my hands completely; God has to take over. His Spirit must take me into death and
raise me up as a new man. I give up the ghost, the independent life of flesh.
Death to all ambition. Death to boasting and trying to impress others. Death to doing anything on my own. Death to my plans, desires, will. Death to all my striving to please Him. And, most of all, death to my past flesh-faith.
How many times have I struggled to muster up faith and tried to pump it up with promises? I repeated over and over, "Lord, I believe, I do believe, I really believe. I really, truly, honestly believe.” But it did not work. (You
can always tell a request that is of the flesh, because it comes with a deadline. We give God what we consider long enough to act””but when He does not perform on schedule, our so-called faith turns into ugly unbelief.)
Death””it is the only way out of the Old Covenant and into the New. "Flesh-faith” has to die. No more striving to believe. If I am to have faith”” true faith, the faith of Christ””He has to give it to me. We have been given a
measure of faith””yet if it is true that I can do nothing of myself, then this includes having His faith. That is why Scripture calls it "the faith of Christ.”
Paul wrote:
I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died. And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me. Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good. Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through.
Are you sin-sick? Are you truly yearning to live a holy life, free from the habituating lusts of the flesh? Then get ready to die. Get ready to embrace the cross. The Old Covenant will bring you to your wits’ end””to nothingness. When you have given up all hope of overcoming sin by your
own human power and will, then you are ready to enter the glorious realm of freedom through the New Covenant.