Dying With Christ

A. B. Simpson was an author, hymn writer, conference speaker, evangelist to the urban masses of New York City, and a missionary statesman.  He founded The Christian and Missionary Alliance and Nyack College.

The following is from his book The Christ Life:

"Now it is not enough for us to appreciate in a sentimental way the sufferings of our Lord, and weep in sympathy over His shame and agony—all this we may do over some pathetic story of human sorrow; all this we may do under the spell of moving eloquence, and yet know nothing of the power of Christ’s blood.

"The death of Christ stands for a great and potential fact, and is of no value to us until faith enters into partnership with Him in that fact, and knows by personal appropriation 'the fellowship of his sufferings.'

"The death of Christ simply means for me that when He died I died, and in God’s view I am now as if I had been executed for my own sin and was now recognized as another person who has risen with Christ and is justified from his former sins because he has been executed for them, 'For he that is dead is freed from sin.'

"Not only so, it is the secret of my sanctification, for on that cross of Calvary, I, the sinful self, was put to death; and when I lay myself over with Him upon that Cross and reckon myself dead, Christ’s risen life passes into me and it is no longer my struggling, my goodness, or my badness, but my Lord who lives in me.

"Therefore while I abide in Him I am counted even as He, and enabled to walk even as He walked.  Beloved, have you entered into the death of Christ and counted it yours, and through it are you now alive unto Him in the 'power of his resurrection'?

"The Life Risen.—It is just as wrong to stop at the Cross as it is to stop before the Cross. It is just as wrong to have merely a dead Christ as to eliminate the death of Christ from our theology.

"Christ’s death is only the background for His resurrection. The life that was laid down was taken up again, and now He stands before us saying, 'I am he that liveth, and was dead.'

"It is not the Cross with the Saviour hanging on it, but it is the Cross on which He hung, but where He hangs no longer, the grave in which He lay, but open now, and the very gateway of life immortal.

"And so this passage is full of suggestions of the risen Lord. 'That which our hands have handled of the Word of Life' brings back to us immediately the memory of the morning when He stood among them and said, 'Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.'

"There is something infinitely touching in language like this from the pen of John, for he had leaned upon the Master’s breast, and doubtless he had proved the reality of his Master’s resurrection, and claimed once more the familiar place and touch of love."