On the Happy Thought of Self Crucifixion

The whole idea of crucifying oneself gives me the heebie-jeebies. Crucifixion is a horrible enough picture to contemplate as it is but to consider doing it to oneself is, well, unthinkable. Besides, the fact is I am almost incapable of administering the smallest needle wound to myself. How could I even begin such a gruesome task? I’m just too squeamish. But all that aside, I don’t think self-crucifixion is a human possibility. I mean I can imagine a person nailing his feet to the wood. I can sort of imagine him leaning out and spiking his left hand. But then what? His right hand would be flailing around with no way to finish the job. It’s a physical impossibility.

Besides, if we’re not careful we can find ourselves wandering off the gospel rails. There’s something self-serving and almost narcissistic about the whole idea. We have to kill ourselves so that we can start to mold ourselves into a likeness of Christ? Sounds like the gospel plus something to me. It’s ironic that in an effort to kill off our own old nature we can find ourselves caught up more in self-salvation than when we started.

But this is where the finished work of Christ comes into play. If Jesus is the “author and finisher” of our faith how does the work of God in Christ on our behalf fit into this whole question of the crucifixion of the old man?

Scripture declares (especially Paul declares) that “of God” or by His doing we are “in Christ Jesus.” And, apparently we are to believe that the experience of Christ counts as our experience. If Christ was crucified, so were we. If Christ rose from the dead, we did too. 1 Corinthians 15:22 “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” If Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father and sits there now, then that’s where you’ll find us as well. Done.

John remembers Jesus simply saying that because we believe in Him we have already passed from death to life. Done.

This is a great mystery. Do any of us know what death is? I mean, really? Have any of us begun to appreciate what death can do? Do any of us understand anything about what it means that God, the creator of life, voluntarily entered death? God died? He became human and let us kill Him? And He co-opts death for His own purposes and now death is the only way to get to God, instead of being the only thing that could separate us from Him?

And then God declares His intentions: “If it happens to me, it happens to you. My death is your death. My resurrection is your resurrection. My new life is your new life. All of the old things, as far as I am concerned, have passed away, behold all things have become new.” Somehow we are already dead in Christ and risen in Christ and separated from our sinful nature in Christ so that this old nature cannot reign over us in this life even if we fail and cave in to its desires upon occasion.

We don’t need to kill off our own old natures. We need to believe that, thanks to the work of God in Jesus, we’re already dead! Hooray! Ain’t it grand? I’m dead and I’m starting to feel better already.

I love the way the King James puts it in Romans 6:11, “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive unto God through Christ Jesus our Lord.” Reckon. We are to reckon (figure, assume, count it as true, impute to ourselves, consider ourselves to be) already dead. And as everybody knows “Dead men don’t lie.”

I mean “reckon” has this great cowboy grade B movie ring to it.
Slim: Gee Tex, I heerd we wuz dead already in Jeezus.
Tex (Spitting first): Yup. I reckon.

And so if we reckon ourselves dead to sin in Christ, we can avoid the snare of trying to take that work away from God and falling into the do-it-yourself pit. Consider Jesus instead who is the author and finisher of our faith, and save yourself the embarrassment of walking around having applied a wide variety of tourniquets to our personality, and having hacked off a limb or two, and only making a botched job of it. We could end up half-dead. We might struggle all semester only to receive a grade of “incomplete.” We might find out we are just another “do-it-to-yourself-er.”

Or as Max the Miracle Worker once explained, “It’s a good thing your friend here is only mostly dead.” Only in this case it would not be a good thing.

Happy Thaksgiving

-The Crank