We are very familiar with the description of Christian life as “being crucified with Christ”. St. Paul constantly uses this expression, and often he means by it something very obvious – a successful struggle to kill off some wrong within us. I am an alcoholic - I cure myself. I am a drug addict – I learn to control it. I have a bad temper – and so on. We often call this “nailing our bad temper to the Cross”. But this meaning of being crucified with Christ is all right as far as it goes, but it does not go very far. I admit that it is quite a good thing to have our bodies, minds and habits under control – but is merely to attack the symptom rather than the cause. It is from the heart, said Christ, that evil thing come. We may be able to control ourselves so that we do not kill our brother, but if we are angry with him and we cannot stop ourselves feeling angry by an act of will – then this very anger shows that all is not well with us. We may be able to control ourselves enough not to commit adultery – but if we are continuously seething with desire, that is unhealthy, and all is by no means well within us.

 

Because he was a realist, Christ had the wit to know that the symptoms are the least important part of sickness. For sickness can be there without necessarily producing any symptoms When we set out to kill what we think is wrong with us and nail it to the cross, it is the symptom only that we catch and crucify, not the disease or the cause itself. I cannot make myself into another kind of person by an act of will, and if being crucified with Christ means only the exercising of willpower, then from the practical point of view it does not mean very much. But on the Cross Christ did not kill anything – he died and to die is not to kill. To die is to surrender.

 

I believe every true artist has a fear when he sets out to create or perform a great work he too must surrender to powers over which he is not in complete control, powers which, on the contrary, must in some way take control of him. It is this sort of surrender which is the profound meaning of our being crucified with Christ. It means no longer trying to play the tyrant over ourselves, but taking the risk of opening the front door of our personality to something which is far larger than any of us. This something larger is, of course, God. But here we have to be very careful to understand correctly. We quite rightly think of God as being separate from ourselves, somebody else who we could meet as we could meet a king.

 

But this is by no means the whole truth. As our creator, God is not so much somebody else who stands over against us, as the fount of our being, the very source from which we proceed. We are, so to speak, the picture on the television screen while God is the real person in the studio. This is not a perfect analogy but it does emphasise our continuous dependence of our being upon Him. If He were not there the picture would vanish. We exist because we never cease to flow from Him, but this means that our submission to Him is not merely a bare submission to His will, like the obedience of a soldier to an officer.

It is not really a submission at all. It is more a discovery – the discovery of what we ourselves really are. Usually we are scared of what we are, and without meaning to, or knowing that we do, we cover it up and try to keep most of it locked away, thus controlling it makes us feel safe. It is the safety of wearing a straight jacket and such tyranny is always the policy of the fearful. What in fact we are doing is keeping three quarters of ourselves in a deep freezer so that we are only a quarter of the person we could be. As such we are denying not only ourselves, but God.

 

If I stuck some thick paper over three quarters of the television screen I would blot out not only the image of the person on the screen, but also the person in the studio. Seeing less of God’s picture, I see less of Him. God is perfect love, perfect joy, and perfect peace and so on. What we find within ourselves is turbulent chaos. When you were a child did you never turn on the tap and put your finger over the opening of the tap? The water, not allowed to flow evenly into the bath, squirted all over the place in chaotic confusion. The confusion we find inside us – the heart, as Jesus called it, from which bad things proceed, is confused, chaotic, and bad, precisely because we try to dam it up so to force part of us to master and dominate the whole.

 

Let me give you an example: I am, shall we say, a very conceited man. I’m always talking about my superior social class and superior friends, my superior job and boasting about things that I am not really able to do or to accomplish. What in fact am I doing? I am pointing at all things external to myself, things which are not me, and shouting “This is me”. Why do I do this? Because the only me I allow myself to have is so small that I am afraid that, without these external aids, these supportive props, I shall not exist at all.

 

But suppose I begin to surrender to more of what I really am, suppose I begin to look inside myself. True, I shall see that I am conceited. This is not all. I shall also see my conceit is not only unliveable and stupid but unnecessary. As I open up myself to what I am, I shall feel that, after all, there is quite a big part of me without all the external aids I have acquired. So then, in time I shall feel I have to use them. In the end I shall perhaps understand that my being, flowing as it does from God, is of infinite value. Intense dislike, out of control anger, is attempts to give myself value because in myself I feel to be without value. And I feel without value because I refuse to surrender to anything that I really am.

 

This it seems to me is the profound meaning of the phrase “being crucified with Christ”, and obviously it leads here and now to a resurrection with Him. The death of the tyrant within me rises up all the potentialities which, through fear, I attempted to kill off. I become possessed of a new heart and a new mind. And Christ said “Either makes the tree good for its fruit to be good, or else make the tree corrupt to corrupt its fruit”. This example Christ gave using the parable of the fig tree. Anything which is not realising its potential is cursed and will die.

 

The questions remains is how to make our surrender? I suppose you would like me to give you some lessons on the technique of speed surrender! The tyrannical you can surrender to the fount of your being by doing lessons 1, 2, and 3 etc. But there is no technique of surrender. If there were it would not be surrender but manipulation of another form of the old tyranny. Perhaps it would help us if we think again about the artist – he uses technique of course but that is for articulating what is his already as a result of his surrender. An artist can run away from the ability he has and smother it by living for pleasure. On the other hand by hard work comes a sense of confidence when he begins to feel secure enough not to run away from his own potential. How such confidence comes to an artist is a mystery. He cannot make it come, yet if he does not run away it will come of its own accord.

 

When Christians talk of God’s grace in Christ, they mean that God has done something which will create confidence in us if only we will let it. As a result of this confidence we are able to open up to everything that we are. What God did was to give His only Son to die for us on that first Good Friday. If the self-giving love of the Crucified Christ shows us the ultimate meaning of everything – “In Him all things hold together” – then there is nothing to be frightened of, not even ourselves, with all our kinks and all our longings. God wants us just as He made us, and the raw materials which make up our individual personalities are the very stuff which He wants consecrating to his service. This is the faith which enables us to become all that we can possibly be – that is mature people according to the fullness of the stature of Christ 

 

David Bevis.                                 

THE CROSS AND SELF