The Crucified Life — E.A. Johnston

This is a New Year's sermon, a message to go into 2015 with a new resolve for Christ and His gospel. I remember being at a pastors conference years ago and Dr. Stephen F. Oldford was up at the podium addressing a room full of preachers and he asked the following question to us.

He said, how many of you here have ever read the book Born Crucified by Ellie Maxwell? And no one raised their hand. He shook his head and turned to his fellow minister on the platform and remarked, can you believe that?

That incident took place about 14 years ago and I would like to ask us a question here today. I will name four books, each written by different men and each on the same subject, which is the crucified life and as I name these books, if you have read them, I want you to read them and raise your hand.

Are you ready? Here we go. How many of you have read Born Crucified by Ellie Maxwell? Bone of His Bone by F .J. Hegel? The Christ Life for the Self Life by F .B. Meyer? And lastly, The Way of the Cross by Gregory Mantle?

Recovering the Doctrine of the Crucified Life

Many of us are not familiar with these men or their books and it's a shame. This generation of ministers and church members know very little about the doctrine of the crucified life. That's why there's so much irreverence in our churches today, both in the pulpit and in the pew.

The Church's Need for Holy Spirit Power

We live in a day, friends, of self-help books, self-soothing sermons and self-empowerment to succeed. I was having lunch at a local restaurant and I overheard the conversation of two staff ministers of one of the biggest churches in town and they were going over their missions budget for the new year and how they were going to spend it.

They had over half a million dollars to spend and they spoke as if they were two businessmen as they were going to operate their business in the coming year. Listen, friends, I remember a time in our churches when they were not run on money and manpower but by prayer and holy ghost power.

The church has little influence upon society today because it's run like a business. We have forgotten what a church really is by our New Testament standards. We pick a CEO to pastor a church and then throw money at him and say, go get them in the name of God and religion.

We have many personalities in the pulpits, many educated men who can move a crowd through emulsion. But let me ask you, where is the power? Where is the power? Where is the holy ghost power in our churches today?

The power to transform lives and impact eternity. Listen, friends, my subject today is the crucified life. My text is found in the book of Galatians in chapter 2 and verse 20. You can turn in your Bibles there now.

My late mentor, Dr. Stephen F. Olford, would always sign his books and letters with that verse, Galatians 2 .20. He taught me about the crucified life and I consider Dr. Olford the last man of his generation who really understood that message and preached it with authority.

Dr. Olford was an expert on the subject of the crucified life or the cross and the life of the believer. He wrote an entire book on that theme entitled Not I but Christ. I was sitting with him in his office one day when he got the news that Crossway Books was letting his title go out of print.

He picked up the phone and let them have it. He said, you asked me to write this book for you and now you're letting it go out of print. But what Dr. Olford didn't understand was that your average Christian was moving away from the standard of New Testament Christianity.

They no longer wanted to read books about the crucified life. They just wanted to read self-help books and church growth books, books that did not have a cross in the center of them. After all, a cross is painful.

Who wants that in today's society? We would all rather have an encouraging word. Our Christian radio gives us an encouraging word. Our churches give us an encouraging word. We encourage one another with encouraging words.

But if this is the case, why is society unraveling all around us? Why has this nation become a hellhole of perversion and indecency? Why are teenagers not coming to church anymore? Is not our message of the encouraging word enough for them?

I believe the teenagers are staying away from church because they are bored to tears when they are there. We have coddled them. We have entertained them. We have spoiled them. We do everything to give them the real truth of the full counsel of God.

That includes a cross as well as a crown. That a crucified Christ must have crucified followers. That if we who preached demonstrated with our lives a supernatural power from above, that maybe our messages might have a little touch of heaven on them.

That if our pulpits were filled with more praying men who hunkered for an anointing from the Holy Spirit and who were so desperate to be God's man, standing in the gap for this sinful generation, that maybe, just maybe, the teenagers might be drawn back to the church.

Not by our personalities, but by the presence of God in the sanctuary. Listen friends, the Holy Spirit falls on individuals who have crucified lives. When I study Christian biography and I see how God used men like D .L. Moody and John Song, I see men who lived crucified lives and who had the power of God upon their preaching in such measure that those who heard them were struck down by the awful solemnity of a holy God.

Where is the power of God in a meeting today? Where is the God consciousness in our churches today? I believe the missing factor is a crucified life. A life dead to this world and all things in it. We are the most pampered generation of Christians here in the West that we know absolutely nothing about living a crucified life and we know so little about it because so few men today are preaching upon its subject.

I dare you to walk into any church within your community and visit a number of them months on end and then come back to me after a year's time and tell me how many sermons you heard on the subject of the cross and the life of a believer.

It's a forgotten doctrine in our churches today and the main reason why we lack power in our churches today, friends. I want to take some time to read us portions from four books I mentioned in my introduction, but let me first read us our text today from Galatians 2 .20.

Galatians 2:20 and Union With Christ

I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me and the life of which I now live in the flesh. I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.

The Apostle Paul knew full well the meaning of a crucified life. It's a theme that runs throughout his epistles. Before I read us our portions from our four books which I mentioned, I want to make a statement, friends.

The Cross Is Mandatory for Every Believer

This aspect of the cross in the life of the believer is not optional. Let me repeat that. We live in a day where we believe that the cross in the life of a believer is optional, but this is not biblical, rather it is mandatory.

Jesus declared the demands of a true follower of his as seen in Matthew 16 verses 24 and 25. Then Jesus said unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. Listen, friends, the gospel has rights and claims on your life. Jesus bought you with his blood.

You no longer have any rights or claims on your life to live selfishly for yourself. You were bought with a price, and that price was a bloody cross. Your life is no longer your own. Your time is not your own.

Your money is not your own. Your body is not your own. Christ must be a complete master. Some years ago, I wrote something on the inside cover of my Bible. At the time I meant it, I promised God that I wished to have it made a reality in my walk with him.

I did not know at the time what it would really cost me in my personal life to have this desire fulfilled. This is what I've written in my Bible, and I trust he has allowed me to enter into the reality of it.

What is my life that I should keep it selfishly for me? I choose to lose it so completely and have it found in thee. Let me warn you, friends, when you promise God something, he doesn't forget about that promise.

If you ask him to do something dramatic in your life and you were serious about it, serious about being more Christ-like and giving God all the glory, he will do that thing for you, friend. But I warn you, it will cost you something.

It will most likely be painful. It will be painful because a cross is painful. Dying is a painful process. When my father lay dying in the hospital, he lingered on and on and slowly died a painful death.

It took a long time for him to die. Listen, friend, a cross is an instrument of death, and if you want to get up there, you better be prepared to die to everything you now hold dear. The Apostle Paul declared in Galatians 6 .14,.

But God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Let me ask you, friend, can you say that of yourself? Can you, and still be honest, or is there something or someone in this world more important to you than our Lord Jesus Christ?

What's the focus of your attention as normally revealed by what your heart is in love with? Our theme today of the crucified life is what I believe can be the answer to seeing true revival in our churches once again.

Revival Through Consecrated Lives

Allow me to make this illustration. Go and read up on the life of Evan Roberts of the Welsh Revival, that glorious revival of power from on high, an awakening that ignited revival fires all over the globe.

It began with a lanky young man who lived in obscurity in Wales. He chose to shut himself up with God in prayer and to live such a crucified life that the glory of God shone through that man to such a degree that thousands were drawn to hear him.

He refused even to have his photo taken. He resisted popularity. He was dead to this world. But look what God did with Evan Roberts. There are a few figures like him in the history of the church. He was a man crucified to this world, crucified to the compliments of man, and God used him like few other men have ever been used.

Listen, friends, I believe God is looking for such a man today, such a woman today, an individual who is dead to this world and who only lives for eternity, someone whom God can send a mighty spiritual awakening through to impact the entire nation.

I believe my God is able to do such things, friend. I believe my God is the same God today as in the days of Evan Roberts in 1904. Listen to this promise from his holy word. For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.

I believe that, friend. Do you? Do you? Do you know how to get a heart perfect toward him? Then live the crucified life. Take up your cross and nail all your hopes to it. Nail every dream, every desire, every pleasure.

Nail it up there and ask God to give you the grace to live a life pleasing to him in a crucified walk with him for his glory. It's a supernatural walk. A man cannot flesh it out. We are nothing but failures in the flesh.

Listen, there is nothing good in E .A. Johnston except the Christ who dwells there by his spirit. But bless God, he is able to take an unholy man and save him, then sanctify him, then put that man back into this sin-cursed world and enable that person to live a life holy unto him.

God can do that for you, friend. God can change this world through your surrendered life. Do you believe that? D .L. Moody did. He heard a man once say, the world has yet to see what God can do. Through the man, holy consecrated to him, Moody walked away and muttered beneath his breath, by God's grace, I will be that man.

I was standing on Round Top one afternoon years ago. It was a ghost town. I stood there by D .L. Moody's grave on that little hill where he so often preached. I looked down and saw the home in which he was born, and then I looked to my right and I saw the home in which he died in.

As I walked down that little hill, I repeated, I cried out to God, Lord, I am no D .L. Moody, but I desire to live a life wholly sold out to thee like he did. Do it, great God, do it, I pray, and tears ran down my face as I walked down Round Top.

I then sat on the porch of the home in which Moody was born, and I spent that afternoon there in prayer, getting serious with God. Listen, friend, God gets serious with those who get serious with him.

If you get serious with him, friend, God will use your life to ignite others for him. I can promise you that. Now, at this time, I would like to introduce you to the following four men. Some of you are already familiar with some of them, or even all of them, but most of you I fear are not.

How well do you know the names of F .J. Hegel, F .B. Meyer, L .E. Maxwell, and Gregory Mantle? Not too much, I assume, but now are some of their writings which I hope will inspire you to go out and buy their books and read them for your spiritual benefit in this new year.

Hegel on the Indwelling Christ and Supernatural Ministry

I will begin with a passage from Bone of His Bone by Hegel, who was a missionary to Mexico. These are his words. One thing for the missionary is inevitable. If he is to go forward in the face of seeming insuperable obstacles which beset him, usher in a new day for enslaved souls, there are definite spiritual requirements.

If he is to do what God expects of him, and the church expects of him, and what the heartrending need of these to whom he is an ambassador of light requires of him, then he must himself appropriate in an ever deeper and fuller way the power of Christ.

He must himself be bound to that unconquerable Christ who all down the centuries has, through his disciples, achieved the impossible. He must get beyond a mere intellectual knowledge of the historical Christ, and so entwine the tangibles of his spiritual nature in the eternal Christ that he imbibes a divine life.

The job he is attempting to do requires of him a superhuman force. The merely human man, however noble and strong and cultivated, will prove as insufficient and as inadequate as a handful of glowing coals would be for the dissipation of an arctic blizzard.

He must transcend the purely natural and immerse himself in the supernatural. He must experience the power of the indwelling Christ, and dispossessed of his own life, become an ever fuller measure, possessed of a divine life, only rivers of living water flowing from his innermost being.

The promise which the Savior has made to his own can make possible the renewal of life in those to whom he has sent. I will stop there. Listen friend, any book you pick up by F .J. Hegel is worth its weight in gold.

Maxwell on the Cross in the Believer's Life

I hope by introducing you to some of these men, you will go out and discover more of them on your own. Next I want to read us from Born Crucified by Ellie Maxwell. Maxwell founded Prairie Bible Institute in Canada, and my good friend Dr. Ted Rendall followed in his footsteps there as president and pastor of that campus.

Ellie Maxwell is a forgotten man, and his message is forgotten as well. His book Born Crucified is centered on the theme of the cross in the life of the believer. Go out and get it if you have to get your right arm for it.

All these books are out of print, but you can find them on the internet and in some Christian booksellers. A favorite bookseller of mine is Rare Christian Books out of Dixon, Missouri. But here now is a brief passage from Born Crucified.

The cross is the key to all situations as well as to all scripture. If I lose that key, I miss the road not only in the Bible but also in the whole of my life. If through the years the cross in the life of the believer had been adhered to as strenuously as the cross for salvation, the church would not today be so plagued with modernistic infidelity.

We little dream how we are suffering from what has been termed a decapitated gospel. This book is written to show the believer that, from the moment he is saved, he is so related to the cross that, if he henceforth fails to live by the cross, he is an utter ethical contradiction to himself and to his position in Christ.

Meyer on Self-Centeredness and the Christian Life

I will stop there. Now, friends, I want to read us a little from F .B. Meyer's classic work, The Christ Life or The Self Life. I keep a photo of F .B. Meyer on my desk as a reminder of his consecrated life for God.

Here now are his words. The curse of the Christian and of the world is that self is our pivot. It is because Satan made self his pivot that he became a devil. Take heaven from its center in God and try to center it in self, and you transform heaven into hell.

I know little or nothing about the fire, or the darkness, or the worm of hell. Hell is selfishness, and selfishness is hell, and the philosophy of the Bible is to do away with self and to make Christ all in all.

Take Galatians 2 .20. I have been crucified with Christ. God demands that every man and every woman should unite with the cross and, so to speak, kill the self-life, the egotism, the personal element which has been so strong in each one of us.

I will stop there. These books I am reading from are all first editions, and they are falling apart at the seams, but they are true treasures. I hope that each of you friends can find these books and benefit from them as well.

Mantle on Holiness and the Cross

Now for the last one, The Way of the Cross by Gregory Mantle. I am afraid that our feel-good Christianity today has been fed to us by our modern pulpits, and it has infected each one of us with a man-centered philosophy in regard to our Christianity.

But listen, friend. A real Christianity is God-centered. It is Christ-centered. A real Christianity has a cross right in the center of it. All of the world's religions gather around the cross and worship there.

But true Christianity gets up on the cross and stays there. I now have a fight on my hands with that one. Folks don't like to hear a message on the cross in the life of the believer. It's not a popular message.

But listen, friend. It is the only message for a believer. Now let me read you from our fourth book, The Way of the Cross. These are the words of Gregory Mantle. The cross of Christ not only enforces holiness, but makes holiness possible.

In Galatians 2 .20, Paul states, I am crucified with Christ. Here we have both the exterior and interior cross, or the cross in its moral effect. There is a great difference between realizing on that cross he was crucified for me, and on that cross I am crucified with him.

A New Year's Call to Surrender and Revival

The one aspect brings deliverance from sin's condemnation. The other from sin's power. The death of Christ was not only an atonement for sin, but a triumph over sin. I will stop there. Well, friends, I hope these tidbits from these authors of years gone by have stirred you as they have stirred my own heart as I have read them to you today.

May the new year be your victory in Christ for each of us. And may the new year be a year where souls are saved from the torments of hell and its fires. And may the new year be a year where God uses each of us in a new way to bring him glory.

And may the crucified life be our life. And may the cross and the life of the believer be that which we are willing to take up to follow our master along the narrow way as we live lives which are pleasing unto him.

All for God's great glory. Amen.