Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body…So then death worketh in us, but life in you.
—2 Corinthians 4:10, 12
Paul was very bold in speaking of the intimate union that was between the life of Christ in him and the life he lived in the flesh with all its suffering. In Galatians 2:20, he had spoken of being crucified with Christ and of Christ living in him. Here he talked about how he was “bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus”; it was through this that the life of Jesus was also manifested in his body. And he told the Corinthians that because the death of Christ was thus working in and through him, Christ’s life could work in them.
We often speak of abiding in Christ, but we forget that this means abiding in a crucified Christ. Many believers seem to think that, once they have claimed Christ’s death in the fellowship of the cross and have considered themselves as crucified with Him, they may now consider it as over and done with. They do not understand that it is in the crucified Christ, and in the fellowship of His death, that they are to abide daily and unceasingly. The fellowship of the cross is to be a daily experience. The self‑emptying of our Lord, His taking the form of a servant, His humbling Himself and becoming “obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8)—this mind that was in Christ is to be the disposition that marks our daily lives.
“Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.” This is what we are called to as much as Paul was. If we are indeed to live for the welfare of others around us, if we are to sacrifice our ease and pleasure to win souls for our Lord, it will be true of us as of Paul, that we are able to say, “Death worketh in us, but life in [those for whom we pray and labor].” It is in “the fellowship of His [Christ’s] sufferings” (Philippians 3:10) that the crucified Lord can live and work out His life in us and through us.
Let us learn the lesson that the abiding in Christ Jesus, for which we have so often prayed and worked, is nothing less than the abiding of the crucified Lord in us, and we in Him.