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Not I, But Christ
(Overcomer Wu)

“I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me....” Galatians 2:20

On the corporate level, the goal of God's high-calling is the building of the Corporate Entity that comprises the Church Universal for the fulfillment of His eternal plan. Yet on the personal level, the goal to which God is leading every new-born child in Christ is that which is so strikingly expressed by Paul in the familiar words, “Not I, but Christ.” The judgment that God has pronounced on our self, “I,” is that it is completely hopeless in attaining to the standard of God's perfection by any progress or reformation. Thus, the only deliverance and the only sentence to be passed on, which was executed in and through Christ Jesus' death on the cross, to the natural "I" is that it be delivered over to death, and by the power of the Holy Spirit is ever to be kept in the place of death. When the old “I” is kept in the place of death through the cross of Christ, He can then take the place vacated by the old man, and reigns supremely on the throne of our heart with the entire government placed on His shoulders. There is no more important practical question among the many which gather around this subject than this: How is it possible so to live that those around us will always see “Not I, but Christ.” We believe the answer is largely found in what Paul calls the “putting on” (Gal 3:27, Rom 6:2-11) of Christ.

Just as among weeds, some that are painted with alluring colors are only weeds still, so among the fruits of the natural life are some that carry a more pleasing appearance than others, but they are nevertheless the growth of the natural man. The natural affections, beautiful as they are in the place they occupy in the human realm, have demonstrated like every other part of our flesh, the effects of our depraved and fallen condition. The best of our natural love, natural goodness, and anything that issues or originates from the flesh need to be crucified! Why is there such a lack of love among Christians? Why is the badge of true discipleship so seldom seen? Is it not because God’s children have not learned to put off or see the need to put off their natural love that is so limited in its power of expression and so easily provoked, and to put on the divine agape love of Christ “which is not provoked, which thinks no evil, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, which never fails”? The putting off of our sin-tainted and defective human love, and the appropriation of the love of God in Jesus Christ, will save us from what has been called inordinate partialities. In other words, we will be saved from our particular affinity to certain persons which generally exist with or without reason, and which are apt to be attended with corresponding dislikes to other persons.

The secret of possessing the unfailing agape love is to claim the fulfillment, moment by moment, of Christ’s own desire, “That the love wherewith You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them” (Jn 17:26). The indwelling of Christ Jesus and the indwelling of Divine Love are conceived of here as one and the same thing, and they truly are inseparable. The conditions on which this love may become ours are clearly revealed. They are first, separation from the world: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (v. 16); second, obedience to the Word: “The words which Thou gavest Me I have given unto them, and they received them” (v. 8); and third, oneness with the children of God: “That they may be one” (v. 22).

What has been said above about our failing natural love and the appropriation of the Divine love applies also to human and divine patience and all other divine virtues. Is not this manifestation of impatience the exposure of a spirit that still largely revolves around the human “I”? There is but one remedy if we are to live in newness of life and express the holy nature and virtues of Christ: the persistent putting to dead our self by applying the cross of Christ, and the daily putting on of Christ. As we live perpetually in the center of God’s will, we will find that God is orchestrating all the events in our lives to expose the frailty and inadequacy of our natural goodness and even our fleshly devoutness to where we will come to the same pronouncement as God that in our flesh dwells no good thing (Rom 7:18) and that it it impossible to please God in our flesh (Rom 8:8). Only then will we gladly surrender our flesh to the cross of Christ and die to our pitiful self, which yields ground for Christ to live in stead of us and thus bringing us deliverance!

The “putting on” of Christ or of the new life/nature which we have in Christ is frequently referred to in both the Old and New Testaments (Please read Isa 49:16,17; 61:10; Psa 132:16; Zech 3:1-5; Luke 15:22; Rom 13:14; Gal 3:27, Eph 4:22-24; Phi 3:10-11, Col 3:8-14; 2 Pet 1:4, Rev. 19:8). It is evident from a reference to these passages, that death-fellowship with Christ is equivalent to putting off the old man, and life-fellowship with Him equivalent to putting on the new man. We cannot put on the new over the old; rather, we need to die to the old for the new to emerge. The old man is corrupt according to the lusts of deceit, and if we do not put him off he will wrap his choking roots about us like a parasitic Choking Fig tree that eventually chokes to dead the host tree upon which it preys. The new man, on the contrary is, by a continuous process, “being renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him that created him” (Col 3:9). And this transformation into His wondrous likeness is the result of all our putting off and putting on.

We cannot be too frequently reminded that it is only by “putting on” Christ that we “put off” our self. Our moral nature abhors the vacuum that would be created by an old affection taking its departure from the innermost chambers of our being, without any new affection to succeed it. The old monarch, the domineering “I”, will retain his position until the new monarch, Incarnate Love, is invited to supplant the tyrant, restore our peace with God and enthrone Himself in our nature. The ruling monarch will not abdicate at a mandate from the chair of reason. Nothing can displace the tyrant “I” in us but the Victorious Christ, whose love is the divinely appointed prescription for the exorcism of the self.

“He died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him who died for them and rose again” (2 Cor 5:15). We must ‘put away’ our old man, because it is not in a single limb or a singe organ that we are affected; the very springs of life are polluted with the enemy's nature of sin. Corruption has already irrevocably set in to our fallen nature. The whole structure of our former moral character and habits embodied in our “old man” and our “flesh” must be demolished and the ruins cleared away, that the building may be re-commenced from its very foundation by our “putting on” Christ.

The perfection to which we are to attain (Matt 5:48) is founded in and attained only by Christ. That life of Christ which is well-pleasing to the Father can be ours if Christ is truly the fountains of our life by our death to self and the flesh on a daily basis. It is the eternal purpose of the Father, that as the branch receives and reveal the life which is in the vine, I should receive and express the life which is in Christ. Therefore, when I “put on” Christ, or to make my own the perfect humanity which God created in Him, I am not attempting to imitate a perfection which in spirit and form is alien from my own nature and character. I am but developing and living a life and energy which God has already been installed into me. Since we are in Christ, the spiritual forces which express the righteousness and holiness of Christ’s life are already active in our lives! We need but to continuously live in the reality of “not I, but Christ.”