Holiest of All by Andrew Murray

Zbe Iboliest of mi 451
power of fallen nature ; that only through death can it be
delivered from the power of sin and death ; that only so
can it become a life wholly possessed of God. The first time
quickened by Him, and yet under the power of sin ;
time, dead to sin, and alive to God in
the second
the perfect life of eternity.
It was the symbol of what was to take place in Christ Jesus
and everyone who is made like Him in the fellowship of His
death.
We see where this leads us in the Christian life. Even as
Christ in His birth received His life from the Father, so we,
too, in our new birth. But that life had to be sacrificed, ere
He could enter the full life in the glory of the Father. Even
so with us. The life God gives us in the new birth is only to
prepare us for understanding and deserving and accepting and
entering into a perfect voluntary conformity to Christ's death.
As we see how much there still is of self, we begin to learn and
long for what is implied in the death to self It means a deeper
insight into our own entire and complete inability to do any
good.
It means a willing and a hearty consent to be and to do
nothing, and to let God be and do all.
It means a real ceasing
from our own works, and an entire surrender to the immediate
and unceasing operations of God by His Holy Spirit, for Him to
work both to will and to do that which is pleasing in His sight.
It means such a hating of one's own life, such a denial of one's
self, that one is content with nothing less than death to it.
It is the soul that seeks to follow its Lord in this new and
living way, that feels the need of the faith in the living God
who raises the dead, that will be fitted to exercise it. It is
the trial of faith calls out its power
;
it is the need of faith calls
down the power of God. Oh, if we did but hear the call of God
to bring the life He has Himself given us, with all its blessed