In the Scripture reading for this message, we have listed thirty-two verses. All these verses are like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle concerning the revelation of the all-inclusive death of Christ. These verses are scattered throughout the Bible. Under the inspiration of the Spirit, the Bible was written in this way. The truths are scattered here and there throughout the Bible. Time, insight, and skill are needed to put these pieces of the truth together. Then we can have a complete picture. In this message we want to put the pieces of the truth concerning Christ's all-inclusive death together, so that we can have a complete picture of His death.
In the early days, by reading some spiritual books, I found out that Christ's death has two aspects—the objective aspect and the subjective aspect. The objective aspect is that Christ died for my sins (1 Cor. 15:3), and the subjective aspect is that when Christ was crucified, I was crucified with Him (Gal. 2:20a). Through my reading of the Bible for over sixty years, I have collected the scattered pieces of the truth concerning the all-inclusive death of Christ.
The Bible was not written in a systematic way according to our thought. It was written according to what Isaiah said in Isaiah 28:13: "Therefore Jehovah's word to them will be:/ Rule upon rule, rule upon rule;/Line upon line, line upon line;/Here a little, there a little." We need the sight and the insight to put all the pieces of a certain truth together. I have spent much time to put the pieces of the truth concerning Christ's death together. All the verses I have collected from the Scripture give us a marvelous picture of Christ's wonderful, excellent, and all-inclusive death.
If we do not know the all-inclusive death of Christ, and if we do not experience His death in our daily life, we cannot live the Christian life. Without experiencing His death, we can live at best only an ethical life. We may live an ethical life according to our culture in the Chinese way or in the American way. Ethics are always different from country to country. We may live a life which is good in the eyes of people, but such a living has altogether nothing to do with the Christian life.
The Christian life is to live Christ, but to live Christ, we must die. If you do not know that you have been crucified before you were born, you can never live the Christian life. We have to realize that not only many negative things but also many of our natural positive things need to be dealt with subjectively by the cross of Christ. For example, we may always gossip about others. Some saints are the "information desk of the church." If people come to this "desk," they can find out all the information about the saints in the church. This is negative. Things like this need to be dealt with by the cross because they are of the flesh. And the good things, the ethical things, which are by our natural life, even though they are positive, also need to be dealt with by the cross of Christ because they are not something by Christ and cannot be considered something of the Christian life. In order to live the Christian life, we must be under the killing of the cross of Christ in the subjective experience of His all-inclusive death.