Message Five

Delivered from the Self by the Cross of Christ

Scripture Reading: S.S. 2:14-15

1. Delivered from the self:
   1. The attainment of the lover of Christ in her pursuing after Christ for satisfaction and rest results in a condition in which she overcares for her spiritual condition before Christ concerning whether or not she remains in the perfection she has attained.
   2. This causes her to fall into introspection, which becomes the seclusion as a wall that keeps her away from the presence of Christ—2:9.
   3. This peculiarity of introspection becomes one of the "little foxes" that ruin the flourishing resurrection of Christ in the churches—2:15.
2. By the cross of Christ:
   1. Hence, Christ comes as a gazelle leaping upon the mountains and as a young hart skipping upon the hills, showing forth His resurrection power over difficulties, to call her repeatedly to rise up from her down situation and come away to Him from that situation which separates her from Him—2:8-10, 13b.
   2. Christ wants her to remain in the cross, that is, to stay in "the clefts of the rock" and in "the covert of the precipice"—2:14a.
   3. Christ wants to see her countenance and hear her voice in the cross as the clefts of the rock and the covert of the precipice—2:14b.
   4. To stay in the cross is a hard matter, like getting into the clefts of the rock and the covert of the precipice by a rugged road.
   5. It could be only by the power of Christ’s resurrection shown in the leaping of the gazelle upon the mountains and the skipping of the young hart upon the hills, not by her natural life.
   6. This is to "deny" herself as the Lord charges in Matthew 16:24.
   7. This is also to be conformed to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10).
   8. It is only in this way that she can be delivered from her self which frustrates her from experiencing Christ in His resurrection, signified by the flourishing spring in 2:11-13a.