The Relinquished Life

Bread and Wine Reading: "The Relinquished Life", Oswald Chambers

Scripture Reading: Galatians 2: 19-21
For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God; for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.


Oswald Chambers asserts that “there will have to be the relinquishing of my claim to my right to myself in every phase…to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ.” That is certainly hard for most of us to swallow. We who have spent so much of our lives “finding ourselves” and standing up for ourselves are now asked to give up any claim to who that self is. What exactly does that mean? The words to the Galatians essentially say the same thing. If we truly live in Christ, it means that we also die in Christ. It means that our own selves—the self that we have imagined into being, the self that we have worked so hard to protect, the self that we have tried so desperately to insert into our lives—must be relinquished. It must, indeed, die.

Chambers uses the word “co-crucifixion” to describe this dying of our self that we might be raised in Christ. I’ve never really used that term. I’ve used the word “co-creator”, implying that by entering Christ we become part of God’s ongoing act of Creation, that we become part of bringing the Kingdom of God into the fullness of being. But I supposed that the term “co-crucifixion” goes along with that. I mean, how can we become part of God’s Creation, how can we become part of Christ’s Resurrection into New Life without also being part of the Crucifixion? Much as we would like to try to separate the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, much as we would like to relegate one to darkness and one to Light, it cannot be done. It is all part of God’s ongoing act of Creation. It is part of God recreating us into who we are made to be, into one made in God’s image.

And, in the example of Christ, we must die, we must relinquish our own self that Christ may rise in us. Chambers maintains that “it is not just a question of giving up sin, but of giving up [our] own natural independence and self-assertiveness.” As he contends, even the good in us must die, must be relinquished, that we might enter God’s best. He reminds us that “it is going to cost the natural in you everything, not something…Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your won independence.”

Discussion Questions:
1.) What does “relinquishing the claim of the right to yourself” mean for you?
2.) What does it mean for you to become part of this “co-crucifixion”?
3.) In what ways does this change your Lenten focus?

So go forth and relinquish yourself that you might be raised in Christ!

Grace and Peace,

Shelli