Some Christians have been grievously mistreated by other believers. Some so severely that it amounts to a crucifixion.

Being crucified by fellow Christians is one of the deepest pains a child of God will ever know. It can so profoundly affect you that it can mark the end of your life as a practicing Christian.

Place your crucifixion in the realm of the invisibles, in realms unseen. Only there will you truly find the person who deliberately caused you to be crucified. Only in the realm of the spirituals will you find the perpetrator.

When you were crucified at the hands of men, in reality you but entered into His crucifixion. Consider the circumstance which led to His crucifixion. Who caused His cross, His crucifixion? Who was it that plotted His Golgotha? It was exactly the same person who plotted yours. That person actually desired that you enter into your Lord's sufferings. After all, you ­ the believer ­ are in Him.

The Father willed His own Son's crucifixion. And yours. Refusal to accept your crucifixion as wholly from the hand of God only means you were not crucified, you were just mistreated. Only when you accept that it came from God...only then is it a true crucifixion. The crucifixion of a Christian comes from the hand of God, and God alone.

You must find a whole new view of your crucifixion. There was far more purpose in it than you first realized. Perhaps far more good in its content than you can presently imagine.

What happened to you was meant to be a magnificent beginning of transformation in your life. The circumstances which birthed this tragedy were exactly what you needed. That hellish event brought you to exactly the place your Lord wants you to be.

The inherent nature of a crucifixion is destructive. This is the key to understanding your crucifixion. In that discovery you may also find healing...and recovery.

There is nothing which more exposes a Christian's weakness than how he reacts to being crucified by other Christians. Was there anger? Resentment? Did you find fault? Did your dark side emerge? Find solace in this: In all Christian history believers who handle a crucifixion nobly are virtually unknown.

What will be the result if you embrace a crucifixion? To embrace it is to allow the destruction of all that is in you which is not Christ. The very desire to not be destroyed must be destroyed. The cross seeks out man's desire to not suffer, and man's furious commitment to never lose, and his screaming logic that he is not in the wrong.

A true crucifixion has resolution. A true crucifixion ever ends in triumph! If you accept that nightmarish ordeal as a sovereign work of God, if you acquiesce to His will, then does He begin to have His will. Suddenly it becomes not only a crucifixion but a holy work of God.

Consider Jesus. As you are crucified, watch Him handle His crucifixion. Your Lord bequeathed to you an example of the high art of being crucified. Behold how He reacted to betrayal, to lies, to false witnesses. Jesus Christ absorbed these pains, even as they added the shamefulness of being crucified in public. Humiliated, degraded, defamed, tortured and then murdered. That day he raised acceptance of the cross into an art form. He learned to accept all things from the hand of His Father.

The Lord Jesus, by the power of His Father's indwelling life...criticized no one, gave no rebuttal, never resorted to logic or reason, did not defend His rights, gave no defense, challenged no lies, answered only with silence.

The evening before Golgotha was every bit as black as His crucifixion. Gethsemane was a yielding to His Father's view of crucifixion. For most believers Gethsemane must come after crucifixion. Gethsemane is simply that hour when you finally align your will with the will of God. It is when you agree, accept, embrace...your crucifixion. Any human daring to follow a divine path will come upon a Gethsemane. Each will tarry there until he realigns his will with divinity, or he will completely miss the divine way of things. Acquiescence to destruction. That is Gethsemane.

Only a few hours before Jesus rose from the grave, men had been brutalizing Him. In that brutality of the cross Jesus had suffered the utter ends of pain.

Then He rose from the dead!

Here is the hallmark of the resurrection of our Lord: Having arisen from the grave, He never once referred to the events of His crucifixion. Not once. Not even one word.

Such is the hallmark of all true resurrections. The past is forever gone! Resurrection is beyond that which is dead. Resurrection means to arise from out of death into a new realm, a new time continuum where the past never happened. Resurrection is a demarcation. Everything before resurrection no longer exists. It never happened!! That is the essence of resurrection. Everything after resurrection is new and has no connection with the events of the past! After the resurrection, all things belong to a new creation.

The essence of crucifixion is that it is a portal to pass through to come into the fullness of resurrection. Just as surely as there can be no resurrection without crucifixion, there can be no true crucifixion without Gethsemane. Join your Lord in Gethsemane, join Him at Golgotha. Then can you join Him in resurrection!

The One who died so magnificently lives inside you at this moment.

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From: Edwards, Gene, Healing for those who have been... Crucified by Christians. Sargent: The Seedsowers. 1994. ISBN 0-940232-52-9. We recommend that you purchase this book and read it in its entirety. The Seedsowers, P.O. Box 285, Sargent, GA 30275.