We are dealing with the almost unknown fact of our Identification with Christ.

At once you ask, “What does Identification mean?”

It means our complete union with Him in His Substitutionary Sacrifice.

For instance, this term is used: “I have been crucified with Christ.” This is our Identification with Christ in His Crucifixion.

I died with Christ.

I was buried with Christ.

I suffered with Christ.

I was made alive with Christ.

Now I am seated with Him.

This little preposition “with” is the key that has unlocked a long-hidden truth that is of vital importance to us.

The first two or three chapters of this little book will lead you into the ante-chamber of God’s greatest Revelation connected with the New Creation.

The teaching of Identification is the legal side of our Redemption.

It unveils to us what God did in Christ for us, from the time He went to the Cross, until He sat down on the right hand of the Father.

The vital side of Redemption is what the Holy Spirit, through the Word, is doing in us now.

Several times Paul uses the preposition “with” in connection with His Substitutionary teaching.

Gal. 2:20 “I have been crucified WITH Christ.”

Then he tells us that “he died WITH Christ,” that “he was buried WITH Christ.”

This gives us the key that unlocks the great teachings of Identification.

Christ became one with us in sin, that we might become one with Him in Righteousness.

He became as we were, to the end that we might be as He is now.

He became one with us in death, that we might be one with Him in life.

There is a two-fold oneness: first His oneness with our sin on the cross; second, our oneness with Him in His glory on the throne.

Eph. 2:6 “And raised us up with him, and made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus.”

He became as we were, so that we might become as He is.

He died to make us live.

He was made sin to make us Righteous.

He became weak to make us strong.

He suffered shame to give us glory.

He went to Hell in order to take us to Heaven.

He was condemned in order to Justify us.

He was made sick in order that healing might be ours.

He was cast out from the presence of God in order to make us welcome there.

In the fact of Identification we have one of the richest phases of Redemption.

When Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ,” it meant he had been judged, condemned, cast out, stripped naked, and nailed to the cross.

The very thought of crucifixion to a Jew, and especially to a Pharisee, brought a sense of shame and horror.

When Saul of Tarsus identified himself with the Man, Jesus, accepted Him as his Savior, and confessed Him as his Lord, that moment he became a crucified man to the Jewish people.

He became an outcast.

No wonder he said in Gal. 6:14 that the world had been crucified unto him, and he had been crucified unto the world.

The world had been stripped naked to Paul.

There was no longer any delusion in regard to it.

He could no longer be deceived.

He knew its cruelty.

He had felt its lash upon his back.

He remembered the stoning that had left him unconscious.

He remembered that in every place he went, he faced the anger, bitterness, and jealousy of men.

He had been stripped naked to the world.

There was nothing in him that the world desired.

That little Jew, with his mighty message, and his tremendous power in prayer, had been crucified to the world.

We understand what crucifixion actually means.

Paul saw his Identification with Christ in His crucifixion.

We understand that crucifixion did not mean death.

It meant union with Christ in His disgrace and suffering.

Rom. 6:6 “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin.

Crucifixion points the way to death.

In the Spirit’s great argument of our Identification with Christ He said that our old man, this hidden man of the heart, our spirit, the real man who was filled with spiritual death, Satanic nature, was nailed to the cross in Christ.

Christ went there, not for Himself, not as a martyr, but as a Substitute.

We were nailed to the cross with Christ.

We were crucified with him.

The object of the crucifixion, in the mind of the mob, was to get rid of this Man whom they hated.

In the mind of Justice it meant His Identification with humanity in its sin and suffering, and our Identification with Him in His crucifixion.

In the great drama of our Redemption, as soon as Christ was nailed to the cross, with His crown of thorns, and with the howling mob that surrounded Him, Justice began to do its awful work behind the scenes.

Sense-Knowledge men and women who surrounded the cross could only see the physical man, Jesus, hanging there.

God could see His spirit.

Angels could see His spirit.

Demons could see the real man, hidden in that body.

Then came the dreadful hour when 2 Corinthians 5:21 was fulfilled.

“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”

Isaiah 53:5 “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

On that awful cross, He not only became sin, but He became a curse, for in Galatians 3:13 it tells us, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree.” (The word “us” there refers to the Jews).

He came as a Jew under the First Covenant to redeem all those who were under that Covenant from the curse of the Law.

When He was hanging on the cross, He was not only sin, but He was a curse.

Is it any wonder that God turned His back upon Him?

Is it any wonder He cried in His agony, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

He had taken the sinner’s place in Judgment.

All the forces of darkness had overwhelmed Him.

He was our sin Substitute.

Sin was not reckoned to Him. Sin was not set to His account. He became sin.

Our Senses reel under the staggering thought of it.

We cannot grasp it.

Only our spirits can fathom the depths of His agony.

You can hear Paul cry, (Philippians 3:10) “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death.”

Paul’s prayer amazes one.