I read a powerful statement recently in the writings of one of my favorite authors, T.A. Sparks, who lived in community and ministered in regular Christian life conferences in Great Britain between 1930 and 1970.
He wrote, "Whenever a man or a people comes under immediate government of God (which means to live under the direction and empowerment of the Holy Spirit) in relation to His eternal purpose, they will have this one thing brought home to them: It is that in themselves "dwells no good thing" (Rom. 7:18). There is much prayer for revival and much effort for the deepening of the spiritual life. But the only answer to this is a new knowing of the Cross, not only as it pertains to sins and a life of victory over them, but as Christ supplanting (replacing) the natural man."
On the cross, not only was Jesus Christ offering Himself to pay for our sins, but He was offering Himself as our substitute. When He died, in God's mind, He died not only for us, but He died as us. As Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live..." (Gal. 2:20)
To come to Jesus Christ in faith is to come into an inward union with Christ. We recognize Him as our substitute to God, our representative before God, and our life in God. When we do this, we aren't playing psychological make believe. We're agreeing with God. For God has sent His own Son to become our substitute, our representative, and our life.
It all starts with the cross and our apprehension of what occurred their by faith. At the cross, God put us to death in Christ. Our self-loving hearts recoil from such a word, but this is the clear affirmation of the Scriptures. "Or do you not know that you have died with Christ?" Why do we recoil? Like Cain we're still trying to get God to accept us and our offerings. God will not. God will never accept man's best efforts, not even when those men are Christians. When the source of the living is man, it's man's life that's expressed. It's godless effort, and utterly rejected by God. How does that make you feel?
Check yourself. Most people who don't see how utterly rejected and contemptible they are apart from Christ never embrace the cross. We can't imagine hell, much less that apart from Jesus Christ that God would surely send us there. Our belief that our best efforts make us more acceptable in the eyes of God only provoke Him all the more, because He opposes the proud. We too must reject our best efforts by embracing the cross as the place we died to God.
Don't misunderstand this point. It's not that we have no value as God's creatures who display His glory and are made in His image. But our value to God is just that... that we bear His image and display His glory. Apart from bearing His image, the only way we will display His glory is through eternal damnation. But the good news is that through Christ, God has made a way of redemption and salvation that is an infinitely more satisfying display of His glory by making us one with His image... "Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God."
I recently had a couple of discussions with a few Mormons and J.W.s about this very thing. They imagine that God is pleased with our good works and displeased with our sins. So, in this view, Jesus's death erases our sins so that we can be rewarded for our good works. But in doing so they rob Jesus Christ of His glory of being our complete Savior, whom we do not help in the least. It is fully His grace from beginning to end that must save us.
But how many Christians are "Mormons at heart", looking to Jesus to cover our sins while looking to ourselves to please God? No! Jesus Christ is our complete righteousness, not only taking away our sins, but taking the "old man" into death. So how then do we live?
We live by this faith, the faith of the Son of God. We must not merely add Christ to our living, or attempt to add to Christ's life by our living, but to make room for Christ to be our life. We should be dead to our own desires, good intentions, best efforts, good ideas, etc. Though while we live on in the body we can not escape from them, but we dare not live on the basis of them. All things must be governed by His Spirit. Does the idea, intention, or desire come from us, or from His Spirit? "Live by the Spirit and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh".
What does this mean? We must get acquainted with the Life of His Spirit. We must saturate ourselves with the Word of God which is able to divide between soul and Spirit. We must remember that His blood cleanses our conscience from dead works to serve the Living God, for we will no longer simply feel a need for cleansing from sin, but from moving, living, desiring anything apart from the Life of Christ Jesus. The Living God is served by Living Sacrifices, those who are offering themselves up to live in the Life of His own Son.
What lies ahead for those who take this path? A great deal of suffering and greater experience of the Lord Jesus Christ as our life. "God gives us the Cross, but the Cross gives us God." 
