“I will let you see what it is to die with Me.”  And He says that word to-day, to the weakest and the humblest; if you are longing to know what it is to enter into death with Jesus, come and look at the penitent thief.  And what do we see there?  First of all, we see there the state of a heart prepared to die with Christ.  We see in that penitent thief, a humble, whole-hearted confession of sin.  There he hung upon the cursed tree, and the multitudes were blaspheming that man beside him, but he was not ashamed publicly to make confession:  “I am dying a death that I have deserved; I am suffering justly; this cross is what I have deserved.”  Here is one of the reasons why the Church of Christ enters so little into the death of Christ; men do not want to believe that the curse of God is upon everything in them that has not died with Christ.  People talk about the curse of sin, but they do not understand that the whole nature has been infected by sin, and that the curse is on everything.  My intellect, has that been defiled by sin?  Terribly, and the curse of sin is on it, and therefore my intellect must go down into the death.  Ah, I believe that the Church of Christ suffers more to-day from trusting in intellect, in sagacity, in culture, and in mental refinement, than from almost anything else.  The Spirit of the world comes in, and men seek by their wisdom, and by their knowledge, to help the Gospel, and they rob it of its crucifixion mark.  Christ directed Paul to go and preach the Gospel of the cross, but to do it not with wisdom of words.  The curse of sin is on all that is of nature.  If there be a minister who has delighted in preaching, who has done his very best, who has given his very best in the way of talent and of thought, and who asks, “Must that go down into the grave?” I say, “Yes, my brother, the whole man must be crucified.”  And so with the heart’s affection.  What is more beautiful than the love of a child to his mother?  In that lovely nature there is something unsanctified, and it must be given up to die.  God will raise it from the dead and give it back again, sanctified and made alive unto God.  So I might go through the whole of our life.  People often say to me:  “But has God made all things so beautiful, and is it not right that we should enjoy them?  Are not His gifts all good?” I answer, yes, but remember what it says; they are good, if sanctified by the Word of God and prayer.  The curse of sin is on them; the blight of sin is on everything most beautiful, and it takes much of God’s Word, and much of prayer to sanctify them.  It is very hard to give up a thing to the death, and it is hardest of all to give up my life to the death, and I never will until I have learned that everything about that life is stamped by sin, and let it go down into the death as the only way to have it quickened and sanctified.