"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me" (Gal 2:20).
There is so much of the natural that needs to go to the cross. This altar is the divine sanitation system, for fire is a great sanitizer, a never-failing disinfectant. This altar is not an educational system, it is a burning process. The answer to our flesh is not pampering, controlling, or hiding; the answer to all carnality is the fire of God's brazen altar - the cross of Jesus.
However, I guess that once I really know the altar is for worship as well as for burning, I should always approach the burning as a worshipper.
When our life is hid with Christ in God, the old shell that once hid that life is going to be burned. It is like the seed planted in the earth and warmed and moistened until germination starts. Does the seed cry, "Wait a minute; stop it; you're destroying me?" No, of course not. To come forth in the new, the old has to die. The only alternative would be to dig the seed out, dry it, and put a little sign next to it saying, "This is the seed of God". If we just leave it in the ground to go through the death process, we don't need a sign, for people will see the fruit that life has produced. That's one of the purposes of the cross - to break the hull, to kill the old, in order to release the life principle so we can be restored to the Father's eternal purposes.
(Judson Cornwall, Let Us Draw Near, pp. 61-62)
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