Beautiful Identity

Rom 6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Identified

Imagine I took a twenty dollar bill and then put it into a book. What would happen if I burned the book? The bill would burn up as well wouldn’t it? If I threw the book in the lake then the bill would become soaked. Once the bill is placed in the book its destiny becomes instantly and personally tied up with the destiny of the book. That’s what Paul is saying happened to you here. You were placed into Christ just as a bill can be placed in a book. What happened to Jesus happened to you. From God’s perspective you were crucified with Christ. You died to your body of sin, you died to the power of your sin nature. This is a wild truth and it takes eyes of faith to understand what it means. It means that the moment you believed you were placed into Christ. When you read through the accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection you are reading a part of your own personal history.

Significance

What is the importance of this? You have been identified with Christ in his crucifixion and his burial and his resurrection, so what? You can remember it happening? You were there in the spiritual sense (which is the real sense) but as far as your day to day life what difference could this possibly make? Here is the point. Before you believed in Christ your body was capable of one thing: Sin. You may have done something that seemed nice, but the fact is that it was coming from a wrecked source. Imagine a stream that looks beautiful and clean, you might think that because it looks clean that you can take a drink, however if there were a poisonous snake that had died in the pool right above the stream a single drink would kill you. The stream looks clean but the water is poisonous. That is what our lives are like apart from Christ. Ever since the fall we are ruined creatures, unable of making anything good because we are separated from God, and God alone is good. However, in Christ we are able to be useful to God once again.

Separation and Unity

In The Bible the word “death” is used to mean separation from God and life is used to mean knowing, or being united to God (John 17:3). Before a person comes to Christ they are united to their sin nature. The picture of marriage is a great example. While a woman is married to one man she cannot also be married to another. In order for her to be married to the second person her first husband must die. While this is not a perfect illustration it gives us a picture of the situation that we were in. In order for us to be freed from that dark slave master of Sin who owned us we had to be freed by our own death. When a person puts his faith in Christ he is regarded by God as having died and we were freed from Sin. This means that believers are now able to walk in newness of life, and exist in joy and peace as we were made to be by God.

Application

Notice, there is nothing for you to do here. The application here isn’t to crucify yourself with Christ, or remember to crucify your desires each day. The real application here is found in the last verse: “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11). The word “consider” has an element of the concept of belief. If you want power over sin and to know the power of the life of Christ in You the secret is believing and trusting in what He has done. Believing that you are freed from Sin and you never have to fulfill the awful demands of your Sin nature ever again by having faith in the work of Jesus is how God wants us to live. We were saved by believing that Jesus died on the Cross, paying the price for our sins, trusting Him for what we are unable to do: Pay the price for our own sinfulness. We continue our lives in the same way: Believing in Him and trusting Him to do what we are unable to do: live out our daily lives out for us, in us and through us as we trust in Him.