The Cross - Part 3

In addition to what we have seen in the last two posts, the Bible teaches us that if we know Christ as Savior, we died with Him when He died. This has tremendous implications both for our understanding of what we have in Christ and for our daily walk in victory.

Romans 6:3 says “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” Ephesians 2:5,6 adds to this by saying, “even when we were dead in trespasses, (God) made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

I believe that the baptism mentioned in Romans 6:3 is not water baptism, but the baptism of the Spirit which means that the Spirit immersed us into or placed us into the body of Christ. This is spoken of in I Corinthians 12:13 where it says, “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body.”

So since we have been placed into the body of Christ, God sees us as having died with Christ, risen with Christ and seated with Christ in heavenly places in Christ. This has great implications for our daily walk as Romans 6 teaches us.

If we go back to Romans 6:1 Paul asks, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” His answer in verse 2 is that we cannot because how can someone continue to sin who has died to it? In what way have we died to it? We died to it when we died with Christ. Paul says in verse 6, “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.” That is a strong statement.

Sometimes sin seems to have so much power over us and we feel like we are its slave. But God tells us that if we are a Christian we have died with Christ and we have been freed from sin and its power. He goes so far as to say that the body of sin was destroyed or done away with. It certainly doesn’t feel that way does it? This almost makes it worse when we sin because we are doing so freely and we cannot blame our bondage to it and its power over us.

The key to victory is given in verses 10 and following. “For the death that He (Christ) died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.” Now here’s the key, verse 11, “Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead.” We are to count ourselves to be dead with Christ. We are to believe it to be true and to act accordingly. So much of the time we let our minds dwell on things that aren’t true. In this case we are to think on and reckon as true the fact that we have died and our life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3) We are to give ourselves to God as those who are past death and past the resurrection. As resurrected people we are to offer the parts of our body as tools or instruments to God for righteousness and we are to avoid presenting our bodies to sin as instruments or tools of unrighteousness. We may have given our bodies to sin before we died, but now that we are dead and resurrected, we are to be tools that God can use.

It’s interesting to look back at the passage in Colossians 3 that I quoted from earlier. The motivation for what we do is to be based on these truths. We are to seek those things which are above because we’ve been raised with Christ. We are to set our minds on the things above because “you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

The next post will be related to our new relationship with the law because of our death with Christ. However, I might mention here that right thinking concerning our identity with Christ and our death with Him is the best and most effective motivation for right living.