So many of us are hang up with how or who we were in the past than focusing on and embracing the new person we are “in Christ”. This stumps our own growth and transformation.

In the previous post we looked at the new realities that have now become native to the believer in Christ as a result of their union with Him. It is the reality of dying and being raised from the dead with Christ that is central to these realities and their present-day implications for all believers. Paul labours extensively expanding on these central truths for all believers in Romans 6:1-11.

He begins with a vigorous rebuttal of a blasé attitude towards sin that could very easily set in – at the expense of grace. It is way too easy to take grace as a licence for sin if one has not deeped one’s co-death with Christ. The number one antidote to this misunderstanding or mistaking of grace for licence to sin, is understanding the believer’s joint death with Christ.

So Paul directs their attention to their death with Christ and its present-day implications in their lives to counter any misconception of grace as a licence for sin. He addresses how we died, why we died (its necessity and objective) and what it means to us today (its present-day implications for us in relation to sin).

Romans 6:1 starts with a rhetorical question which he answers himself in the most emphatic terms rejecting even the thought of it.
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

It is as if Paul is saying, “Duh? Are you crazy or what?” For him this is inconceivable and self-destructive. Paul’s position is established on the fact of the believer’s union with Christ in His death and crucifixion showcased and symbolised in the act of water baptism. Union with Christ – in all of His accomplishments and all that He represents – is every believer’s default position. We enter this union with Christ the moment we profess faith in Him but get to visibly and powerfully mark it in the act of water baptism. Verse 3:
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Paul is stating this as common knowledge – without a shred of doubt. He continues to unpack this truth offering his readers the low down in case there is a misunderstanding about what exactly happened to us as demonstrated in our baptism. Verse 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.

As a result of your union with Christ and position in Him, you too have undergone what Christ underwent on the cross – crucifixion and death. His death was your death and His crucifixion your crucifixion. That act of crucifixion on the cross centuries ago was not just the crucifixion of one man but of countless multitudes in Him – including you and me. Everything that happened to Christ – has equally and fully  happened to us who are “in Him” having been united with Him by God as a result of our faith. Your death is a completed act, a done deal, a fait accompli facilitated by your faith-engendered union with Christ marked by water baptism.

Paul firms this truth further dispelling any doubt about the believer’s enduring union with Christ leading to, not only death with Him, but resurrection too. We have entered an inseparable and enduring union with Christ by way of our faith expressed in baptism. Verse 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.

The believer’s joint death with Christ is a major truth of monumental significance that is repeatedly asserted throughout the New Testament. In Galatians 2:20 Paul states with certainty, “I have been crucified with Christ” while in 5:24 he reaffirms that “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”

But the truth of our enduring union with Christ and subsequent death and resurrection with Him are not without practical, present-day implications but extremely relevant to our lives today, here and now.  Here is Paul’s categorical and unequivocal assertion of our death and clarification of its objective:
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.

Crucifixion with Christ was an absolute necessity if the matter of our slavery to sin was to be comprehensively addressed once and for all. Only through the ridding of the old self by dying on the cross with Christ could we truly be liberated from the slavery inherent in the old (natural) self.

Paul continues to clarify the purpose and objective of both Christ’s and the believer’s death arguing its necessity.
For one who has died has been set free from sin. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.

There at the cross, as Jesus was literally crucified, we too were crucified with Him – His one-time death was sufficient to count for all who’d believe in Him. He did it once, but for all and on behalf of all who would put their faith and trust in Him.

Paul now turns to the critical matter of applying the truth of the believer’s union with Christ. All this inevitably leads to crystal clear action points that start with how we view ourselves. Verse 11:
So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

It is one’s view and thinking that first needs to change. The reckoning or viewing of oneself in light of the truths expounded so far (death and resurrection with Christ), is the bedrock of the actions that are to follow.

You cannot do Romans 6:11 (“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus”) or even remotely understand how it is possible if you don’t get the truths of verses 1 – 10 or they’ve not been wholeheartedly embraced by faith and subsequently owned by you. Paul zeros in on this point and expands by following it up with a practical action point. Verse 12:
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

These are practical steps accessible to every believer because of the fundamental truths expounded so far that relate to all believers. Paul is urging and exhorting – even commanding – by introducing the concept of presenting oneself to God as instruments of righteousness. That is, giving and offering oneself for good works, righteous deeds in place of what once used to happen which was offering oneself and one’s members to sin, to unrighteous acts and deeds. It is here that the rubber meets the road – in the choice we make in what or who we offer ourselves to: to sin as instruments of unrighteousness or to God as instruments of righteousness. Period.

“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

(Dan Milliman, author)