Dead Men Walking

Rom 6:6-7  "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. "

When we surrender to Christ it cannot be a partial surrender.  To be completely yielded to Christ means that there is nothing left of our will.  It means that we need to cease to exist as the person we were before we believed in Him.  The old self is dead.

The old self is our spirit, the part of us that was born into rebellion.  This is the part of us that places us at the center of the universe.  In psychotherapy this is called the id; this is the part of us that is concerned with instinctual drives and needs.  It is the part of us that drives us to satisfy the self.  It is all about "I, me and mine".

When we constantly put ourselves first it leads to behaviors that are in conflict with God.  He created us to worship Him, to love Him, serve Him.  The old self rebels against Him and focuses on self.  It has been so since the temptation of Adam.  Since Adam, death has reigned as a result of that rebellion.

It is not always obvious.  Some people seem to live selfless lives.  They will give you the shirt off their back. While there are people that just seem evil, there are others that just seem to be good.  So much so that modern psychology is built on the premise that man is basically good and it is his environment that causes him to do bad things.  It is the nature versus nurture argument.

The Bible, on the other hand, tells us that we were born into a sinful nature.  That nature manifests itself in all of us to varying degrees.  But even the nicest person still has that nature and as a result will sin and even just one sin is enough to separate us from God.

The Bible also gives us the solution to our problem.  We know that by surrendering our life to Christ we can crucify the old self.

We are dead men walking.

Here is yet another one of the mysteries of the kingdom of God.  We live in the here and the not yet of His kingdom.  We are yet struggling against our flesh and will not be made perfect until Christ comes back.  And still, when we yield our lives to Him and are baptized we partake of His death  and our old self dies.

Dead people can't be offended.  Dead people do not covet and are not jealous.  Dead people cannot be tempted because they have been freed from sin.

So what does the mean; that we will never sin again?

I wish it did.  What it does mean is that we are dead to the reign of sin in our lives.  We are freed from slavery to sin.  We have the choice to live for God and the power to resist temptation.  Until Christ comes back these are choices that we make every moment of every day.

Gal 2:20 "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me . The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Through faith in Christ we strive to be more like Him every day.  We do this by yielding ourselves to His love and grace.  Faith believes what we have not yet completely experienced in our flesh.

John 3:30  "He must become greater; I must become less."

Notice the order.  In order for me to become less, He must become greater.  As I allow Him to take a greater role in my life, what seemed important to me begins to fade slowly.  The battle is not so much to stop sinning, for my sinful nature is dead.  That battle is to be more like Him.  To allow Him to grow and become, not just the core of who I am, but all of who I am.

We are triune beings.  Our spirit is the part that dies and is reborn.  My body doesn't change, it is still in the process of relentlessly moving toward physical death.  The battleground is my mind.  The more my mind is filled with His thoughts, the more my actions will follow.  The more my mind delights in Him, the more I will strive to pleasure Him.

It is the key to overcoming any addiction.  The moment that we focus on stopping a bad behavior the more of a pull that behavior has on us, the more we think about it.  When we focus on the good, the less of a pull that addiction has on our lives.

We are dead with Christ.  Dead men walking.

Next, we will see what it means to be alive in Christ.