Now we go a step further and find that we receive this new life by identification with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, and the doctrine of our resurrection with Christ does contemplate the past. Resurrection presupposes a former life and death. The identity of the individual is preserved throughout. The individual who lived a certain kind of life, and died, is now raised to live a new life. Now, raised from the dead, he is the same person, yet not the same. Thus the Apostle Paul could say: “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…” (Gal. 2:20).
It is true that Ephesians 2:1 teaches that we were already “dead in trespasses and sins” before ever having become identified with Christ in His death. But like the woman described in I Timothy 5:6, unbelievers are dead while they live, and can be quickened from their state of death in trespasses and sins only by identification with Christ in His death and resurrection, for the simple reason that He came to identify Himself with us in our death to bring us through with Him to resurrection life.
But how can one become thus identified with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection? How can one die to the old life and be raised to walk in newness of life?
The answer is: by grace through faith (Eph. 2:5). What Christ has done for us by grace, we must accept and appropriate by faith. He, by an act of infinite grace, identified Himself with us, dying our death. We, by an act of simple faith, must identify ourselves with Him. The moment this is done we become one with the once-crucified, ever-living Christ.
THE BELIEVER’S RESURRECTION WITH CHRIST
Mark well, Calvary is the meeting place, the place where the identification is made possible. No man was ever made one with Christ without being made one with Him in His death. “Know ye not,” asks the apostle, “that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death?” (Rom. 6:3). And it is for this reason that we are buried with Christ, by that same baptism, and raised with Him to walk in newness of life (Ver. 4). The same spiritual power that was displayed when God raised up Christ from the dead ought to be a living spiritual reality in the life of the believer (Ephesians 1:18-20).
How perfect and wonderful is the divine plan! In grace Christ died our death. In faith we acknowledge it was our death He died, and trust in that death to save us. And there at the Cross we become one. The response of faith to grace has united and identified us with Him inseparably and eternally together.
It is on the basis of this judicial transaction that the apostle argues that we have no right to continue in sin. The sins we are so prone to commit after having been justified belong to the old life, not to the new which we have in Christ. Therefore we have no right to go on in sin. “How shall we that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Rom. 6:2). And pointing to the fact that Christ “died unto sin once,” but now “liveth unto God,” he goes on to say:
“Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:11-14).
But this positional truths we have been considering are only part of the whole doctrine of our baptism into Christ (Gal. 3:27), for while these positional realities affect our experience as we appropriate them by faith, our baptism into Christ is also in itself a practical and experiential matter.
When the sinner acknowledges Christ’s death as his own and trusts Christ for salvation, not only does he receive a standing before God as having been crucified, buried and raised with Christ, but the Spirit seals the transaction, uniting him in a vital, living relationship with Christ. Thus the believer actually becomes a partaker of Christ’s resurrection LIFE. There is more than justice in view here; there is the need and the impartation of life and this life, while spiritual in its nature, is none the less real.
Furthermore, we now become partakers of the resurrection life of Christ, which we can never lose (Rom. 6:9) since it is His life. As the Father has raised us from the dead judicially, so the Spirit has raised us spiritually, in the sense that He has actually imparted spiritual life. It is now ours to appropriate and enjoy the fullness of that life by faith.
In Romans 8:2 Paul speaks of this impartation of life by the Spirit as a law which operates in every believer:
“For the law of the Spirit, [that] of life in Christ Jesus, hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”
And then the apostle proceeds to show that what the law of Moses “could not do” because of the character of “the flesh,” God sent His own Son to accomplish: “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom. 8:4).
Christ’s life has become our life (Col. 4:4). In life under grace, the life which we now live in the flesh is Christ’s, and we live for Christ (Galatians 2:20). The goal of life under grace is that the life of Christ might manifest in our body (2 Cor. 4:10-11). And that “they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves” (2 Cor. 5:15). Therefore…
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The good that a believer does is not his own (Galatians 2:20).
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Good is what real believers want to do (Romans 7:22).
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Good fruit comes from the new man which rose from the dead (Romans 7:4).
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Any good that come from us is the result of what God has made us in Christ (Ephesians 2:10).
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The faithfulness of Christ is the means by which we are able to live a life under grace (Galatians 2:20).
We are Debtors to Live after the Spirit
“But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken [give life to] your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh” (Vers. 11,12).
Thus we are debtors—not to sin, but to God. We cannot excuse ourselves by saying, “I am only human after all,” or “the flesh is weak,” for we have the Holy Spirit within to strengthen our mortal bodies and help us to walk in newness of life.
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Knowing – He liveth, he liveth unto God (Romans 6:9-10)
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Reckoning – To be alive unto God (Romans 6:11)
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Yielding – Yield as those alive from the dead (Romans 6:13)
Evangelist Rodgie Quirante
The Workman’s Treasure Study Series