Jesus didn’t give Himself merely to rescue us from hell in the next life. He also came to rescue us from the evils of the present life.

OUR FLESH WITH THE SIN NATURE DIES WITH CHRIST

The second message is: The Cross does not only provide forgiveness for our sins; it also puts to death our old sinful nature. Cross is the means of slaying our former nature which keeps urging us to sin. In and with Christ, we died when He died, and were resurrected when He was resurrected; which means that all of our former nature, with its flaws, its hang-ups, and its difficulties was swallowed up by Jesus’ death and destroyed by it. Through the resurrection of Jesus, we are granted a new nature, planted in us through His Spirit. Our flesh is like a shell that needs to be completely shattered, so that the sweet smell of this new nature can be released.

UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND THIS REALITY, YOU CANNOT WALK IN VICTORY

Our flesh was crucified on the Cross and put to death in Christ. But unless our understanding and our hearts have really grasped and accepted this fact by faith, we will be walking in defeat… we cannot walk in victory over sin. The fact is that our flesh is dead and that we can walk in the newness of the life that God has granted us.

INTO A NEW KINGDOM - A NEW REALM - PARADIGM

As soon as the Holy Spirit gives us that revelation through faith, we become fully aware of our position in Christ, and we enter a new world. You become a new creation and is transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of His beloved Son. The materialization and consummation of this final aspect of His work on the Cross is to be manifested at Jesus’ return and the resurrection of the dead. Then our bodies will be resurrected and we shall receive new glorified bodies in which sin will no longer dwell. Then we shall clearly see that all things are truly new.

But now in the mean time all things are new in the spirit; God enables us to walk in His Spirit, although our bodies are not yet resurrected. When our attitude is one of faith, the law of the Spirit that is in Christ enables us to overcome completely the law of sin and death that is in the body, because we are grounded in faith. Everything is given through faith in Jesus, and revealed through the Holy Spirit.

Sanctification

Sanctification, therefore, is not something that we have to grow slowly into. Jesus Himself has secured our sanctification through His death and His resurrection. Jesus has been made sanctification for me. Through His death and resurrection, He has engulfed death as well as sin, He has engulfed my past. Let this sink into the depths of my heart and wash away all my former ways of thinking.

This can be, since Jesus commands us to be a demonstration of it when He says: "As He who has called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct." (1 Peter 1:15). "You shall therefore be holy, for I am holy". (Leviticus 11:45) "Therefore be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:48). There is no half-way with Jesus. He cannot command us to be holy and perfect unless we actually can live in perfection and holiness.

Lord, I want to understand. Let my spirit be filled with the light of Your Spirit, and enlighten my understanding so that I can clearly see all that Jesus has accomplished on the Cross and receive it as mine, since it is Your gift to me.

Sanctification is the carrying on to perfection the work begun in regeneration, and it extends to the whole life. In justification, God at the beginning of Christian life declares us acquitted. In sanctification, God accomplishes his will in us as Christian life proceeds. Justification, the privileged status of acceptance, is achieved through the cross; sanctification, the ongoing process of conformity to Christ, is achieved by the Spirit.

Paul's denial that he is already "perfect," and his exhortations to ongoing sanctification, show that he does not think a final, completed sanctification can be claimed in this life. Though the Christian who has died with Christ is freed from the bondage of sin, and need not, ought not, and at his best does not sin, yet he must continually reaffirm his death with Christ and his yielding to God (Rom. 6:11, 13, 16).

John's warning that "if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," and his insistence on the continual forgiveness and advocacy of Christ available for all Christians (1 John 1:7 - 2:2), shows that he too does not think the Christian sinless.

So long as he is "in this body," the Christian continues to be tempted, continues sometimes to fall, growing more sensitive to sin as he lives nearer to God. But he will continue to repent, and to seek forgiveness, never acquiescing, never making excuses, never surrendering, but ever desiring to be further changed into Christ's image, stage by stage, as by the Lord, the Spirit

WHEN THE PAST OF THE BELIEVER IS BURIED, A NEW CREATURE RISES UP

Through faith, we receive the new nature that God has created for us, a brand-new nature which will enable us to reach the fullness of Christ’s stature. He throws out the old into the rubbish-bin, into Christ’s tomb, grants me a new nature and says: "This new nature is to make you into the likeness of Jesus". Jesus has settled everything perfectly. He has thrown the whole of our past into His own grave. When He died, he hauled our past wholesale into His death; when He rose from the dead, He made all things new. However, we need to believe that. Jesus’ gift to us is an astounding one: being created anew. Our fleshly eyes can’t see that new creature, but through faith, we can see what our eyes of flesh are unable to perceive. Through faith, we can see as God sees. The fact that all this was accomplished on the Cross shows us why the message of the Cross is so powerful. It always takes us back to the death of whatever is old, and to the renewing of all things in Christ.

FORGIVENESS IS ACCOMPLISHED BY A DEATH

"For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." (Romans 5:6). In verse 8, Paul says: "But God proved his love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8). That is the first part of the message of the Cross: "Christ died for us". "Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him." (Romans 5:9).

That first part of the message of the Cross is fundamentally based on the power of Jesus’ blood, which blots out our sins and imparts everlasting life. "For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." (Romans 5:10).

Throughout the rest of the chapter, Paul explains how death has ruled over human nature since Adam, owing to disobedience and sin. That disobedience and that sin caused the spiritual death of humanity, and death was handed down from father to son, right down to us. When we came into the world on this earth, we inherited death from our parents, and a whole spiritual, psychological, and physical inheritance blemished by sickness, ill-health, etc… That inheritance can be summed up in a single word: "death". No matter how clever we are, even if we can travel to the moon and to Mars, death presides over all those activities, and they all end up in death and in the grave.

The message of the Cross says: "Jesus died for you, to blot out your sins and to give you Life. Condemnation is no longer." Through a single act of justice and through faith in this message, we receive the justice of the Lord. And in verses 20 and 21, Paul says: "But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 5:20-21). So, the first part of the message of the Cross is the wonderful redemption that Jesus paid for by His blood: He paid the price that we owed, through His sacrifice on the Cross. His blood blotted out all our sins.

WE GAIN THE NEW NATURE BY RESURRECTION FACTOR

Immediately afterwards, Paul declares in chapter 6, verse 1, "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?" That amounts to saying: "You have not grasped the second part of the message of the Cross. Part one, in Romans 5, was: "Christ died for us." Now, in chapter 6, Paul says: "We have died to sin." Our old, sinful nature died in Him! Throughout chapter 6, Paul explains how vital it is to have the revelation of our being dead in Christ. In verse 3, he says: "Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death”?

FAITH BAPTISM – BY FAITH YOU IMMERSE INTO DEATH OF CHRIST – KILLING YOUR OLD NATURE AND RISING WITH CHRIST AS A NEW CREATURE

The only real Christian baptism is baptism into Jesus’ death and resurrection by faith. Water baptism in itself does not impart death in Jesus Christ, or resurrection in Him. Only faith in the message of the Gospel and in what Jesus has done can save us. To be baptized means: "fully immersed into". We have been fully immersed into the death of Jesus. "Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." (Romans 6:4).

As a Christian, you can walk daily in "newness of life" only if you understand that you died and were raised in Christ. "For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." (Romans 6:5). If you are truly dead to your past life, sin no longer rules in your present life. As soon as you move away from a position of faith, you fall, as Peter did when he walked on the water, then started to sink when he took his eyes off Jesus.

If you never take your eyes off Jesus and His Word, and if throughout the day, your spiritual understanding never departs from the fact that your past life died in Christ and that in Him you are a new creature, then through faith you can walk in that newness of life which is his gift to you

KNOW THAT THE OLD MAN IS CRUCIFIED AND DIED WITH CHRIST

"Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should be no longer be the slaves of sin." (Romans 6:6).

All our problems come from that "old man”: wrong behavior, jealousy, anger, spite, wrong feelings, uncleanness, etc… The "old man" was crucified with Christ. Notice the phrase used in verse 6: "knowing that…" We need to know it. Have you got that knowledge of it in your heart, as a revelation of the Holy Spirit? Do you know that you are a new creature? You need to say: "Yes, in Christ, I am a new creature. As long as I walk in faith in the Son of God, I am free from sin. I can only sin when I fall away from faith, back into the flesh."

YOU HAVE DIED AND HENCE ARE FREE FROM SIN

It must be likewise for us, "for he who has died has been freed from sin". (Romans 6:7). If you know that your "old man" is dead, because God says so and because His Word is true, if God says that we have been crucified in Christ, then it is a fact. It is not a promise, but something that was actually accomplished two thousand years ago. If God says that thanks to the Cross our old man is dead, then it is done. All we can do then is receive that by faith, because it is the written Word. If Scripture is an authoritative Word for you, then instantly the Holy Spirit will confirm it in your heart and you will say: "Amen, Lord! Even before I have seen anything yet, I believe it." Don’t wait to see before you believe, but believe first, and then you will see.

NOT DEATH BUT LIFE

"Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him." (Romans 6:8-9). Therefore, death no longer has dominion over us. "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in me has everlasting life." (John 6:47). Even if we have to pass through physical death, we know that what dies then is the body that has not yet risen. But our spirits are alive, eternally alive, so that we pass from this earth to heaven without a single second of separation! We are already alive in Christ. AS SOON AS OUR BODIES DIE, OUR LIVING SPIRITS ARE INSTANTLY REUNITED WITH CHRIST IN HEAVEN! A Christian who is born again in Christ cannot be engulfed in death. Only our physical bodies will know death, but they are already dead in Christ. I am already expecting the resurrection and the return of the Lord, who will change my body of humiliation into a glorified body. However, I am already alive in Christ and whatever befalls me, I remain alive in Christ. "For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life that he lives, he lives to God." (Romans 6:11).

In verse 11, Paul makes an important statement: "Likewise, you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord." Therefore, sin will no longer rule over us. We shall not sin.

In Romans 7, Paul explains that not only we have died to our former selves, but also to the Law.

Paul reveals to Christians that they have "died to the Law". That means they have died to every form of legalism. God’s commandments are good and perfect, but man’s carnal nature is unable to practice them.

From now on, we will walk according to the Law that God has written in our spirits. That inner Law is a life that enables us to produce the fruit of holiness. The Law declared: "Do this, don’t do that!" They endeavored to obey, but never managed to come into full obedience. All that finally becomes a set of laws and commandments that minister death instead of life. Being unable to practice them, he takes refuge in hypocrisy. In the presence of others, he manages to control himself and to appear to be what he is not. But in private his uncrucified nature surfaces sooner or later.

When a Christian walk in his new nature, he receives the commandments of God into his heart, into his spirit, and to practice them becomes natural for him; not because he has been told that he must, but because he has received them into his heart as a life-giving law.

In Old Testament times, men could not live a crucified life, that is to say as having died and risen in Christ, since they knew neither Christ nor the message of the Cross. The prophets spoke about those things, but they had not yet come to pass. So, the Old Testament saints could not walk in the Spirit as born-again believers, as we are required to do. They had grasped many things concerning God, had received revelations from the Lord, and they walked in the light they had received.

But the ultimate grace of new birth has been granted only to the Church of Jesus Christ, which is baptized in water and in the Spirit. The Church alone has been granted the revelation of her death and resurrection in Christ.

PURPOSE OF GOOD LAW OF GOD

God had given mankind a perfect law, but it cannot be practiced without the reality of the Cross. The purpose of that law was to show men that through their own personal human efforts they could not obey it. The law was given so that sin might be revealed. Men had to understand that they were born sinners, and that their human nature was a sinful one. That sin is in the flesh, in this body of sin. When God commanded: "You shall not kill," immediately that sin which is in the flesh declared: "I am going to kill." I would have been ignorant of sin if I had not received that God-given commandment. Sin, in my flesh, keeps on rebelling against God’s commandment and urging me to disobey.

So, God granted the Law because He knows how evil man’s heart is. Man was unaware of that, so God had to provide him with the evidence of it. Man had to understand that his heart was so evil that he could not obey God. Even the sincerest and the holiest of men, despite all their efforts to obey, never reached one hundred per cent obedience.

Under the stern tutorship of the Law, God wanted man to understand that he was a sinner who needed to be redeemed by Jesus. Man was thus made to understand that by nature he is sinful and unable to obey God’s Law.

Together with this conviction of sin, God was preparing the coming of His Messiah. Men were to see the only One who had ever obeyed the whole of the Law to perfection. The Lord Jesus was to come and satisfy all of God’s demands, and to bear the chastisement we deserved. Thus, God wanted to show man how much he needed divine grace, and in what way man was to be born again through Christ, so as to be filled with the Spirit of God and enabled to obey God’s Law from the heart, for men’s hearts were going to be changed on the inside.

Let us not, as Christians, repeat the same mistake as the Jews, placing ourselves under the Law, under a yoke of man-made requirements, or even of divine requirements. Unfortunately, many Christians spend the whole of their lives in the flesh, in defeat. The good news of the Gospel is that they can be overcomers.  

Paul knows that it was the Cross that freed him from the Law. He understands that he cannot obey in his own strength, but through faith in what Jesus accomplished on the Cross. When he exclaims: "Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Paul himself declares: "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh, the law of sin." (Romans 7:25).

In Romans 8, Paul adds: "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit."(Romans 8:1)

He knows that the body of sin has been destroyed and that as long as he walks in faith he walks in permanent victory, since he also says: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death." (Romans 8:2). That remains a fact as long as we consistently walk in faith. = LAW OF FAITH

In Christ, my old nature was crucified. In Christ, I am a new creature. When I come up against sin, I shall be in a position to resist and overcome it, for I am no longer a slave to sin.

Paul clearly states in Romans 8:3: "God… condemned sin in the flesh". For that reason, Jesus had to be made flesh in a body like ours, and that flesh had to be put to death. He had to take upon Himself all our sins, all our condemnation and go through death in our stead. Because He underwent death in His flesh, we can partake of His Life. God the Father has placed us in Christ, so that our sinful flesh might die through His death. "God did so by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh…".

Paul says: "For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: he condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit." (Romans 8: 3-4).

Let me say this again: to walk in the Spirit is to walk through faith in God’s everlasting Word. The Spirit always takes us back to the Word. To walk in the flesh is to walk according to our own human hearts and patterns of thought, according to what men tell us, or what the devil tells us.

RESURRECTION

The Holy Spirit comes and brings Jesus’ dead body back to life! All his bodily functions are restored to life. Resurrection Life is manifested in His physical body, now transformed and glorified! Death has been swallowed up by immortality and Resurrection!

Paul adds: "That selfsame Holy Spirit lives in you. He will restore life to your mortal body". That has a twofold meaning: first, He will heal your sicknesses and your infirmities, while you are still awaiting Resurrection. Then when Resurrection day comes, he will give you a glorious body that will live forever.

If we trust in what Jesus has accomplished on the Cross, we know that in Him there is the answer to all our problems, healing for all our sicknesses and infirmities, and deliverance from every crushing weight on our lives. Everything was accomplished by Jesus on the Cross! This same Jesus lives within us through His Holy Spirit! He wants to fill us with His everlasting Life, and has the power to do so. Are we going to believe it, and see it come to pass? "But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8).

There is power in the Cross. It is the power of God! It is on the Cross that everything was accomplished, that everything was dealt with.

Will the message of the Cross still be preached when Jesus returns, or will it have been replaced by those traditions and teachings of men that disfigure Jesus’ work, distort and minimize it, preventing the Lord from doing His perfect will in us?

"For the love of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if one died for all, then all died; and he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and rose again." (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).

"Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him thus no longer." (2 Corinthians 5:16).

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation". (2 Corinthians 5:17-18).

Now, we need to know one another according to the Spirit and no longer according to the flesh. STOP UTILITARIAN APPROACH TO PEOPLE.

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul says: "I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." The second part of the verse is vital: "the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20). Further on, in Galatians 5:24, Paul adds: "Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and its desires."

In Colossians 2, there is another wonderful passage: "buried with him in baptism, in which you also were raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead."? (Colossians 2:12). Baptism is primarily baptism into Jesus’ death. It is also water baptism by immersion, which is a burial. His death gave us Life, through His resurrection, and through His complete triumph on the Cross.

In 1 Peter 2:24 as in Isaiah 53, both aspects of the Cross appear in the same passages: "(Christ) who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness — by whose stripes you were healed." In just a few words, it conveys the whole of the work of the Cross. Since He bore our sins, He also bore the consequence of our sins, that is to say sickness and death.

In 2 Timothy 2, Paul says: "This is a faithful saying: For if we died with him, we shall also live with him. If we endure, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us." (2 Timothy 2:11-13). Those who are called by Jesus Christ to reign with Him are not just those whose sins have been blotted out by the blood of Jesus. They are the ones who have actually gone through death on the Cross, having received the message of crucified life with Christ, of death to the flesh, and of resurrection life in Christ.

If you are not walking as a crucified one, you have not fully received the message of the Cross. Perhaps you will be among the saved ones, those of whom Paul said: "he himself will be saved, yet as through fire." (1 Corinthians 3:15). However, you will not be able to take part in Christ’s reign. Only the overcomers, those who have actually passed through the Cross, will reign over the nations with Christ.