ROMANS 6:3-7 JUSTIFIED FROM SIN It may be that those whom God has saved sometimes forget what baptism really means. When a believer is baptized, they have confessed they have chosen against sin and their old life. Christ had died unto sin on his or her behalf. He has been buried. Burial is the last link a person has with earth. All earthly ties have been severed and the whole of the past is ended at burial. What great joy it is to us that Christ has been raised up from among the dead and believers are raised up after a true likeness of His resurrection. Baptism has to do with death, not cleansing from sin; with burial, the ending of a former link to earth and that by a true likeness of Christ's resurrection, we enter a new life.
This is not baptism by the Holy Spirit into the Body of Christ. This is not an act of bringing about the death of the old man. This is a testimony that we are on new ground apart from Adam's family who was our representative head. Now our new life is based on a new representative (federal) Head - our Risen Lord Jesus Christ. We were unto His death baptized. Now we are walking about in a new life. This is not just the way we live or the manner of living we choose. This is a new kind of life. People in the Bible times who were raised from the dead did not have a new kind of life. They got their old life back again. The newness of life we live because we are joined to Christ in His risen life, is because we have been made to grow together with Him. A graft into a tree gets its life from the same place as the tree itself. We have been crucified with Christ in the reality of His death. Now we have received the reality of His life, which in baptism, we testify to. That is why believers do not continue in sin. We have this new life. Paul said, "To me to live is Christ." We live in the effects of what Christ did when He bore our sins in His own body on the tree."
Now our old body of sin is annulled. Our old man, as we were in Adam our federal head in the past, has been crucified with Christ, and we have put off the old man. Yet he exists, so those things that were our manner of life before, we put off, and put on the new man which is "created in Christ Jesus unto good works." Our spirit has experienced "the redemption that is in Christ Jesus," but our bodies have not. Our inward man has been made new by the Holy Spirit but not our bodies. So, we have an on-going "war against the flesh."
These truths have to do with what we are, not of what we have done. We have been crucified with Christ. We have been buried with Him by baptism into death. We have been raised to walk in newness of life. Our relationship to sin is clearly stated, "We have died to sin." Our relationship to God also is plain, "We are alive to God." Now we walk in faith believing what God has said. We are in Christ, therefore our relationship to sin is the same as that of our Lord Jesus Christ. His death for sin happened once. It is not something that has to be redone. Our response is to consider that as a real fact. The power of sin has been annulled. We are declared righteous - freed from sin - justified from sin. This is not a gradual working out of efforts on our part or even on God's part. This is a fact that God Himself has accomplished and declares done.
When we as believers reckon or acknowledge that this is true, life then becomes what God intended. We "walk in the light." We are "children of light." We are "light in the Lord." The realization of the glory of this fact is a liberty that cannot be described because we are now freed to love and serve the Lord empowered by the Holy Spirit. Our joy is not in what we may be able to accomplish from day to day, but in what has been accomplished for us by God and is reckoned by Him to be done forever.
What glory, what joy to walk and live in this new life! No conflict is necessary, no grief and no strife - To make us accepted in Christ by our God - For He has freed us from being bondmen to the world.
The fact of our identification with Christ is made clear. Through His death, burial and resurrection we have been brought near To Him so that in Him we died, were buried and rose again - And in the power of newness of life our new life begins.
Now we are raised like Christ Himself was raised. To the glory of the Father we now give Him our praise. We are so close to Christ that together we grow. And the life of God in His people to others He shows.
It is a true fact that in Christ I have died. The sin-principle in me no more does abide. In baptism the burial signifies an end To the Adam-life to which we did once attend.
The resurrection of Christ indicates that I am risen too The life of the past which claimed me is forever through. This power of new life has freed me from the power of sin. And the life I now live is a new life lived by faith in Him.
We do not now serve sin in this new life of ours. The Spirit of God to this new man gives us the power To do what God wants and that gives me great joy; For I can experience victory over sins that annoy.
"O God and Father of the new life I have: I find this new life to be so satisfying that I would never want anything else. And yet, I am aware of the nature that is within me, that is so deceitful and would seek to claim priority over my mind and actions. O God, in Thee do I trust to keep this weak servant from falling and dishonoring Thee. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen."