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Topic: Our death with Christ: a historic fact
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Eden
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Our Death With Christ A Historic Fact
Romans 6:1-11 is the passage before us now. In these verses it is made clear that the death of the Lord Jesus is representative and inclusive. In His death we all died.
None of us can progress spiritually without seeing this. Just as we cannot have justification if we have not seen Him bearing our sins on the Cross, so we cannot have sanctification if we have not seen Him bearing us on the Cross. Not only have our sins been laid on Him but we ourselves have been put into Him.
How did you receive forgiveness? You realized that the Lord Jesus died as your Substitute and bore your sins upon Himself, and that His Blood was shed to cleanse away your defilement.
When you saw your sins all taken away on the Cross what did you do? Did you say, ‘Lord Jesus, please come and die for my sins’? No, you did not pray at all; you only thanked the Lord You did not beseech Him to come and die for you, for you realized that He had already done it.
But what is true of your forgiveness is also true of your deliverance. The work is done. There is no need to pray but only to praise. God has put us all in Christ, so that when Christ was crucified we were crucified also.
Thus there is no need to pray: ‘I am a very wicked person; Lord, please crucify me’. That is all wrong. You did not pray about your sins; why pray now about yourself?
Your sins were dealt with by His Blood, and you were dealt with by His Cross. It is an accomplished fact. All that is left for you to do is to praise the Lord that when Christ died you died also; you died in Him. Praise Him for it and live in the light of it. “Then believed they his words: they sang his praise” (Psalm 106:12).
Do you believe in the death of Christ? Of course you do. Well, the same Scripture that says He died for us says also that we died with Him. Look at it again: “Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
That is the first statement, and that is clear enough; but is this any less clear? “Our old man was crucified with him” (Romans 6:6). “We died with Christ” (Romans 6:8).
When are we crucified with Him? What is the date of our old man’s crucifixion? Is it tomorrow? Yesterday? Today? In order to answer this it may help us if for a moment I turn Paul’s statement round and say, ‘Christ was crucified with (i.e. at the same time as) our old man’.
Some of you came here in twos. You traveled to this place together. You might say, My friend came here with me’, but you might just as truly say, ‘I came here with my friend’.
Had one of you come three days ago and the other only today you could not possibly say that; but having come together you can make either statement with equal truth, because both are statements of fact. So also in historic fact we can say, reverently but with equal accuracy, ‘I was crucified when Christ was crucified’ or ‘Christ was crucified when I was crucified’, for they are not two historical events, but one.
My crucifixion was “with him”. Has Christ been crucified? Then can I be otherwise? And if He was crucified nearly 2,000 years ago, and I with Him, can my crucifixion be said to take place tomorrow?
Can His be past and mine be present or future? Praise the Lord, when He died in my stead, but He bore me with Him to the Cross, so that when He died I died. And if I believe in the death of the Lord Jesus, then I can believe in my own death just as surely as I believe in His.
See your sins forgiven by the shed blood and you the sinner crucified with Christ ON the cross, not in the future, not now, but when Jesus Christ died our sins were forgiven and we were crucified with Him because God says so.
We must have faith for both parts of what God did, not just for forgiveness of sins. We must also have faith that God nailed the sinner to the cross with Christ.
Romans 6:6, Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.
Yes, but DO you know it?
Eden
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