By: Dan Stone
The blood side of the cross deals with sins: actions or attitudes that break the law of God. The body side of the cross deals with sin, whose source was the old man, our old Adamic nature. He was the point of origin of sins. God's solution to our dilemma was to become what our problem was. But our problem wasn't our humanity, and it wasn't our environment - our parents, the school we went to, which side of the tracks we grew up on, or what we had or didn't have. Our problem always was a spiritual problem: sin. Jesus didn't just identify with our problem; He became the problem. "[God] made Him [Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). The cure was radical. Jesus became sin and joined our old man to Himself. Thus, our old man died with Him. And when our old man died, sin was eradicated from our inmost being. We died to sin.
Jesus didn't just die for us to forgive us. Through our spirit union with Him, He did something in us. He completely solved the sin problem. He took the sin nature out. As Paul said in Romans 6, he who has died is freed from - cut off, separated from - sin. Says who? "I do," God says. "And if you ever catch up with Me, you'll see it."
But if I have died to sin, why am I still tempted to sin? Why do I have this pull within me toward sin? Paul explained that in Romans 7:23. Though sin has been removed from our deepest inner being, it hasn't been eradicated from our body, our "members," as Paul put it. So we can still be pulled by the power of sin that dwells in our body but not in our spirit.
That's why it's so crucial to understand that our old man was crucified with Christ and that we died to sin. We are free from sin. That is a spirit-level truth. Because if we live by our soul's thoughts and feelings, we feel sin's temptation and think that's the real us. It feels as if the real us wants to sin, so we conclude there must still be something wrong with the real us.
To put it in theological terms, it feels like we have both an old nature (our old man) and a new nature (our new creation in Christ). Every outward appearance seems to verify that. The only thing that doesn't is what God says is true: "Knowing this, that our old [man] was crucified with Him"that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin."
The blood side of the cross labels us FORGIVEN. The body side of the cross labels us THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD (2 Corinthians 5:21). You're the righteousness of God. You're not just forgiven but perfect and complete. In the unseen and eternal, you are a finished product.
The old man manifested his nature through us: sins. The new creation in Christ - the new spirit man, born by God's Spirit in righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:24) - manifests Christ's nature through us: righteousness. As we learn to live from the truth of what has happened in our spirit, we will witness externally what God has already made an internal reality. We have been separated through death from the power of sin. We have become the righteousness of God. We have a total victory over sin.
So the first thing we died to when we were crucified with Christ is sin. The second thing we died to is the law. The church drowns in confusion over the issue of the law. It has misunderstood it since the first century. Paul's epistle to the Galatians was written to set the record straight on this issue. But much of the church remains confused.
The Scriptures could not be clearer about this. In exactly the same way that Paul said in Romans 6 that we died to sin, in Romans 7 he said that we died to the law:
Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God"But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter (Romans 7:4,6).
It's not just the ceremonial or civil aspects of the Old Testament law that we have died to. Many teach that. But after Paul stated that we have died to the law, he immediately provided an example - straight from the Ten Commandments: "You shall not covet" (Romans 7:7).
Just as we no longer have any relationship to sin, we no longer have any relationship to the law, including the moral law. Just as sin no longer has any power over us, the law no longer has any power over us. We have died to sin. We have died to the law.
Why did God crucify us to the law? Because although the law is holy and righteous and good (Romans 7:12), it has fulfilled its function in our lives. The law was given that it might reveal sin (Romans 3:20) and lead us to Christ:
Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, so that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor (Galatians 3:24-25).
Once a person becomes a believer, the law actually hinders the fulfillment of God's purpose for our lives: that He might express His life in and through us. That's because the law by its nature sets a standard that we automatically try in our own effort to live up to. And the moment we do, we are living according to the flesh, from our own self-effort, rather than by faith, trusting Christ's life in us. That is exactly what Paul chastised the Galatians about:
You foolish Galatians! "did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (Galatians 3:1-3).
God had to crucify us to the law, because as long as we were married to it (Romans 7:1-3) we were obligated to try (and fail) to keep it on our own. Having been crucified to it, we are free to allow Christ in us to naturally express His life through us. It is not us trying. It is us resting in Him as He produces His righteous fruit. (We will look at the issue of law and grace in more detail in chapter 13.)
The third thing we died to on the cross is ourselves as our point of reference. Paul testified in Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
It's impossible for a person to know their union with Christ, and live out of that union, if they don't know they have died with Christ. If I think the old me is still alive, I am still my point of reference. If I am still my point of reference, I am still trying to correct me, straighten me up, make something out of me, or do something to change me. As long as my emphasis is on me, it can't be upon Christ in me. So I'm a divided person. Oh, I can still live in the Romans 7 trap - what I want to do I don't do; what I don't want to do I do - but I've had enough of that, haven't you? I want to be out of that. What Paul tells us in Romans 6 and 2 Corinthians 5 is that we really are out of that.
When Paul poses the question, "Shall we continue in sin just to prove the reality of grace?" he concludes, "People who go on living like that don't really know they died in Christ." In other words, their point of reference hasn't been changed. Their point of reference is still themselves, and they think they're no good and want to sin. Consequently, they're excited about all of this grace of God they can keep drawing on. Paul would say, "Yes, you can keep on drawing on the grace of God for everything you ever do, for every sin you ever commit. But why? Why not instead draw on the life of God?"
A friend of mine once said to me, "You know, until I really knew that I had been crucified with Christ, there was no way for me to get rid of me. Because I was still alive to me." It's so true. Until we know we've died, we're never going to be free of ourselves, and we will never experience union. We will still be a problem to ourselves. The spotlight will still be on us. That's where most Christians are living their life: "I've got to produce for God."
Until the full work of the cross - our death and resurrection with Christ - becomes a reality to us, we will try to produce something that's not required of us. Our focus will still be on us instead of Christ in us. And we will neglect to be involved in the glorious activity of God as He lives out through us for others. We participate in God's life when we see that we died to ourselves as our point of reference. Christ in us is now our point of reference in all things.
Everything necessary for living the Christian life is provided in the cross, completely and properly understood. It's all in the cross. God hasn't omitted one thing from the cross that is necessary for us to allow Him to live His life through us.
We must experientially know both sides of the cross: Christ died for us (the blood) and we died and were raised with Him (the body). |