Transformed by Union: Living in Christ's Victory

We are engaged at this moment in this argument you remember that the Apostle is working out in these verses. He is dealing with this objection that is brought to his preaching of justification by faith, namely that it seems to suggest that we should therefore continue in sin that grace may abound. That, he says, is impossible because we died to sin, and how can we who died to sin live any longer therein? [00:41:43]

The Apostle takes the trouble to make this statement, which, as I say, is in a sense a repetition of what he's already been saying because he's anxious to emphasize that last statement in verse 4, which is again, even so we also should walk in newness of life. That's the point he wants to get over, that we are walking in this newness of life. [00:22:51]

The big thing still to hold in our minds is this: what matters above everything else is our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. We are baptized into him, and it is because we are united with him by this baptism that these things are true of us. Let us never forget that the whole point of saying it all is to answer that false objection mentioned in verse 1. [00:59:22]

What has happened to him literally and actually happens to us spiritually. There is a spiritual sense in which it is true to say that we have died with him. We didn't die with him literally, physically. We shall never know the agony that he knew in his death. But what is important is this: because of our spiritual relationship to him, the effects and consequences of his actual literal death become ours. [00:58:24]

The Apostle is here concerned to show how we can never continue in sin that grace may abound. Well, now that refers to something which happens to us in this life and in this world. He's not arguing about what we're going to be like after we have risen from the dead in a literal sense. He's concerned about the life we live as Christian believers in this world, in the here and now. [00:11:49]

We are not left in the grave; we have risen to newness of life, and we are to walk in newness of life. Now, this is what the Apostle is concerned about. Not only have we died to the guilt of sin, we are dead to the whole reign and realm of sin. That's the thing he's emphasizing, and here's the final proof of it. We are so out of its territory that we are in this new territory. [00:16:12]

The old man was crucified with him. Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be dishonored or might be rendered void or ineffective, that henceforth we should not be slaves of sin. Very well, let's take it as he's put it. The first thing we have to look at is this expression, knowing this. [00:24:58]

The old man is the man that I used to be in Adam. How can it mean anything else here? It's been the whole context since chapter 5, verse 12. I was a man in Adam; I am now a man in Christ. What's the old man? Well, it's that man that I was and which I no longer am. We have seen so abundantly that that old man that I was in Christ is the one that was crucified with Christ. [00:29:55]

The whole trouble with us, as the New Testament is, is that we don't realize who and what we are. We still go on thinking we're the old man, and we're trying to do things to the old man. It's been done. The old man was crucified with Christ. He's non-existent; he's not there. The man that you were in Adam, if you're a Christian, has gone out of being. He's out of existence; he has no reality at all. [00:39:14]

We are called upon once more to do what the father of the faith did, Abraham. You remember, we are told all about it there in the fourth chapter, where he puts it like this: therefore it is by faith that it might be by grace, to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. [00:40:49]

I wouldn't know that I was in Adam if God didn't tell me in his word. I wouldn't know that I have been baptized into Christ unless he told me. This is an action of the Holy Spirit, which is non-experimental. The Holy Spirit baptizes me into Christ. It isn't the baptism of the Spirit; it's the baptism by the Spirit. He baptizes me into union with Christ. I know that because I find it in this word. [00:43:48]

My salvation is so sure. It is because God himself, by the Spirit, has put me into Christ that nothing can ever take me out of Christ, and my future, eternal future, my final glorification is guaranteed and certain and sure. Whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he hath also glorified. [00:46:31]