08/26/2026
Dear Saints,
In his “gospel for believers” (Romans 6-8) the apostle Paul gives us a new way to see ourselves as God’s children. For those who are born again of the Spirit he insists that we count on the fact that we ourselves are “dead to sin, but alive unto God”. Hard as that may be to really believe (especially when our own flesh flashes and does some stupid thing), we are called upon to count on our new identity in Christ as a rock-solid fact. While we still live in the same natural body we were born with we, ourselves, have become a brand-new person! The old person we were in Adam was crucified and buried with Christ, and a new person was created and raised up with him. The leftover conditioning from who we were (the old beliefs, assumptions, habits, and coping strategies) otherwise know as “the flesh”, is no longer our true identity even though it is still present in our natural bodies. The persons we are now are dead to sin and alive unto God!
Because this good news is so unbelievable, it takes a while for most believers to come to the realization that God has made them brand new persons. This is why Paul insisted on telling us that we were joined to Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection and assuring us that our “old man” is crucified once and for all. Our responsibility is to simply believe what God says about us is really true “for the just shall live by faith”. Believing that we really are dead to sin and alive unto God frees us from our natural obsession with sin and allows us to actually think about and love others. Instead of asking, “Is it right or is it wrong?” we now ask, “What do you want me to do to love others like Jesus today?” Believing that we are dead indeed unto sin and alive unto God generates in us the hope we need to set us free to love others.
In addition to the good news of our new identity in Christ Paul tells us in Romans chapter 7 that we are also dead to the Law. Using an analogy of a married woman being bound by the law to her husband, Paul states that if her husband dies, she is loosed from the law. By this he means for us to understand that death is what frees us from the law. In the fourth verse he concludes that believers are dead to the law by the body of Christ so that we, like the woman, are free to be married to another. This gives us even more insight into the good news! Putting ourselves into his illustration as the woman who was married, we also are “married” to our first husband, the law. What he means by this is the way we have always lived under the law by trying to make our decisions on the basis of our own knowledge of good and evil. We try as hard as we can to know what is right and wrong and are constantly trying to do what is right and not do what is wrong. No matter how hard we try we always end in failure.
Being dead to the law means that we can now be “married” to Christ in order to bring forth fruit unto God. The term “married” refers again to our union with Christ so that he now directs our lives according to his own personal instruction. Again, the question is no longer, “is it right or is it wrong?” but “What do you want me to do, Lord?” Being alive unto God means that the new persons he has made us to be are inseparably joined to Christ. We are one with him as a husband and wife are one. We no longer have to figure what is right or wrong according to our own knowledge of good and evil. We can trust Jesus to lead us by his indwelling Spirit. Our Christian life is no longer lived according to a morale code or set of rules and regulations we must follow but is lived out in relationship with Jesus leading us by his Spirit within. We no longer serve in “oldness of the letter” as a duty or obligation, but in “newness of the Spirit” as a privilege. ~John
