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Alive to Christ, Dead to Sin by Fr. Reid Hensarling
Romans 6:1-11
Previously those who did not know Christ were dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1). Now that we are saved in Christ we are dead to sin. Becoming a Christian is a decisive step; it is the beginning of faith and it means the end of sin. We are constantly to commit ourselves to God and become dead to all evil. After this life, sin will be over and believers will be raised up to live without sin in God’s presence eternally. The reign of sin is broken in the believer’s life and the reign of grace begins. Acquiescence in sin is incompatible with being a Christian.
The act of baptism is an act of incorporation into Christ. It is the death of Christ that makes anyone a Christian, and apart from that death baptism is meaningless. Christ’s death alone is the ground of our justification, and when we make that our own by faith we are united with Christ – untied with him in his death, united with him in his burial, united with him in his rising again, united with him in life. In baptism we are buried with Christ. An old way of life passes away completely. His death was followed by resurrection, and our death to sin and our baptism into his death are followed by our being raised to new life. We now walk or live in newness of life.
To come to Christ means the complete end of a whole way of life. The “old man” has been crucified and is no longer supreme (Gal. 2:20). This does not mean that the believer lives untroubled by the possibility of sinning. There is a sense in which a death has taken place once and for all in the believer, but there is another in which he dies every day. This crucifixion has a purpose – so that the body of sin might be dealt with finally and absolutely. The sinner’s terrible situation is completely changed by the work of Christ on the cross. The purpose or the result of his crucifixion is that we should no longer be slaves to sin. Until the crucifixion we had been slaves to sin, without hope and without God (Eph. 2:12). In our natural state we were unable to resist sin and thus were slaves. But, thanks be to God, this is no longer true because Christ has delivered us. The person who has died with Christ enters into Christ’s atonement and is justified from their sin.
Union with Christ in his atonement involves union with him in spiritual life and sanctification. Our death with Christ is not an end in itself; by faith we go on to life with Christ. There is a death for the believer to an old way of living, but as the believer identifies with Christ in his death he enters into newness of life and day by day lives with Christ. Our belief that we will live with Christ is not baseless because it rests upon our knowledge of the fact of his resurrection from the dead.
Believers face battles with sin every day. As long as we are on this earth we are never free from it. Christ dealt with sin once and for all, paid its penalty, removed its sting, and won the victory over it. Since Christ died to sin and since the believer is dead with Christ, the believer is dead to sin and is to recognize the fact of that death. This does not mean that he or she is immune to sinning. Paul does not say that sin is dead, but that the believer is to count himself as dead to it. He feels temptation and sometimes sins, but the sin of the unbeliever is the natural consequence of the fact that he is a slave to sin, whereas the sin of the believer is quite out of character since he has been set free. Once united to Christ he must count himself as dead to the reign of sin forever. By the grace of God he or she is alive to God, and ready to serve the Lord all the days of their life.
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