NEWNESS OF LIFE
LIBERTY AND LOVE #106
“Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin” (Rom. 6:4-6). Notice that “the old man was crucified with him.” And this is something that we “know.”
How do we know? The same way we know anything in the spiritual realm—by revelation. God has told us. That is all there is to it. God says you are dead with Christ and it is a matter of faith from then on. Things are not true because we have faith in them—we have faith in them because they are true. That act of accepting something as true is what faith is. We should never make the mistake of confusing faith with facts. Facts generate faith. Faith can never cause something to be true.
“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts” (Rom. 13:14). To be sure, Christianity is a matter of what you take off—the old man, with all his ways. “If indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:21-24).
Notice that the old man is to be “put off.” The old man must go! He never did you any good in the first place, so to bid him farewell should be an occasion for joy if your spiritual faculties are attuned to the ways of God’s Spirit. The truth that “is in Jesus” tells you that with joy you may put the self-nature aside. All that is representative of “your former conduct” is to be “put off.” The old way of thinking and behaving must give way to something new. Therefore, as we put something off, in the same way, we are to put something on. The “new man” is to be put on. This new man is the part of our spirits that are under a continuous influence of the Holy Spirit whereby we are being transformed into the image of Christ. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18).
God has predestined us to be changed into his image. Therefore, the new man that we put on looks like him. The image of Christ in all its perfection and glory arises within us as we continually yield more and more to the “new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Col. 3:10).
The old man reflected the image of the world in all its horror and ugliness. But in Christ, all is made new (2 Cor. 5:17). Nothing from the past can haunt us any longer, for the old man has been put off. None of his wrongful decisions or woeful transgressions matter any longer, for he is gone. We must disown him and deny that we ever knew him! He does not think the way that the new man thinks; therefore, to try and reason with the old man who was dominated by the self-nature is an exercise in utter futility. Do not reason with him or try to change him. Do not even actively remember him. Put him off. Run from him! Consider him dead. The image of Jesus now is your focus.
Remember the process begins with your putting something off and then putting something on. The new man who reflects the image of Jesus cannot live in your spirit with the old man. “I have been crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20). Rest, dear believer, in your “deadness.” You don’t have to claw and fight against the enemy, if you believe that you are dead with Christ. You owe nothing to the old self-nature, for it has been defeated and its power can no longer dominate you. Paul says, “Sin shall not have dominion over you.” And the reason is because you are dead with Christ and free from Satan’s tyranny. My life will look much different than what it has looked in times past if I really believe this is so. And so will yours.
Through baptism we are “buried with Him” (Rom. 6:4). When was he buried? Some twenty centuries ago. Notice the text does not say that he is buried with us in the water, but that we are buried with him! This burial points again to our death with Christ, for the only suitable course of action to take with the dead is to afford them a “proper burial.” Baptism expresses our identification with Christ, which means that what happened to him happened to us.
Dewayne Dunaway
