Christians who do not know they have died with Christ end up living two lives. On the one hand they are trying to walk in the new life they have received in Christ, but on the other they are trying to reform the old life they inherited from Adam.
This is a recipe for misery. No one wants to be one person on Sunday and another on Monday. Live like this and it’ll tear you apart.
The cure for double-minded Christianity is not to “try harder” or “lift your game” or “follow these ten steps to a new you.” It is a revelation that your old self was crucified with Christ.
What is your old self?
It is the person you used to be before you met Jesus. It is who you were in Adam before you were put into Christ. Paul wrote that “we know that our old self was crucified with him” (Rom 6:6). Look at his choice of words; was crucified. Past tense. Done and dusted. Dead and buried.
Do you see how liberating this is?
The old man was unfixable. He was broken, corrupt, and completely screwy. He was a slave to sin and no amount of reform could fix him. But the good news is he’s dead. That incorrigible old so-and-so was nailed to the cross with Jesus and he no longer lives.
If the average believer could grasp hold of this truth—I died—half of our church programs would cease immediately. We would stop trying to reform the old man because the old man is dead.
Want to really live with Jesus?
Then let this truth take root in your heart: “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” (Gal 2:20).
Read more at http://www.escapetoreality.org
