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Consider Yourself Dead To Sin
Consider Yourself Dead To Sin
“Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11)
Our conversion marks a dividing line in our life. We WERE, but NOW ARE. All of us who are now children of God have such a dividing line. The dividing line of course is marked in historical fact and actions (here our obedience in being baptized because of our faith and repentance). Yet the dividing line has an inner concept that has to constantly be acknowledged and followed: CONSIDER YOURSELF. We NOW must consider ourselves DEAD TO SIN.
Being an internal concept, people often discount the actual change such makes and shows in our actual physical existence. Such a misconception is the only way one could ‘continue in sin’ after such a life-changing encounter. In believing and being baptized, God has done so many things for us: for example just in chapter 5 of Romans
We WERE: ungodly, sinners, enemies of God, and facing the wrath of God in judgment.
BUT NOW, because of Jesus we ARE justified (declared right), saved from wrath, reconciled to God.
Or again in Col.3:11-13, having been buried in baptism:
We WERE dead in transgressions and uncircumcision of heart.
BUT GOD has made us ALIVE, circumcised of heart, and forgiven of our transgressions.
So NOW, I must bring for the fruits of repentance. Verses 12-13 give us the outward picture of such a change of the inward man:
(12) Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,
(13) and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. Romans 6:12-13
What do your neighbors see? Yes, there will be mistakes, there will be temporary missteps, even ‘relapses’, but they all must be temporary and NOT the normal pattern.
How do you now see your relationship with sin? Dead or alive? If you have been raised in newness of life in baptism, what is your life like now?
Hugh DeLong
