“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” (Rom. 6:6)
The death of the old man doesn’t begin in Romans 6:6 but in Romans 6:3-4 - “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
Prayerfully consider, and seriously meditate upon, the entire process of our identification with Christ. See yourself as spiritually baptized into His death. See yourself as spiritually buried with Him by baptism. And see yourself as spiritually raised up from the dead with Christ. Do not ever forget that His crucifixion became your new spiritual reality. Do not ever forget that God allowed you to be transformed spiritually as Christ was transformed literally. His sacrifice became your sacrifice. His death became your death. His burial became your burial. His resurrection became your resurrection. The newness of His life after His resurrection became your “newness of life.”
As a result of your death, burial, and resurrection with Christ, you are now and forever victorious over sin and death as Christ is forever victorious.
How can the old man, everything that we were in Adam, survive a transformation as complete and as glorious as that? How can the old man ever possibly survive a death, burial, and resurrection with the Lord Jesus Christ?
We are living His resurrection life right now, which is how we have victory over sin and death, because we have spiritually died and risen with Christ. Christ made this victory possible by taking all that we were in Adam and put that old man upon that old cross 2,000 years ago and crucified him. Our old man stayed bound in the grave, and a new man rose from that grave in resurrection life with Christ our Lord! Pastor Holtorff once wrote that “Our only hope, our only asset for victory in this warfare is a grave back there somewhere in which this old man was laid alongside of Jesus Christ.” (From “Christ Our Life”, Bible Study for Bereans, December, 1936)
Never forget that when we place our faith in Him, we are united with Christ in an eternal union. We are one with Christ. We are in Christ, and He is in us. Our identification with Christ and His work on the cross so thoroughly transformed us that we were made into completely new creatures (2 Cor. 5:17). “Behold all things are become new”!
All things new!
Does not all things mean all things? Does not new mean new?
How can we be completely new creatures, all things new, being dead, buried, and resurrected with Christ, transformed by the Spirit, walking in a newness of life, and yet, all that we were in Adam, embodied by the phrase the “old man,” somehow didn’t die after being crucified with Christ?
Make no mistake.
When we were resurrected with Christ – the old man didn’t make the trip. To say that the old man didn’t die, or that he’s still alive hanging on that cross, is an affront to the glorious doctrine of our identification with Christ and His all-sufficient work on the cross.
How can all things become new if the old things of the old nature in the old man were still alive in us?
God didn’t partially transform us. He completely transformed us into completely new creatures. Everything we were in Adam is gone forever and we’re now completely righteous as His Son because He completely remade us spiritually into completely new creatures. Was not Christ’s work on the cross so all-sufficient as to be able to put to death the old man in order to give us a new man? Was not Christ’s work on the cross so all-sufficient as to be able to make all things new? And was not Christ’s work on the cross so all-sufficient as to be able to make us literally freed from sin?
This isn’t just about the interpretation of Romans 6:6, as to whether it’s a positional truth or a practical truth. This, to me, goes back to the heart of the all-sufficiency of Christ’s work on cross and to the heart of our spiritual identification with Christ, which was so perfect that God was more than able to crucify that old man, to spiritually crucify everything we were in Adam, and He was more than able to transform us into wholly new creatures so that all we need to do is to renew our minds, to reckon as true what Christ has already accomplished in us, to put off in our thinking all the old ways and old habits of an old nature now gone, because we are now freed from sin with a new nature.
We no longer look up at the Lord through the eyes of the old man because the old man is dead. We now look upon ourselves through the eyes of the new man, as God sees us in Christ, as righteous as His Son. We reckon these truths as a reality, right here, right now, and we live according to those truths! That is at the core of putting off the old man and putting on the new man.
A pastor once told me that if I’m to convince him that the old man is dead, then I need to show him every verse in Paul’s letters to prove my case, which is funny, because all I need is Rom. 6:6. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him…”
Do you know what “crucified” means in the Greek? It means crucified! Imagine that!
Do you know how Webster’s 1828 defines “crucify?” “To put to death by nailing the hands and feet to a cross. To mortify. To destroy.”
How can the old man be alive in us when he is put to death with Christ? What man has ever been crucified and lived? Was Christ only positionally crucified? Did not Christ literally die for us on that old rugged cross? Did any of the malefactors who were crucified alongside Jesus live? Has anyone in the Bible or in history ever survived a crucifixion?
The word crucified leaves no room for survival. If you’ve been crucified, you’ve been put to death. Further, there is absolutely no room whatsoever for any chance of survival if you’ve been crucified with Christ, because Christ literally died on that cross!
Let me ask another question.
If the old man is somehow synonymous with the flesh, then how can our flesh be crucified with Christ? How is that even possible? Christ died on that cross, and yet, our flesh still lives. One pastor suggested that the old man is still alive in the sense that he’s still hanging on the cross! How can that be when Rom. 6:3-4 speak of our spiritual identification with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection as a one-time event the moment we believed? How can we still be dealing with an old nature that somehow went into a time machine to perpetually hang on that cross some 2,000 years ago when our souls have already been declared by God as dead, buried, and risen with Christ?
How does that make any sense?
Here’s another verse, Rom. 8:9, in which Paul wrote, “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit…” If the old man is synonymous with the flesh, then doesn’t this verse state unequivocally that you are not in your old man anymore but in the Spirit?
Charles Henry Mackintosh once wrote, “But what is Christianity? It is something entirely new — heavenly — spiritual — divine. It is based upon the cross of Christ, in the which the first man came to his end — where sin was put away — judgement borne — the old man crucified and put out of God’s sight for ever, so far as all believers are concerned. The cross closes, for faith, the history of the first man.” (From his wonderful booklet, Man of God, pg. 6).
Arno Gaebelein once wrote, “God therefore does no longer behold the believer as in Adam, but he sees him in Christ; the old man has been put to death in the death of Christ ‘that the body of sin might be annulled that henceforth we should not serve sin.’ God looks upon the believer as being dead with Christ to sin.” (In his introduction to his Romans commentary)
Exactly! How can we be dead with Christ to sin if everything we were in Adam before we were saved, which included our bondage to sin, is still alive and active inside of us?
“Ah,” some might say, “look at what Paul says right after that phrase.” Okay. “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Does this not mean that the old man is somehow synonymous with the flesh? Absolutely not. This verse makes a distinction between the old man and the flesh. The old man is crucified, but the body of flesh still lives. We’ve only been thoroughly transformed spiritually whereas the physical body still remains.
The only thing left to complete our salvation is the death of our corrupted bodies, because everything about us spiritually has been transformed to make us as righteous as Christ. We would not be as righteous as Christ if our old natures, all that we were in Adam in utter bondage to sin in the flesh, were still alive in us. The reason Paul says “that henceforth we should not serve sin” is because THE OLD MAN IS DEAD!
His death made us free from the bondage of sin in the flesh!
[This was an excerpt from Joel’s book Empowered by His Grace.]