Romans 6::6 says “We know that our old personality [lit, “old man,” the nature we inherited from Adam] was impaled with him, that our sinful body might be made inactive, that we should no longer go on being slaves to sin.
In our previous article "What did Paul mean by spirit, soul and body?", we saw what Jesus said about our worship, that we should worship Jehovah “with spirit,” not with our soul, that is, by Jehovah’s spirit working in our spirit, and “in truth” that is “in reality,” and not by mimicking “spiritual” acts with our soul. - John 4: 23, 24
But the question is how?
To accomplish this Jehovah has to:
Remove the penalty for sins. Then he could put his spirit in us and regenerate our spirit making us God conscious again.
Deliver us from the power of sin. To do this he has to get rid of our Adamic nature since that is where sin operates.
Did you notice the difference between sins and sin? Penalty for sins, plural and the power of sin, singular.
Sin is character; sins are conduct.
Sin is the centre; sins are the circumference.
Sin is the root; sins are the fruit.
Sin is the producer; sins are the product.
Sin is the sire; sins are his offspring.
Sin is the fountain; sins are its flow.
Sin is what we are; sins are what we do.
So Jehovah God has to not only forgive us our sins on a legal basis, he also has to remove the very nature of sin in us.
These are accomplished by one act. By Jesus' death on the torture stake. On the torture stake Jesus substituted for us and represented us, that is, he died for us, and in his death, we died with him. Both these aspects are important to understand. The first removes the penalty for sins, the other delivers us from the power of sin.
Removing the penalty of sins
When Jesus died on the torture stake he died for us. He shed his blood for us in order to remove the penalty for sins. He substituted for us. When we have faith in his death for us we have forgiveness of our sins. His blood removes the penalty for our sins.
Matthew 26:28
“For this means my ‘blood of the covenant,’ which is to be poured out in behalf of many for forgiveness of sins.
Ephesians 1:7
“By means of him we have the release by ransom through the blood of that one, yes, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his undeserved kindness.
Romans 5:8, 9
“But God recommends his own love to us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more, therefore, since we have been declared righteous now by his blood, shall we be saved through him from wrath.”
When we accept God's forgiveness through the blood of Christ he declares us righteous. This is not just for a few chosen people. This is for all who exercise faith in Christ's blood. Our sins, past, present and future, are forever obliterated by his blood. Forgiven and forgotten. Never to be applied to us, ever. We receive carte blanche forgiveness. Forgiveness of our sins depends on Christ's blood and his blood alone. It does not depend on anything else.
Now when we put faith in this aspect of his death for us, then Jehovah God puts his spirit in us and regenerates our spirit. We have to believe that Christ's blood completely forgives all our sins. This is the first aspect of the Good News. The holy spirit of God is a free gift to be appropriated by anyone through faith in Christ's blood. The reproductive seed of God is then sown within us, regenerating our spirit. We will learn more about the holy spirit operating within us, regenerating us from within, in another article.
After we hear the Good News and put faith in Christ's blood we find we are cleansed. Forgiven completely. It's thrilling. But soon we find that something is terribly wrong. We increasingly find that even though we have been forgiven our sins, we are still under the power of sin.
When we understand how Jehovah has freely forgiven our sins we begin to appreciate his love and undeserved kindness. We then think that we need to now straighten our lives and begin to do things for him. We are now concerned about serving Jehovah with all our strength. We try hard to live by Bible principles. We are concerned about our doing, not with our being; we are distressed by what we have done rather than by what we are. We don't really realize our nature, what it is that we have inherited from Adam. We don't realize that no matter how much we live by Bible principles, these only result in outward actions. They do not change our inner rotten nature that we have inherited from Adam.
Notice what Watchman Nee says: “At the beginning of our Christian life we are concerned with our doing, not with our being; we are distressed rather by what we have done than by what we are. We think that if only we could rectify certain things we should be good Christians, and we set out therefore to change our actions. But the result is not what we expected. We discover to our dismay that it is something more than just a case of trouble on the outside -- that there is in fact more serious trouble on the inside. We try to please Jehovah, but find something within that does not want to please Him. We try to be humble, but there is something in our very being that refuses to be humble. We try to be loving, but inside we feel most unloving. We smile and try to look very gracious, but inwardly we feel decidedly ungracious. The more we try to rectify matters on the outside the more we realize how deep-seated the trouble is within. Then we come to Jehovah and say, `Jehovah, I see it now! Not only what I have done is wrong; I am wrong.' The conclusion of Romans 5:19 is beginning to dawn upon us. We are sinners. We are members of a race of people who are constitutionally other than what God intended us to be. By the Fall a fundamental change took place in the character of Adam whereby he became a sinner, one constitutionally unable to please God; and the family likeness which we all share is no merely superficial one but extends to our inward character also. We have been "constituted sinners". ”
Romans 5:19, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man many were constituted sinners.....”. So we are sinners in our very constitution, in our very nature. So our nature has to be dealt with.
Delivering us from the power of sin
It is not enough to have my sins forgiven, I need to be delivered from its power, from its powerful clutches. So Jehovah has to strike at the root of our capacity for sin, in my very nature where it operates.
He has to get rid of our “self” where sin operates. By getting rid of our “self” the power of sin can be removed, and the process can begin whereby we can be constituted righteous, that is, we can be made righteous in our very nature.
Romans 5:19 continues, “likewise also through the obedience of the one person many will be constituted righteous.” He does this not just by his spirit regenerating our spirit as we saw earlier, but also by getting rid of our self, our sinful nature that we have inherited from Adam. How does he do this? This brings us to the second aspect of Christ's death. By nailing it to the torture stake with Christ.
Romans 6::6 says “We know that our old personality [lit, “old man,” the nature we inherited from Adam] was impaled with him, that our sinful body might be made inactive, that we should no longer go on being slaves to sin.
At Galatians 2:20 Pauls says: “I am impaled along with Christ. It is no longer I that live, but it is Christ that is living in union with me.”
Colossians 2:20 says, “Since you died together with Christ toward the elementary things of the world, why do you, as if living in the world, further subject yourselves to the decrees.”
2 Corinthians 5:14 says, “For the love the Christ has compels us, because this is what we have judged, that one man died for all; so, then, all had died.”
These scriptures make it clear that Jesus not only died for us, in his death we died with him. When Jesus died on the torture stake he also represented us. He not only substituted for us, he also represented us. Just as we were in Adam when he sinned, so that we were constituted sinners, we were also in Christ, so that when Christ died we died with him. How did we get in him?
1 Corinthians 1:30 says, “But it is due to God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become to us wisdom from God, also righteousness and sanctification and release by ransom.”
Jehovah put us in Christ. So since we were in him, we died with him. When we put faith that we died with Christ, then sin loses its power over us. Sin has no more control over us. We are delivered from its powerful clutches. Yes, we do have the sinful nature, but it doesn't have any power over us. It is not that we are not able to sin; it is that we are able not to sin, and it is by simple faith in the fact, that we died with Christ.
When we put faith in the fact that we died with Christ, sin loses its hold over us. There is nothing we need to do but exercise faith. It is that simple. If only brothers and sisters would understand this truth about our death with Christ, they could be leading victorious lives.
Thus in the memorial, or the Lord's Evening Meal, Jesus used wine and bread. The wine symbolizes his blood, for the forgiveness of sins, to remove the penalty for sins. He wants us to remember that he died for us. The bread symbolizes the body of Christ, to remove the power of sin. He wants us to remember that we died with him. Thus it is vital to partake of these emblems in faith if we are to benefit from his blood and body, if we are to have our sins forgiven and the power of sin broken.
We will deal with this subject in detail later. But first we need to understand more about our position in Christ. What does it mean that we are in Christ? We will study this in our next article.
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