Scripture: "If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him."—ROM vi. 8.
The reason that God's children live so little in the power of the resurrection life of Christ, is because they have so little understanding of or faith in their death with Christ. How clearly this appears from what Paul says: "If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him"; it is the knowledge and experience that gives us the assurance of the power of His resurrection in us. "Christ died unto sin once; but the life that He liveth, He liveth unto God" (ver. 10). It is only because and as we know that we are dead with Him, that we can live with Him.
On the strength of this, Paul now appeals to his readers. "Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (ver. 11). The words "even so reckon yourselves" are a call to an act of bold and confident faith. Reckon yourselves to be indeed dead unto sin, as much as Christ is, and alive to God in Christ Jesus. The word gives us a Divine assurance of what we actually are and have in Christ. And this not as a truth that our minds can master and appropriate, but a reality which the Holy Spirit will reveal within us. In His power we accept our death with Christ on the cross as the power of our daily life.
Then we are able to accept and obey the command: "Let not sin reign in your mortal body; but present yourself unto God, as alive from the dead; for sin shall not have dominion over you" (vers. 12, 13, 14). "Being made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness; present your members as servants to righteous¬ness unto sanctification. Being now made free from sin, ye have your fruit unto sanctification" (vers. 18, 19, 22).
The whole chapter is a wonderful revelation of the deep meaning of its opening words: "How shall we, who died to sin, live any more therein ?" Everything depends upon our acceptance of the Divine assurance: if we died with Christ, as He died, and now lives to God, we too have the assurance that in Him we have the power to live unto God.
