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D A IL Y D E V O T I O N A L S T U D I E S IN THE NEW TE S TAMEN T FOR INDIVIDUAL MEDITATION AND FAMILY WORSHIP
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By R. A. TORREY
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sin, how shall we any longer live therein?” The truth of our identification with Christ in His death is'a great truth to grasp, but as Paul goes on to show, we were identi fied with Christ not only in His death, but in His resurrection as well. When He arose we arose. In His death we died to sin, in His resurrection we aros.e to God (cf* vs. 10, 11). This great truth of our identification with Christ in His death and resurrection is symbolized in baptism. When we are really baptized (that is, not merely baptized with water which is a sym bol, important indeed and full of meaning, but after all only the symbol, but also really identified with Him and that which baptism symbolizes) we are baptized into His death, that is actually identified with Him in His death, His death becomes our death. But that is not all, we are not only buried with Him, but we are raised again into a resurrection life, a life where we walk in “newness of life.” But if we realize our resurrection with Him as well as our death with Him, how can we longer Death must precede resurrection and if we do not see ourselves made dead to sin and the old life in Christ’s death, we can not, of course, walk in newness of life, but “if we have become in the' likeness of His death, we shall be also by the likeness of His resurrection.” In the crucifixion of Jesus our “old man,” i. e., what we were before) our, regenera tion and union with Christ, our old self, “was crucified.” The purpose of this cru cifixion of theold man effected in the cross of Christ, was that “the,body of sin (i. e. our physical body, which by its mastery over the spirit is the continue in sin? Monday, July 2 . Rom. 6 : 5 - 7 .
Sunday, July I. Rom. 6 : 1 - 4 .
With the end of the fifth chapter Paul closes his exposition of God’s way of justi fication, i. e., on the ground of the propi tiatory death of' Jesus Christ and on the sole condition of faith in Him who died. .With the sixth chapter he begins an ex position of the way into holy living. Natur ally hfe begins by showing the relation between justification and personal holiness, or in other words, the relation between our being reckoned righteous on the ground of what the crucified Lord JesUs has done for us and our becoming actually righteous by what the risen Lord Jesus does in us. A very natural question for either a quib- bler or for ope who wishes to find a license for sin, to ask in view of Paul’s doctrine of abounding grace (viz., that “where sin abounded, grace did abound more exceed ingly”) was, “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?” Paul first meets the question with an indignant negative, “Away with the thought.” But he does not stop with that, he goes on to bring out another view, of the death of Christ closely associ ated with its propitiatory meaning. This view of death is that if Christ died, we also died in Him and with Him. This view of the death of Christ shows how utterly impossible it is for, one who has part in Christ’s death to “continue in sin.” Paul does not take back or qualify one word that he has’ said about justification by free grace apart from works of the law, but he tells us that we are identified with Jesus, our representative, in His death; that we died when He died and that it was “to sin” that “we died.” On the basis of this great truth about Christ’s death (that it \fras our death) he asked the unanswerable question, “We who died to
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