tine for the majority! God has made every provision for us to be triumph ant in Christ. We don’t need to be so desperately weak. All of the re sources of God’s life are placed at the disposal of each child of His. Yet we fail in prayer, in witnessing to other people, and in consistently reading the Bible. We have hearts grown cold toward the Lord and His church. No one in the world is more miserable than such a person. There may be no doubt about their salva tion, but they experience so little in the way of vanquishing the enemy of sin and Satan. In Romans 6:1 to 3, Paul tells us how the believer is led into the truth of identification with Christ. Paul’s was not only an emotional answer, but also one filled with wonder. The believer isn’t dead to sins or to sin ning. We don’t become sinlessly per fect. The Bible doesn’t teach any thing of the kind. The law of sin in the life of the believer is the sin nature within him . In becoming Christians, we died in Christ to the old life. We have since been resur rected in Christ to live a new life. The Lord was our substitute. Death always involves a separation, wheth er spiritual or physical. The Mosaic law of the Old Testament command ments, when broken, demanded death. Christ was made the curse for the sinner when He went to the Cross. At Calvary, He met in Him self all of the demands of a broken law and a holy God. A person who dies is dead to the former sphere of his life. He might have been plagued by debts all his life, but when he dies these debts no longer bother him personally. Yes, death marks a separation from all controls, authority, obligation, and masteries of the former sphere in which we lived. So, when the believ er is declared to be legally dead in Christ, the mastery of the old nature of sin over his life ho longer is binding upon him. Now, we may not 16
feel dead, or act as if we’re dead, but that doesn’t change the legal or spiritual aspect of it. How can we live any longer in sin’s control ? Verse 4 of this chapter shows us the triumphant, victorious, surrendered Christian life through the spiritual resurrection. Our baptism symbolizes this entombment. We must not mis take the meaning of the passage. This is not talking about physical resurrection. It is spiritual and takes place the moment you believe in Jesus Christ. This means that we can live victoriously in Jesus Christ. In verses 5 to 10, the key to tri umphant living is to be found in the believer’s complete surrender of him self and all he possesses to the sov ereign mastery of Jesus Christ. What a wonderful thing it is to be a believer in the Lord through faith in His finished atoning work at Cal vary! May this be real in each of our hearts. jjplip maim Rfisjt ] jilts :JIBB p . yap — *, 'i JB f l i p M h . f
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Dr. Israel Carmona (standing) and Dr. James Henry plan 1971 tours to the Holy Land and Europe.
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