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II Cor. 5:17 says if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature. There is a danger in over-emphasizing the fact that we have been justified by God to the point that we think salvation is simply a declaration and not a transformation. We are not just declared righteous, we are a new creature.
Old things have passed away, new things have come. It is important to realize that salvation involves transformation. If you are wondering if you are a Christian, you don't simply look back at some point in time where you prayed the sinner's prayer, you also have to look at your life to discern that the evidence of your salvation is manifested. It is as James said, "Faith without works is dead".
Yes, you should have had a confession of faith. There had to be a time when you put your faith in Christ but there should follow that, an evidence of transformation. You should no longer be what you used to be. Justification is not something you experience but transformation is. In Romans 5:20 Paul talked about grace and said the more you sin, the more grace abounds. That does not mean that we should sin more so God's grace is more evident. That is not how it is.
In Romans 6:1 Paul says shall we continue in sin so grace might increase? No, no, no. You can't go on living the same way you did before you were justified, because you died. Died to sin is a past event. You were made righteous. You have been transformed. That old person died and you are now a new creation. We are not the same person. We have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God's son. And all of that is linked to the fact that when you were justified, you died.
What does that mean, you died? In v.3 Paul answers that question in a very logical sequence, a set of logical truths that lead through a process.
First of all, we are immersed in Christ Romans 6:3 There is no water in that verse folks. This is a dry verse. It is not talking about water baptism; it is using the word baptism metaphorically. When we go through a trying time we may say we went through a baptism of fire. We don't mean we were literally burned; just that it was a difficult trial. Paul is saying all believers have been literally immersed into Christ. We have been placed into Christ Jesus, united with him, joined to him. It is a spiritual mystery. A Christian is in Christ. Notice we are immersed into Christ's death and resurrection ( v.3). We have been buried with Christ in order that as Christ was raised from the dead, we may be raised to walk in a newness of life. So we died in Christ and we rose in Christ. We share in his death so that we can share in his life. He became sin for us that we might be made righteous in Him. That is the transformation I am talking about. The old man has died. I am crucified with Christ. As old dies, a new I lives. And it is not just me now; it is Christ living in me. A Christian is a transformed person. It is not someone who says sometime in the past I believed, and God declared me just and now it doesn't matter how I live. No, along with justification comes this transformation.
Second, the body of sin has been destroyed v.6 There are three facts that describe how our body of sin has been destroyed. Number 1, Our old self was crucified with Christ. What does that mean? It means what we use to be is dead. Some people believe that when you become a Christian you get a new man that fights against that old man, the man you used to be, like two dogs living in the same pen and fighting all the time. But salvation is not an addition, it is a transformation. If I am still what I used to be and Christ just added something to me, where is the transformation? No, my old self was killed. I am a new creation. I am not what I used to be. The old self is not the flesh because we still have our flesh, our unredeemed humanness. The old self is our unregenerate nature. It is dead. It is gone. The old man has been crucified. There are two words in the Greek for the word old. One means old from a point in time. We use the term archaeology to describe the study of old things. But the word old used here is another Greek word meaning not old in point of time but old in point of use. It is now the old self. The useless self. Old in the sense it is worn out, not functioning, fit for the dumps, scrap heap, something to be discarded. That is the old man. It is the person you were before you were a Christian. It was depraved, unregenerate, and useless to God and unable to please him and even its best acts were but filthy rags in God's sight, but now that old self was crucified, a metaphor for death. I am not what I used to be. I am crucified with Christ. I, the old I, is dead. I have a new nature. To put it another way I have a new disposition. My entire perspective of life has changed. I see with spiritual eyes. Everything has changed. I now have holy longings and righteous aspirations. I now hate sin. I now love what is pure and good. I long to obey God. I want to honor God. All of that comes from the new man. John Murray wrote a book titled Principles of Conduct and in it he writes, "To suppose that the old man has been crucified and still lives or has been raised again from this death is to contradict the obvious force of the import of crucifixion. He doesn't say our old man is in the process of being crucified. The believer, a new man, is a new creation. But he is a new man not yet made perfect. Sin still dwells in him and he still commits sin. Understand, we still have this unredeemed flesh. That is where the battle is. But we are also a new creation. We are not both an old man and a new man. We are a new creation with holy longings that are debilitated by the flesh, not the old man. The old man was that unregenerate man. The new man is the regenerate man created in Christ Jesus unto good works. The old man doesn't exist folks. We are a whole new creation. We are thus called to behave consistently with who we are. So our old self was crucified with Christ and secondly, our body of sin might be done away with. What does that mean? What is this body of sin? He is not talking about the physical body but the entity of sin. Obviously, that has not been eliminated because we still battle with it, right? But it is made useless, or rendering it powerless, idle, unemployed, inactive, inoperative, to be deprived of strength. Once our old self was killed, the dominating power of sin was deprived of that power. J.B. Philips writes, "Let us never forget that our old self died with him on the cross so that the tyranny of sin over us might be broken". That leads to the third fact about our old self being crucified. We should no longer be slaves to sin. That means that the old, dominating, controlling power of sin is rendered inoperative, so that we are no longer slaves to sin. We are no longer enslaved. The change is that the old self was a slave to sin and the new self is a slave to righteousness. There is no more bondage. v.7 says for he who has died is free from sin. When you died in Christ, you were freed from sin's tyranny. That controlling, dominating, sovereignty of sin has been broken. V.14 says sin shall not be master over you. So a justified person is not only declared righteous but set free from the dominating power of sin. That is why I John says we no longer continue in sin as some unbroken pattern. Now we live a pattern of righteousness that at times is interrupted by sin but not this continual pattern of sin. So we are immersed in Christ, then immersed into his death and resurrection which results in the entity of sin rendered inoperative, no longer in control. V.8 says now we can live for God. We want to love him. We want to praise him. We want to worship him. We want to give to him. We want to obey him. We want to proclaim him to others. We may not always do that consistently but is it not the cry of your heart. Even when we do sin, we feel the guilt and anguish because it goes against who you are. Now our longings are right. Now our desires are right. And those desires at times collide with the evil desires of our flesh. Therein lies the battle, but if you are not a Christian, there is no battle. But for us who are Christians v.11 says so consider yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. We are not someone who has simply been declared righteous, we are a people who have been transformed and now live this new life. Jesus has come into our lives. The law can't touch us. The penalty for our sin has been paid. We have this divine nature. We have an indwelling spirit. We have been made righteous. But you may be thinking, I don't know about you but I have not arrived yet. No you haven't and neither have I. None of us have. We still have to battle this flesh. That is why in Romans 8 Paul cries out for the redemption of our flesh so we can get the whole package. But the point I want you to understand is this. A Christian is not simply a person who gets forgiveness; a Christian is not simply a person who gets to go to heaven. A Christian is not simply a person who receives the Holy Spirit. He is all of that but in addition he is a person who has become something he was not. He is a saint, a child of God, a divine masterpiece, a child of light, a born son, and a citizen of heaven. He is a new creation. My life is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I see sin in my life and I hate it, and that is evidence that I am a Christian. John Newton said it well when he wrote, "I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I wish to be. I am not what I hope to be. But by the cross of Jesus Christ, I am not what I was." That is the new creation.
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The Rev. Dr. James Barnes is currently the pastor of White Memorial Church in Milroy.