April 2014 – According to the Christian faith, that Jesus Christ died on a cross and then on the third day was raised from the dead is the central moment of human history. What it all means to the believer is a subject that is overflowing with spiritual import.

Many people understand that the cross demonstrates the cost in saving men and women from sin, death and eternal punishment. However, most people – even some Christians – fail to appreciate why such a cost was necessary. They have little appreciation for the tragedy that is fallen man – and the calamitous consequences of sin.

Born of flesh
According to Jesus, there are only two realms of existence in this life for human beings: flesh and spirit. He said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:6).

In this context the word “flesh” refers to the unregenerate life, or the life lived by a person who has not been born again. It is the life inherited by each human being from Adam (Romans 5:12).

Jesus is saying that whatever is born of flesh remains flesh – for what can change it? Flesh can be educated, well fed and exercised, or it can be ignorant, malnourished and sickly; it can live in a mansion or under a bridge; it can be taught religion and morality or nothing at all; it can love, marry and have children, or it can spend its existence in lonely isolation; it experiences joy and sorrow, anger and peace, hope and fear; it dreams and follows ambitions to the pinnacle of achievement, or it fritters its years away in serial moments of emptiness; it can be oppressed or free. But it remains flesh. From first breath to last, it can never change that reality.

In the New Testament, however, the word flesh also refers to the sinful inclinations of the unregenerate person. In Romans 7, for example,  Paul talks about his life before Christ (“while we were in the flesh,” vs. 7) – struggling to serve God but being undermined by his own human weakness. Paul had to battle the flesh with the flesh. It was a losing battle. Throughout the chapter, the apostle notes that someone can even love the truth of God’s laws – recognizing that the Law is holy, righteous and good (vs. 12) – while at the same time being sabotaged by the power of sin within the unregenerate heart.

Thus, under the Old Covenant, even the Jew, despite his numerous advantages over the pagan Gentiles who surrounded him (Romans 3:2; 9:4, 5), could not rise above his fleshly nature.

Paul states flatly: “For we know that the Law is spiritual, but I am of flesh” (Romans 7:14).

The Law had no power to change flesh into spirit. While the Law was of God, Paul says it was “weak … through the flesh” (Romans 8:3).

Bound in chains
The Law also had no ability to destroy the power of sin within that fallen flesh, for the failure to do good was not the only weakness in it. The flesh loved and craved sin. It was, Paul said, “sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3).

While the fleshly Jew lived under the Law, the pagan Gentiles – also of flesh – were left in spiritual darkness, groping for God during “the times of ignorance” (Acts 17:30). Their woeful condition is explained by Paul in Ephesians 2:1-2. Everything they did was according to the world and the power that controlled it – Satan. They were “sons of disobedience” (vs. 2).

But in verse 3, Paul makes a startling admission. While we might expect him to continue talking about those wicked pagans, he makes a universal statement instead: “Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” (Emphasis added.)

Paul says that all of us – Gentile and Jew – were trapped by fleshly weakness and the power of sin because that was our nature. 

The slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt is a perfect picture of the misery of an oppressed people, bound in chains and struggling under the lash, simply awaiting the end of their brutish existence. Egypt is thus a type of sin’s bondage, while Pharaoh is a type of the satanic desire to keep men and women under oppression (2 Timothy 2:26).

Throughout the Gospels, too, we see men and women in the grip of a power from which they cannot escape: blind, deaf, paralyzed, leprous, with withered limbs, children and grown men under the terrifying control of demonic spirits. 

How perfect is the plaintive cry of Paul: “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24).

Opened veins
Then Christ came, and everything changed. The first Gospel says: “The people who were sitting in darkness saw a great Light, and those who were sitting in the land and shadow of death, upon them a Light dawned” (Matthew 4:16).

After his sorrowful cry in Romans 7:24, Paul exclaims with joy in the very next breath: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (vs. 25).

The cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are the bookends, if you will, of the weekend that changed human history. God sent His Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh” (Romans 8:3). From those opened veins flowed the blood of redemption, the forgiveness of sins; the door was opened to the adoption as sons, that we might become the children of God; we received the promise of the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:5, 7; John 1:12; 14:17). 

“Let My people go!” is the demand that Moses, as the mouthpiece of the Lord, makes to Pharaoh, the oppressor of God’s people. How much more has God commanded that those who put their faith in Jesus Christ be delivered when the Son of God was raised from the dead. 

“So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed,” Jesus said in John 8:36.

Yes, that which is born flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Holy Spirit is spirit (John 3:6). A man or woman who is born again is changed.

“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Free from sin?
And yet how little seems to change after we become Christians. If “the old things [have] passed away,” why do I seem to act like the man I was before I met Christ? If I am free, why do I still seem to act like a slave? If I am spirit, why do I still seem to be trapped by my flesh?

In Scripture there is an ethical purpose to everything God does in humanity – i.e., a true change in behavior seems to be one of the objectives of redemption.

After all, when God says to Pharaoh through Moses, “Let My people go,” it is for the purpose expressed in the very next words: “that they may serve Me” (Exodus 8:1).

Even in John 8:31-36, where Jesus announces the freedom that comes through the Son of God, true freedom is expressed as a coming out from under the dominion of sin. “[E]veryone who commits sin is the slave of sin,” Jesus says, but the Son sets men free, and if He does, “you will be free indeed.” 

There is clearly a divine intention that we who are free will not continue to sin as a lifestyle. We will not, John says in 1 John 3:4-10, practice sin.

But how does this victory over sin occur? Does it happen because we will it to happen – i.e., through human determination?

Dead, buried and raised
The answer to this puzzle is also found in the momentous power of Easter. The core of the gospel, as explained by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, is that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

Note the sequence of events: “died … buried … raised.”

We celebrate these historical events and their power to set us free through the blood of Christ – and rightly so. But the often over-looked power of these historical events is the manner in which God has applied that victory to the lives of His children. 

1. We died with Christ on the cross. Paul says in Romans 6:6, “knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.”

Now, we understand that Paul does not mean to suggest that we were literally crucified alongside Jesus Christ. So what could he mean by this statement? It is clear the apostle meant that God considered us crucified with Jesus.

Which us does he mean? It is the “old self” or, as some translations put it, the “old man.” This is the fleshly life that existed before regeneration. 

2. We were buried with Christ when He was laid in His tomb. In Romans 6:4, Paul says, “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death.” The act of being baptized is a symbol of burial – itself a sign that there is to be no rejuvenation of the old life. The crucifixion was final. The old man is dead and put away forever. 

3. We were raised with Christ. “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,” Paul says in Romans 6:5.

Death and burial is not God’s final word, for He considers us raised from the dead with Jesus Christ. 

Like the core message of the gospel itself, the same pattern is applied to us: “died … buried … raised.” The purpose of it all is so that we might “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

Transition to a new life
This isn’t a mind game – it’s real. God declares us dead, buried and raised with Christ. Like all positional truth, it is a legal, declarative reality issued from heaven. However, experientially we are all learning to live in this new position.

Imagine a homeless man who has grown up on the streets of a big city. He did not know who his father was. His single mother was a crack addict and a prostitute who died when he was 6 years old. This homeless man is uneducated, has no life skills and no social skills. He has lived by his wits – panhandling or stealing – and drowning his misery with alcohol. He is sickly in body, cruel in heart. He lives under a railroad bridge, in filthy clothes, with all his belongings in an old grocery cart. This is his life.

When he is 30 years old, a rich man pulls up in a limousine under the bridge. He gets out of the vehicle and walks up to the homeless man and says: “I want to give you a new life. I will take you away from here and you will live with me in a mansion. I will adopt you as my son. Everything I have will be made available to you. I will teach you to be the son of a wealthy man and I will train you to work in my business one day. What do you say to this?”

The moment the homeless man accepts this offer – the moment he leaves the bridge and gets into that limousine – he has left his old life behind and entered a new life. He is no longer a homeless man but the son of a wealthy father.

This new man is cleaned and sobered up. He is fed well, taken to a doctor to get healthy and taught to exercise. He is instructed in life skills and social skills; he is educated. He is taught everything necessary to be the rich man’s son.

Yet he has an old life. The old memories and impulses and habits – an entire pattern of life – remain inside the new man. Those old things might still beckon to him; when things get difficult as he learns to be someone different, he might even be tempted to return to the bridge and his old ways. But while it might seem to him that there are two of him at war within, he is a single individual transitioning from an old way of life into a new.

This old life – what we sometimes call the flesh – is what Paul says was crucified with Christ “so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.” If we truly live as disciples of Christ and obey His word and are led by the Holy Spirit, the new man within becomes stronger and more stable and more permanent. The old man becomes weaker and more ghost-like, like faded memories.

Power of the Spirit
Faith plays a key role here. We learn what God has declared about us and we must believe it. It is true: My old life died with Christ and was buried. I am now free to live a new life.

The once homeless man now is the son of a wealthy man. It is a fact, even if he remembers what it was like to rummage through garbage cans to eat scraps of discarded food. He now has access to unlimited funds, even if he remembers what it was like to beg for coins from passersby. He now lives in a beautiful mansion, even if he remembers what it was like to shiver in the freezing cold under a concrete bridge.

Like everything else in Scripture, we must accept by faith what God declares about us – and then faith must be turned into action. The old life must be destroyed so the new life can flourish.

As Paul says in Romans 8:12-13, “So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

How can the same Paul who complained of moral defeat in Romans 7 now say we are no longer “under obligation … to live according to the flesh”? Because Paul understood that the resurrected Christ had forgiven him and transformed him into a new man – filled with the power of God through the Holy Spirit.

It is not by human determination that we obey God, but “by the Spirit” we put to death the old life and live as a new man. This brings the whole process full circle. We once were mere flesh; now we are spirit, operating in the power of the Spirit.

Paul says: “[Y]ou are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you” (Romans 8:9).

We rejoice that Easter celebrates the power of the cross and resurrection in rending human history in two; but at Easter we also celebrate the power of the cross and resurrection as it splits our own individual lives in two. We each had an old life before Christ came – a life lived in the weakness of the flesh toward God; and now we have newness of life – a life lived in the power of the Spirit.

As Paul says in Ephesians 4:22-24, “that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”

With the apostle we likewise say, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  

Christ’s righteousness for my sin … Learn more about the gracious God of the gospel 
Behold Your God: Rethinking God Biblically is a 12-week multimedia study for churches, small groups, families, or individuals that focuses on the majestic descriptions of God’s character found in Scripture. Behold Your God shows how embracing these unchanging truths are foundational to true revival. For more about Behold Your God visit BeholdYourGod.org. To order visit afastore.net or call 877-927-4917.

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Hungry for more? May we suggest …
▶ Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
▶ All of Grace by Charles H. Spurgeon
▶ The Cross of Christ by John R.W. Stott
▶ The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer
▶ Knowing God by J.I. Packer
▶ The Prodigal God: Recovering the Heart of the Christian Faith by Timothy Keller
▶ Exodus: The Way Out by John N. Oswalt