Monday, August 29, 2011

ALIVE IN CHRIST




Romans 6:11-13    In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires...but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life.  


            We must appreciate the gravity of that with which sanctification is concerned. There are several respects in which this must be viewed. All sin in the believer is the contradiction of God’s holiness. Sin does not change its character as sin because the person in whom it dwells and by whom it is committed is a believer… Remaining, indwelling sin is therefore the contradiction of all that he is as a regenerate person and son of God…The presence of sin in the believer involves conflict in his heart and life.

            There must be a constant and increasing appreciation that though sin still remains it does not have the mastery. There is a total difference between surviving sin and reigning sin, the regenerate in conflict with sin and the unregenerate complacent to sin. It is one thing for sin to live in us: it is another for us to live in sin. It is one thing for the enemy to occupy the capital; it is another for his defeated hosts to harass the garrisons of the kingdom. It is of paramount concern for the Christian and for the interests of his sanctification that he should know that sin does not have the dominion over him, that the forces of redeeming, regenerative, and sanctifying grace have been brought to bear upon him in that which is central in his moral and spiritual being, that he is the habitation of God through the Spirit, and that Christ has been formed in him the hope of glory. This is equivalent to saying that he must reckon himself to be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ his Lord. It is the faith of this fact that provides the basis for, and the incentive to the fulfillment of, the exhortation, “Let not sin therefore reign”. In this matter the indicative lies at the basis of the imperative and our faith of fact is indispensable to the discharge of duty. The faith that sin will not have the dominion is the dynamic in bond service to righteousness and to God so that we may have the fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. It is the concern of sanctification that sin be more and more mortified and holiness ingenerated and cultivated.


Redemption Accomplished and Applied by John Murray, pg.145.



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