Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:40 — 26.6MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | TuneIn | RSS
Paul says that asceticism and mysticism are a failure to understand and experience the death and resurrection of Christ inside ourselves. Paul talks about a philosophy of men, contrasted with who Christ is and living an ordered life out of this living in Christ.
How are we raised with Christ? What is the result of it? This is a fundamental, Biblical teaching of being a Christian. If you are a believer this is something that you have experienced. It is an assumed reality for the follower of Christ. It is not a maybe kind of thing.
When we identify with Christ when we receive Him as our Savior and Lord. At that moment something happens inside of us, when we identify with Him it is as if we died on the cross with Him. Whatever it means for Christ to die on the cross, that is what happens to us at the new birth.
So, what dies? Romans 6:6 talks about what dies as being our “old man” getting crucified with Him. The person that we were as a descendant of Adam, prior to our regeneration, the “old self.” When the “old man” dies, the body of sin can be destroyed.
What is the “body of sin?” Our identification with, participation in, walking in sin. When this dies it results in a different kind of life to what we were living before.
The Bible teaches that this is the process that God is working in His people. He is moving them out of the self they were before, moving them into a new person.
The love of Christ compels us to live for Him, the one who died for us and rose again. Every person who experiences this death that God works in a new believer becomes a new creation, something dies and something new is created. This happens in a place inside of us that nobody sees, it is hidden at a deep level of “who I am.”
The results of our resurrection to life with Christ include a life seeking heavenly realities, a life hidden with Christ, a life setting the affections (mind) on heavenly realities, and a new lifestyle.
The believer is not focused on human reasoning, he is focused on heavenly thoughts. Not human systems and solutions. The mind is focused on Christ’s thoughts. The believer seeks to know who Christ is and what Christ is thinking.
Another result is a new lifestyle. Paul says to put to death the evil attitudes and actions.
Scriptures used – Colossians 3:1-5, Colossians 2:12, Romans 6:1-11, 2 Corinthians 5:14-17