The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is the need to sign
the death certificate of our sin nature. I must take my emotional
opinions and intellectual beliefs and be willing to turn them into a
moral verdict against the nature of sin; that is, against any claim I
have to my right to myself. Paul said, “I have been crucified with
Christ . . . .” He did not say, “I have made a determination to imitate
Jesus Christ,” or, “I will really make an effort to follow Him”-but-”I
have been identified with Him in His death.” Once I reach this moral decision and act on it, all that Christ accomplished for me on the Cross is accomplished in
me. My unrestrained commitment of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit
the opportunity to grant to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.
“. . . it is no longer I who live . . . .” My individuality remains,
but my primary motivation for living and the nature that rules me are
radically changed. I have the same human body, but the old satanic right
to myself has been destroyed.
“. . . and the life which I now live in the flesh,” not the life
which I long to live or even pray that I live, but the life I now live
in my mortal flesh-the life which others can see, “I live by faith in
the Son of God . . . .” This faith was not Paul’s own faith in Jesus
Christ, but the faith the Son God had given to him (see Ephesians 2:8).
It is no longer a faith in faith, but a faith that transcends all
imaginable limits-a faith that comes only from the Son of God.
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