Dabbling in Death

What would you think of a man who kept a corpse in his closet so he could take it out every day and admire it and cuddle with it? I should hope it would repulse you in the extreme! But that is exactly what we as Christian men do when we live in the “old nature”, as the Apostle Paul called it in Romans 7:18. When we live out the impulses and desires of our “old man”, the person we were before Christ came in to live in us through His Holy Spirit, it is just like playing with a dead and rotting corpse! 

Men, we need to stop this! 2 Corinthians 5:17 says that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old is gone! The new is come!” When we came to saving faith in Jesus Christ, we were crucified with Him at the moment of our salvation. Paul says in Romans 6:2-3 “…we died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?” 

This is great news! The old sins that kept us in bondage do not have to rule us anymore. (We are not under law but under grace). We have been set free to live a holy life! We do not live a holy life FOR our salvation, but BECAUSE we are His, we have an intense desire to live to please our Savior. 

So, brothers, let us bury that rotten, stinking corpse and “count ourselves dead to sin but alive to Christ” (Romans 6:11). Remember there are two elements to living a victorious life of holiness. First, we must reckon our old nature dead and buried with Christ. THEN, we must count ourselves alive to God in Christ! We replace the focus on our sin nature with a determined focus on letting the Holy Spirit produce His new nature in us by faith. 

This is the only way to experience the abundant life Jesus promised. It is available to each of us. Will you embrace it? 

Mike Whitney