June 23
“For the death that He died He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so, consider [or reckon] yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:10-11)
Continuing quoting from The Green Letters, we learn more of the importance of considering ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God:
SELF
One of the most important factors in Christian growth is the Holy Spirit’s revelation of the self-life to the believer. Self is the fleshly, carnal life of nature, the life of the first Adam, “dead in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1); thoroughly corrupt before God (Gal. 5:19-21; the life in which there is no good thing in the sight of God (Rom. 7:18)….For one to get beyond just knowing about the Lord Jesus, and enter into a consistent and growing personal knowledge of and fellowship with Him, one must first come to know oneself. Introspection is not involved here – the Spirit uses experiential revelation.
For some years now the evangelistic scene has been dominated by a conversion known as “commitment,” which, sad to say, amounts to little more than a spiritual miscarriage. When there is a bit of life it usually blossoms overnight …and soon becomes heavy with the fruit of “dynamic,” “radiant,” personality coupled with busy, rushing service. The tragedy of this sort of thing is that self is at home and thrives in the glow of it all, and is rarely found out for what it really is….The healthy new birth, based on a deep conviction of sin, and repentance toward God, starts out clear and strong with love and devotion to the Savior. But, before long, there comes the sickening realization of an element within that pulls one back to self-centeredness, to the world, …to sin. This learning by heartbreaking experience of the utter sinfulness and reigning power of self in the everyday Christian life, is the means whereby we come to know the Lord Jesus beyond the birth phase – as our Savior; on to the growth phase – as our Lord and life. “To me to live is Christ.” No believer will truly come to know the Lord Jesus as his Life until he knows by experience the deadly self-life deep within for what it is.
Dr. C. I. Scofield: “Not everyone, by any means, has had the experience of the seventh of Romans, that agony of conflict, of the desire to do what we cannot do, of longing to do the right we find we cannot do. It is a great blessing when one gets into the seventh of Romans and begins to realize the awful conflict of its struggle and defeat; because [that is] the first step toward getting out of the struggle of the seventh chapter and into the victory of the eighth…Of all the needy classes of people, the neediest…are not those who are having a heart-breaking struggle for victory, but those who are having no struggle at all, and no victory, and who do not know it, and who are satisfied and jogging along in a pitiable absence of almost all the possessions that belong to them in Christ.”
To be continued.