Living Above the Line "Sermon 3" What You Died To
Living Above the Line Two Sides of the Cross Part One “You Died To Christ”
Cont: “What You Died to”
Last week we looked at what I call Two sides of the cross. I explained that not only did Christ die for us, the blood side of the cross, but we also died with Him, the body side of the cross. We must understand that our old self was crucified on the cross, because our old self was the source of most the problems we experience as humans. Our old, unregenerate spirit, inherited from Adam, was by nature sinful. It was an enemy of God, separated from God, and without the life of God for which man was originally created. From the old man flowed sin, hatred, a sense of separation from God, and from one another, and death.
For our God to restore humanity to its original purpose, that old man had to die. Through His kindness, God accomplished that for us on the cross of Christ. Now today, before I move to the second side of the cross, the body side, I want to make sure we understand the first side and give you some details of the benefits of the fact that our old man died. But before we do, we must establish one fact:…we all died with Christ. Paul tells us this repeatedly:
2 Cor. 5:14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;
Col. 3:3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Romans 7:4 Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God.
Romans 6:3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
This is incredible! It is something we can not entirely process through our brain. When One died, all died, because all were in Him. This is not a below the line statement. Humanity is stretched out over time from the beginning until the end. The only realm where this could happen is above the line, where there is not any time. There is only now! What we see as past, present, and future is simply now, above the line.
The fact that all died in Christ is an unseen, eternal, above the line reality. It is just like when Adam sinned, all sinned. None were even born when Adam sinned, but all were in his loins. All believers are in the loins of Christ.
But, it is easy someone to say, “All Died. That means all of you. But I know me, I have not died yet. I’m not dead yet. But I say. All means all. The devil wants you to believe his lies. That all does not include you. He wants you to believe the old self still lives within you. He can control the old self. So then if you believe him, he can control you. That is a lie from Satan. A lie straight from Hell. You tell Satan he can take that lie and go straight to Hell. Tell him it’s a trap, but not for you.
All means all. And the beautiful thing is that all means all to God, no matter what all means to us!
If we never see that we died spiritually until we physically die and then, looking back, see that the old us was already dead, we were still already dead to God. That He is already seeing us differently than we are seeing ourselves. That we are inflicting punishment, guilt, and condemnation upon ourselves, day after day, for things about us that He isn’t even seeing, … because He cant see them.
I do not mean He is blind. I mean that He can not reckon them. He can not record them. He can not see us that way because we are no longer that way to Him. So Paul could say, 2 Cor. 5:17-18 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God,
That is good news. Before I understood this, in my own life, I, Greg was trying to get rid of the old and I was trying to make the new come. What a trap! Above the line, Paul said to me, Look Greg, when Jesus died, you were in Him, you died too. The old spirit is gone, the new spirit has come, you are a new creation in Christ Jesus!
People say I know what you are telling me, but that is just not my experience. Why, because below the line things are temporary, above the line things are eternal, above the line is the greater truth. Your position is your true condition. In your spirit, you did die with Christ, and you were raised with Him. You are Holy and righteous, and blameless. These are all above the line truths. The question is what is your position, where are you living, above or below the line.
Your life may never evidence this in the temporary world below the line, but God says you died, you were buried, and you were raised, and you are seated in the heavenlys. The question you must ask yourself is, when am I going to admit this truth. What is true, what God says, or what I currently see? “Not by sight but by faith says the Lord.
Can you recognize that above the line in the unseen realm of the spirit, you are already dead? I promise you that when the Holy Spirit turns on the light and you say, “I See, I see, you will become a free person. You will be able to stop fighting with the flesh, trying to make it do things it can never do. You will free yourself to be an expression of the indwelling Jesus Christ. You will become what God desires of you, to be the expression of Him, in your own unique humanity.
Now, when our old self died on the cross with Jesus, there were certain things that we died to. When our spirit ceased its relationship with certain things; these things no longer hold any power over us, over our new spirit, which is our true identity. We are dead to them.
1. The First thing we died to is sin.
Not, sins, which are acts of unrighteousness, but sin, which is the power that produces those acts of unrighteousness.
In the last part of Romans 5, Paul talked about the riches of God’s grace. But the Apostle knows that as some people listened to his teaching on grace, they heard license. When the flesh hears pure grace, it always hears license. The spirit praises God for His Grace; the flesh hears only license. So Paul knew that some were going to hear the good news and conclude, “I can do whatever I want and get away with it. I can do all the sinning I want, because I have all of this grace of God to draw on and get all the forgiveness I want.”
Well, technically, that’s a truth. Pardon me if my taking the grace of God that far offends you, but that is true. If, and this is a big if, but if, you are truly a born again person, you can do what ever you want to, because God never sees what you used to be. He only sees who you are now in Christ. But just as Paul responded 2000 years ago, I would respond today, God forbid that that would be your conclusion. It is a truth, but God forbid you would conclude it. Romans 6:1-2 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Paul then immediately taught what we saw last week, Our union in Christ in His death and burial and resurrection. Because we died with Him, we are dead to sin. It no longer has any power over us. Romans 6:6-7 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For the one who has died has been set free from sin.
But we would have to be blind not to see that there are those who take advantage of God’s grace and continue to sin, just as well as there are those who are fearful of the full grace of God. But I will guarantee you one thing. There is something they do not know. Something that has so far eluded them. They do not know they have died to sin.
They know they have been forgiven of sins, but they do not yet know they have died to sin. Hear me, there is no one among us in the Body of Christ in there deepest being, their inner man, their soul, who wants to sin. They just do not yet have the spiritual awareness of being dead, buried, and risen with Christ.
The blood side of the cross deals with sins; actions or attitudes that break the law of God. The body side of the cross deals with sin. The source of Sin was the old self, our Adamic nature. He was the point of origin of sins. God’s solution to our dilemma was to become what our problem was. But our problem was not our humanity, it was not our environment, it was not our parents, the school we went to, which side of town we grew up in, how much money we have or not.
Our problem was always a spiritual problem. 2 Cor. 5:21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The cure was radical. Jesus became sin and joined our old self to Himself. So our old self died with Him. And when our Old self died, sin was eradicated from our inmost being. We died to sin.
Jesus did not just die to forgive us. Through our spiritual union with Him, He did something in us. He completely solved the sin problem. He took the sin nature out. As Paul said in Romans 6, he who has died is free from, is cut off, separated from, sin. Says who? I do says God! And if you ever catch up with me He says you will see it too!
But if we have died to sin why are we still tempted to sin? …Why do I still have this struggle within me toward sin?... Paul explained this in Romans 7. Though sin has been removed from our deepest inner being, it has not been eradicated from our body, our members, as Paul puts it. So we can still be pulled by the power of sin that dwells in our body, but not in our spirit.
This is why it is so crucial to understand that our old self was crucified with Christ and that we died to sin. We are free from sin. That is a spirit level truth, above the line. Because if we live by our thoughts and feelings, we feel sin’s temptation and think that is the real us. It feels as if the real us wants to sin, so we think there must still be something wrong with the real us.
It feels like we have both the old nature, the old self, and a new nature, our new life, the new creation in Christ. And every outward appearance seems to substantiate that. The only thing that does not is what God says is true: Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him..so that we are no longer slaves to sin, for he who had died is freed from sin.
The Blood side of the cross labels us, FORGIVEN. The body side of the cross labels us THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD. (2 cor. 5:21) We are the righteousness of God. We are not just forgiven, but perfect and complete. In the unseen, and eternal realm above the line, we are a finished product!
The old self made its self known through us by way of sins. The New Creation in Christ, the new spirit man, born by God’s Spirit in righteousness and holiness, makes his self known by Christ’s nature living through us by way of righteousness.
As we learn to live from the truth of what has happened in our soul, we will then witness externally what God has already made an internal reality.
We have been separated through death from the power of sin.
We have become the righteousness of God.
We have total victory over sin!
Praise God!
Next week we Continue with “What You Died to”