Series: Understanding Salvation
Lesson Introduction
The finished work of Christ and our Identification in it is the foundation of our new life.
As such we trust God to show us the full scope of implication of our unity with Christ and how to appropriate it in our daily living.
The first area It should affect is your perception. How you see yourself, how you see other believers.
This union with Christ is a strong foundation to anchor the image you have of yourself it transcends anything in the natural that tries to define especially the opinions of men. No matter how severe the speakings of men are about us they can’t undo who we are in Christ. Let is rejoice in this great truth.
WE ARE IDENTIFIED WITH CHRIST IN HIS RESURRECTION!
“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:4–5).
Water baptism is a symbol or picture of what has already taken place in the believer. The baptism that is referred to here is not water baptism. It is the baptism by which we were made part of the body of Christ. Water baptism is a sign or symbol of that, but the essential thing here is the baptism into the Body by the Spirit. We become united with Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit.
We were identified as living members of the body of Christ by being baptized into the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit. We were baptized into His death. We were co-crucified with Christ. Again, it took place when we trusted in Christ, not when we were baptized. Baptism is only a picture of what has already taken place in reality.
By faith, we participate in the life of Christ.
Just “as Christ was raised from the dead . . . so we too might walk in newness of life.” “Those united with Christ, the apostle teaches (Rom. 6:4–10), so as to be partakers of His death, are partakers also of His life. ‘Because I live, you shall live also’ (John 14:19). Christ dwells in our hearts by faith (Eph. 3:17). Christ is in us (Rom. 8:10). It is not we that live, but Christ lives in us (Gal. 2:20). Our Lord illustrates this vital union in terms of a vine and its branches (John 15:1–6). As the life of the vine is diffused through the branches, and as they live only as connected with the vine, so the life of Christ is diffused through His people, and they are partakers of spiritual and eternal life only in virtue of their union with Him . “
“Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” (Romans 6:8).
We have been raised to new life by God’s power in our identification with Christ’s resurrection.
Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2:5–6, “even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
“Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1)
We are expected to walk by faith in the newness of life because we have this identification with Christ in His resurrection.
We are to reckon ourselves “to be dead to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:11). We are to act upon what we know to be true. We died to sin’s rule and we are alive to God. Spiritually we died and rose again in Christ. We are to count upon this as a fact and live accordingly.
Philippians 3:10–11, Paul wrote, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” His desire is that the resurrection life of Christ might manifest itself through his daily life in a new kind of life. Here are the deepest secrets of Paul’s spiritual life revealed. The resurrection of Christ ought to make a difference in our daily lives.
Believers have been resurrected to new life with Christ. Because of our co-resurrection with Christ we walk in a new kind of life. In the analogy of the marriage law Paul said we have become dead to the law of the sin nature that we should be married to another, “even to him who was raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God” (Romans 7:4). By His death we were liberated, and by the co-resurrection we produce righteousness unto God.
Since we have been set free from sin’s control we are free to yield to the Spirit’s control of our lives.
The Holy Spirit operates In a new, divine nature to bring us to obedience to Christ. He produces His righteousness in us.
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