Overcoming Death 721
Jesus in His death for us has swallowed up our sin and death. Death
at first reigned in our body, but being identified with His death we
have died to sin and been made alive to God (6.11). Because of our
union with Christ “death no longer has dominion over him (us)” nor
can it bind us anymore (6.9,11). The salvation of Christ replaces sin
with righteousness and death with life. Since the main objective of
the Apostle in this portion of Scripture is to deal with sin and death,
our acceptance cannot be complete if we absorb only half the theme.
Paul describes the full salvation of the Lord Jesus in these terms: “the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law
of sin and death” (8.2). Granted we have a great amount of
experience in overcoming sin, yet how much have we experienced
the overcoming of death?
Having received the untreated life of God in our spirit, we who
have believed in the Lord and are regenerated undeniably have as a
result some experience in triumphing over death, but must our
experience be limited to just this little measure? How much can life
overcome death? Unequivocally most of the Lord’s saints have not
enjoyed the full extent of this particular experience which God has
provided for them. Must we not confess that death works more
potently in our body than does life? We ought to be as attentive to sin
and death as is God. We must overcome death as well as sin.
Since Christ has conquered death, believers need not die though
they may yet die. It is the same as the fact that Christ condemned sin
in the flesh so that believers need not sin any more even though they
may yet sin. If a Christian’s goal is not to sin then not to die should
likewise be his goal. As his relationship with sin is regulated by the
death and resurrection of Christ, so must his connection with death
be regulated by them. In Christ the Christian has conquered
completely both sin and death. Hence God now calls him to triumph
over these two experientially. We usually assume that since Christ
has conquered death for us we need not pay any further attention to
it. How can we then exhibit the victory of the Lord experimentally?