HAVING THE BODY OF SIN DEAD

For if we have been joined together in the likeness of His death, we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection; (6) knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be destroyed, that from now on we should not serve sin.(7) For he who died has been justified from sin”,Rom.6:5-7

I am reluctant as to which verse to use in this Chapter of the book of Romans alone. There are so many we could use to state a fact that I recall was one of the greatest revelations I ever experienced. I recall my heart over-rejoicing concerning it all. The struggle against sin having been so great and merciless, I couldn’t believe all my heart was given to see then. For weeks on a row I would sing and cry out “dead unto sin, dead unto it, crucified with Christ”. I couldn’t believe salvation was so easy and so wonderful. For the first time I understood what it meant “to confess that Jesus came in the flesh”! To have it crucified and dead! If and when I am crucified myself, He is come in the fleh, my life reveals, testifies to that. He took it with Him to the cross! Hope the Lord does the same to your whole being as well.

I can state unto you that this glamour of victory should only be grasped and understood to abide in the heart of all Spirit filled Christians and none else. So, as you read on, have it in mind.

There is a body of sin, within man, which has to die if sin is to stop forever. It breeds sin. To cancel its actions, to control it, is but to fight sin until it kills you. I was used to fighting sin, because I wished I could live as Moses and Elijah did before I came to know the Lord. After I met Him face to face (so to speak) I realized I had been used to the wrong battle, for if sins dies, I have to learn to lay down my weapons and not to raise them up again. Let the man be crucified with Christ and there is no body of sin to fight against any longer – and it is true, and to assume it, is but to assume a fact if it is for real.

To the people who uphold justification as a mere assuming of something which is never real on earth, I have a word to state: repent, for you know not what you are missing. And to such as do state that justification is something to attribute to forgiveness and old sins confessed, I feel free to state as well you are wrong – you do never know what you have been missing as well. The word says “For he who died, has been justified from sin”.

The process of sanctification, on the other hand, is but a process of laying down our own weapons against all sin since the work has been done inside. “Withstand no evil”, says the word of God. Because people love to sin, they fall into it – not because sin has power. Now, people conceive that sin has a strange hold on them, a strange power, a spell and a grip on them. But, if I love something, my heart yields unto it – if not, it doesn’t at all. Whenever I am able to feel at rest when sin knocks at my door, it surely is because I am no longer in love with it nor will I open that door because I please not man any longer. If, however, I still have a love, a secret love towards it, once it knocks than I may say towards sin “my beloved spoke, and said to me, Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away”,  Son 2:10; “I sleep, but my heart is awake. It is the sound of my beloved that knocks, saying, open”, Son 5:2.

Suppose the love of God floods your heart from then on and you receive more than the Baptism of Jhon, your whole love changes poles and you start attributing these words of Scripture to Christ instead, from now on, as it ought to be indeed. Now you start fearing to loose because sin knocks at your door – or so you think it does – for your love towards the Lord is great, since you have made up your mind for good that sin and God will not abide together at all, ever,just as doctrine frequently upholds they do. You fear, therefore, and start a fight against an old lover, no, an old love actually, for you believe you still love it since you have lived with it for many years and know not of any other kind of life from experience at all besides it. Friend, just suppose even further the lover you used to love so much (yourself) is in fact and beyond any doubt dead, really, really dead – in fact, more than dead, crucified. What will you think of that love you still carry within you, or at least believe you can never live without at all? All there is left, is but the memories, the taste of sinning, the vice of it, the longings towards it all – nothing more. If a smoker has no cigarettes and he on the verge to come to hate whatever he does, he will soon make up his mind he is as good as dead unto it. Now, the Word states “Likewise, count yourselves also to be truly dead to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord”, Rom.6:11.

You see, if sin is dead in a sinful world – at least concerning and touching you – sanctification, or a great part of it, is but to lay down the weapons because sin is but a love affair, and never a real world – it has no spell on you, no binding power at all and if the Lord manages to set you free, then you will be made free indeed. If you enter that rest, if you lay down your weapons, if your fear no more once your vice, memory or whatever, drags your mind back to its old pleasures, it is because you love no more as you used to do. If you sleep towards it, if your heart is no longer awake because of it, then do not dare go on living as if you are fighting a lost battle, for to fight a victory battle against sin is less then the Promise, being more than a conquerer. To fight a dead foe is crazy, is useless, a loss of your precious time you could use to serve God and that battle is a piece of fiction. Sin is fiction right from the start, there is nothing in sinning at all. Once it existed, there was nothing in its walls to offer anyway, besides captivity and martyrdom. If it was so when it was alive, conceive what that kind of nothingness it will become when dead – non-existing is less the nil, less then the zero it had already been before. Will you fight such a foe?

If, then, your love is considered to be dead, it is because you may consider and truly have it so. Sanctification is but to consider sin dead, the making up of a mind towards it, it is a restoring of a mind towards truth, concerning it all. The other part of sanctification is but to learn in experience to do towards God as you did towards sinning before. But never regard sin as alive again once the Spirit of God fills you for real, for you are not living according to reality. Use your time and your heart's toughts and pre-disposition to serve the Lord rather. A surreal world is a non-existing one. Once you have been justified, made loving towards another Lover, dead unto the old one, made righteous by a change of nature and a new birth – as long as it is real in fact – let the dead bury the dead. Care not about the corpse, for it is dead – someone will come and pick it up for you in a dung truck. You go on, follow your Lord, for He will grant you many a reason never to look back upon a corpse again. The promise is that, “Behold, a King shall reign in righteousness, and a Prince shall rule”, Is. 32:1. Have you ever been among noble ones? And suppose that Noble One is righteous and decided to conquer your whole heart back again as it was before the world was made? Surely, you will gain a new love, just follow Him there. “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom”, Luke 12:32.