Dead to the Law and Dead in the Body of Christ

Dead to the Law and Dead in the Body of Christ

We must differentiate between being dead to the law and being dead in the body of Christ. The law is for transgressors, but through the body of Christ we have become dead to the law. Rom. 7:4.

After you have received the forgiveness of sins and have begun to live a godly life, you will soon discover that you fall short. Even when you do your best, it is not good enough. Again and again you must turn to the Lamb of God who bore the sins of the world to receive forgiveness for your sins. You are like the people in the old covenant who received forgiveness by making a sacrifice. Then it was the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean that sanctified them for the purifying of the flesh. Now you receive forgiveness through Jesus’ blood by looking to the Lamb of God who was sacrificed.

In this state, you are still ignorant of your own incompetence, your own corrupt nature. You promise time and again to do better, but you do not realize that you cannot be better. However, if you are upright, you will consider this and discover that sinning daily is not a perfect life. Through the law you will come to the understanding that you must die to the law. If you have died to the law through the body of Christ, you also through the same body have become crucified with Him.

Before you were crucified, you sinned daily and therefore needed your sins forgiven daily. Now you are delivered from the law so that you can serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. Rom. 7:6. The nails of the cross will prevent you from sinning. Now you have come into the body, because we are baptized with one Spirit to be one body.

Even though you are now dead to the law, you are not dead in the body. In the body there is a continual surrendering of yourself to the death of Christ. Death is at work in us, and we are conformed to His death. Phil. 3:10. It is during this process of being conformed to His death that the weakness becomes manifest through which God’s power is revealed.

Those who live under the law are completely outside the realm of faith. Therefore it is written, “But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed.” Gal. 3:23. “The law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.” Verses 24-25.

Faith has replaced the law. Being nailed to the cross has replaced the chastisement of the law. We are dead to the law through the body of Christ, and now we are delivered to death in the body—by faith.