Dead With Christ

Dead With Christ

Christ’s work—God’s work in Christ—is a tremendous work in breadth and in depth. Not only did He atone for our sins—sins that we have committed—but He took us along, our old man, our entire existence according to the flesh, all our will and honor, even the whole world.

Everything was sentenced to death in and through Christ and put to death so that we could receive a new, divine life and live and grow in this life until we have reached the maturity of manhood, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. Eph. 2:13.

Alas! How pitifully little most believers get out of this! In spite of this mighty work, they continue to sin because they themselves continue to live. They live for themselves, and therefore they cannot avoid sinning.

Everyone knows what it means to die: all the old things cease to exist; you obviously forsake everything and are irrevocably separated from everything and everyone. People know that, but they do not believe God’s Word. They do not believe in the work of Christ. Absolutely not!

This is not to be wondered at, for who and how many are there who—in the full and real sense of the Word—are willing to die voluntarily, long before the time when they have to die whether they want to or not?!

Blessed are the few who are tired of sin and of themselves to that extent.

For a person of simple faith, there is essentially nothing that is more typical than this very common obituary: “X has entered into rest.” Imagine! We can enter into rest while we live in the flesh, in this body of death!

“If One died for all, then all died . . . .” 2 Cor. 5:14. In other words, we walk around in the same body as if we were actually dead. The silence of death and the grave have set in—an eternal rest, constant rest from all sin and the busyness of the world. You don’t hear a single sound where it used to bubble like a witches’ brew and boil over with misunderstanding, anger, envy, discontent, ambition, offenses, empty talk, etc., etc.

On the contrary! Not a single sound! How could it possibly rattle and roar, boil, and boil over when death has actually set in, when the fire underneath this witches’ brew has died out?

How significant it is what the great prophet and seer saw several hundred years before Christ came, when he said, “Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Isa. 53:1.

However, everything that is silenced in the death of Christ (in those for whom Isaiah is searching) is gloriously and abundantly replaced by and in the new life in God; namely, by thanksgiving, praise, edifying words, instruction, exhortation, chastisement, correction, consolation, speaking the Word in season and out of season, by: “Yes, my Lord (and lord)!” and by: “Get behind me, Satan!”

Old expressions have vanished! Glory to God! New things that are acceptable to God have replaced them!

Rest from the old, and an unceasing new life in Christ Jesus to His glory and praise!

The benefit an individual receives who believes in the atonement is, as we now realize, quite different: from very small side-effects, a braking or dampening of the power of sin and its nature, to a radical transformation or re-creation, a new creation that is only possible by dying to yourself. This, in turn, is only possible through living faith in partaking of the death of Christ. His death is our death.

The effects of dying with Christ can be considered advantageously in various areas and from various perspectives. We have already, to a degree, considered one part of a very important area, namely:

1) Rest in God: “For we who have believed [namely, in our death with Christ] do enter that rest . . . .” Heb. 4:3. The ungodly cannot be quiet. They are like the troubled sea. Isa. 57:20. How significant that is!

No one can be quiet, least of all in the day of trial, except for the very ones who have died with Christ by faith. But they can, and they simply cannot be anything else precisely because it has become reality. That which otherwise would make a lot of noise and commotion is dead.

“Be silent, all flesh!” is what it says from days of old. Yet who could possibly manage it even if they meant it ever so uprightly? However, since the work is finished now, the way to do it is open. Hallelujah!

May there be this silence of death in many a person’s life in the days to come! Absolute silence! Then it will truly be a good and blessed New Year!

The very great apostle says that women shall learn from men in silence with all submission. She shall be in silence. How has it gone in that respect? 1 Tim. 2:11-12. Her adornment shall not be outward things. How has it gone in that respect? Her adornment (she is to adorn herself) is to be a meek and quiet spirit. 1 Pet. 3:3-4.

What can get a woman to be quiet? Nothing under the sun, except death. Death can bring even a living woman to silence! Otherwise the great apostle’s exhortation in 1 Peter 3:1 would be in vain. Moreover—just think—he actually exhorts the wives who have unbelieving husbands to win them without words!!!

Who could not possibly praise this death of Christ from his heart—our death with Him—which is able to accomplish the otherwise unthinkable!

It is of vital importance to do, to see, and to comprehend it correctly!

This death is not a horror story; it is not a monster; it is perfect redemption from all unnecessary troubles, sorrows, and burdens. No one can imagine a more glorious liberation.

It gives us an everlasting Sabbath rest in our inner man already on this earth.

It pays unspeakably well to sacrifice everything in order to be able to enter this rest as soon as possible.

Then you have left everything in God’s hands. He manages it best—in spite of everything! Then you rest sweetly and peacefully from your own works—the works with which you have troubled yourself and others all the days of your self-life.