Romans 6:6 tells us that the believers’ old man has been crucified with Christ that the body of sin might be annulled, that they should no longer serve sin as slaves. The believers’ old man has been crucified with Him, that is, buried with Him into His death. Certainly we may participate in His death, which has annulled our old man and everything related to our old man, including our thinking, our likes, our dislikes, and our temper. Here our old man refers to the natural life in our soul. The old man is our very being, which was created by God but became fallen through sin; it is the same as the first “I” in Galatians 2:20. It is not the soul itself but the life of the soul which has been counted by God as hopeless and has been put on the cross and crucified with Christ. Formerly, our soul acted as an independent person, with the old man as its life and personality; now, since the old man has been crucified, our soul should act only as an organ of Christ and should be under the control of our spirit, having Christ as its life.
Our old man has been crucified by His death that our body of sin might be annulled. Because of the fall, our body is a body of sin. It is the body indwelt, occupied, corrupted, possessed, utilized, and enslaved by sin so that it does sinful things. This body of sin is very active and full of strength to commit sins. As such a fallen body, it is good only for committing sins. In this body there is nothing but sin. The sin dwelling in our body makes it the body of sin (Rom. 7:19-20). When a person dies, immediately his body loses its job. Likewise, because our old man has been crucified with Christ, the body of sin has lost its job of sinning. It has become of no effect because the sinning person, the old man, has been crucified. The body of sin is not the sinning person but the sinning instrument utilized by the old man to express himself by committing sins; it is the means by which the person does sinful things. However, now that the person, the old man, has been crucified, the body of sin is unemployed. Christ’s death made the body of sin jobless and therefore of no effect. Because the body of sin has lost its job, we no longer need to serve sin as slaves. This means that we have been freed from sin. Since our old man has been crucified and buried with Christ, we have been freed from sin (6:18-22) and no longer need to be under the bondage of sin to serve sin as slaves.
The believers’ old man has been crucified with Him that the body of sin might be of no effect, that they should no longer serve sin as slaves. Suppose that you are a slave. If you die, your body would be annulled. Spontaneously, you would no longer be under slavery; death would end your slavery. This is the way that we are freed from sin. The Bible never tells us to try to overcome sin by our striving, struggling, and endeavoring. Rather, it reveals that we are free from sin by the death of Christ. By being buried into the death of Christ, we die and our body of sin is annulled. Then we are no longer under slavery to serve sin as slaves; thus, we are freed from sin.
Romans 6:10 says, “For the death which He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life which He lives, He lives to God.” The believers, having died to sin in Christ, should live, as Christ lives, to God. To live to God means that we are under His direction and control and that we desire to fulfill His requirements, satisfy His desires, and complete what He intends.
Death in and of itself is terrible, but the positive side of death is that it leads to resurrection. The death of Christ led Him to resurrection. Our experience is the same. Once we die in Christ, His death leads us to His resurrection. For this reason, when we baptize people, we do not leave them under the water; rather, after we put them into the water, we immediately raise them up from the water, showing that they have been not only buried with Christ into His death but also raised together with Christ in His resurrection.
When we go into the water to be baptized, we enter into the death of Christ by faith, allowing ourselves, everything that belongs to us, and everything that is related to us to be buried in the tomb of the water of baptism, that is, in the burial of Christ. Then by faith we come out of the water, and in resurrection we allow the resurrected Christ to live in us that we may live by Him and with Him. Therefore, through baptism we have been identified with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. His death and burial, on the negative side, terminated us and everything that is of us that we may be delivered from the self, sin, the world, and everything that is of the old creation, everything that is of Satan, and everything that is outside of God. His resurrection, on the positive side, has made us a new creation to partake of God’s life and all its riches in Christ, and has brought us into a new realm of resurrection in which the old things have passed away and have become new. This is our experience and enjoyment of the Christ who died and resurrected.