“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Romans 6:11
We all have sin that easily entangles us (Hebrews 12:1), but as believers, we don’t want to live in sin. We want to be mastered by Christ, not our sin (Romans 6:14). But this begs the question, how can we throw off the sins that hinder us in our daily walk? How can we overcome sins that we've dealt with for much of our lives?
In Romans 6, we find that our death with Christ means freedom from the power of sin. God established a union between believers and Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30) so that God counts Christ's death on the cross as our death. If we would lay aside the sin that frustrates us, we must believe ourselves dead to it. We must see ourselves hanging on the cross with Jesus and buried in the tomb with Jesus. That is, our old person, our old self, died on the cross and was buried. Now we respond to sin's temptations differently, for we consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.
When we die physically, our bodies become unresponsive to stimuli. Likewise, because of our union with Christ in His death and resurrection, we consider ourselves dead to sin and unresponsive to it. Picture yourself in a casket, and then see someone laying temptations to sin all around that casket; how would you respond? Dead people do not respond to stimuli. “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Romans 6:11
This is what we are demonstrating when we submit to water baptism; we go under the water as a symbol of being buried with Christ. Burial is for the dead. Our old self died, our old identity died, our old labels died, our old way of living died! And we rise a new creation, united with Christ in all of life.
And while death is usually considered a sad thing, for us who believe, our spiritual death is a happy event because it means we are now hidden in Christ (Colossians 3:3). Our death in Christ means safety and sanctification for us. It means that the world, the flesh, and the devil have no claim on our hearts, minds, or bodies. We are no longer living in sin; we are dead to sin. We are dead to the world's allurements. We are dead to our past life. We are dead to old labels that were placed on us. This is the wonderfully good news of the beautiful, terrible cross: we died with Christ!
Galatians 6:14 (NIV) May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.