February 26

Read: Romans 6:3-6

He that is dead is Steed from sin (Romans 6:7).

Dead To Sin

Sinfulness and Christlikeness are mutually exclusive alternatives. God’s plan of salvation is to free us from sin and to make us Christlike. The destruction of the carnal mind is a decisive step in that process. Paul asks, “How shall we, that are dead to sin [the sin, carnality], live any longer therein?”

The surprise in the Apostle’s question is because he knew the thorough way that God proposes to deal with carnality. The treatment is as radical as death itself and that is why God’s Word uses the figure. Matthew Henry comments, “Death makes a mighty change; such a change doth sanctification make in the soul, it cuts off all correspondence with sin.”

Dr. A. M. Hills adds: “Can such… a dying mean anything less than that… depravity can be so destroyed by sanctifying grace, that the Christian can become as dead to any internal impulse to sin as a corpse is dead to the attractions of the world that once charmed him?

“A man that is dead is uninfluenced and unaffected by the affairs of this life. He is insensible to sounds and tastes and pleasures… The voices of condemnation or praise do not reach him.

“And a Christian can be so delivered from the propensity to be charmed by the world that he is as one dead. The thing that once stirred within him at the approach of temptation has been ‘crucified’ and ‘destroyed,’ and he is dead to all but holiness and usefulness and God.”

This is what it means to die out to self, to die out to the world, to be dead to sin. Does it seem like an impossible goal? It is high country but not too high for a man who walks with God. The Bible presents it as the true Christian ideal within reach of every child of God.