“When Christ calls a person, He bids them come and die” So wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a writer who has greatly influenced the way that I think about my walk with Jesus. Dying with Christ is also what the Bible urges me to do. By faith, we who follow Jesus have been united with Christ in the likeness of His death and have been raised to new life. Therefore, we need to live life as newly born people, creatures that are new. The old ways are gone. The ways of sin are passed and a new walk, a new way of living has come about. This is one of the great themes of the Bible. The Apostle Paul proclaimed that the grace of God appeared in Jesus Christ to teach us to live a godly life. (Titus 2:11—14) But Paul also told us how we are able, by the Spirit and grace, to break free from sin and live a new life. Paul exhorted the Christians in Rome to find a new way of living through “death.”
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” Romans 6:1-4 (NASB)
The death that we die with Christ is a spiritual; not a physical one; a death to sin. It is dying to our pride. It is dying out to our self-will and our instance on living our way and not God’s way. It is becoming dead to the urgent appeals of lust and sexual immorality. Think of Jesus in Gethsemane! We do not have that kind of agony. But we must commit to the will of the Father and take up our cross, no matter the personal cost. Just as a seed dies to give new life to the vine, so when we are baptized into Christ’s death we are raised with Him to newness of life. Crucify self-will and be raised again!
“O Lord, I want to participate with you in the likeness of your death. I pray, O Lord God, that you would help me to walk in newness of life. You have raised me to new life! Keep me from sin today, Lord. Lead me away from temptation. Help me where I am weak and give me grace where I may stumble. And I pray, O Lord God, that you would fill me with your spirit so that I may walk worthy of the one who has called me out of darkness into the light. I pray in Jesus name, Amen.”