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Pathways Through Paul
Daily Devotional
February 15
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Today's Pathway:
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Over the past two days we have seen Paul introduce the idea that the believer is "dead to sin". He is going to expand on that in today's text. Yesterday he stated that "we are buried with him...that like as Christ was raised up from the dead... even so we also should walk in newness of life" (vs 4). We focused on the fact that Christians are to walk in this new life that we have in Christ. Now Paul points out that not only do we have a resurrected life, but our old man has, in fact, been crucified. Perhaps we should define the term "old man". The "old man" is characterized by that fallen sinful nature received from Adam. This is in contrast to the "new man" (Eph 4:24, Col 3:10), which is characterized by that divine holy nature received from God at the time of the new birth. The term "crucified" is also very interesting. It is a passive verb, which means that the action is being performed on the subject by an outside source. In other words, the old man does not crucify himself. The crucifixion is performed by God. Paul said of himself in Galatians 2:20,
"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live."
He knew that when he became born again that God had done a miraculous work in not only redeeming him, and not only in allowing him to have a new life, but God had spiritually crucified the man that Paul had been.
Paul says in verse 6 that this happened so that
"the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin."
The "body of sin" refers to our physical body over which sin seeks to reign as king or to rule as slave master. Paul says the goal is that the body of sin would be "destroyed". Again, we need to define our terms. The Bible is not saying here that a man's sin nature ceases to exist when he receives Christ. The word translated "destroyed" carries with it the idea of being "rendered inactive". Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words says this:
"The Greek word 'kartargeo' never means 'to annihilate.' (to destroy utterly and completely and thus cause to cease to exist). The general idea in the word is that of depriving a thing of the use for which it is intended."
So, our old man was crucified by God and the body of sin was rendered inactive at the point of salvation. Why was this done? According to verse 6 it happened
"that henceforth we should not serve sin".
This is a tremendous blessing that God has given to His children. Because He has crucified the old man, we who are believers are no longer obligated to do wrong like we were when our sin nature was in control. The present tense verb used here indicates that we are no longer continuously enslaved to sin, and the active voice shows that we can now make the choice to not submit ourselves to the corrupt desires that we had previous to salvation. In the next verses Paul is going to use this truth to challenge Christians to choose to live godly lives.
Pastor Mark J Montgomery
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