Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, HE DIED TO SIN ONCE FOR ALL; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. (Romans 6:8-10, emphasis mine)1
The next verse tells us why it’s so important for us to know that Jesus died to sin “once and for all”:
LIKEWISE YOU ALSO, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:11, emphasis mine)
We are to reckon ourselves dead to sin in the SAME WAY that Jesus died to sin. If we misinterpret verse 10 and the manner in which Jesus died to sin, we are going to misinterpret verse 11. Whatever is true of Jesus is true of us. Consider this: in whatever way Jesus died to sin, WE died also to sin. Is Jesus dying to sin progressively in the way we have imagined ourselves to be dying to sin? Of course not. He died to sin “once for all” on the cross. So how are we to die to sin? Once and for all.
What does it mean that we have died? Think about the day you were water baptized. What did it mean? It was symbolic of the death of the “old man” that you once were in Adam’s sin. When you rose up out of the water, it symbolized your new life in Christ. As Paul says in Galatians 2:20, we were “crucified with Christ.” Because Jesus’ died as our representative, we can say that when He died, we died. We are counted righteous and included in His death when we trust in Jesus as our representative and receive His righteousness as a gift. In other words, we are born again a new creation when we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior.
When the “old man” died and was buried, his past went with him. When we were born again, God gave us a whole new past – a past with a clean record. So now we need to “reckon ourselves indeed dead to sin.”
The word “reckon” reveals the unequivocal nature of our death. Reckon in this verse doesn’t have the meaning Southerners use when we say, “I reckon so…maybe so…I sure hope so…“ Reckon is the Greek word “logizomai,”2 which means “to count, compute, calculate, count over, to make an account of.” Reckoning is to count something as a fact! Reckoning has to do with fact, not supposition or opinion. If I reckon that I have $100 in the bank, it’s because I HAVE $100 in the bank. In other words, because of what has happened to us in Christ, we are to calculate/ to count ourselves, as a fact, “dead indeed to sin.”
That brings us to the next question: HOW did Jesus die to sin “once for all”? That’s important to know so we can walk in victory! Did He finally get over all His bad habits and addictions with one big New Year’s resolution? Obviously not. He never sinned and had no sin in Him.3 Jesus’ death to sin was the death to the charges against us, the condemnation of sin, the penalty of sin for mankind, and the power of sin. All of the assignment for blame, all of our condemnation for missing the mark, and all of our punishment (the wages of sin is death) was received by Jesus at the cross, and He died forever to all of it! It is finished!
(from pages 136-137 of Unveiling Jesus)
Want more from Tricia Gunn? Check out excerpts from the Unveiling Jesus 20-part series!
Unveiling Jesus, by Tricia Gunn, is a verse by verse study of the pure gospel of grace. It’s an amazing journey of love, identity, and freedom in Christ.
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1All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version. Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission.
2G3049 (logizomai), Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, website: http://www.blueletterbible.org/lang/Lexicon/Lexicon.cfm?strongs=G3049&t=KJV, accessed 5-23-14
31 John 3:5″
