Alive in Christ

Ephesians 2:4-5: “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).”

Spiritual life in Christ is the sole remedy to man’s problem of spiritual death. We read in Romans 5:17: “For if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ.”

Thus the central purpose of salvation by grace is to bring man from death into life. Jesus Himself declares in John 5:24: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”

Salvation is not the adoption of some religious code of ethics or moral laws presented for man’s discipline and moral improvement. According to the Scriptures, not even the Law of Moses, the most venerable religious and moral code in the history of human cultures, can produce true righteousness in those who try to adhere to it. True righteousness can only be produced from the life of Christ in man. In light of this, we must distinguish between knowing the law and keeping the law.

We went over in previous discussions Paul’s desperate struggle and bitter failure in his attempt to keep the law he knew so well. Paul continually failed because of the dominating control of the body of this death over him until he found deliverance through Jesus Christ. He writes in Romans 8:2-4: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

There is absolutely no religious code of law or rituals which can deliver sinful man from the corrupt nature of the flesh, known as the body of death. But Jesus Christ, thank God, has come to deliver man from the flesh and the body of death by making man alive in Him. In fact, since genuine righteousness is the fruit of the life of Christ and cannot be produced by man in the flesh, it is only by being made alive in Christ anyone can be truly righteous before God.

Paul describes the divine process of being made alive and righteous in Christ this way in Galatians 2:20-21: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.”

Therefore, let us who are made alive in Christ appreciate the experience. Let us be convinced of the truth that we have passed from death into life. Let us reckon ourselves “to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Jesus Christ” (Romans 6:11). Yes, we who were once under the wretched control of the body of this death are now alive in Christ and the body of this death has been destroyed.

Father, I thank you for providing me deliverance from spiritual death by your grace by making me alive in Christ. Help me to live a true and productive Christian life by yielding completely and continually to the life of Christ in me.