The Day of Reckoning

‘Count yourselves dead’. Other versions of today’s scripture tell us to ‘reckon yourselves’. This means to count or consider ourselves. To do this we need to look at where we are and what we are. We must come to a conclusion and accept it. In this case it is being dead to sin.

Now when we say we are dead to sin, then sin no longer has a hold over us, and we’re dead to its consequences. ‘So that we might die to sins and live for righteousness’ (1 Peter 2:24).

Jesus was dead when He was laid in the tomb. But He cast off the grave clothes of death and walked out in new life by the power of God and the Holy Spirit. Death had ‘died.’ It no longer had power over Him. Jesus had defeated death and new life had taken over. He was alive.

If we are ‘dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus’ then we are free to live in the fulness of Christ without being bound to sin or self. Sin has died. To be alive to God is walking out of the tomb of death into the new life of Jesus Christ, free from the shackles of sin. This is not to say we cannot physically fall back into sinful ways. But the consequences, that is the wages of sin being death, no longer have a hold over us.

We’re free to live in the grace and love of Jesus, with no guilt and no shame. We no longer need to struggle to live the perfect life or try to be someone else. We’re free from the constraints of sin, walking in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who doesn’t look at our old self, because He Himself has put it to death. He sees only the new life that He prepared us for. The old has gone; the new has come. If we can grasp this, and look to the one who made us new, then we become as one with Christ.

His Spirit lives within us, ‘I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me’ (Galatians 2:20a). This becomes a reality through our acceptance of who we are in Him, and He in us.

As we are dead to sin, we now become alive to holiness. Our day of reckoning is when we see what we are in God’s sight, which is holy and righteous through Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:22). He took us with Him when He died, and we died with Him. ‘The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me’ (Galatians 2:20b).

Let’s not try to work it all out, but let’s live through the outworking of the truth. ‘The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’