Dead and alive.

Jerry Bridges writes about how Christ's death on the cross achieves for us two distinct purposes - firstly, payment of the penalty for our sin, and secondly, freedom from the dominion of sin. The wages of sin is death, after all, but it is only through death that we can be released from the kingdom of sin in which we once lived, freeing us once and for all from the rules and attitudes of that kingdom, allowing us to live a new life in the kingdom of God.

He tells the story of a Russian air force pilot who, during the height of the Cold War, flew his aircraft to an American airbase in Japan and sought asylum. He was flown to the US, given American citizenship, and allowed to begin a new life in the United States. To quote liberally from the book,

"This former Russian pilot, however, was still the same person. He had the same personality, the same habits, and the same cultural patterns as he did before he flew out of Russia. But he did have a new identity and a new status."

"As a result of his new identity and status as a citizen in a free country, he now had the opportunity to grow as a free person, to discard the mind-set of someone living under bondage, and to put off the habit patterns of a person living under the heel of a despotic regime."

And so it is with us. We live in a new country now. We have died to sin - it is a fact, a done deal so to speak - and we are no longer driven by the old urges and temptations. We are also alive to God, fully responsive to His voice and eagerly yearning to walk in His will, for Christ dwells in us and we in him. We still have to get round the old habits of the old regime, but that doesn't change the fact that we ARE in a new kingdom.

When we die, we go to heaven where we will fellowship with God forever. But in one sense, we have already died, and are already enjoying fellowship with God in the midst of this garden that He created for us.

Amen.


Rom 6:11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.