Lessons for Living from the Bible in Everyday English by Dennis Magee

No one is born with any possibility of not being sinful. We are born sinful. Physical death, the penalty for sin, is symbolic of spiritual death, ultimate and eternal separation from God.

Abraham, father of the Jewish nation, was a sinner like all humans. But he was made righteous before God because of his faith in God’s promise to bring life out of death. God did this in his life by enabling Abraham at that time 100, and Sarah in her 90’s, to give birth to a son, Isaac. God promised that Abraham would become the father of countless people through time. Abraham never wavered in his faith in God’s promise. Abraham is considered the father of all Christians as well as Jews because we also gain righteousness in His sight by having faith in God bringing life out of death. God did this by raising Jesus from the dead.

The problem humans face is not God’s hostility toward us, but our hostility toward Him. God took the initiative in ending this hostility by providing His son as a sacrifice for our sins. He did this not out of any inherent worthiness in us but in spite all our undesirable qualities.

God allowed our sinfulness to be imputed to Christ, who God punished because of this sin and in turn exchanged it by allowing Christ’s righteousness to be imputed to us. So, if we believe that Christ died as punishment for our sins and God raised Him to life again, we become righteous in God’s sight just as Abraham was considered righteous by believing in God’s promise to bring life from death.

We gain proof of this when we receive Christ as our Savior, because at that point, His Holy Spirit enters us and we experience His love in our lives.

So now we can have hope in a glorious eternity with God. Just as Christ was raised from the dead so also will we be. Physical and spiritual death was the penalty for sin but through our faith in Christ this penalty has been removed; we are considered righteous in God’s sight and so will spend eternity with Him. This hope is not unfounded wishful thinking. It is God’s assurance and promise to every one considered righteous in His sight through faith in Jesus.

God’s grace in the free gift of eternal life through faith in Christ is available to all, but needs to be accepted by faith.

Through our natural birth we are united with Adam, who by his own will, sinned against God by being disobedient. We, from birth, have no possibility of not living a sinful life.

The penalty for sin is physical death of the body and spiritual death, eternal separation from God. Prior to Adam’s sinning there was neither physical nor spiritual death.

Christ, for our sake, submitted to sin’s penalty and suffered both physical death and separation from God. But unlike humans, He never sinned; He entered this world perfect and remained perfect. In so doing, He broke the link between sin and death. God was satisfied that our sin debt had been paid and raised Christ from the dead.

When we receive Christ as our Savior through faith, we are baptized by the Holy Spirit into a union with Christ. Our sinful nature can be viewed as a body that can be put to death. So, just as Christ, after He had taken on our sin died, physically and in being separated from God, so we too in our union with Him need to put to death our sinful nature.

Just as we are united with Christ in being assured of physical resurrection and eternal life with God, so also, we need to be united with Him in no longer allowing our sinful nature to be master in our lives.

We need to consider our sin nature as having been killed on the Cross with Christ. Since we still live in this flesh, we will continue to sin but we needn’t be ruled by it. At death we will become perfect, no longer ruled by the flesh.

“I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. This life I live in the flesh I live by faith in Christ, who loved me and delivered Himself up for me.”

We need to spend our lives working at what we already are considered to be before God because of our union with Christ, which is holy and righteous.

As resurrection followed death for Christ, so we too, in our union with Christ, experience a resurrection in the here and now, living new lives committed to serving God. We’re to live our present lives this way until our death to this life and resurrection to eternal life with God.