Wisdom of the Cross and Sanctification

Wisdom of the Cross and Sanctification

B. In Romans 6:1-23 we learn how our union with Christ is to be lived out in daily life.

Our baptism was a “funeral rite” which marked our decisive break with the values of the present age (Rom 6:3-11). Now as those set free from the dominion of sin we show who our new Master is by our conduct. We are to revolt against sin in the Name of God who is our rightful Ruler and Master. Physical and emotional needs frequently attempt to usurp God’s rule if they go unchecked. Christians must guard against indifference to the glorious gifts they have through the gospel.

According to Romans 6:6, it was our old self that was crucified with Christ. The old man (old self) was crucified in order to set us free from slavery to sin, putting sin “out of business” as a ruling tyrant in our lives. Our old self was all we were prior to salvation in Christ.

C. The believer’s faith response to God’s work of co-crucifixion is to “reckon” or count our old self as having died with Christ.

When we reckon or count, it means we are regarding ourselves as God does (Rom 6:11). Our old self was what we were before we were created anew in Christ (2 Cor 5:17; Eph 2:10). The sinful values of the “old self” are described in Titus 3:3 and Ephesians 2:1.

III. The most important sermons are the ones we preach to ourselves.

A. A biblical understanding of sanctification regards holiness to consist of our relationship with the Lord more than the mastery of a moral code.

In Romans 6:11-13 we learn that God has consecrated us to Himself by the death of His Son. Our obedient response to God’s action is that we must not let sin go on reigning unopposed in our daily lives. Our willingness to put sin to death is our “revolt” against sin. By our ‘revolt’ we express our loyalty to the Lord as our rightful Ruler and Owner.

As a young believer I found that reckoning myself dead to sin was a tremendous help in overcoming temptation (Rom 6:11). But part of my problem was I was still living with a ‘grit your teeth’ mentality. I was so centered on what I had been saved from (sin); I was forgetting what I was saved to (communion with God). I was neglecting the second half of verse eleven in Romans chapter six, “[reckon yourselves] alive to God in Christ Jesus. The saint must learn, as I had to learn, that we are saved to fellowship with God, and therefore our revolt against sin is crucial in maintaining our relationship with the Lord.

B. Every sin begins with a breakdown in faith first.

There are only two rulers; sin and righteousness. Unbelief takes us to sin as a false source for satisfying our needs. It is our love for God that drives our revolt against sin—the more we trust in His love by faith in Christ and the gospel, the more we will express our love to Him by putting sin to death. Reckoning ourselves dead to sin and alive to God is inseparable from maintaining our relationship with God.

C. Romans 6:15-18 describes the believer’s new orientation to God as being “obedient from the heart.” At the moment of salvation, the cross of Christ produces in the believing sinner a form of obedience that is ‘from the heart’. This means that the believer is united in mind, heart, will, and affections concerning the gospel and its ethical demands. The believer regards the true nature of freedom to be living life according to God’s design. Therefore the obedient Christian exhibits a joyful willingness to be ruled by God’s Word. In order to maintain a united heart in obedience, the Christian will have to frequently reason with himself (‘preach to himself’—even argue with himself) concerning the nature of true freedom (submission to God).

The world defines freedom as liberty from divine design—liberty from all external restraint and interference by others. By contrast, the biblical definition of freedom is union with Christ. For by union with Christ we have freedom from condemnation because of our unchanging state of justification. Those united to Christ are free from guilt, fear, condemnation, and sin. These freedoms mean that the Christian may approach God anytime in bold and free access (Eph 2:18) (Peter Jensen, At the Heart of the Universe, pp. 157-160).

B. According to Romans 6, progress in holiness involves both the cross and the resurrection. We pursue holiness by putting to death what God has already sentenced to death (our sin and old man) on the cross (crucifixion). And, we live out the new life given to us by the indwelling Spirit of Christ (resurrection). God regards us as being dead to sin, and alive to Himself in Christ Jesus. We are to regard ourselves the same way (Peterson, p. 100). Preaching the gospel to ourselves each day helps us see ourselves as God does.

1. ‘Reckoning’ involves both the cross and the resurrection: the cross secures our death to sin, and the resurrection our newness of life. Though our absolute freedom from sin will not take place until our resurrection, Christ’s resurrection gives us the promise of defeating sin and living for God here and now (Peterson, p. 99).

2. “Preaching the gospel to ourselves daily” assists us in living between the cross and the resurrection so that both of these aspects of Christ’s finished work exert sanctifying value in our lives (Rom 6:11-13).

C. Romans 6:1-8:13 establishes us as beneficiaries of Christ’s death and resurrection. Calvin notes that mortification (putting sin to death), and vivification (new life) are an essential demand rising out of union with Christ in His death and resurrection.

A radical life change or “moral renewal” takes place after conversion. Change proceeds from our union with Christ in His death and resurrection. There is no “fiction” in the believer reckoning himself dead to sin and alive to God, for sin and death have truly lost their hold on those ruled by God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

1. The moral benefits of being united to Christ are guaranteed—there will be deliverance from the old era of sin and there will be newness of life lived out toward God. Our Lord’s death and resurrection cannot fail to produce the effect the Father intends. “Christ’s death and resurrection have made possible a profound change of attitude and motivation, a real sense of belonging to Him, a new freedom to resist sin and serve God because of justification” (Peterson, pp. 95-96, 101).
2. Union with Christ necessarily brings us into conformity with Christ. However, the believer is not passive in this moral renewal. He has a profound obligation to the One who has brought him from ‘death to life.’

3. The believer has life because of the righteousness of justification (Rom 8:10-11; Phil 3:9). The indwelling Spirit presses upon the believer the obligation of rejecting the dominion of the flesh (Rom 8:12-13). The Spirit, our pledge of ultimate victory, continually leads us to put sin to death. There is an unbreakable link between ultimate victory and a life of putting sin to death by means of the Spirit (Rom 8:9-13).

CONCLUSION: So we have seen that our walk of obedience flows from being ‘right with God’s righteousness’. In other words, our faith, love, and honor are directed towards God’s Name (His Name is expressed in His righteous work of salvation). This “drives” our practical righteousness. God’s consecrating us to Himself is accompanied by a change in our nature. To live as one “possessed by God” is to live with self dethroned. Our relationship to God is to be lived out through the ongoing presentation of the members of our body to God (6:12-13ff.). The result is a life of unselfish love to God and neighbor. Holiness is preeminently expressed in love (Rom 5:5). God has taken possession of us and the benefit of this new relationship with God results in a God-ward life in which our consecration to Him brings Him honor and brings us joy.

“You shall call His Name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). We are saved from the penalty of sin (legal guilt/condemnation). Saved from the practice of sin (the enslaving power/dominion of the flesh). Saved from the presence of sin (ultimate deliverance from sin when glorified).

In order to grow as a Christian, you must know the resources you have against sin because of the gospel—walk by the Spirit (Gal 5:16), power to resist and escape temptation (1 Cor 10:13)—live as a new creation (2 Cor 5:17). How will Christ save His people from their sins? His atoning work is as both Priest, and sacrifice, He offered Himself (Heb 7:27; 9:25-27). His work of substitutionary death, burial, and resurrection is applied to His people by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we must know how Christ’s death was my death to sin, His burial the abandonment of my old life, His resurrection, my start of new life. You cannot grow to spiritual adulthood unless these truths become yours—in other words, you learn to explain them to your own soul.

Christ came to destroy the works of the devil (1 Jn 3:8) (the lawlessness of breaking God’s commandments—1 Jn 3:4). We need to mark this down in our age of permissiveness: Christ saves His people from hell by saving them from their sin— Romans 6:21-23. He does not save without saving from sin. Grace does not take the danger out of sin, God’s grace conquers sin by bringing victory over its service/slavery.

The Gospel is the VICTORY won by Christ at Calvary. You must know this victory in order to reckon this victory. Because of Christ’s substitutionary death for all who would ever believe, sin’s dominion is broken for God’s people. “Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin” (Rom 6:6-7). Christ as Creator and Ruler of all did not need personal victory over sin and the world. He came to earth as overcomer for the sake of His bride. He gained the victory over sin, death, and hell in order to give that victory to His church.

Everything Christ endured from His birth to His ascension was for His people. His vicarious life had one great aim for His people—to give them life, righteousness, sonship, pardon, holiness, adoption, and victory—all out of His infinite stores of grace (Rom 6:23). He gave His life to make the believer an overcomer in both position and practice (in both status before God and in Christian walk). His conquest over the enemies of our souls was not merely an example to follow (1 Pet 2:21)—His conquest and victory is the believer’s possession by sovereign decree, “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS,

BOAST IN THE LORD” (1 Cor 1:30-31).

Now, by faith and obedience, we participate in His conquest over the enemies of our souls. We enter into His victory by faith and obedience resulting in the conquest of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Victory was gained decisively by Christ, our mighty Champion, but, we are to daily appropriate that victory through faith, love, and obedience. In Colossians chapter 3 we see four aspects of appropriating Christ’s victory over sin. 1) We are to practice occupying our minds upon things above where Christ is; for believers are united to Him, and our lives are hidden in Him (Col 3:1-4).

2. We are to reckon ourselves dead to sin (Christ’s death was my death to sin). And, as those dead to sin we are to mortify the lusts generated by our old natures (Col 3:5ff.).
3. We are to put off the behaviors of the ‘old man’—casting them off like a dirty garment, refusing to give them expression through our persons (Col 3:8-9). 4) We are to put on the behaviors of the new man. These ‘garments of grace’ are to characterize all of our relationships. Sin and lust are not merely conquered by abstaining from their practice, there must be replaced with godly behaviors (Col 3:10-4:6).

Thus, the only possible way we can live for God is to ‘die with Christ’ to the old life of sin and self. This co-crucifixion is exactly what happened—the sin natures of all who would ever believe were judged in the crushing of the body and soul of our Savior 2000 years ago. The tearing of Christ’s flesh was the legal judgment of our sin natures. Our co-crucifixion with Him was to this end; so that we would ‘no longer live for self, but for Him who died and rose on our behalf’ (2 Cor 5:14-15). By reckoning these truths (spiritual realities) by faith, the reality of ‘co-crucifixion’ is worked into our daily walk so that victory over sin becomes inseparable from our Christian experience.

The victory Christ won is the rightful property of His church. He overcame the enemies of our souls in order to give that victory to His church. But it is NOT a victory that is enjoyed passively. The saint is commanded to enter into Christ’s victory by feeding the mind upon gospel realities. We are commanded to reckon, to count, to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (by means of His cross).

Romans chapter six describes the active appropriation of Christ’s victory (Rom 6:11ff.): “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God” (Rom 6:11-13). True believers are overcomers in Christ, and overcoming is how they are to live.

All that Christ has accomplished at the cross is ours by virtue of being in union with Him. When the Spirit placed us in Christ, all of the benefits of Christ’s ‘crosswork’ became our possession—‘deeded’ to us in the New Covenant. But this is a ‘positional truth’ that is not immediately experiential. You may wake up tomorrow morning and not ‘feel’ dead to sin. In fact, if you allow yourself to be gripped by fear, anger, resentment, or lust, you may ‘feel’ very alive to sin! Paul’s point is that true believers are to reckon themselves dead to sin regardless of how they feel. This reckoning is not an attempt to make something fictional into something real. It is an appropriation of Christ’s victory by faith (actively seize). The Lord accomplished a mighty conquest of our souls’ enemies (Col 2:14-15). Our part is to believe it and act upon it—what Christ accomplished is bedrock reality for His people. That is how we participate in victory that Christ has purchased for us.

We must be convinced (by counting God’s promises about us in Christ as fact) that through Christ’s substitution on our behalf, we are dead to sin. We must reckon ourselves dead to sin before we can fight sin successfully. Romans 13:14 has a wonderfully relational way of saying the same thing in terms of reckoning oneself dead to sin by virtue of His atoning death. “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.” The gospel order is, reckon yourselves dead to sin, then say ‘no’ to sin’s overtures. Christ has killed the sin that defiled and enslaved us, separated us from God, and brought judgment upon us. Therefore, we are to ‘take to the morgue’ the sin that Christ has slain. Put sin to death by starving it—by refusing to let it have expression through your body and spirit.

Victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil is not an option, it is the condition necessary to finish the race. The citizens of heaven are said to be overcomers. “He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death” (Rev 21:7). Those who live obediently by faith in Christ are overcomers (1 Jn 5:4-5).

The victory joined to overcoming is set up in stark contrast to those who are overcome by the world. Scripture refers to them as ‘cowardly and unbelieving’ and not heirs of eternal life. What a cause for sober reflection! Those who do not overcome; but instead are overcome by sin and the world (lay down in it), will not enter heaven (Rev 21:8; 2 Pet 2:18-22; Phil 3:18-19). One cannot have his sin and heaven too.

Defining myself as crucified with Christ (a positional reality) is an act of obedient faith. At the moment of salvation, the Holy Spirit set me apart in Christ as belonging to God. Set apart to Him is an accomplished fact that allows me to live the rest of my earthly life as God’s own possession (Heb 10:10, 14). The more I trust in this fact that I am set apart from sin unto God as His child devoted to Him, the more I will understand why Christ does not want to share my heart with idols (Eph 3:14-17).

CONCLUSION: Our part in preaching the gospel to ourselves is to view these treasures by faith, meditating on them until we are able to explain their wealth to our own souls. We should always be matching His all-sufficient Savior-hood with our sinner-ship—always dwelling upon how His redeeming work is a perfect fit for our ruin by sin (Heb 7:25-27).

The Puritans remind us that to deal with the wealth of the gospel is to deal directly with Christ’s Person. For the benefits He has won for us are not ‘commodities’ that have an existence apart from Him. Our wealth is in Him—we are sons in Him; overcomers through Him, heirs in Him. As we meditate upon our union with Christ, and the riches we have in Him, our hearts are drawn out in love and adoration to Him—and our loyalty to Him becomes more stable and firm.

We must always remember that Christ’s work in His atonement was a purchase—not only of eternal life, but also of ourselves as well. To have received God’s free gift of redemption is also to have become God’s own possession. It is to be owned by the Lord as His cherished possession (1 Cor 6:19-20). It is to be Christ’s ‘slave’ who is ruled by His Word. What follows then for the rest of our lives is giving our selves back to God (presentation) in overflowing gratitude (Rom 6:12-23).

Grace is commonly defined by professing Christians as boundless kindness, but not as absolute obligation. Paul, in Titus 2:11-14, corrects this misnomer by declaring that grace instructs us in holiness. Grace fits us and motivates us to live our entire lives as set apart to God’s calling as His possession—to present ourselves back to God without reservation as our daily privilege (Rom 6:11-13). In this life, you will never outgrow your need for the gospel—for Paul states: “And now I commend you to God and to the word of His grace [the gospel], which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified” (Acts 20:32).

Preaching the gospel to ourselves is the key to thinking spiritually, it is the chief spiritual habit which the Lord utilizes to form Christ in us and grow us to maturity. When we are gospel-centered, it is normal for us to experience fruitfulness and as well as victory over the world and its idolatrous offers. Only the gospel proclaims that a sinner may be right with the God by faith (Phil 3:10). Exploring all that God is toward us in Christ is a gold mine we cannot exhaust. There is no greater glory and honor than to know God (Jer 9:23-24), to be beloved by, and to belong to, the One who owns and rules the cosmos. For He gave His blood to make us His own (Eph 5:25-27).

II. As disciple-makers, we must know why the cross of Christ gives the believer the power to deny self and put sin to death. Paul’s disciple-making always begins with “we proclaim Him!” Admonishing and teaching follow. It is the proclamation of Christ in His fullness that is the foundation for all ethical action and religious devotion (Col 1:28-29). Paul knew that his listeners must build upon Christ. Their striving and repenting must rest upon Christ and Him crucified. The centrality of Christ (and the assets He won for us) must always be our proclamation in discipleship or our efforts will be met with disappointment.

We proclaim Him and His cross-work—for only in the Christ-centered—cross-centered life do we find the divine power and love necessary to make a disciple. When Paul was among the Corinthians, his message focused upon the cross, the heart of the gospel—this is the truth with which God associates His power (Rom 1:16-17). “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). Only in Christ are the resources to make a disciple (employ your assets). For the cross produces real transformation—radical changes that can only be adequately described as an entirely new creation. In Christ’s atoning work there is a death applied to us, a resurrection performed upon us that implants a new life principle, there is a ‘spiritual circumcision’ in which the dominance of the flesh is surgically cut, severed, and removed (Gal 6:14; Col 2:11-12).

Christ’s death and resurrection affects these changes in the believing sinner. Our approach to discipleship must have the centrality of Christ at its center as ‘Source Person’. For it is in the hearing and believing of this sweet message of the God-man standing in your room and stead that the poor sinner receives the power and the motives for discipleship. We proclaim Christ, we do so with the goal in view of making disciples and bringing them to maturity.

The Word of the Cross is a message filled with divine power. When the converted sinner hears what Christ has done to slay our old man and how we have been resurrected to an entirely new form of existence—it opens his understanding to spiritual realities that are life-changing. He discovers the source of power for personal holiness (“Christ in you”). This has immense consequences and crucial application for our own methodology in making disciples. We proclaim Christ, admonishing and teaching (See Romans 6).

We must follow the Pauline order (Col 1:28-29)—we proclaim Him—then we admonish and teach. Because only Christ and His cross can make a true disciple— you cannot by your own efforts. All of our instruction, exhortation, pleading, and admonishment must be anchored in Christ and His cross. Why? Because the devotion, the diligence, and the sacrifices made by a true disciple constitute a series of faith responses to Christ, the Lord of Glory. The life of obedience lived out by a true disciple takes place because he has ever clearer views of his Savior. Faith-based obedience is never separated from its object, the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, as disciple-makers, we proclaim Him—for in Christ there is limitless transforming power. That is a neglected truth in the church today—that the message of the cross actually produces consecration and real devotion to Christ.

III. Paul gives us our growth pattern; he joins the power of God in the cross with the believer’s response of diligence and consecration. The power of the message of the cross believed produces consecration and devotion to Christ. Our disciple-making must be characterized by both proclamation and practice, by exhibiting the supremacy of our Savior and by exhorting believers to follow Him without limits or reservations. Bare principles and moral injunctions will not produce lasting change in the listener. In the final analysis, our most impassioned pleas for our listeners to be good, to try harder; to stop sinning—must be joined to the display of Christ—or the flesh will conclude that in itself are the resources necessary to crucify the flesh. We must preach to our hearers what we preach to ourselves—namely that Christ is the Divine Architect of the new man (Col 3:9-11; Eph 4:20-24).

The cross of Christ has redeemed and purchased us making us God’s possessions for His holy and loving purposes. Christ’s mediatorial work has poured us into a life mold—totally shaping us to live for God’s glory (Col 3:10-11). On this side of the cross, true discipleship is living the new life Christ has wrought for us. But, we do not live a life of self-denial so that Christ will accept us—no, God has accepted the believer in the Beloved (Eph 1:3-6). Discipleship, with its lifestyle of self-denial, is living the life Christ has wrought for us.

By means of the Holy Spirit, our Savior lives through us (Gal 2:20). Paul’s overflowing joy as a disciple of Christ emanated from his understanding that he was living an exchanged life. Paul could say with complete confidence that Christ was living His life through Paul. The old Paul had been crucified with Christ. The new Paul was nothing less than a daily cognizance of the reality that Christ lives in me. Paul was animated by this truth—it permeated his understanding—Christ is expressing His personality through the vehicle of my fleshly body (Gal 2:20). Paul was so conversant with his divine resources/assets in Christ that he could actually say of himself, “It is no longer I who live!”

IV. Proclaiming Christ and His cross guards against Christianity characterized by box-checking and the performance treadmill. There are dangers we might encounter if we don’t keep sharing with our disciples the resources they have in Christ. Let us mark this down in our own disciple-making—exhortation without this Word of Christ and Him crucified can produce exasperation. I remember the formula this way: exhortation without enablement equals exasperation. When we exhort— we must never fail to imbue our listeners with their infinite resources in Christ.

But, admittedly, these gospel spiritual realities of identification with Christ stretch our understanding/comprehension to the limit. Just to think that in the mind of God, the elect were so fully identified with Christ their Head as to gain His life. So intimate was this identification that in Christ’s crucifixion, our fallen human natures were judged so that we should no longer be slaves of sin (Rom 6:6). This is Paul’s victory cry—those who have died are freed from sin—sin is no longer master over them (Rom 6:5-10ff.). Our Adamic nature with its original sin—that bottomless vile vent of rebellion and pollution was once and for all judged in the body of Christ in His death. That is the basis for our victory over indwelling sin.

V. This doctrine of co-crucifixion is frequently neglected because it is difficult to understand, and therefore not viewed as practical. The Apostle does not relegate this doctrine of co-crucifixion with Christ to the realm of theory. He immediately plows it into practical use. The believer is to reckon, count, consider himself dead to sin and alive to God. He is to present the members of his body to God as instruments of righteousness (Rom 6:11-13). How blessed it is to know that our fruitfulness as disciple-makers is tied to the Word of the Cross. The message of Christ and Him crucified assures us that the message of the gospel is God’s power to all who believe (Rom 1:16-17).

The proclamation of Christ’s indestructible life and His intercession for us in His passion and His glory cannot fail to produce a life of true discipleship in the elect. You and I need that assurance. Paul was seeking to prove to the consciences of the Corinthians that Christ was in him (2 Cor 13:3), and that his motives in ministry issued from the Person and work of Christ (see 2 Cor 5). Paul’s point is that only Christ’s cross can produce the mindset of a true disciple of Christ. In 2 Corinthians 5, the Apostle expounds his motives for serving God, and he expounds the source of those motives. Paul’s motive for service was the controlling love of Christ. This motive issues forth in an action—the believer no longer lives for himself—he lives the life of a true disciple. “For the love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all that they who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose again on their behalf” (2 Cor 5:14-15).

Paul says that he is constrained or controlled—he is so affected by a sense of incarnate love as to be ‘bounded by it’. He makes the will of Christ the rule of obedience. The true Christian is controlled by a sense of divine love issuing forth in a life consecrated to Christ. The one who lives supremely for family, science, world, mankind, or whatever else is not a Christian. Christ died and rose on our behalf—that is, in our stead. The theology of this verse (2 Cor 5:14) is more profound than merely an obligatory response of our love to Christ’s love. The cross has an inner result only understood in terms of substitution. He died for me as Substitute. He met the demands of justice for me (the basis and reality of my justification)—I died with Him— co-crucifixion is the basis for the whole possibility of my discipleship and sanctification. Thus, the power of Christ’s cross is life-transforming. The sacrificial work of Christ is not merely an example of ultimate obedience for the disciple of Christ to emulate. The cross of Christ exerts the power in the lives of believing sinners to make new creatures who will walk as disciples of Christ.

VI. Let’s review these gospel realities so that they become fixed in our hearts as genuine ‘take away’s’. Being a new creation in Christ is a profound truth in relation to discipleship because the cross of Christ produces actual changes in the sinner— changes which make the new believer willing to pay the cost of true discipleship! Therefore, we must fix in our minds that the cross provides each of the following three necessities for true discipleship. The cross provides the 1) motivation to live as a disciple (we are controlled by the love of Christ). The cross provides the 2) obligation to live as a disciple (we are to no longer live for ourselves). The cross provides the 3) enablement to live as a disciple (we have died with Christ).

1. How is the cross a motivation to obedience and loyalty to Christ? ANS. according to 2 Cor 5:14-15, Eph 5:25, and Gal 2:20, and 1 Jn 4:10 -- it was infinite love for us that moved Christ to endure the cross. That incredible love is an animating, motivating force for us to obey our Lord.
2. How does the cross of Christ provide the obligation to live for our Lord? ANS. according to 2 Cor 5:15 those who receive the benefits of Christ's atoning work will no longer live for themselves. They will live a life which crucifies the sinful passions of the flesh (Gal 5:24). Romans 8:12-13 says that we are always under the obligation to obey Christ and to deny indwelling sin.

3. How does the cross provide enablement to live a sin-judged life? ANS. The cross was a real condemnation and judgment of our old Adamic man. In fact, according to Romans 6:6 the former dominion of our sinful natures was made powerless, put out of business, and cancelled as a force of dominance by the application of Christ's death to us (this is known as co-crucifixion).

The Puritans remind us of several things related to the centrality of the gospel:

1. The gospel ought to be central because it is how God gives Himself to us in Christ.
2. Christ is our ‘source Person’, the fountain of life; the gospel sets forth union with Christ as our very life, now and eternally.
3. When we are feeding on the gospel, we are dealing directly with Christ, for He gives Himself to us within the gospel promises of the new covenant.
4. The gospel is our ‘food’ because it answers our heart's hunger by graciously giving to the believer the full availability of Christ who is source of all divine blessing, favor, light, love, belonging, and presence.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Why is our core identity and its source an area of intense spiritual warfare?
2. What are the benefits of preaching the gospel to yourself? How is that accomplished?
3. What is the connection between being loved by Christ, and the ability to understand, and rest upon the gospel promises in His Word? (Hint: Christ’s sheep are those who ‘hear His voice’—John 10:4, 16). Locate as many gospel promises as you can in John chapter 10. To whom are these promises made?
4. Explain what it means that Christ’s sacrifice on Calvary’s cross was a verdict. It was a verdict about what? What established the verdict? Who pronounced the verdict?

5. How does God intend that this verdict affect the believer’s conscience (use Scripture)?
6. The righteousness that God is looking at when He justifies a believing sinner is resident in Christ, not in the sinner. How does this truth ensure that salvation is ‘all of grace’? How does this truth drive all of the believer’s motives in his Christian walk?