Reading through Romans-Dead to sin!

Romans 6: 5-10 "For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God."

The death of the old man is an established fact. It happened spiritually when we were identified with Jesus' death at our salvation.

The old man is the self patterned after Adam, that part of us deeply ingrained with a desire to rebel against God and His commands. The system of law is unable to deal with the old man, because it can only tell the old man what the righteous standard of God is. The law tries to reform the old man, to get him to "turn over a new leaf." But the system of grace understands that the old man can never be reformed. He must be put to death, and for the believer the old man dies with Jesus on the cross.  

The crucifixion of the old man is something that God did in us. None of us nailed the old man to the cross. Jesus did it, and we are told to account it as being done.

In place of the old man, God gives the believer a new man - a self that is instinctively obedient and pleasing to God; this aspect of our person is that which was raised with Christ in His resurrection.

The flesh is a problem in the battle against sin because it has been expertly trained in sinful habits by three sources. First, the old man, before he was crucified with Christ, trained and "imprinted" himself on the flesh. Second, the world system, in its spirit of rebellion against God, can have an continuing influence on the flesh. Finally, the devil seeks to tempt and influence the flesh towards sin.

That we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin: Our slavery to sin can only be broken by death. In the 1960 film Spartacus, Kirk Douglas played the escaped slave Spartacus, who led a brief but widespread slave rebellion in ancient Rome. At one point in the movie Spartacus says: "Death is the only freedom a slave knows. That's why he is not afraid of it." We are set free from sin because the old man has died with Jesus on the cross. Now a new man, a free man, lives.

This change in the life of the one who is born again was understood and predicted as a feature of God's New Covenant, where because of new hearts our innermost being wants to do God's will and be slaves to righteousness. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

Dear Holy and Loving God, thank you so much for crucifying the "old man" that was in me and replacing it with a "new man" that is a slave to your righteousness!  I am so grateful to no longer be a slave to sin!  Glory be to you!