Spiritual Identification with the Cross

The "finished work" of God in Christ must not be considered only with theological objectivity. Christ's activity will of necessity affect us personally and subjectively. Though this might all be regarded as the theological significance of the cross, it is being separated under a different heading to emphasize the subjective elements of His death and life in the Christian, by referring to spiritual identification with the cross.

Previous mention has been made of an objective "spiritual solid-arity" that all men have with Jesus Christ because He substitution-ally took the death consequences of our sin. That "spiritual solidarity" becomes efficacious for us individually and subjectively when we receive by faith the complete death and life that God effects in Jesus Christ. The spiritual exchange of our regenerative conversion is the occasion of this personal spiritual identification.

Paul explains in Romans 6:6, "that our old man was crucified with Him (Jesus Christ), in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin." It is important to observe several particulars of what Paul writes in this verse:

First of all, he employs a compound Greek word, sustauro�, which means "to crucify together with." This has often been referred to as the Christian's "co-crucifixion" with Jesus. It is best to avoid such terminology, as the English prefix "co-" can mean "jointly" or "together with." But it also can mean "equally," "in the same degree," or "as a complement to." We would not want to imply that our subjective crucifixion experience is of equal significance or in the same degree as the crucifixion of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Nor would we want to imply that our experience of being crucified is a complement to Christ's crucifixion, in order to complete it. Jesus said, "It is finished" (John 19:31) ­completed! Our having been "crucified together with" Jesus must be understood in terms of spiritual solidarity. When Jesus died on the cross, He died there for me, but He also died there as me. When He died, I died. I was "in Him" when He died. The entire human race was represented by Jesus when He took the death consequences for sin upon Himself, but that spiritual solidarity becomes personally and subjectively efficacious for me when I receive Jesus Christ by faith. The verb is an aorist tense indicating that "to have been crucified with Him" was a definite occurrence historically enacted when Jesus died on the cross, and which becomes experientially effective at the definite occasion of our spiritual conversion.

Secondly, Paul writes that our "old man" has been crucified together with Christ. The designation "old man" signifies our spiritual identity when we were a "man of old" in our old spiritual condition of un-regeneracy. Our pre-Christian identity was that of a "natural man" (1 Cor. 2:14), a "child of wrath" (Eph. 2:3), an "old man." That "old man" identity was "laid aside" (Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:9 [both NKJV], both aorist tense verbs) when we became Christians and received... Read Full Article