WE return to our study in Principles of Spiritual Growth (Part One of the Complete Green Letters) – looking now at chapter 8 titled Identification. I have found that this is a topic that is not discussed much, but is a doctrine that provides much in laying a solid foundation in Christ. Paul writes in Gal 2:20, I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. What does Paul mean by it is “no longer I, but Christ?” It appears that here and elsewhere in the NT there are statements pointing me to a new identity in Christ – Not I but Christ.
IN this chapter, our author pulls statements from various writers and quotes them without comment, providing a list of considerations on the topic of Identification. Much of this is centered in what is found in Romans 6, particularly the first 14 verses. Take time to prayerfully read what is there in the context of Romans 6. Look up the related scriptures, and see what can be gleaned there on this important and significant aspect concerning our identification to Christ as we enter into this next chapter of understanding.
With highest regards in Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10; Isa. 30:15; Jas. 1:2
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Chapter 8—Identification
As our thinking moves along from the substitutionary (birth) truths on to the identification (growth) truths, it might be good to consider briefly what leaders, honored of God through the years, have to say about identification, as centered in Romans 6.
Evan H. Hopkins: “The trouble of the believer who knows Christ as his justification is not sin as to its guilt, but sin as to its ruling power. In other words, it is not from sin as a load, or an offence, that he seeks to be freed—for he sees that God has completely acquitted him from the charge and penalty of sin—but it is from sin as a master. To know God’s way of deliverance from sin as a master he must apprehend the truth contained in the sixth chapter of Romans. There we see what God has done, not with our sins—that question the Apostle dealt with in the preceding chapters—but with ourselves, the agents and slaves of sin. He has put our old man—our original self—where He put our sins, namely, on the cross with Christ. ‘Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him’ (Rom. 6:6). The believer there sees not only that Christ died for him—substitution—but that he died with Christ—identification” (Thoughts on Life and Godliness, p. 50).
Andrew Murray: “Like Christ, the believer too has died to sin; he is one with Christ, in the likeness of His death (Rom. 6:5). And as the knowledge that Christ died for sin as our atonement is indispensable to our justification; so the knowledge that Christ and we with Him in the likeness of His death, are dead to sin, is indispensable to our sanctification” (Like Christ, p. 176).
J. Hudson Taylor: “Since Christ has thus dwelt in my heart by faith, how happy I have been! I am dead and buried with Christ—ay, and risen too! And now Christ lives in me, and ‘the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me’ [Gal. 2:20]. Nor should we look upon this experience, these truths, as for the few. They are the birthright of every child of God, and no one can dispense with them without dishonoring our Lord” (Spiritual Secret, p. 116). ….to be continued
