Death and resurrection

“...we fail to acknowledge that the gospel isn’t centrally about behavior modification. At its core, the true message is about dying and miraculously being resurrected into a new person.

“Sure, life in Christ has implications for behavior. But we can’t afford to miss the death and life issues because we’re obsessed with the effects rather than the cause. Describing the core of the message, Paul writes the following:
For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:3–4)”—The Naked Gospel, page 106

“This miraculous exchange [of the new birth] is not figurative or symbolic but literal and actual. The spiritual part of every Christian has literally and actually been crucified, buried, and raised with Christ. The fact that this occurs spiritually (and not physically) doesn’t make it any less real.

“So what happens to the old self that was in Adam? Once a person is in Christ, the old self is entirely obliterated.”—The Naked Gospel, page 108

“Many have held to the idea that the old self is only positionally dead or is progressively dying over time. But the same epistles that claim Jesus solved our behavior problem by dying on the cross and taking our sins away also state that Jesus solved our identity problem by giving us a new heart, a new spirit, and God’s Spirit. We accept forgiveness as actual, Jesus’ own death as actual, heaven as actual, and Jesus’ return as actual. We don’t have the right to relegate the death of our old self to the realm of the positional or the progressive.”—The Naked Gospel, page 109

<idle musing>
The italics are all his.

I'm currently reading Inhabiting the Cruciform God. His basic thesis is that justification and sanctification are co-crucifixion with Christ, and the resulting co-resurrection. Good stuff—and it should have an affect on how we live, but that is not the core issue. The core issue is that we are new creations in Christ!
</idle musing>