As a child of fallen Adam you could not be restored to innocence, or brought back in righteousness to God [Rom. 5:12]. Divine justice could only pass upon you the sentence of utter condemnation. If that condemnation had fallen upon you in your own person, you would have been lost for ever, but, thank God! it has fallen upon you in the person of Him who took your place upon the cross. And when Christ hung upon that cross, God saw you there; and when He died and was buried you disappeared judicially as a child of Adam from God’s sight for ever. God would have you to know this — it is a part of the gospel — “that our old man has been crucified with him,” Romans 6:6.
Displacing the fleshly ways of Adam through deliverance
It is on the ground of this great judicial act that the believer is entitled to reckon himself dead to sin [Rom. 6:11], and alive to God in Christ Jesus, and when he is brought to this by the Spirit he has deliverance. I think we may say that Adam is displaced by Christ experimentally when the believer gets deliverance. All his efforts to improve himself are then at an end; and the awful misery of perpetual disappointment as to the success of those efforts is ended too, for he tastes the joy of being free from Adam, and is consciously in the liberty of life in Christ Jesus.
This experimental setting aside of our old man [the flesh] is the proper and necessary counterpart of the judicial setting aside of which I have already spoken. When Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20), he expressed what he had really reached in the experience of his soul. He had done with himself. It was now for him, “Not I, but Christ.” He not only believed that he had been set aside judicially before God at the cross, but he was in the good of a perfect deliverance for himself, so that not one thought of self-amendment crossed his mind…
Displacing the fleshly ways of Adam through spiritual formation
Intimately connected with deliverance is the great fact that Adam is displaced characteristically by Christ being formed in us.
The expression has just been under our notice — “Yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” Again Galatians 4:19 the apostle says, “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you”. … Then, if that [old] man was gone was there no other? Yes. Paul could not only speak of the setting aside of a man perfectly worthless, but of the bringing in of a MAN perfectly acceptable to God. “I live; yet not I, but CHRIST lives in me.” His great heart travailed in birth again for the Galatians that CHRIST might be formed in them. Religious ordinances could never effect this; it can only be effected as we go on in the Spirit [Gal. 3:1-3; Eph. 5:18]…
What has been judicially accomplished at the cross [Rom. 6:6] has its counterpart by the Spirit in our souls [Rom. 8:4], and it is upon that line that Christ is formed in us. We have before us a MAN [Jesus] who has taken up on the cross our whole condition as in Adam, that He might end it in death; and now as the risen and glorified One, He fills, not only the heart of God, but the heart of everyone who is in the Spirit, with unspeakable rest and satisfaction.
It is thus that CHRIST is formed in us, and the effect of it is, that we come out in new character. The fruit of the Spirit — “love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance” — is what Christ is characteristically. It is not Adam elevated or improved, but Christ. In Colossians 3:9-11, this precious truth is further developed, where believers are said to have “put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all.” On this ground we are exhorted to “put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness” (vv.12-14).
That is, Adam in every phase and form is set aside, Christ is everything and in all, and all that Christ is characteristically, takes the place of the selfish and hateful things characteristic of Adam. I am sure that the very mention of these things should have a deeply humbling effect upon us. I leave it to each one to ask his own heart how far all this has been effected and made good in him by the Spirit of God…
From The Believer Established by C. A Coates (1862-1945). pp 34-37
His spiritual testimony is mentioned here: gracenotebook.com/beyond-self-improvement/