“I have been crucified with Christ …” (Galatians 2:20).
The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is the need to sign the death certificate of our sin nature [the self-life]. I must take my emotional opinions and intellectual beliefs and be willing to turn them into a moral verdict against the nature of sin; that is, against any claim I have to my right to myself. Paul said, ” I have been crucified with Christ …”
He did not say, “I have made a determination to imitate Jesus Christ,” or, “I will really make an effort to follow Him”–but–“I have been identified with Him in His death.” Once I reach this moral decision and act on it, all that Christ accomplished for me on the Cross is accomplished in me. My unrestrained commitment of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to grant to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.
“… it is no longer I who live . …” My individuality remains, but my primary motivation for living and the nature that rules me are radically changed. I have the same human body, but the old satanic right to myself has been destroyed.
“… and the life which I now live in the flesh,” not the life which I long to live or even pray that I live, but the life I now live in my mortal flesh–the life which others can see, ” I live by faith in the Son of God . …” This faith was not Paul’s own faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith the Son God had given to him (see Ephesians 2:8). It is no longer a faith in faith, but a faith that transcends all imaginable limits–a faith that comes only from the Son of God.
[“For the death that He (Christ) died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord” Rom. 6:10,11]
My Utmost for His Highest: March 21. This classic daily devotional is online at http://utmost.org/ and for purchase in a variety of editions – http://www.dhp.org/Departments/Books.aspx. (Chambers’ teaching on identification with Christ, clarified by discerning man’s makeup as spirit, soul, and body, is the essential message that Grace Fellowship International applies in a biblical counseling model. See Chambers’ Biblical Psychology and C.R. Solomon, Handbook for Christ-Centered Counseling.)
For more clarity on the term “sinful nature” as a traditional term for the flesh or indwelling sin, see https://gracenotebook.com/does-the-believer-have-two-natures/.