OUR OLD MAN IS DEAD

Rom 8:8-9 
So then they who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if anyone has not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.

Rom 6:5-11 
For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.  For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies no more; death has no more dominion over him.For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he lives, he lives unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.  

In Genesis 3:1 Satan tries to cast doubt in Eve’s mind about what God said. Then in Genesis 3:4 he contradicts what God said, basically he has the audacity to call God a liar as he assigns a false motive to God and what He said. He continues the same pattern to this day as he will always attack God’s Word. He deceived Adam and Eve by attacking the teaching God gave them. Look what happened to them, they died, in the fact that their sin separated them from that close communion they once had with the Giver of life. He does not want us to receive what God says about us or what He has in store for us. In light of this truth let’s look at Romans 6:6 and 8:9.
Romans 6:6 says “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” Some of the definitions of the word “knowing” are “to know absolutely; to resolve; to be sure.” There is something here that God wants us “to absolutely know, to be sure of, and to resolve” that we will use what we learn to win as we battle our enemy on a daily basis. 
There has been much debate as to whether a Christian has two natures, the old and the new, and according to what God says in this verse, not only does a Christian not have an old nature, we are not even in the flesh (mind blowing but that is what God says about us, that is the way God sees us). We do not walk by what we see (I see this flesh), we walk by faith and when He makes what seems like such an absurd statement, we must receive it by faith. What a privileged position we have in Him. Grace, grace, God’s grace, grace that is greater than all our sin. I know this sounds too good to be true, and if it does it is probably Jesus!

When we view ourselves as having an old nature it gives Satan a foothold in our mind that he uses to give us an excuse for our bad behavior, and bad behavior always comes from bad thinking (aka, “stinkin thinkin”). Satan is the father of death, he always deals in death (John 10:10), and he wants to keep us in the realm of death, and he accomplishes his plan by continually running the thoughts that have been ingrained in our sub-conscience mind from the time we were born. For example, in regard to my earthly father his actions conveyed to me that I was worth less to him than his time, I was worth less to him than his job, I was worth less to him than his friends, motorcycle, or any of his other pursuits.
This is the way I thought of myself in regard to my father,”I was worthless to him,” and I continued to think of myself the same way after I was saved. I had a very difficult time believing I was worth anything to God, my Heavenly Father. In my initial upbringing in the church after I was saved I bought into some very destructive teachings by well meaning, yet misguided Christian brothers and sisters. I heard them saying things like, “well, you’re just a poor old sinner saved by grace,” or “just do the best you can to serve Him,” or “well, that’s the way I’ve always been,” and worst of all I remember one brother telling me, “Steve, you know God loves you, but if you step out of line, He will whip you back in line,” (that’s the way my earthly father chose to raise us).
By the way, please don’t hear me bashing my earthly father, he was just doing the best he could, he did not realize the damage it was doing to my self image, “but God” (I love that phrase) had other plans for me as I began to study His Word to discover how He sees me, a person of great worth to Him simply because I am in His Son (Ephesians 1:1-14). Victory over sin is much about expectancy, dead men don’t sin. Will we continue to set our minds on the way of death or will we declare the works of the Lord by saying “I am a saint of Almighty God that still has a problem with sin from time to time,” or “I will study His Word and learn to depend on Him instead of just doing the best I can,” or “forsake the old thinking that says this is the way I’ve always been and embrace the fact that I am a new creature in Christ?” Will we set our mind to embrace His truth about ourselves,i.e. “we are dead to sin and now we walk in newness of the life our Savior won for us with His own precious Blood, and will we be bold enough to declare His mighty works before men? Jesus deals in life, He gives us eternal life, abundant life, we must learn to choose life over death when we are tempted by our enemy.

In regard to Romans 8:9 I can hear Satan saying “did God really say that” or “did God really mean that?” He constantly tries to convince us that we are a part of this flesh. God says otherwise, and when Satan attacks our mind we have the God given authority to “put off the old man” (Ephesians 4:22) that he is trying to put back on us.

We’ve all heard in the business world that “clothes make the man.” From God’s perspective that is absolutely true, salvation is all about our clothes. Before we were saved we were clothed in this flesh, (Job 10:11, “You have clothed me with skin and flesh, and have fenced me with bones and sinews). Psalm 109:18 tells us that the wicked has “clothed himself with cursing.” Even Jesus was clothed in this flesh (John 10:14 “the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us). When we receive Jesus as our Savior He has no intention of cleaning up this flesh, His plan has always been to kill it (Romans 6:6) and start all over with us as brand new creatures in Himself. The word “creature” in 2nd Corinthians 5:17 means “original formation.” Man was originally formed in the image of God. Adam was perfect before the fall and that is the same way God sees us when we receive Jesus as our Savior (Hebrews 10:14). He clothes us in His righteousness (2nd Corinthians 5:21). We should take the advise given us in 1st Peter 5:5 to “be clothed in humility” (dependence on Him and what He says rather than depending on ourselves or others). Again, what a privileged position we have in Him. 

Think about the verse we are looking at. I’m sitting here typing with my fingers, I see my hands, arms, feet, legs, etc. I see this flesh and blood body I’m in but God only sees me in His righteousness (2nd Cor. 5:21), in His perfection (Heb. 10:14) through the finished work His Son accomplished for us all. He even tells me I’m not in the flesh but in the Spirit, because the Spirit of God came to indwell me the moment I received Jesus as my Savior.
I see all my failures, my sin, my shortcomings, all carried out in this flesh and blood body and for God to say I’m not in this flesh seems like an absurd statement to me and Satan will work overtime to convince us it is not true, but God said it and that makes it true. The Apostle Paul knew this to be true when as he said in Romans 7:17 and 20 “it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwells in me,” another mind blowing statement from the Word of God that we have to receive by faith. We either believe and receive what God says or we give in to this flesh that He says we are not apart of.
Romans 8:9 robs the flesh and Satan of their power to be in control (the opposite of humility), one of the greatest benefits to us of “knowing” our “old man” is dead.

At this point You may be asking, “how can this be true?” or “why it is so important that we know that we no longer have an old nature warring against our new nature.” It is true solely because God said it. It is one of the most wonderful acts of His grace that He has ever bestowed on mankind. Many believe that the old man is still alive and well and he is constantly warring against the new man that we are, but God says our old man is crucified with Christ (Romans 6:6), he is dead, another statement that we have to receive by faith. Obviously there is a war going on and we continue to fall to some of the same temptations we fell to before we were saved, so what is going on and how do we deal with it?

In Eph. 4:22 God says to “put off” the old man. If the old man is dead, and indeed he is, why does God tell us to put him off. We are no longer “dressed” in the old man, he is dead and we are new creatures in Christ, but when Satan tempts us to question the Word of God (Romans 8:9) we have the authority to put him off and put him in his place. As we deal with our sly enemy we would do well to remember that 2nd Corinthians ll:14 tells us that Satan is transformed into an angel of light, in John 8:12 Jesus depicts Himself as the light of the world. If we are not careful we will mistake Satan for Jesus when he comes to us with his lies and deceptions. If he has the audacity to disguise himself to come across like Jesus I don’t think it is outside the realm of possibility that he would also masquerade as our dead old man and constantly try to convince us that we are still dressed in him to keep us divided, and according to Mark 3:25 “a house divided cannot stand.” According to what He says here, if we believe we have two natures we are divided and “cannot” stand, but we must remember, God is all about us standing up to our enemy, not cowering to him and hoping for the best,and as we learn to put on the armor of God (Ephesians 6:10-17) we realize it is absolutely the will of God that we stand, we may get knocked down but He wants us to get back up and continue to stand in the power of His might, but if we believe “I’m just doing the best I can”, or “that’s the way I’ve always been”,or “I’m just a poor old sinner saved by grace” (old man thinking) instead of learning to trust in Him to overcome we will stay in a fallen state far longer than He wants us to. As we practice putting on His armor (and keeping it on for that matter) we find ourselves continually putting on Jesus, our new man, (Colossians 1:27: “Christ in us, the hope of glory” ). Satan and the “old man” are all about sin and its consequences, i.e. death. They always deal in death because death always separates us from the Giver of life, and as we have already seen, Satan is all about dividing (Mark 3:25). Satan attacks our vain minds (Ephesians 4:17) to distract us from Gods Word, he doesn’t want us to get the fact that we are dead, because he knows that after we die we resurrect to walk in newness of life. After receiving Jesus as our Savior our position in Him is one of perfection. The process of sanctification works out practically what our Savior says about us positionally, i.e. “we are perfected forever” (Hebrews 10:14). Think about this, someone that is perfect needs no forgiveness, but if we want to realize the benefits of forgiveness on a practical level we must agree with God (confess) when we give in to Satan’s temptations. If we stay divided by thinking we have this “old nature”, “new nature” battle going on we just complicate what God is trying to work out in our lives.When Satan tries to convince us that we are still a part of the old man we need to call him on it, call him the liar that he is, and speak the truth about ourselves as God sees us. Remind him that the One that lives in us is greater than he.

Look, I know we will struggle with this flesh until we are delivered from it totally but if we think we still have the same old nature we had before we were saved we wind up shooting ourselves in the foot from the get go. Speaking of shooting, I enjoy shooting handguns, been doing it for several years now and I have learned some things about what is called “muscle memory.” In the event, God forbid, that I would ever have to use my gun to defend myself I have practiced the basics of stance, grip, sight picture, trigger pull over and over until it has become an automatic response that I don’t have to think about. “Muscle memory” might be a misnomer, the fact is it is more like “sub-conscience memory”. Whatever you want to call it, I think this is what happens after we get saved that leads us to believe that our “old man” is still alive and well. Over the years our enemy worked overtime programming our sub-conscience minds to the point that it became an automatic response to do whatever he wanted.
The truth is we have the same old enemy (Satan) that uses the automatic responses of the sub-conscience mind that he programmed to tempt us to go back to the way we always operated before we received Jesus as our Savior, and his cohort “sin” is even personified in Genesis 4:7 (“sin crouches at your door”), hence the teaching that it is no longer I that do it but sin that dwells in me (Romans 7:17 and 20). An effective response to Satan when he attempts to put the old man back on us is “Satan I take authority over you and put you in your place, you are a liar and I will not listen to you. According to what my Savior says, my old man is dead and I no longer have to give in to his desires.”

We have to work at renewing our mind (Romans 12:2) to think on life not death.
Psalm 118:17 gives us some good insights on how to renew our mind “I shall not die, but live and declare the works of Jehovah.” The word “declare” means “to score with a mark as a tally or record, that is, (by implication) to inscribe, and also to enumerate; intensively to recount, that is, celebrate …… reckon…. speak, talk, tell (out)”
Also, Romans 6:11 teaches us to “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The word “reckon” means “to take an inventory, that is, estimate (literally or figuratively): – conclude ………think (on).”
In the case of the “old man” being dead, we “declare, recount, celebrate, speak, talk, or tell out,” (Psalm 118:17), in Romans 6:11 we reckon or “think on” this same truth. In both cases we discover that by simply declaring something that He says produces the faith we need to believe what He says (Roman’s 10:17: “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God”) . Also, He has given us the authority (power) to speak life or death to any situation of life (Proverbs 18:21). Remember that it is His desire that we “know” this about ourselves (Romans 6:6: “knowing this”).

We have to do the mental work to renew our mind. He doesn’t tell us to casually read His Word, He tells us to study it (2nd Timothy 2:15). We’ve all heard that thinking negatively comes naturally and that may be true for unsaved people but should never be natural for us as supernatural beings in Christ. We should study God’s Word to learn how to deal with the negativity that we are faced with everyday of our life, and use God’s Word as our initial response when these temptations arise. When God tells us that our “old man” is dead it takes away the excuse for our laziness to search the scripture to find out what we can declare and thus produce the faith we need to believe, whether it makes any sense to us or not.

When I started this study a couple months ago Satan was using this flesh to try to convince me that I ‘will continue’ to struggle with my breathing because of some pneumonia in my lung from Covid 19, but God says I am healed by His stripes. At present I have my breath back and as Gods Word says “let everything that has breath praise the Lord!”