Dead to the Law and Dead in the Body of Christ

We must differentiate between being dead to the law and being dead in the body of Christ. The law is for transgressors, but through the body of Christ we have become dead to the law. Rom. 7:4.

After your sins have been forgiven, and you want to live a godly life, you will discover that you fall short. Even when you do your best, it’s still inadequate. Again and again you must turn to the Lamb of God who bore the sins of the world in order to receive forgiveness for your sins. You are like the people in the old covenant who received forgiveness by offering a sacrifice. Then it was the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer that sanctified them for the purifying of the flesh. Now you receive forgiveness through Jesus’ blood by looking up to the Lamb of God who was sacrificed.

In this state, you are still ignorant of your own inadequacy, your corrupt nature. You promise time and again to do better, but you do not realize that you cannot be any better. However, if you are upright, you will consider this and discover that sinning daily is not a perfect life. Through the law you will come to the conclusion that you must die to the law. If you have died to the law through the body of Christ, you also through the same body have been crucified with Him.

Previously, you were not crucified, which is why you sinned daily and needed to have your sins forgiven daily. But now you have been delivered from the law so that you serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter. Rom. 7:6. The nails of the cross will hinder you from sinning. Now you have come into the body, because we have been baptized with one Spirit to be one body.

Even though now you are dead to the law, nevertheless you are not dead in the body. In the body we are continually delivered to the death of Christ. Death is at work in us, and we are being made like Him in His death. Phil. 3:10. It is during this process that the weakness comes forth through which God’s power is revealed.

Those who live under the law are not living by faith. Therefore it is written, “But before faith came, we were kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith which would afterward be revealed.” Gal. 3:23. “The law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.”

The law has been replaced by faith. The chastisement of the law has been replaced by the nails of the cross. We are dead to the law through the body of Christ, and now we are delivered to death in the body—by faith.