Day 3

Not One Death, But Many

Today's Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:31 (NLT)

Paul did not say I died, once, on a road outside Damascus. He said I die, present and continuous, every single day that I draw breath. And this small grammatical fact carries within it one of the most liberating and one of the most demanding truths in the entire Christian life: the cross is not a single event in your spiritual biography. It is a daily appointment that never gets removed from your calendar.

When you first came to Christ, something genuinely died. The old man, as Paul calls him in Romans 6, was crucified with Christ. Your identity was decisively, eternally, forensically severed from the dominion of sin. That is gospel truth, and nothing in this devotional or in this month is meant to diminish it for one second. You are, in Christ, a new creation. The old has passed away.

And yet — and here is the mystery every honest believer eventually meets — the old man has a strange way of acting like he did not get the memo. The self that was crucified positionally still rises practically. The flesh that has no legal claim on you still makes daily demands. The old patterns that have been judicially condemned still come knocking on the door of your heart with depressing regularity. And the believer who does not understand this will eventually fall into one of two errors.

The first error is to conclude that they were never truly saved, because if they were, surely these old desires would be gone forever. This error has driven countless sincere Christians into despair, into endless cycles of re-conversion, into a tortured spirituality that never finds rest. They mistake the persistence of the flesh for the absence of grace. They do not understand that the New Testament assumes the flesh will still be present even in mature believers — which is precisely why Paul keeps telling us to put it to death (Colossians 3:5, Romans 8:13).

The second error is the opposite — to conclude that since the old man was crucified at conversion, no further effort is needed. To treat death to self as a past tense reality requiring no present participation. To coast on the positional truth without ever engaging the practical command. This error produces the comfortable Christian who has never grown, the believer whose first decade of faith looks identical to their fourth, the soul that mistakes inertia for assurance.

The truth runs straight between these two errors. The old man was crucified — yes, positionally, decisively, in Christ. And the flesh must be put to death — yes, practically, daily, by the Spirit. Both are true. Neither cancels the other. Your conversion settled the legal question forever. Your daily life addresses the practical question, today.

This is why Paul does not write to the Romans, "Since you have already died with Christ, you have nothing left to do." He writes the opposite: "Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin" (Romans 6:11), and then, "If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live" (Romans 8:13). The verb mortify means to put to death. It is present tense. It is ongoing. It is the daily activity of the saved soul.

So what does this mean for the month of June? It means that every morning, you have a fresh decision to make. The self that died with Christ two thousand years ago will not stay dead in your daily experience unless you participate today in what God has already accomplished. The cross is finished, but the application of the cross is not. The work is done, but the working out is daily.

Think of it like this. A condemned criminal is sentenced to death. The judge's gavel falls. Legally, his life is over. But until the sentence is carried out, the man still walks, still eats, still talks. The same self that was condemned in the courtroom is still active in the cell. That is a picture — imperfect but illuminating — of the believer's flesh. It has been sentenced. Its execution is certain. But until the day we see Christ face to face, the daily work of carrying out the sentence is the believer's calling.

This is not a burden. It is a privilege. It means that every day of your life until the day you die, you have the opportunity to enter into what Christ has already accomplished and to live in the freedom He purchased at infinite cost. The cross is the gift that keeps giving — but only to those who keep coming back to it.

You died once, decisively, in Christ. You die daily, deliberately, by the Spirit. Both are true. Hold them together, and you will walk through this month not in confusion but in clarity.

Prayer

Father, thank You that in Christ I have already died, and the verdict against me has been settled forever. Now teach me to live in the daily application of what You have already finished. I do not need to earn a death that is already accomplished. I only need to take up, each morning, what is already mine. Holy Spirit, do in me today what Christ accomplished for me on the cross. Amen.

Today's Challenge

Speak aloud both truths today: "I have died with Christ" — and — "I die daily by the Spirit." Notice how the first gives you assurance and the second gives you direction. Let both shape your prayers and your decisions through this day.

"You died once in Christ so that you could die daily with peace, not panic."