.

THE OLD MAN = BEING IN ADAM

NOT THE OLD SIN NATURE

In the structure in the book of Romans, the section from 5:12-8:39 deals with God's solution for the problem of inherant sin with which everybody is born. God as the moral Judge of the universe has to deal with this issue of inherant sin - this problem that we are born with. In the subsection within this from 5:12-7:6, Paul explains how God as a Holy Judge has dealt with inherant sin within man. And so for this reason we have added the word judicial to describe the section 5:12-7:6: this is how God as Judge is dealing with our inherent sin. We cannot base daily living truth on this particular section of Romans. In Romans chapter 6 Paul is answering an attack about salvation by grace alone.

[Ro 6:5]:

"If we have been united with Him like this in His death,

[and we believers have per verse 4]

we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection."

In the first part of Romans 6:5, Paul declares that believers have grown together with Jesus Christ in His death:

"for we have been planted together in the likeness of His death"

This first part of verse 5 is actually explained in verses 6 & 7.

The last part of verse 5:

"We shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection" is explained in verses 8-10. God is thus explaining how we have joined - grown together - with Christ in terms of His death and verses 6 & 7 explain this in greater detail:

[Ro 6:6]:

"knowing this, that our old man is crucified with

Him, that our body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should no longer be slaves to sin;"

"knowing this" = 'you ought to know this' = Paul is presenting, after the phrase "knowing this", a doctrinal fact which Paul says Christians should know.

"the old man" = refers to the position of the whole human race in Adam sharing Adam's guilt. All the verses previous to this verse from chapter 5 kept dealing with the man Adam and the Man Jesus Christ. These men were constantly matched, one against another: the old life of sin and death in Adam vs. the new of righteousness in life in Christ. So following right through in this context to Romans 6:6, Paul uses a technical term which he invents under the guidance of God the Holy Spirit, (II Tim 3:16), to describe humanity as a whole in that position of judgment and death and condemnation in Adam: "the old man" = Adam is "the old man". Adam is the old man. All of humanity that is joined with him in that position of death are part of "the old man". Adam's guilt was imputed to all of us because he acted as our federal representative. He was the head of the human race and what he did was imputed to all of us. For this reason we are joined to Adam. Paul refers to this joining with Adam and his guilt as "the old man". Being in the old man is a position which we enter by birth and it is one which is under divine condemnation - under the wrath of God. So the human race is viewed as a whole under the position of death because of its relationship to Adam its federal head. "The old man" refers to the whole old creation in Adam in contrast to the new creation in Jesus Christ. The thing that we want to stress is that the term "the old man" does not refer to the inherent sin nature - your inherent sin tendency - which is in everyone and continues to be there even after salvation. What "the old man: does refer to is your position in Adam which is a position of death. Anybody who dies physically while he is under the condition of being in Adam will go to the Lake of Fire. It matters not how religious you are, how sincere you are if you die in Adam. As human beings, we can do absolutely nothing to remove ourselves from the position of death in "the old man" Adam. That's where God and His grace had to come into the picture to provide a solution. So what Paul is referring to here is that whole desperate condition into which we are all born where we have imputed to us the guilt of Adam when he disobeyed God in the garden of Eden and brought upon himself and all the human race the condemnation and the wrath of God. That is being part of the old man. What we have here is a summary of the position of condemnation before a holy God because of the imputation of Adam's guilt to each of us. It is a technical term - "the old man" to describe the human race under eternal death in Adam. "The old man" does not mean the old sin nature - it is your position in Adam - a position of death and condemnation which you are born into and are helpless to get out of it. "The old man" is in contrast to the position in Christ which is the new man - which is the position in which the grace of God must place you if you are ever to go down to heaven. For all of mankind the problem is very simply reduced in Scripture to being here in Adam or being here in Christ. The issue is that if we are born in Adam, how are we going to get to be in Christ. If we die in our position in Adam we will go to the Lake of Fire. If we die in the position of in Christ, we will go to heaven. Somehow we have to terminate this relationship in Adam and inaugurate this relationship in Christ. We ourselves, however, can never do it. Paul here says, 'You can't go on sinning. You can't go on a slave to that sin tendency, because you should know this: that our old man, our old relationship in Adam is crucified' ----WRONG TRANSLATION:

"= ==== " = "sunestaur oth e = from the Greek word "= === o " = "sustaur o o" = comes from two Greek words:

"sun" = with

and

"staur o o" = to crucify

And when you put them together and you have, 'to crucify with' - cocrucifixion - to be crucified together at the same time. The word is actually used in the Bible to describe two people who are crucified together:

[Mt 27:44 ]:

"In the same way the robbers who were crucified with Him

sustaur othentes

also heaped insults on Him."

(Compare Mk 15:32 & Jn 19:32)

But here in the book of Romans 6:6 this word is being used in a spiritual sense to connote identification with Christ in His death on the cross. It is our cocrucifixion as has been reckoned to us by God the judge. This is a judicial reckoning. And here we are told that this old man - the old humanity in Adam has been crucified. Now crucifixion indicates one thing: termination. When a person is crucified his life comes to an end. It does not mean to be squelched in some way. So the phrase 'the old man' in this verse cannot be referring to the old sin nature - our inborn tendency to sin - because we know that we don't quit sinning - our sinning is not terminated, even after we have been born again. And the term crucified means termination. Therefore the phrase 'our old man was crucified' does not signify that our sin nature is nailed to the cross in such a way that it can come down from it and sin all over again and then get crucified all over again. Nor does 'our old man was crucified' mean that our old sin nature was terminated, (I Jn 1:8, 10)