- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
DEAD TO SIN.
By E H Hopkins
Children of God need two things, a power to separate us from evil, and a power to transform us into the likeness of Christ. These are found in His death and life. We do not say goodbye to the first because we have been brought to live in the second. No, the condition of knowing the power of His resurrection lies in “becoming like Him in His death” (Philippians 3 v10).
True life springs up out of death and it triumphs over sin, and does not stop producing fruit. We see this spiritual meaning in the words of the Apostle Paul, which we can sometimes fail to grasp at first reading, always carrying around in “our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body” (2 Corinthians 4 v10). Death is here put before us as the condition of life. The continual display of this life depends upon us constantly conforming to the death of Christ.
Death means separation, and life means union. By being brought more and more into harmony with Christ’s death to sin, we become more thoroughly separated from sin’s effects and corruption. It is not only separation from sinning, it is a separation from the old selfish way of living. The great obstacle to the display of the Christ-centred life is the presence and activity of the self-centred life, which needs to be put aside. Nothing but the “carrying around in our body the death of Jesus” can accomplish this. Conformity, and compliance, to His death means a separation in heart and mind from the old source of activity, and the motives and aims of the old life. This conformity is the condition needed for the display of the Divine Life.
From ‘The Overcomer, 1911’.