Romans 6:11

‘Even so reckon you also yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.'

In the same way we as Christians are to reckon ourselves as dead to sin, but alive to God, ‘in Christ Jesus'. This is what our response to what has been described must be. It must be a recognition of the fact that we are truly dead to sin. Compare Galatians 5:24, ‘but those who are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its affections and desires', and that in a passage where practical living is very much in mind. This is because we, as the man we were, have died with Christ. And it must be an acceptance of, and response to, the fact that we as the man we now are (the new man) share in His resurrection and life (John 11:25) because we are ‘in Christ Jesus'. Through Him we are ‘alive to God'. And we are therefore to live to God as He does.

That this is to be a practical experience, and not just positional, comes out in the fact that we are made ‘alive to God' and in its description as a ‘newness of life' in which we have to walk (Romans 6:4). This is confirmed by the references to yielding our bodies as instruments of righteousness (Romans 6:12), and is further confirmed in Romans 8:1 where it is seen as due to the work of the Spirit. We have experienced a new birth of the Spirit (John 3:1). We have been begotten again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3). Christ lives in us (Galatians 2:20; Colossians 1:27). How can it not be experiential?