We’ve all heard of people in witness protection programs or defecting from another country who have had to assume new identities”killing off’ their old selves’for reasons of personal safety. Paul appeals to this sort of language when he says,
How shall we who have died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of you as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. (Rom. 6:2’5)
The apostle goes on to speak of the crucifixion of the old identity and its burial as the believer is raised with a new life: ‘Let us never forget that our old selves died with him on the cross that the tyranny of sin over us might be broken’for a dead man can safely be said to be free from the power of sin’ (v. 7, J. B. Phillips).
Israel had long sought its identity in conforming to the law. By outward observance, many thought union with the law and with Moses would lead to the identity that brought fulfillment, hope, and salvation. But Christ alone possessed in himself, in his essence as well as in his actions, the righteousness that God required. Therefore, only through union with Christ could the believer enjoy the identity of belonging to God.
This new identity is not something we achieve. God gives it to us graciously, apart from and outside of ourselves. Just as these people who have to change their identities can never go back, and owe their loyalty to those who give them the new identity, so ‘released from the service of sin, you entered the service of righteousness’ (v. 19).
It is important to realize that Christ does not come to improve the old self, to guide and redirect it to a better life; he comes to kill us in order to raise us to newness of life. He is not the friend of the old self; he is its mortal enemy, bent on replacing it with a new self. God gives life to those who are spiritually dead, granting them the faith necessary to respond positively. It is through this faith that one is accepted by God.’
