Sanctified Position

One of the most horrible, most cruel forms of punishment in Paul’s day was a method employed by the Romans to put people to death, was to take a corpse, someone who had already been executed and to strap that corpse onto the body of a live person. One can imagine what it must have been like as that corpse began to rot, what an abhorrent presence that would have been. Paul paints that very picture when he illustrates the ever-present problem that his sinful nature presented to him. Paul could not escape his sinful nature no matter how fervently he tried. We can rejoice and we can give all the glory and the praise to God and to our savior Jesus Christ for the fact that even though that sinful nature is strapped onto our fleshly backs like a rotting corpse, God does not see us in our flesh from his judicial perspective. Our fleshly bodies will never be worthy of heaven in that they will never be able to perform to the measure of the righteousness that is true of God. We are alive because of our position, not at all because of our practice. God no longer views us in our human flesh, he views us in our position in the second Adam (Jesus Christ), he views us in our glorified identity.

What a great outlook!

It must be awesome to think you have a metaphorical rotting corpse strapped to your back throughout your entire life.

reply to post by newnature

. . . a method employed by the Romans to put people to death, was to take a corpse, someone who had already been executed and to strap that corpse onto the body of a live person.

Never heard of that but they probably devised a lot of ways of killing people.

Paul paints that very picture when he illustrates the ever-present problem that his sinful nature presented to him.

I doubt that Paul was thinking of that while he was writing his letter to the Romans.

Paul could not escape his sinful nature no matter how fervently he tried.

He was probably referring to how he naturally was offended by things that gentiles took in stride, because of his strict Jewish personal history. His flesh was trained by practice to see things that were abhorrent even while spiritually he understood that they had no real effect on his salvation. He realized that he was stuck with those Jewish prejudices for as long as he lived.

We can rejoice and we can give all the glory and the praise to God and to our savior Jesus Christ for the fact that even though that sinful nature is strapped onto our fleshly backs like a rotting corpse, God does not see us in our flesh from his judicial perspective.

We don't have the same problem as Paul had because most likely anyone who is reading this post is not a Pharisee but more likely a gentile, and a Christian on top of that, so we don't have this ingrained aversion to things that we were taught would defile us, like being in the company of "sinners".

Our fleshly bodies will never be worthy of heaven in that they will never be able to perform to the measure of the righteousness that is true of God.

I see no indication that we might ever be required to live in Heaven, or face to face with God.

We are alive because of our position, not at all because of our practice.

Hello, the world hasn't ended yet, in case you haven't noticed. We are alive because we were born.

God no longer views us in our human flesh, he views us in our position in the second Adam (Jesus Christ), he views us in our glorified identity.

We aren't standing for judgment yet, seeing how we are alive right now.
We are in Christ as long as we are walking by faith, which means that we have received the spirit from God through Jesus that enables us to live upright lives.
About the "second Adam" paul says that unlike how through the sin of one all eventually die, through the righteousness of the second, it does not automatically make everyone not die. People have to actually be like Jesus, in being righteous, following his example, to have eternal life.

reply to post by newnature


I understand what you mean.

There is he who was born into the world and lives in the world, and when we take on the body of Christ we take on a new body and become dead in the world and alive in Christ. Yet in the world we still live.

It is like Jesus carrying His cross. He is alive and must use His life to carry the dead weight to His death. On the Cross His flesh dies but He comes off of it and lives. He shows us what we must do, we must lose our life so that we can save it.

The Cross represents our worldly nature in this situation presented, but as you know it is a representation of many things.

reply to post by backcase

. . . when we take on the body of Christ we take on a new body and become dead in the world and alive in Christ.

I'm not aware of any verse in the New Testament that describes "taking on the body of Christ".
I am also not aware of any verse that describes being "dead in the world".
We can live for Christ.

reply to post by jmdewey60


Well what I mean is that we are alive in Christ, we live for the spirit rather than living for fulfillment of pleasures, selfish dreams, and human desire.