The great preacher, Leonard Ravenhill, once said, “Jesus did not come to make bad men good; He came to make dead men live.” We spend a lot of time trying to make us good, promoting a better moral standard, a higher ethic. The way grace finds us is “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1-5). Until Jesus raises us from our death, we will not be able to walk in “newness of life”. When He raises us from the dead, He raises us to a life that will result in moral and ethical living. United to His death, the dead rise to live with Him.
“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. “ Romans 6:4-6 (NASB)
