The Simultaneous Death Of The Messiah And Of Me

If this title sounds like it includes a personal testimony, it does. It is not only my testimony, it is the historical truth for every believer to discover and experience. It is a declaration of personal fact and it is also a testimony of personal faith. If it sounds puzzling, let me first talk with you about the traditional view of the death of the Christ.

The traditional view of “the gospel”
The “preaching of the gospel”, according to the traditional view that has developed among the saints of God, is greatly oversimplified, incomplete, and far less than the “gospel” or “the death of Christ” as presented in the Bible. It is not necessarily “wrong”, it is just not “right”, in the sense it is not often preached in its completeness.
What do I mean? First, it is a wonderful truth that Christ died for the sins of those who come to believe in Him, and that He rose again from the dead. However, and secondly, this aspect of the gospel has unfortunately come to be presented as the complete gospel. Unlike in the second testament, “preaching the gospel” goes something like this: if an unbeliever admits he has sinned, he accepts the thought he is under judgment “and headed for Hell”, but that if he will ask Jesus to forgive his sins he will receive eternal life and go to Heaven when he dies. When a person has completed this spiritual transaction he has “accepted Christ”, he has “believed the gospel” and will go to Heaven if he dies tonight. Better yet, he ought to now “preach the gospel” to others, or bring his friends to the preacher who can do it for him. However, in the Bible, a study of the contexts in which “gospel” is mentioned, makes clearly evident that the gospel includes the entire church life, not just the new birth by which we spontaneously become organic members of a living body, called “the church”.

The biblical view of “the gospel”, including the co-death of Christ and of each believer
In this essay, we wish to deal with primarily one aspect of the gospel, the aspect of the death of Christ and the death of the old man, the fallen and natural life of the soul. We must realize it is not our soul that is put to death, or each of us could not be person. No, it is the fallen life of the soul that was crucified with Christ, and it is to be replaced in experience by the eternal life of the resurrected Christ. With more detail following, we will see that the death of Christ was a co-death of the old creation, of the first collective Adam, a co-death of the self, of the old nature, of the old creation, of the sinful life in every soul who would come to believe in Him (Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:6).

The biblical view of what happened when Jesus the Messiah was crucified
Spiritual truths, by definition, are in a different dimension than natural truths. For example, in the natural realm when a man dies, he dies alone. It is a huge difference in the spiritual realm. The Bible clearly teaches that when Jesus was crucified He did not die alone. On the one hand, He died for sins and for the sinner. On the other hand, the sinner also died even before he was birthed into time.
While II Corinthians 5:21 says that Christ became sin itself on behalf of us and sin was thereby crucified on the cross, in Galatians 2:20 Paul adds that he himself was crucified with Christ. Romans 6:6 says our old man was co-crucified with Him. The Greek word in Galatians 2:20 and Romans 6:6 is the same (sustauroo), meaning “to be crucified together”. Our old man is the condemned life of the first corporate Adam, the natural and fallen life in our soul. It is the old life, the old man in our natural soul that was crucified together with Christ. I Corinthians 15:45 refers to Christ, in this regard, as “the last Adam”, because He brought to an end the totality of fallen mankind that issued out from Adam and into his entire offspring that has since populated the world. To remain in this fallen life is to live a wasted life apart from God’s life and apart from God’s intention. It is not possible to know the resurrection of Christ without knowing the death of Christ. Hence, Paul says in Romans 6:5-6, “For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed…”.

What is implied by the believer’s co-crucifixion with Christ
When we speak of the death of the co-crucifixion of the Messiah and the believer, much is implied. Let’s narrow it down to include a few points, not exhaustively, but for clarification.
1. “Messiah” and “Christ” both mean “Anointed”. The name Messiah, or Christ, is particularly used in the function of Jesus as God’s anointed one. He was anointed to accomplish the work of God for the plan of God. His doings, therefore, must be understood to be for a cause, and that cause is the accomplishment of God’s purpose. These doings include the death of the Messiah and the co-death of all humanity even before those who would choose to believe were born into time.
2. The death of the Messiah was the crossroads of history. Virtually everything and everyone in the old creation (Romans 6:6a; II Corinthians 5:14-17), everything opposing to God including sins (I Corinthians 15:3; Hebrews 1:3; 9:15, 28), the sinner (Galatians 2:20a), Satan (Hebrews 2:14), the works of the devil (I John 3:8), and death itself (II Timothy 1:10) were terminated in His death on the cross.
3. As the Anointed one of God, the Messiah, the Christ, He took upon himself humanity, not as the seed of a fallen man as all others in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 genealogies, but as the seed of woman (Luke 1:27, 34, 35; 2:3, 43b). (Being the seed of God, Jesus was embodied in human flesh and blood, carried in Mary’s pregnant womb; not being the seed of the man Joseph; thereby Jesus was clothed upon with human flesh but without its innate body of sin and death which would have been transmitted by the seed of a fallen man).
As such, Jesus the Messiah stood before God on behalf of the entire human race as “the last Adam” (I Corinthians 15:22, 45, 47) and put the collective seed, Adam as the first collective man, to death on the cross. The first corporate man was thereby nullified in His death and experienced the co-death of Christ and man referred to in Galatians 2:20 and Romans 6:6. It is by this the Messiah, Christ, was able to become the Life-giving Spirit to indwell the believers as the second man, a spiritual man, a heavenly man, a collective man composed of Christ the head and all the believers as His body (Corinthians 15:45b, 48-49; 12:12-13; Ephesians 1:22-23).
4. As the Messiah, Jesus was also the true Lamb of God (Exodus 12:3; John 1:29). As such, He was the real, lasting and perfected offering to God (Hebrews 9:15-26; 10:4-14). The death of Christ included man and everything that affected man, but the primary blessing of the adequacy of His sacrificial death was for the acceptance and satisfaction of God.
It was not in His death so much as in the resurrection that mankind, and especially the believers, have great cause for jubilee. As Jesus died to crucify everything negative of the old creation, He rose again to produce everything positive and originate a new creation in the co-resurrection (I Corinthians 15:12-22; II Corinthians 5:17-18; Romans 6:4, 5, 11; 8:29b; Hebrews 1:5a, 6a; 2:11, 12).
5. As believers, you and I were crucified 2000 years ago before we were born (Galatians 2:20; Romans 6:6). As Christ was the last Adam for the purpose to end fallen nature, so He is the resurrected Christ to give life to us as the Spirit for a new nature and a universal new creation (I Corinthians 15:22, 45; II Corinthians 3:17-18; 5:17; Galatians 4:6, 4:19b; Colossians 1:27).
It is quite impossible for our natural mind to grasp this. As a result, the tendency of believers is to continue living a natural life, even a sinning life. Spiritual truths may be somewhat learned by study, but to grasp them, to become them, we must see them with the eyes of the spiritual man within us (Ephesians 1:18a; Psalm 119:18). On the one hand, we have the faith of Christ and thereby believe. On the other hand, we must yield to the Lord in consecration, asking Him to help us “see” the spiritual truth that we died when He did. Only then will we know we also have risen with Him as well, and are thereby empowered to walk in “newness of life” (Romans 6:4-5).
6. We may have the question why we are troubled by Satan, the world, sins and our sinful nature if we are dead and their effect was terminated on the cross with us and with the Messiah. Quite simply, the old creation with all its components was judged as a serial killer may be judged in the court and sentenced to death for his unspeakable crime. Still, the killer lives under judgment with a lot of freedom until the time of his execution. The Bible shows us a similar picture, and not until Revelation 20:10, 13, 14 does the “execution” of the devil take place. In the meantime, he and all the rebellion and sin and oldness of his poisoned creation of the world continue on insanely. Further, He left it for us to execute the effectiveness of His death on our own sinful selves (Galatians 5:21, 24, 16; Romans 8:8, 13).
It is for us as believers to see the truth of the judgment of God in our co-death with His Messiah, the Christ. In seeing the truth, we are empowered to the degree of our vision, according to the degree of our willingness and obedience, to turn from the life in us that is convicted and condemned; and actively, perpetually turn to the life of the resurrected one indwelling us, and with other believers grow into the incredible, mysterious second man, the church which is His body (I Corinthians 15:42-50; Ephesians 1:22b-23).
7. In due time, just as the enemy will be publicly “executed” in Revelation 20, so the believers will be publicly revealed in their heavenly, transfigured state in His kingdom on earth as the matured, collective saints of God, constituted with the life of the new creation for an eternal kingdom. (I John 3:2-3; I Corinthians 15:23-28; II Thessalonians 1:7-12; Hebrews 11:16; Revelation 21:2). This maturity of life grown in resurrection as “the second man” (the second corporate man) is the result of the death of “the first man” in his co-crucifixion with Christ (I Corinthians 15:47-49; Romans 6:5).

The goal of the co-crucifixion
May the Lord open our eyes and bring our living into His light and truth that we might, with Him, produce the builded church that comes out of a co-crucified people living in and by their co-resurrected Christ. This is the goal of the Messiah, the Anointed One of God.

by Richard A. Nelson