To die is to give up life, to lose life totally and completely, to surrender life to death, to cease living completely, to expire, to stop.

To faint is to lose consciousness briefly, to weaken, to lose clarity, to lose consciousness momentarily, to misplace consciousness for a moment.

Jesus died on the cross for you and I. He surrendered His life to death, He stopped breathing, He expired, He stopped living completely.

Romans 6:2-7 shows us how a Born Again child of God dies on the cross with Jesus. When a person truly receives salvation it means that the person has realised that the life he has been living is not good at all and that nothing good can ever come from that kind of life ever; so, he seeking a better life in God, confesses his weaknesses to God and resolves to receive Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Saviour. He takes the spiritual journey to the cross with Jesus and right there at the cross, an exchange of lives take place. He is Born Again. How? He surrenders his old life to death, the life is not working anymore anyway, so he gives up this life completely at the cross with Jesus. He dies completely. He becomes without life just as Jesus became without life. He expires. He becomes lifeless. He stops.

Jesus died on the cross to take our sins away. God raised Jesus to life triumphantly on the third day. When a person goes to the cross and gives up his life to Jesus, he dies completely to his old life. Now, because Jesus did not stay dead, without life; God will not allow anyone who dies with Jesus at the cross to stay without life. When God looks at that lifeless person who has just surrendered His old life to death because he desires Jesus; God goes on to breathe His own life into that person’s lifelessness. A new and Holy life without sin. With the breath of God on the inside of Him, this person now has a new life. However the new life he has is no longer his own, it is the life of God. He had given up, surrendered, lost his own life of sin and ruin.

The life he now lives is not his own. He now has to learn to live this new life that he has been given. He picks up the manual of this new life, which is the Word of God –  to receive instructions on how to live his new life. He would not want to risk damage to, or malfunctioning of this new life. He cannot apply the rules of his old, dead sinful life to this new holy life. The life he has now is the life of God. (Matthew 9:16&17).

This person has now become a brand new person. His old life is dead, therefore the old way of living ceases to exist. “Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence.” – 2 Corinthians 5:17 (GWT)

How many of us who claim to be ‘born again’ truly died with Christ at the cross? Did we really give up our lives completely? Did we truly die? Did we really cease completely? Did we truly surrender our old lives to death?
Could it be that instead of dying, we fainted? Was it that we just lost consciousness for a brief moment… and thereafter regained consciousness and continued with the same life, but now with a new tag?

How many of us truly have a new life? Let us examine ourselves critically, truthfully and sincerely. The life you live now, is it God’s holy life or is it your old life in a new wrapping? Do you still like the things you used to like before you became ‘born again’? Do you still have the same views, do you still have the same appetites, the same passions, the same mentality, etc? Do you still talk the same way? Do you still hold on to so many traits, habits, methods, from your life before you became ‘born again’? Did anything die in your life at all?

To be Born Again is to first give up and  surrender your own life to death before you can receive the life of God; only then can you begin to walk and live in the new life of Jesus. Only then can you truly carry the image and the likeness of God.

Is your life a “Holy life” or the “Old life”? Whose image are you manifesting? The world’s image, satan’s image, self-image  or Jesus’s image?

Friend, did you faint at the cross of Jesus, or did you die with Jesus at the cross?

~KJO.

2013.