Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:8-11 ESV)

Jesus died once and will never die again. Why? His death was no ordinary death. He died receiving God’s wrath against sin. Consider the guilt you have felt over some ridiculous sin you’ve committed…again. Multiply that guilt by billions of sinners who have lived through all the millennia: Jesus experienced at once that multiplied guilt. His death was no ordinary death. The physical weight of the cross paled in comparison to the moral weight of your sin on his shoulders.

Jesus’s work didn’t stop with his death. But the life he lives he lives to God. He now mediates on behalf of all believers. He was single-minded in his death and he is now single-minded in his life.

We must be too.

When we received Christ as our Savior, we died to sin. That one act of faith didn’t finish the work. We have a day-to-day, and sometimes moment-to-moment, responsibility: consider yourselves dead to sin. The word consider is an accounting term: it means to write it down in the debit or credit column. Here we have an entry for both sides. Every day in the debit column we write: dead to sin. But we don’t stop there. In the credit column we write: alive to God! The name of the account at the top of the ledger: Jesus Christ. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

debit credit

What kind of balance does this yield? A victorious Christian life.

This is what it means to consider yourself dead to sin and alive to Christ. No emotional fanfare. Some days you will not feel “saved.” Some days you will battle harder against sin than others. Every day your thinking must be on point: you are dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. That’s who you are! That’s the believer’s ledger.