Dead To the World — What’s That?
00:00:00.000 | A listener named Cal writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I'm reading through your book,
00:00:09.200 | 'Don't Waste Your Life,' and I have a question about Galatians 6.14 and boasting only in
00:00:13.720 | the cross.
00:00:14.720 | Specifically, though, what does it mean to be dead to the world?"
00:00:17.760 | Let me get the verse right in front of us so we can hear how that phrase occurs.
00:00:23.760 | "Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the
00:00:32.240 | world has been crucified to me and I to the world."
00:00:38.260 | So the question's coming, I think, from that last phrase, "I am crucified to the world,"
00:00:44.480 | or "I am dead to the world."
00:00:47.440 | So my first question is, even before I ask, "What does it mean to be dead to the world?"
00:00:51.840 | Is what does it mean to be dead?
00:00:54.360 | And I think, in Paul's mind, that idea of Christians being dead starts with Jesus' words
00:01:05.880 | in a bunch of places in the Gospels, like Luke 9, where he says, "The Son of Man must
00:01:12.160 | suffer many things and be killed, and on the third day be raised."
00:01:16.760 | And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up
00:01:21.040 | his cross daily and follow me."
00:01:24.380 | When Bonhoeffer read that, remember, he said, "Jesus was saying, 'When I call you, I bid
00:01:30.840 | you to come and die.'"
00:01:32.800 | So to take a cross means to die.
00:01:35.360 | So to follow Jesus is to experience a kind of death.
00:01:41.860 | And the way he says it in Luke 9 is, "It's a daily taking up of the cross."
00:01:46.040 | So there's a daily dying going on.
00:01:50.440 | And then when Paul picks that up, I think, for example, when he describes baptism, he
00:01:56.440 | says, "We were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised
00:02:03.040 | from the dead, we too might walk in newness of life."
00:02:05.520 | So at the point of conversion and faith signified in the waters of baptism, we are being united
00:02:15.120 | to Christ, and when we're united to Christ, the death that he dies, we die.
00:02:21.800 | In fact, the very next verse, I think, in Romans 6, verse 5, makes that connection with
00:02:28.920 | union with Christ.
00:02:30.240 | If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with
00:02:38.040 | him in a resurrection like his.
00:02:40.140 | So we died when we were united to Christ, and we were united to Christ when we believed
00:02:47.640 | in him and signified that in baptism.
00:02:51.580 | And so for me, the next question becomes, "So who died?"
00:02:56.320 | I'm a living, I'm talking to you right now, and Cal wrote and asked the question, so he
00:03:01.220 | doesn't sound dead, he's thinking, so who actually died?
00:03:06.740 | So let's go back to Galatians, and Paul, I think, answers that, helps answer it anyway,
00:03:11.960 | when he says in chapter 5, "Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its
00:03:21.180 | passions and desires."
00:03:23.780 | So the old me, which Paul calls the flesh, that self-reliant, proud, idolatrous, world-loving,
00:03:35.940 | world-worshipping self, died when I trusted Christ, because I was united with him in his
00:03:43.380 | death, and when he died, I died, and the part of me that dies is the old unbelieving, self-reliant
00:03:49.620 | self.
00:03:51.580 | And a new person comes into being, and who's that?
00:03:57.860 | And Galatians gives the answer again.
00:03:59.420 | I think, I mean, one of my favorite verses in all the Bible, ever since I was a sophomore
00:04:04.060 | in college, has been Galatians 2.20, "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer
00:04:11.100 | I who live, but Christ who lives in me."
00:04:15.980 | So it sounds like the new person who's alive is Christ, but then it says, "And the life
00:04:21.060 | I now live," so, oh, I thought I was dead.
00:04:24.140 | No, you're not dead, because as Christ lives, you're alive, how?
00:04:29.900 | The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave
00:04:36.340 | himself for me.
00:04:37.380 | So the new me is not the old unbelieving, selfish, self-reliant, world-worshipping me,
00:04:45.860 | it's the new trusting in Christ, enjoying the life of Christ in me person.
00:04:52.820 | So there's this new creation, there's this new Cal, this new Tony that has come into
00:04:58.860 | being, and it's marked mainly by "I live by faith."
00:05:05.140 | And I think faith is not only trusting that he died for me, but trusting him for all that
00:05:12.360 | God is for me in him.
00:05:13.940 | He has become my world, he has become my treasure, he has become my satisfaction.
00:05:20.220 | So now I go back, after all that, I go back to Galatians 6, 14, where it says we're dead
00:05:27.500 | or we're crucified to the world, and I think that means my flesh once loved the world.
00:05:35.160 | Back in verse 24 of chapter 5, it said it died with its passions and its desires.
00:05:40.500 | My old flesh just loved the world, craved the world, depended on the world, needed the
00:05:45.260 | world, worshipped the world as its God and its satisfaction.
00:05:50.020 | And now all that died, and the world now has been crucified to me as a God.
00:05:59.060 | So if you say, "What sense does the world die to me?"
00:06:00.860 | I said, "The world once was a God to me, it once was my life, and I killed it, I crucified
00:06:07.180 | it, I put it to death with its desires, and my flesh died."
00:06:10.820 | So my dying to it, and it dying to me is the same reality.
00:06:17.220 | I killed this pseudo-reality called the world, which was posing as an all-satisfying God
00:06:25.860 | to me, and my old, blind, foolish self who worshipped this world died when I died with
00:06:35.580 | Christ.
00:06:37.340 | And here's just one, when I think about this, I want to make one qualification, because
00:06:42.260 | God made the world.
00:06:44.600 | The world is not evil.
00:06:47.620 | Material is not evil.
00:06:48.620 | Physicality is not evil.
00:06:51.760 | God meant the world to be not our God, but a gift.
00:06:56.540 | And so maybe the simplest way to say it is that when you come to Christ and the old world-worshipping
00:07:04.180 | self dies, what comes alive is a self of faith in Christ that receives the world no longer
00:07:13.260 | as a God, but as a gift.
00:07:16.180 | So I would say directly to Cal, every time the world starts to claim for itself more
00:07:24.700 | than it is, tell it, "World, I'm dead to that pseudo-claim.
00:07:31.940 | Jesus is my treasure now.
00:07:34.540 | He died to have me, and he died to give himself to me as my all-satisfying treasure.
00:07:41.260 | So world, I'm dead to you, and you're dead to me as a God, and I now come to you no longer
00:07:49.180 | as my God, but as a gift from my loving Savior.
00:07:53.660 | And every time you come to me now, I'm going to see Him in you, and if I can't see Him
00:07:58.740 | in you, I'm going to reject you."
00:08:00.660 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:03.140 | And you can download the book, Don't Waste Your Life, for free at DesiringGod.org.
00:08:07.300 | Click on the resource library, and then click on Books at DesiringGod.org.
00:08:10.980 | You'll find thousands of books and articles and sermons and other resources from John
00:08:13.900 | Pepper all free of charge.
00:08:14.900 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:15.900 | Thanks for listening.
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