What Does It Mean to Be Dead to the World?

00:00:00.000 | [music]

00:00:05.000 | Cal writes in to ask, "Pastor John, I'm right now reading through your book,

00:00:07.880 | 'Don't Waste Your Life,' and I have a question about Galatians 6:14 and boasting

00:00:11.120 | only in the cross. Specifically, what does it mean to be dead to the world?"

00:00:18.000 | Let me get the verse right in front of us so we can hear how that phrase occurs.

00:00:25.000 | "Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,

00:00:31.000 | by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world."

00:00:40.000 | So the question's coming, I think, from that last phrase,

00:00:44.000 | "I am crucified to the world," or "I am dead to the world."

00:00:51.000 | So my first question is, even before I ask, "What does it mean to be dead to the world?"

00:00:56.000 | is, "What does it mean to be dead?" And I think, in Paul's mind,

00:01:01.000 | that idea of Christians being dead starts with Jesus' words in a bunch of places

00:01:12.000 | in the Gospels, like Luke 9, where he says, "The Son of Man must suffer many things

00:01:17.000 | and be killed, and on the third day be raised." And he said to all,

00:01:21.000 | "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily

00:01:26.000 | and follow me." Now when Bonhoeffer read that, remember, he said,

00:01:33.000 | "Jesus was saying, 'When I call you, I bid you to come and die.'"

00:01:39.000 | So to take a cross means to die. So to follow Jesus is to experience

00:01:46.000 | a kind of death. And the way he says it in Luke 9 is,

00:01:50.000 | it's a daily taking up of the cross. So there's a daily dying going on.

00:01:57.000 | And then when Paul picks that up, I think, for example, when he describes baptism,

00:02:03.000 | he says, "We were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that as Christ

00:02:09.000 | was raised from the dead, we too might walk in newness of life."

00:02:12.000 | So at the point of conversion and faith, signified in the waters of baptism,

00:02:19.000 | we are being united to Christ, and when we're united to Christ,

00:02:25.000 | the death that he dies, we die. In fact, the very next verse, I think,

00:02:32.000 | in Romans 6, verse 5, makes that connection with union with Christ.

00:02:37.000 | If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united

00:02:45.000 | with him in a resurrection like his. So we died when we were united to Christ,

00:02:51.000 | and we were united to Christ when we believed in him and signified that

00:02:56.000 | in baptism. And so for me, the next question becomes, "So who died?"

00:03:02.000 | I'm a living... I'm talking to you right now, and Cal wrote and asked the question,

00:03:08.000 | so he doesn't sound dead, he's thinking. So who actually died?

00:03:13.000 | So let's go back to Galatians, and Paul, I think, answers that,

00:03:18.000 | helps answer it anyway, when he says in chapter 5, "Those who belong to Christ

00:03:24.000 | have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."

00:03:31.000 | So the old me, which Paul calls the flesh, that self-reliant, proud, idolatrous,

00:03:41.000 | world-loving, world-worshiping self, died when I trusted Christ,

00:03:49.000 | because I was united with him in his death, and when he died, I died,

00:03:52.000 | and the part of me that dies is the old unbelieving, self-reliant self.

00:03:58.000 | And a new person comes into being, and who's that?

00:04:05.000 | And Galatians gives the answer again. I think, I mean, one of my favorite verses

00:04:09.000 | in all the Bible, ever since I was a sophomore in college, has been Galatians 2:20,

00:04:14.000 | "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

00:04:23.000 | So it sounds like the new person who's alive is Christ, but then it says,

00:04:28.000 | "And the life I now live..." So, "Oh, I thought I was dead."

00:04:32.000 | No, you're not dead, because as Christ lives, you're alive. How?

00:04:37.000 | The life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith, in the Son of God,

00:04:43.000 | who loved me and gave himself for me. So the new me is not the old unbelieving,

00:04:49.000 | selfish, self-reliant, world-worshipping me. It's the new trusting in Christ,

00:04:56.000 | enjoying the life of Christ in me person. So there's this new creation,

00:05:03.000 | there's this new Cal, this new Tony that has come into being,

00:05:08.000 | and it's marked mainly by "I live by faith." And I think faith is not only

00:05:16.000 | trusting that he died for me, but trusting him for all that God is for me in him.

00:05:22.000 | He has become my world. He has become my treasure. He has become my satisfaction.

00:05:28.000 | So now I go back. After all that, I go back to Galatians 6:14,

00:05:33.000 | where it says we're dead or we're crucified to the world, and I think that means

00:05:39.000 | my flesh once loved the world. Back in verse 24 of chapter 5, it said it died

00:05:46.000 | with its passions and its desires. My old flesh just loved the world,

00:05:50.000 | craved the world, depended on the world, needed the world, worshipped the world

00:05:55.000 | as its God and its satisfaction. And now all that died, and the world now

00:06:02.000 | has been crucified to me as a God. So if you say, "What sense does the world

00:06:08.000 | die to me?" I said, "The world once was a God to me. It once was my life,

00:06:12.000 | and I killed it. I crucified it. I put it to death with its desires,

00:06:17.000 | and my flesh died. So my dying to it and it dying to me is the same reality.

00:06:25.000 | I killed this pseudo-reality called the world, which was posing as an all-satisfying

00:06:33.000 | God to me, and my old, blind, foolish self who worshipped this world died

00:06:42.000 | when I died with Christ." And here's just one...when I think about this,

00:06:47.000 | I want to make one qualification because God made the world. The world is not evil.

00:06:54.000 | Material is not evil. Physicality is not evil. God meant the world to be

00:07:01.000 | not our God but a gift. And so maybe the simplest way to say it is that

00:07:07.000 | when you come to Christ and the old world-worshipping self dies,

00:07:14.000 | what comes alive is a self of faith in Christ that receives the world

00:07:20.000 | no longer as a God but as a gift. So I would say directly to Cal,

00:07:26.000 | every time the world starts to claim for itself more than it is, tell it,

00:07:35.000 | "World, I'm dead to that pseudo-claim. Jesus is my treasure now.

00:07:42.000 | He died to have me, and he died to give himself to me as my all-satisfying treasure.

00:07:49.000 | So world, I'm dead to you, and you're dead to me as a God,

00:07:54.000 | and I now come to you no longer as my God but as a gift from my loving Savior.

00:08:02.000 | And every time you come to me now, I'm going to see Him in you,

00:08:06.000 | and if I can't see Him in you, I'm going to reject you."

00:08:10.000 | Thank you, Pastor John. You can download the book, "Don't Waste Your Life,"

00:08:13.000 | for free at DesiringGod.org. Click on the resource library and then click on "Books."

00:08:17.000 | At DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of other free books and articles

00:08:21.000 | and other resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.

00:08:25.000 | [ Silence ]

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What Does It Mean to Be Dead to the World?

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