A man comes walking through a small hamlet that has been hit with the plague. He pushes a cart full of the dead and cries, “Bring out your dead!” As he passes one house, a young man comes out dragging an old man, feeble and pale, and starts to put him on the cart. The old man protests, “But I’m not quite dead yet!” The man with the cart declares that he can’t take the man that is clearly not dead yet. So I ask you, could some of us be carrying around an old man that is not quite dead yet?
In the context of the fruit of the Spirit, Paul writes, “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal. 5:24). This is just a few chapters after his statement, “I have been crucified with Christ…” (Gal. 2:20). When did this crucifixion take place? When did my flesh die? “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin” (Rom. 6:3-7).
This passage in Romans states that it was at our baptism that we were to die and to rise and “walk in newness of life.” However, if we have not repented nor truly been “obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed” (Rom. 6:17), then it could be that you have picked up that pale old man that is not quite dead in your life. Hebrews 12:1 gives us this sound advice, “Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us.” There are some that are trying to “run with endurance the race that is set before us” while hanging onto an almost dead man of sin. With this weight, we will never be able to reach the goal that is set before us.
If you know that there are things that are keeping you from running well your race, let them go! No good thing will come from it. You are keeping yourself from being an instrument of righteousness for God (Rom. 6:13). You have chosen to be a slave to sin, and it will be a poor master. It will bring you hardship upon hardship with no thought of your well-being and in the end leave you dead and alone. Before it is too late, please “consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11). Make the changes necessary to come to God with confidence as one with an inheritance.