In a true Christian experience we count ourselves as dead. After we put our faith in the Lord Jesus for salvation and repent of our behavior in the world, the next step is to be baptized in water. Baptism in water means we are reckoning that our entire first personality, the adamic life, is crucified with the Lord Jesus.

From God's point of view, the believer who enters Christ in terms of Romans 6:4 actually has died. His outward man has not died in the sense of losing its blood (although the outward man is spiritually dead, cut off from God, because of the sin dwelling in it—Romans 8:10).

The believer is claiming, by faith in God's Word, that his inner man has died with Christ on the cross of Calvary and his new resurrection life has ascended with the Lord to the right hand of the Father.

Physical death is the separating of the inner man from the outward man. When we believe and are baptized, the Lord raises our newly-conceived inner nature to His right hand. Our life is hidden with Christ in God in the heavenlies but our body remains on the earth. A genuine death has occurred.

The believer reckons this to be a fact, and God reckons this to be a fact and deals with the believer's inner man accordingly.

After an individual dies, whether in this spiritual sense or literally, the next step is judgment.

Therefore we would expect the following sequence of events to take place:

The believer's adamic inner man is reckoned to be dead on the cross with Jesus. Remember, the inner man, the adamic nature, is very much alive in us. But he is "reckoned," counted, to be dead.

The adamic nature having been condemned to death, the Spirit of God searches out the various elements of the adamic nature and puts them to death, meanwhile strengthening our new born-again inner nature that already is in the heavens at the right hand of the Father.

If we cooperate with the process of death and resurrection, which often is performed through considerable suffering on our part, the Divine judgment accomplishes a finished work. We are completely forgiven, through the continuing atoning virtue of the blood of Jesus, and the portion of the adamic life being dealt with loses its life and is replaced by the resurrection Life of Jesus. This is an eternal judgment on the various elements of our adamic personality.

The forgiven and destroyed segment of our personality passes into oblivion and in its place appears a new segment of personality, a segment born of Christ. The new segment cannot sin, having been born of God, and therefore is never condemned by Divine judgment, by the eternal moral law, the Word of God (I John 3:9). The new creation is not under the jurisdiction of the Law of Moses. The new segment takes it place in Christ in the heavens.

And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ: (Ephesians 2:6)

To be continued.