Our Old Self Crucified with Christ

…Christ died according to the flesh, so that he might undo the sin of the world. We, however, do not die according to the flesh—how could we?—but to sin, as it is written (Romans 6:2); that is, we render sin idle and ineffective in ourselves by putting to death “the members that are on the earth: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed” (Colossians 3:5). We have been united, then, not merely with Christ’s death according to the flesh, but with the likeness of his death. And this would be understood as dying for sin, and not for his own sin—far from it! For God is blameless and utterly far from being able to do wrong. Rather, as I said, it was for the sin of the world: “For the death he died to sin, he died once for all” (Romans 6:10). So we have been united with him in the likeness of his death (Romans 6:5). And we shall certainly be united with him and share the same form in his resurrection as well, for we shall live in Christ. The flesh will come back to life, and we shall also live in another way, having dedicated our own souls to him and being transformed toward holiness and into a glorious way of life in the Holy Spirit.

“Knowing this, that our old self…,” and so on (Romans 6:6). Who is our old self, what is the body of sin that is done away with, and in what way was it crucified with Christ? We must look into this closely. Some will perhaps suppose that the earthly flesh is called the body of sin because it was given to the human soul by way of punishment, since the soul had sinned even before there were bodies; for that is how some think and speak. But since this opinion belongs to the Greeks, let us thrust it away as untrue.

By “body of sin” and “our old self,” then, he means the earthly body, which, from the old condition in Adam, must waste away into corruption; for we were condemned in him, the first man. Besides this, it is also sick with the love of pleasure, for that is how the flesh is by nature, because of its inborn impulses. How, then, was it crucified with Christ? The Only-begotten became man and clothed himself with the earthly flesh, which, as I said, had fallen sick with death because of the old condition in Adam, and which carried within itself, as if in labour, the tendency to be sharpened toward sin by its inborn impulses.

Yet the law of sin lies still in the holy and all-pure flesh of Christ. We certainly do not say that the more unseemly of the human passions were stirred in him, except those whose movement is blameless—I mean hunger and thirst and weariness, and whatever else the law of nature has kept free of blame even in us. Still, even though the law of sin was not stirred in Christ, because it was lulled to sleep by the power and working of the Word who carried out the dispensation, yet when the nature of the flesh is examined by itself, even if it is considered as it is in Christ, we shall find that it is no different from ours. So we were crucified with him when his flesh was crucified, flesh that held, as it were, the whole nature within itself; just as…