But at the very moment I begin to believe in Jesus, I become united to Christ, the second Adam, and as really as I am united by my birth to the first Adam, I am made partaker of the life of Christ.  What life?  That life which died unto sin on Calvary, and which rose again; therefore God by his apostle tells us:  “Reckon yourselves indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God in Christ Jesus.”  You are to reckon it as true, because God says it—­for your new nature is indeed, in virtue of your vital union to Christ, actually and utterly dead to sin.

If we want to have the real Christ that God has given us, the real Christ that died for us, in the power of His death and resurrection, we must take our stand here.  But many Christians do not understand what the 6th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans teaches us.  They do not know that they are dead to sin.  They do not know it, and therefore Paul instructs them:  “Know ye not that as many of you as are baptized into Christ Jesus, are baptized into His death.”  How can we who are dead to sin in Christ live any longer therein?  We have indeed the death and the life of Christ working within us.  But, alas! most Christians do not know this, and therefore do not experience or practice it.  They need to be taught that their first need is to be brought to the recognition, to the knowledge, of what has taken place in Christ on Calvary, and what has taken place in their becoming united to Christ.  The man must begin to say, even before he understands it, “In Christ I am dead to sin.”  It is a command:  “Reckon ye yourselves indeed to be dead unto sin.”  Get hold of your union to Christ; believe in the new nature within you, that spiritual life which you have from Christ, a life that has died and been raised again.  A man’s acts are always in accordance with his idea of his state.  A king acts like a king, otherwise we say, “That man has forgotten his kingship,” but if a man is conscious of being a king, he behaves like a king.  And so I cannot live the life of a true believer unless I am filled with a consciousness of this every day:  “I thank God that I am dead in Christ.  Christ died unto sin, and I am united with Christ, and Christ lives in me and I am dead to sin.”  What is the life Christ lives in me?  Ask what is the life Adam lives in me?  Adam lives in me the death life, a life that has fallen under the power of sin and death, death to God.  That life Adam lives in me by nature as an unconverted man.  And Christ, the second Adam, has come to me with a new life, and I now live in His life, the death-life of Christ.  As long as I do not know it, I can not act according to it, though it be in me.  Praise God, when a man begins to see what it is, and begins in obedience to say, “I will do what God’s Word says; I am dead, I reckon myself dead,” he enters upon a new life.  On the strength of God’s everlasting Word, and your union to Christ, and the great fact of Calvary, reckon, know yourself as dead indeed unto