Chip Ingram, president of Walk Thru the Bible, wrote, “We can never live the resurrected life until we understand and accept that we have already died with Christ” (Holy Transformation, 73). Many Christians desire to know the power of Christ apart from the passion of Christ.
The necessity of death before life is the salient principle of the Christian faith. The sacrificial death of Jesus Christ is the pivot point of all history. The entire Old Testament moves toward its climax in the Gospels, and the balance of the New Testament narrates its resultant impact upon individuals, societies, and eternity.
Paul wrote, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” – Philippians 3:10, 11(NIV)
Christ invites us to come and die. It is a morbid thought to the self-absorbed mind, a disconcerting emotion to the arrogant heart, and a haughty antagonism to the independent will. It strikes against all that we are in our fallen humanity. But the reception of His Life always mandates the relinquishing of our own life. The power of the resurrection is available only to dead men.