We as believers know that Christ died for us at the cross of Calvary and that He died for our sins. We know that Christ had to die on the cross because His death was necessary for our salvation and the forgiveness of our sins.
But many of us are unaware of the fact that what happened at the cross is more profound than what we are often taught in churches today. It was not just that Christ died for our sins as an atonement, but also that we were set free. We were liberated in Christ Jesus.
The Original Sin and Its Consequences
How did it all start?
When God created Adam and Eve, He created them in right standing with Him. That’s what righteousness is — right standing with God.
God gave one command in Genesis 2:17:
“But from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day that you shall eat from it, you shall surely die.”
That one law carried a consequence — death. When Adam sinned, he became spiritually dead, just as God had warned.
- Adam was born of God as a son.
- But everyone born after Adam became sinful, because he multiplied after his own kind.
- As Adam multiplied, sin multiplied.
God Outsmarts the Devil
After the devil thought he had outsmarted God, God used death itself to outsmart the devil. It was a masterstroke of divine wisdom.
By faith, God places us in Christ.
That means:
- We were in Him when He was crucified.
- We were in Him when He was beaten.
- We were in Him through His entire earthly mission.
That’s why Paul can say: “I have been crucified with Christ.” Without being placed in Him, we could not say that.
But why was our crucifixion with Christ so important? To answer that, we need to flash back to our life before the cross.
First Benefit: Freedom From the Law
Paul explains this in Romans 7:1–4. Many think this passage is about marriage advice, but it is actually about our relationship to the law.
Paul uses the picture of a woman married to Mr. Law:
- Mr. Law is good, holy, meticulous, and precise.
- The wife, however, is imperfect, failing to meet his unrelenting standards.
- Though his demands are righteous, she lives in distress under constant pressure and punishment.
This is how the law relates to us — it is holy, but it continually exposes our failure.
The only way out would be if Mr. Law died. But Matthew 5:18 says:
“Nothing of the law shall pass away.”
So the solution? She had to die.
That’s what happened at the cross. We are the wife.
- We died with Christ.
- We were crucified with Him.
- Through death, we were released from our obligation to the law.
The law never dies, but we died in Christ, and therefore we are no longer under its rule.
This is profound:
- On one side, we are forgiven of sins.
- On the other side, we are liberated from the law.
Without this, we would never be able to keep it and would always fall short.
Second Benefit: Freedom From Sin
Not only did Christ’s crucifixion free us from the law, it also freed us from the dominion of sin.
Romans 6:5–11 says:
“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.”
This means:
- Our old self was crucified.
- The body of sin was destroyed.
- We are no longer slaves to sin.
Many teach that we are saved by grace but remain “sinners with sinful flesh.” Yet Paul teaches the opposite: our old self died with Christ.
- We no longer have a sinful body — we have a crucified body in Christ.
- Sin no longer has jurisdiction over us.
- We are dead to sin and alive to God.
This is not about striving outwardly, but about living from the inside out.
God’s Masterstroke of Victory
Even at our darkest, God made a way. Just when the devil thought he had won, God defeated him with his own weapon — death.
By including us in Christ Jesus:
- We were crucified with Him.
- We were buried with Him.
- We were raised with Him.
- We are now seated with Him in heavenly places.
God’s master plan was to choose us in Christ before the foundation of the world. He immersed us in Christ so that we share in His victory.
✨ The Final Word: We Are Free
The old has gone, the new has come.
The cross was not only about forgiveness — it was about freedom. Freedom from the law, Freedom from sin. Freedom to live in Christ.
In Christ Jesus, we are not only forgiven. We are free.
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