We die to this world (as a fallen order) in order that we might live to God in Christ. We are given a whole new orientation in life. No longer are we by nature inclined to love and live for this present evil age, but instead our hearts and minds are set on things above, where Christ is seated in glory (Col. 3:1–2).

There is no religion in the history of the world that contains an invitation remotely like the Christian gospel. From its very inception, in the words of Christ, we are told, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). It is, as John Piper points out, an invitation to die.

This has always been counterintuitive to us. From our earliest years, we want to seize life with both hands and seek to live it to the full. Where, then, is the magnetism in Jesus’ words that has drawn so many people to Him through the ages?

The answer was not immediately obvious to His own disciples while they were with Him on earth. When Jesus announced His intention to go up to Jerusalem as the climax of His ministry drew near, Thomas voiced the thoughts of his fellow disciples when he said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16). But we know that to them the notion that Christ would die and that they would have to lose their lives in following Him seemed bewildering (Mark 9:30–32; John 12:23–26). Only after Christ’s death and resurrection did the full significance of the wording of the gospel’s invitation began to crystallize. What to human minds made no sense before Calvary, in its aftermath and through its Apostolic exposition made glorious sense in light of the greatness of God’s salvation. So, it is hardly surprising that the principle of “dying in order to live” embodied in Christ becomes a recurring theme in New Testament preaching and instruction.

It features prominently in several places. Paul, in his exposition of the gospel in Romans, speaks of believers’ being “baptized” into the death of Christ (6:3). Likewise, in Philippians, he speaks about his goal in the life of faith as “becoming like him [Christ] in his death” (3:10). So, Paul speaks about both the beginning of the Christian life and its continuation as involving our need to die.

Peter sounds the same note in his first letter. Speaking to Christians who had been scattered throughout the Roman world because of persecution and who were struggling to make sense of their sufferings, he says (again in relation to Christ), “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2:24). This is among the pithiest explanations of what Christ means by saying we must die to live.

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