Sinless?
What is the difference between “I have been crucified with Christ” (standing on Romans 6:11) and putting some newly discovered sin to the cross (making to die the doings of the body)?
Colossians 3:3-10 is the experiential side of Romans 6:6-11 in regard to sin. By faith you “reckon” that you have died with Christ, and as you “reckon,” the Holy Spirit applies that death to you as you obey the ever-increasing light He throws on your life and actions. The “objective” and “subjective” must be kept in balance. If you take Romans 6 as absolute in experience as well as in judicial position, without other Scriptures to interpret and supplement it, you will be in danger of not calling sin SIN; and you wil close the door of your mind to the Holy Spirit’s light upon deeper knowledge of yourself and God. You will be shut up to the simple maintaining of a “position,” with no open vista of deeper experiential knowledge of Calvary and what Galatians 2:20 means.
You “have been crucified with Christ” – yes – but every part of your whole being must be made “conformable to His death” – this includes the “self-life” as well as “sin.” This will take the whole of one’s lifetime, and the work will not be completed subjectively until even the body of our humiliation is “conformed to the body of His glory” (Philippians 3:21). In other words, the object fact of “died with Christ” is complete, but the subjective application from center to circumference ends only with the final redemption of they body, when He shall come to be admired in all them that believe (2 Thessalonians 1:10).
Gatlatians 2:20 is the outcome of the faith position of Romans 6. We “reckon” God’s fact, and then declare “I have been crucified,” while in detail we are day by day made conformable in experience and obey Romans 6:13 in practice.
(Jesse Penn-Lewis – ‘The Cross: The Touchstone of Faith’)