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I. ITS CRUCIFYING FUNCTION. It crucifies —

1. Not any of his nature's faculties or sensibilities. It energises, refines, and develops these.

2. Not any of the ties of his moral obligations. On the contrary, it gives a stronger revelation of duty, and mightier motives to obey. Christianity crucifies the corrupt character, called "the old man," not because it is the original character of humanity, which was holy, but because it is the first character of individual men. This crucifixion is —

(1) A painful process. Crucifixion was the most excruciating death that the cruelty of the most malignant spirit could devise. To destroy old habits, gratifications, etc., is a painful work. It is as the cutting off a limb, the plucking out of an eye, etc.

(2) A protracted process. No wound was inflicted upon the most vital part, that the agony might be perpetuated. The agonised life gradually, drop by drop, ebbed away. There is nothing so hard to die as sin. An atom may kill a giant, a word may break the peace of a nation, a spark burn up a city; but it requires earnest and protracted struggles to destroy sin in the soul. No man grows virtuous in a day.

(3) A voluntary process. Christ's crucifixion was voluntary. It is so with the crucifixion of "the old man." No one could do it for us. No one can do it either without our consent or against it. If "the old man" is to be crucified, we must nail him to the cross.

II. ITS RESURRECTION FUNCTION. "We shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection." The spiritual life of a Christian is —

1. A revived life. It was not a new life that Jesus had when He came forth from His grave: — it was the old revived. The spiritual life of a Christian is that life of supreme love to God which Adam had, which belongs to our nature, but which sin has destroyed, and buried under evil passions and corrupt habits.

2. A Divinely produced life. "None but God can raise the dead," etc.

3. An interminable life. "I am He that liveth," said Christ, "and was dead, and am alive for evermore." Once the true spiritual life of the soul is raised from its grave, it will die no more. It is an "everlasting life."

4. A glorious life. How glorious was the resurrection body of Christ (Revelation 1:13-18). "We shall be like Him," etc. The subject teaches us —

1. The value of evangelical religion: which is to destroy in man the bad, and the bad only, and to revive the good.

2. The test of evangelical religion, which is dying unto sin, and living unto holiness.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

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KJV: For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

WEB: For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection;