The Death of Christ

Why do Christians need to experience the death of Christ?

A Change of Dispensation
Why is it necessary for believers to experience the death of Christ? It is because when Christ came, He inaugurated a monumental change of dispensation, that is, in God’s way of dealing with His people. In Old Testament times, God gave His people His law, His ten commandments to keep. As long as they kept the law, they were considered to be right before God, and God’s righteousness was accounted to them. If anyone broke a commandment, however, he had to present a trespass offering to God in order to maintain his righteous standing before God. At the inception of the New Testament age, John the Baptist came exhorting the people not to keep the law, but to repent and be baptized. John’s ministry thus signaled a fundamental dispensational shift from law-keeping to baptism.

Burial is the Way
God’s economy in the New Testament is different from that in the Old Testament. According to God’s economy in the Old Testament, His people were required to keep the law in order to be righteous in His sight. But in the New Testament God does not require His people to keep the commandments of the law; rather, He has ordained that they be buried. This means that He requires that they be terminated and germinated. This is God’s New Testament ordination. If anyone in the New Testament economy keeps the ten commandments but refuses to be baptized, he is a rebel against God’s ordination. Therefore, in the New Testament the highest righteousness is to be baptized.

The Way of Righteousness
This is the reason that in Matthew 3 the Lord Jesus said that He had to be baptized in order to fulfill all righteousness (Matt. 3:15). In His New Testament economy, God wants man to be terminated in order that he might receive the One who will germinate him. In other words, in the New Testament the righteousness God requires is that man live, not by himself, but by God. He does not command His people to do this and that. Rather, He simply commands man to live by Him. Moses came with God’s commandments, but Jesus Christ came with God Himself. Thus, the only thing God wants is for His believers to live by Him.

Living by God—The Highest Righteousness
In the Old Testament, God sent Moses with ten commandments to the people. But in the New Testament God sent His Son to put Himself into His people so that they might live, not by themselves, but by God. Such a living is the highest righteousness, the righteousness required for entering into the kingdom of the heavens, the righteousness which surpasses that of the Pharisees, the righteousness which is according to God’s law (Matt. 5:20). This righteousness surpasses the righteousness of the Pharisees because it is according to God Himself. In fact, it is even God Himself lived out of His people (Lee Experience 148-149).

Led to the Cross
The change of dispensation and the New Testament requirement to live a life of the highest righteousness should lead the believers to the cross. They are brought to realize that what they are by their natural birth and what they are able to do in their natural strength can never satisfy God. What God wants is Christ added into them and lived out of them (Eph. 3:17; Phil. 1:21). For this, they need to live a life which is conformed to the death of Christ by the power of His resurrection (Phil. 3:10) that they may live Christ (Phil. 1:21) and magnify Him (Phil. 1:19).

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