Let me get the verse right in front of us so we can hear how that phrase occurs.

Or be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

So the question is coming I think from that last phrase I am crucified to the world or I am dead to the world.

So my first question is even before I ask what does it mean to be dead to the world is what does it mean to be dead?

And I think in Paul's mind that idea of Christians being dead starts with Jesus words in a bunch of places in the Gospels like Luke 9 where he says the son of man must suffer many things and be killed and on the third day be raised.

And he said to all if anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

When Bonhoeffer read that remember he said Jesus was saying when I call you I bid you to come and die.

So to take a cross means to die. So to follow Jesus is to experience a kind of death.

And the way he says it in Luke 9 is it's a daily taking up of the cross so there's a daily dying going on.

And then when Paul picks that up I think for example when he describes baptism he says we were buried with him by baptism into death.

In order that as Christ was raised from the dead we too might walk in newness of life.

So at the point of conversion and faith signified in the waters of baptism we are being united to Christ and when we're united to Christ the death that he dies we die.

And in fact the very next verse I think in Romans 6 or 5 makes that connection with union with Christ.

If we have been united with him in a death like his we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

So we died when we were united to Christ and we were united to Christ when we believed in him and signified that in baptism.

So for me the next question becomes so who died I'm I'm a living or not I'm talking to you right now and and Cal wrote and asked the question so he doesn't sound dead he's he's thinking so who who actually died.

So let's go back to Galatians and Paul I think answers that helps censored anyway when he says in chapter 5 those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

So the old me which Paul calls the flesh that self-reliant proud idolatrous world loving world worshipping self died when I trusted Christ because I was united with him in his death when he died I died in that die the part of me that dies is the old unbelieving self-reliant self.

And a new person comes into being and who's that and the and Galatians gives the answer again I think I mean my one of my favorite verses in all the Bible ever since I was a sophomore in college has been Galatians 220.

I have been crucified with Christ it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me so so it sounds like the new person who's alive is Christ but then it says and the life I now live so I thought I was dead no you're not dead because as Christ lives your life how the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith.

In the Son of God who love me and gave himself for me so the new me is not the old unbelieving selfish self-reliant world worshipping me it's the it's the new trusting in Christ and joying the life of Christ in me person.

So there's this new creation there's this new Cal this new Tony that has come into being and it's marked mainly by I live by faith and I think faith is not only trusting that he died for me but trusting him for all that God is for me in him he has become my world he has become my treasure he has become my satisfaction so now now I go back.

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