The title of my sermon this AM is Dead Man Walking. According to Wikipedia online encyclopedia, the phrase “Dead Man Walking” was once commonly used in American prisons to designate a man condemned to capital punishment. Prior to the 1960s, when guards would lead a condemned man down the prison hallways, they would cry out, Dead man walking! Dead man walking here! This cry reminded & warned those within earshot of the ultimate cost of the most vicious crimes. The meaning of this phrase was that the condemned prisoner, in the eyes of the law, was as good as dead.
Spiritually speaking “Dead Men Walking” includes “the elite of God” who by faith know that their old man of sin has been crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:6). Such Christians are to “reckon” or “count” themselves “executed” to their old life of sin (Rom. 6:11). It is a great puzzle to the unbelieving world that we are now living new lives that are dead to sin & Satan. Peter says: they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you (1 Pet. 4:4). Unbeknown to them, when the spiritually blind speak evil of those who are spiritually “Dead Men Walking”, they have actually paid us a great compliment because they have seen us as “different”, as “holy”, as “salt” & “light”, even though they think of us as being “stranger than fiction” for not practicing the pleasures of sin & resultantly they speak evil of us!
The cross in the days of the Roman Empire during the earthly life of Jesus was the most barbaric form of capital punishment ever devised by the evil imagination of sinful men. The cross was designed to bring the greatest shame & pain to the criminal that could possibly be rendered. Those crucified were even stripped of all their clothing to accentuate their shame & embarrassment. Citizens of the Roman Empire were the only ones excluded from being crucified, regardless of the extremity of their crimes. Of course, the Roman Empire was more than happy to crucify any foreigner who claimed to be “the King of the Jews”!
In today’s world, the real meaning of the cross has been greatly reduced. Thankfully even artists’ depictions of the death of Jesus feature a loin cloth on Jesus to reduce the shame that He actually had to suffer in His execution! Many 21st century people tend to think of a cross only as an item of jewelry or a symbol for decorating a church building or some other piece of land or property. Whenever & wherever I see a cross, I allow it to remind me of the gospel of Christ’s crucifixion & my co-crucifixion with Him.
With this original meaning of a Roman crucifixion in mind we can fully understand why Peter who fully loved the Lord & was persuaded that He was the promised O.T. Messiah reacted as he did when Jesus began to predict His sufferings & death. After all, how could a dead Messiah rule the Roman Empire?
Matt. 16:21-23 says: From that time Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, & suffer many things from the elders & chief priests & scribes, & be killed, & be raised the third day. 22 Then Peter took Him aside & began to rebuke Him, saying, “Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!” We can only imagine the shock of Peter when the next verse adds: But He turned & said to Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.
Many today in their walk of faith with Christ still tend to overlook the real meaning of the cross. May Jesus’ warning to Peter also serve as a personal warning to each of us to be mindful of the way Jesus Himself looks upon the cross, rather than the typical way that men in today’s world look upon it!
Immediately after rebuking Peter for denying that Jesus must die, Jesus made application of His death to those who would be His followers in Matt. 16:24-25: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, & take up his cross, & follow Me. 25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. Those who follow Jesus today must imitate Jesus’ example in denying themselves, taking up their crosses & following Him. Those who take these 3 key steps will save their souls eternally; those who refuse to take these steps will lose their eternal lives.
Self-denial does not mean just denying self of some things in life that we might really want. Instead, it means taking self out of the picture totally. Christians are to deny the old man of sin which was buried with Christ in the watery grave of baptism. It is there that we put off the old sinful self & are raised as new men in Christ.
Taking up our cross does not mean just tolerating some problems that we might face in this life. I have known of people who thought that the cross they had to bear was just some physical defect that they were born with or some illness they contracted, or even more recently the COVID-19 pandemic. However, none of these things are crosses Christians are called to bear, but problems that all humans must face. The Christian cross that we bear in following our Lord Jesus represents our co-crucifixion with Him as we count ourselves dead to our old life of sin. Jesus said in Lk. 9:23 that this is the cross we are to pick up daily if we want to follow Him. Every day that we live, we are to remind ourselves that we are dead to sin & Satan, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 6:11).
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The two key words in the gospel of Christ are death to sin & life in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Eph. 6:15 Paul says we are to shod our feet in the gospel of peace. The normal person has two feet. Each step we take we are to consider ourselves dead to sin, but alive to God through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Paul said Gal. 2:20: I have been crucified with Christ. Notice Paul spoke in the past tense. This is true because his crucifixion with Christ began upon his baptism into the death of Christ. At baptism, we also entered into our crucifixion with Christ. His death became our death to sin. Christ’s eternal life also became our new life of the Spirit. Paul added: it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives, in me. Our co-crucifixion & co-resurrection with Christ form the very foundation of our Christian faith. How we live our lives in the flesh daily has everything to do with our personal relationship of faith with Christ Jesus our Lord. Because He loved us & gave Himself for us, we are to show our love for Him by devoting our lives of faith to Him. None of us can afford to live lives of unbelief by refusing to count ourselves crucified with Him.
Just as faithful Christians begin each first day of the week by gathering around His table to remind ourselves of how He loved us & gave Himself for us, so we are to remind ourselves daily of this same basic foundational fact of the gospel. The basic gospel message of Christ’s Death, Burial, & Resurrection is God’s only power to save any & all who believe. Apart from the gospel of Jesus Christ, salvation from sin does not exist!
Paul declared in Romans 1:16-17: For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes for the Jew first and also for the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” Many people might be ashamed of the idea that our Savior had to die such a terrible death of pain, agony & shame to rescue us from our sins, but Paul knew the truth & he was not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it alone contains the power of God which in the Greek reads the “dunamis” of God (the very word from which we get our word “dynamite”). Thank God that through the gospel of Jesus’ atoning death God Himself is empowered to blast the sin out of our lives as well as destroy our old man of sin. No wonder Paul wrote Gal. 6:14: But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
It has been rumored (though I personally haven’t found any evidence that this is true) that some “more distinguished” churches no longer sing songs which speak of what they call “barbaric messages of blood”. If this is true, one can’t help but wonder what such churches do with verses like Gal. 6:14 where Paul plainly declared: God forbid that I should boast in anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? I would hate to stand in their shoes on judgement day & have to answer for such an attitude of unbelief & rejection that these so called “Christians” reportedly have!
Let me comment on Romans 1:17 which is the key verse in Paul’s epistle to the Romans. This verse establishes the very theme of Romans which is righteousness by faith. Paul writes: For in it (i.e. in the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” The righteousness of God is not just an attribute of God such as “the holiness of God”. The righteousness of God is the gift of His grace to the saved who are his children. Through the gift of Christ’s perfect righteousness & our acceptance of it by an obedient faith, we are now looked upon through the eyes of God’s grace as standing before our God as perfect & righteous in His holy sight. This great gift of God’s righteousness can be given by a God of justice because Jesus took upon Himself our sinful robes before going to His cross. Paul said 2 Cor. 5:21: For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. As Paul said in Rom. 1:17 this gift is given to God’s children of faith for the just shall live by faith.
Paul made it clear in Eph. 2:8-10: For by grace you have been saved through faith, & that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before-hand that we should walk in them. True Christian faith produces good works to the glory of God — not that we might earn the gift of His salvation, for no one can earn any , especially God’s gift of salvation. All that our God asks of His children is that we walk in good works as an outer display of our great appreciation of His gift of salvation by grace through faith.
In Summary & Conclusion: Prison halls once echoed with the phrase “Dead man walking! Dead man walking here!” This phrase warned of the approach of one who was walking to his capital punishment. The world may now echo that same phrase toward those who have suffered & shared in the barbaric capital punishment of our Lord Jesus! Today’s spiritually “dead man walking” can thankfully say with Paul: I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; & the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me & gave Himself for me (Gal. 2:20).
