The True Person Within

 “For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.” – Romans 6:5-6

In Romans 6:6, Paul begins with two simple but weighty words: “knowing this.” He’s not appealing to our emotions or asking us to feel something—he’s declaring a truth we must believe. This is objective truth, the kind that anchors our faith and shapes our identity. Paul wants us to know that when we placed our faith in Christ, something irreversible happened: the old man was crucified. Not improved. Not rehabilitated. Crucified. That old self we inherited from Adam—the one enslaved to sin—was put to death with Christ. This isn’t a metaphor or a gradual process. It’s a spiritual fact. “I have been crucified with Christ,” Paul writes in Galatians 2:20, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” That’s not wishful thinking. That’s the miracle of regeneration.

Yet many believers still live as though the old man is lurking, ready to rise again. We say things like, “I need to put the old man down,” as if we have the power to crucify him ourselves. But Scripture is clear: “the old man was crucified with Him”—past tense, finished work. What we wrestle with now is not the old man, but the flesh—our humanness, our memories, our temptations. Paul himself cried out, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). The answer isn’t in trying harder—it’s in knowing deeper. The old man is gone. What remains is a new “I” inside of us, alive in Christ, learning to walk in grace. Romans 5:21 reminds us that “as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Grace reigns now—not sin.

We should stop trying to fix what God has already buried. You don’t need to crucify the old man again. You need to walk in the newness of life that Christ has already given you. Rest in this assurance—who you are in Christ, not who you used to be in Adam. C. S. Lewis once wrote, “I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it; I want to have it out.” That’s what God did with your old self. He didn’t patch it up—He replaced it. And now, the life you live is by faith in the Son of God, who loved you and gave Himself for you. Let that truth shape your testimony. Let it fuel your worship. And let it free you to live boldly, knowing that the new “I” inside of you is being prepared for a new body, a new home, and a new eternity.

“Our old man is crucified with Christ—this is not a thing we do, but a thing done to us. The death of sin is in the death of Christ, and the life of holiness is in His resurrection. We are not called to improve the old nature, but to reckon it dead and buried.” – John Owen