To reckon means to count on, to account for something. We are going to look at several places in Scripture where we are told to reckon something to be true. That means to count it as true and live in light of its truthfulness. It means to align our lives with the truthfulness of particular facts.
The best place to begin to understand this is in Romans 6. In verse 11 Paul writes, “Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” We’ll go back and look at the context in a moment, but what exactly is God telling us to do here? He is saying that we should count ourselves dead to sin. We should live in accordance with the truth that has been presented that we died with Christ. It is inconsistent to live any other way. Living a life in sin is contrary to what is true about us. The Holy Spirit, through the Apostle Paul, is making that argument from verse one of the chapter. “Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound?” What is the answer? God forbid! What is the reason? Because it is against the will of God? It is against the will of God, but that is not the reason that is given here. The reason is an appeal to the consistency of how we live compared to what is true about us. He says, “How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?”
He challenges us based upon the reality of our death to sin in Christ. He then considers the possibility that we might not know that we were in His death when He died. The presumption is that if we know this truth, it should affect our lives. This struck me as kind of interesting since we often say that it is up to the Holy Spirit to work in us to get us to do the right thing. This is true of course, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t work in a vacuum. He works using the Word of God.
….to be continued
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