Thus with the mortal
body of the Savior, and thus also with the natural life of man, which
is as yet not a life from God.
And this our old man must die a violent death in the name of the law,
such as the Savior died, not without severe suffering and painful
wounds. For if the body of sin dies out in a man of itself, through
satiety of earthly things, and because no excitement can any longer
affect his exhausted powers, that is a death from which we see no new
life proceed. The power of sin must be slain in a man by violence; a
man must go through the torture of self-knowledge, showing him the
contrast between his wretched condition and the higher life to which
he is called; he must hear the cry, and accept it as an irrevocable
sentence; that an end is to be put to this life; he must groan and
almost sink under the preparations for the execution of that sentence;
all his accustomed habits of life must cease; he must be conscious of
the wish that he were safely through it all, and it were at an end.
And when he has yielded up the old life to a welcome death, and the
old man is crucified with Christ, then the world, which knows nothing
better than that previous life, if it only goes on well and easily,
uses all kinds of efforts to hinder the rising up of the new life,
some of them well-meaning, others self-interested and therefore
hostile.
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