Dead and Gone

How we must think about our old selves

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Photo by Sergey Nikolaev on Unsplash

The other day I was on Spotify and, for one reason or another, I decided to take a listen to a favorite song of mine back in the day. You might be surprised to know that, before Christ, I was really into rap/hip-hop. And that’s still my favorite genre of music but now I listen to the likes of Lecrae, Shai Linne, KB, and others.

But this time I went back to my old music. The old music that if I would’ve listened to as a baby Christian, it likely would’ve caused me to stumble in some way. I listened to a song called “Dead and Gone” by T.I. The song does have several instances of profanity—so I’m certainly not advocating for that—but as I listened to this song for the first time in more than a decade, I was struck by the chorus lyrics from Justin Timberlake:

I’ve been travelin’ on this road too long / Just trying to find my way back home / The old me is dead and gone, dead and gone.

These words immediately made me think of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Rome. He wrote, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:11).

I know the song isn’t about this, but it certainly directed my eyes to this biblical truth. Our old self—the self that hated the Lord, the one that sinned with great delight, the one that was prideful and selfish and full of lust—is dead and gone. We said sayonara to that person when God saved us. And that’s exactly what the Apostle Paul tells us to do—consider our old selves dead to sin and alive to God.

There are plenty of reasons why we must consider our old selves dead and gone, but one reason is abundantly clear: we need not try to resurrect our old selves. We should not try to bring our former selves back. That’s our struggle everyday, isn’t it? In Romans 6, Paul exhorts us to consider our old selves dead. In Romans 7, he explains that we will still have an ongoing struggle with our old selves in our fight with sin.

But this entire conversation has two components. One, it rails against the prevailing thought that someone can remain the same in Christ. It goes against the thought that we can just keep sinning so grace may abound. Friend, if this is our attitude toward our sin, perhaps we should examine our faith. Christians don’t want to keep sinning. We want to become more holy in Christ. But two, this helps genuine Christians fight the good fight of faith. It empowers us, by the Spirit, to combat our old desires, our former temptations. How can we keep sinning when our old selves are dead and gone?

Here’s something I think you should do. Write a letter to your old self. I did here. It is a good exercise as we contemplate what it means practically to consider our old selves dead.

And sometimes even old songs from back in the day will help you remember that your old self is dead and that you are a new creation in Christ with new desires and affections. God has made us alive in Christ, and we should reckon ourselves as dead.