Dead or Alive

DEVOTION
ROMANS
DEAD OR ALIVE
Rom 6:8-14

8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
So, here I am, a dead man, but I am a dead man walking, not stuck in some box six feet under the soil. So how can I be dead? Because I died with Christ, is the reason and surely even though he died physically, I did not. So then my death was of the self. That is the person I was, the things I thought and did, as we say, the old self, the former self, the original self, the self who was born with original sin and engaged in personal sin as a lifestyle. That is who is dead, yet that is who is alive! No, I am a new self, a self who is alive with Christ, in a spiritual sense, at least. My physical being is still alive, and will die as well, but my spirit is alive with Christ, and death no longer has mastery over me as well. If this is the case, then those who are not alive with Christ, do they have to be concerned about not only a physical death but also a spiritual death, what does that mean? Yet the real truth of this verse, in context, does deal with self and sin. If the old, original self was both guilty of original and personal sin, then this new self must not be. If I am not longer living for self, then I surely must be living for God. That does sound good, but why do I still struggle with self? This is a question I must continue to ask myself daily.