The death of the flesh must always be realized before the life of God may be enjoyed. This is important practically. In the grace that brings salvation, it is not that death must be learned first, and life afterward. Life in Christ comes to me as a sinner, and that life exposes the death in which I lay. If I must realize my death in order for that life to come to me, it would be evidently man set into his true place as a preparation for his blessing from God; which would in effect deny grace. “That which was from the beginning which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life.” That is to say, it is the person of Christ Himself, who comes and brings the blessing. After that, the soul learns that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” It learns that, if we say we have light or fellowship with Him who is light, and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. All the practical learning of what God is, and what we are, follows the manifestation of life to us in the person of Christ.
If you speak of the order as to a sinner, it is sovereign grace which gives life in Another; but if of the order of progress in the believer, it is not so. The believer having already got life, must mortify all that pertains to him merely in nature, in order that the life should be manifested and strengthened. This is all-important for the saint, as the other is for the sinner. Man in his natural state does not believe that he is dead, but he is laboring to get life. He wants life; he has none. It is Another alone that brings and gives it to him in perfect grace―seeing only evil in him, but coming with nothing but good, and bringing it in love. This is Christ. But in the believer’s case, having already found life in Him, there must be the judgment of the evil, in order that the new and divine life should be developed and grow. So that, while to the one it is life, exposing the evil, and meeting the man in death and delivering him from it, to the other it is the practical putting to death everything that has already existence naturally in him. All this must have the sentence of death put upon it, in order that the life be unhindered in its growth and manifestation.
Extract From “Notes on Daniel” by William Kelly, p. 173-175.