Christ did not go through the pangs of death for nothing, nor did he give his life to us for the purpose of taking it away again. When he gives us his life, he designs that we shall keep it forever. How do we get it? By faith. How do we keep it? By the same faith. “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him” (Col. 2:6). His life can never end, but we may lose it by unbelief.
For let it be remembered that we have not this life in ourselves, but “this life is in his Son.” “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life” (1 John 5:11, 12). We keep the everlasting life by keeping Christ. Now it is a very simple proposition that if we have been reconciled to God by the death of Christ, —if his life has been given to us for the remission of our sins, then we shall much more be saved by that life since he has risen from the dead. People sometimes say that they can believe that God forgives their sins, but they find it difficult to believe that he can keep them from sin. Well, if there is any difference, the latter is the easier of the two; for the forgiveness of sins requires the death of Christ, while the saving from sins requires only his continued life.
By what life are we saved? By the life of Christ, and he has but one. He is “the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever” (Heb. 13:8). It is by his present life that we are saved, that is, by his life in us from day to day. But the life, which he now lives, is the very same life that he lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago. He took again the same life that he laid down. Think what was in the life of Christ, as we have the record in the New Testament, and we shall know what ought to be in our lives now. If we allow him to dwell in us, he will live just as he did then. If there is something in our lives that was not then in his, we may be sure that he is not living it in us now.
"Waggoner on Romans" : Ellet J. Waggoner : p.5.97