In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom 6:11).

If you wish to have God’s word fulfilled in your life, you will need to accept the spiritual reality that the Bible teaches and live standing upon it by faith. In the above verse, pay attention to the verb “count.” Abraham counted the stars in heaven, and believed that God, who said, “So shall your offspring be,” had power to fulfill his word. Then, God also counted him as righteous. It is exactly in the same way that we were made righteous when we believed that God, who had raised Jesus from the dead, has the power to do the same for us according to his word.

Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life (vv. 3-4).

Note the expression, “don’t you know,” which indicates that the object of knowing is a fact—the spiritual reality in which believers live. We believe that Jesus died for us, and he was raised from the dead three days later. It means that we believe that the fact about Jesus’ death and resurrection, which happened two thousand years ago in Jerusalem—at the time we did not even exist, covers us and works for us today beyond the physical reality of time and space that we are living in. In other words, what we believe is the spiritual reality that our physical eyes do not see—that we all died, were buried, and were raised from the dead with Jesus.

If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection (v. 5).

We were all united with Christ, and when God sees us, he sees us through Jesus: whatever he is, we are also—completely righteous and blameless. This is how he sees us, and it is the firm reality. God’s eyes are not like our eyes, and he sees through the spiritual reality.

If this is true, and what these scriptures say is a genuine reality for us, then, there must be a certain way in which we should live according to the new reality we were brought in. If the reality changes, our way of life changes, too. Once we have become the righteousness of God, we are to walk on the way of righteousness—no other way. If we walk on the other way—the way of sin, we deceive ourselves and live according to a wrong reality.

But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness (vv. 17-18).

In a sense, we lost the freedom concerning the righteous way of living that the Bible teaches. We used to be free from it because we were ignorant about the spiritual reality of God’s word. That time, the only reality we knew was that of this world, and we were completely sunk in it, and lived according to whatever the eyes of our flesh saw. And there was no fulfillment of God’s word.

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death (vv. 20-21)!

But now, given the faith to accept the reality of the Bible, and having become the righteousness of God, we can and should live according to the reality that the Bible speaks about. When you live that way, the fulfillment of God’s word is inevitable.