::Paul is speaking of sanctification, though. He's not speaking of atonement. You've been spared judgment and (spiritual) death in Christ. He took your punishment; you claim his righteousness.
Only protestantism draws this distinction between atonement and sanctification; it ought to be understood that sanctification is part of our salvation. We were not spared judgement, rather, in Him we have already been judged.
::It is in living the Christian life that we put to death our former selves and participate in the life of Christ. This is not a magical, mystical experience. It is hard work. It is often painful. This is the suffering through which we're perfected. But this is not atonement; it is the product of atonement. Christ died once, for all. Our participation is in the resurrected life, not in death.
Oh come now, my protest that it is not symbolic and poetic does not mean that I propose it to be "magic." All of His work, as well as all of our work, have spiritual, as well as physical, significance. We have died spiritually, and now we live spiritually. Our bodies will trace the path of our spirit. This is why Paul says the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak; the spirit has died and been resurrected, but not yet the body.
::I think we are all earnest seekers, and if we all knew what we were really seeking, we'd realize that we're honest seekers of the Source of all truth, all joy. I agree with Karen here. None of us--no one--wants just to be "left alone." That is the thing we fear most. That's why we feel so empty, even in the depths of our sin, immediately after we satisfy our appetites and urges with earthly things. We've achieved the feeling we sought, but we achieved it without relationship. Or perhaps we achieved it with a relationship, but we know deep down in our souls that the relationship, like all earthly relationships, is built on shifting sands. I do believe that Christ died to give us life, and that part of that life--even central to that life--is a special kind of knowledge. It is a knowledge that makes a person act ethically, a knowledge that makes a person good. Socrates was correct in Meno; while that sort of knowledge can be taught theoretically, it cannot be taught practically because there is no one worthy of teaching it. It only comes by God's grace, as God opens the eyes of our hearts to his eternal glory.
However many times you reformat it, Josh, you are still essentially declaring that sin is an error of sincere ignorance and that Christ died to give us knowledge. You give us too much credit and Him too little.
