Mortification and Resurrection
Why Death Comes Before Life
Here is the paradox at the heart of Christian transformation: you become more alive by dying. Not metaphorically. Not as a pious exaggeration. The New Testament writers are remarkably literal about it — they speak of the old self being crucified, buried, put to death. And then they speak of resurrection. The sequence is non-negotiable. Mortification before resurrection. Death before life.
For many people this language raises an immediate question: what exactly is dying? And who does the killing?
What Does Restoration Theology Teach Us?
The sources gathered in this apokatastasis.wiki approach mortification from different angles, but they converge on one point: what dies is not the person, but the governing self — what the tradition calls the “old man” or “old self.” And the one doing the dying is not finally the human being, but Christ in the human being.
Cees Noordzij frames it starkly in Moses and the Path to Sonship: “The transformation from ‘dying you shall die’ (Gen.2:17b) to sonship of God is a deadly process for the old self.” That phrase — “deadly process” — resists sentimentality. But Noordzij’s next move is equally striking. He quotes Galatians 2:20 as the template:
Sonship is not an ego-trip. It is death to our self. Whoever follows the Lamb wherever He goes ‘has crucified the flesh with its passions and desires’ (Gal.5:24). Then applies: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, and yet I live, that is, not my own self anymore, but Christ lives in me.’
Death to self is not destruction of the person. It is the displacement of the wrong driver.
Three Voices on One Theme
Noordzij: A Process in Three Movements
In his reflections on baptism (What is Baptism?), Noordzij describes mortification not as a crisis moment but as a progression through three stages. Water baptism begins the process — a reorientation of thought away from earthly things toward “things above” (Colossians 3:2). Spirit-baptism deepens and empowers. The third baptism — into Christ Jesus by the Holy Spirit — is where mortification reaches its full reality:
Third, baptism into Christ Jesus takes place through the Holy Spirit — a transformative process toward spiritual maturity and God’s sonship, bringing the mortification of the ‘old self’ and resurrection to ‘new life’ (Romans 6:3-5).
Two things stand out here. First, the goal named is sonship — not just forgiveness or moral improvement, but a qualitative change in what the person is. Second, the agent is the Spirit: “Only the exalted Lord can perform this baptism,” and it is He who “grants His power for ongoing transformation from ‘old’ to ‘new’” (Acts 1:8). The believer does not produce this transformation; the believer undergoes it.
Stephen Jones: Metamorphosis and Cosmic Scope
Stephen Jones brings a different image to the same reality. In The Laws of the Second Coming, he turns to the caterpillar and the butterfly:
This holy Seed is in the womb of your soul, growing and maturing until the time of full birth… It begins as a worm, or caterpillar, which wraps its entire body within a cocoon, except for its head, which soon dies and falls away. Yet by the process called ‘metamorphosis,’ it is transformed into a living butterfly. In the same way, we have a living Seed within us that makes it possible for us to be transformed into a new creature. When this metamorphosis is complete, and the old Adamic head falls away, we will be birthed as a new creation in the image of Christ. (Ch. 14)
(Stephen Jones — Anthropology b4)
What dies in this image is not the self but the Adamic head — the governing identity formed by the fall. The Seed, the real self, the Christ-in-formation — this does not die. It is precisely what survives and flourishes.
Jones then extends the frame outward. In Free Will Versus Ownership, he argues that death itself is corrective, not final. The “lake of fire” is not destruction but discipline: its purpose is “to teach them the character of God.” And Christ’s work in overcoming death is not limited in scope. Jones cites Paul directly:
So then as through one transgression [Adam’s sin] there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of [Christ’s] righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18-19, cited in Stephen Jones — Hamartology b8)
And: “For as in Adam ALL die, so also in Christ ALL shall be made alive” (1 Corinthians 15:22). This is not incidental phrasing. For Jones, the scope of mortification and resurrection follows the scope of Adam’s fall: it is the shape of the whole story.
Nee-Lee: The Life That Is Received, Not Achieved
Watchman Nee and Witness Lee approach Romans 6 as positional fact. The old man has already been crucified with Christ. The issue is not to accomplish this but to recognize it:
We know that when the Lord was crucified for us, He not only bore our sins but also took us with Him to the cross. Our old man was crucified with Him, just as our sins were borne by Him on the cross.
We were buried with him through baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4, cited in Nee-Lee — Anthropology b8)
And then comes the formulation that reframes the whole of Christian striving: “The life that wins is not attained, but obtained. It is not a life changed, but rather a life exchanged. It is not suppression, only expression.” Mortification as self-effort — as religious straining toward holiness — is precisely what Nee and Lee question. What is needed is not more effort but a different orientation toward something that has already happened.
Reflection: Mortification in an Apokatastasis Frame
What happens to mortification and resurrection when we hold them within the vision of apokatastasis — the final restoration of all things?
If Noordzij is right that the Spirit is the agent of this work, then the question becomes: does the Spirit’s work have limits? Sonship, in the sources of this wiki, is described as the purpose of creation, not the reward of the spiritually accomplished. The trajectory is cosmic.
If Jones is right that death is corrective and the scope of Christ’s reconciliation follows the scope of Adam’s fall — if in Christ all shall be made alive — then mortification is not the private experience of an elect few. It is the shape of the journey that all of creation is making, some sooner, some later, but all in the same direction.
If Nee and Lee are right that the life of resurrection is received and not achieved, then the question of whether all ultimately receive it turns on the question of whether God’s offer ever runs out. The sources are quiet on that point. But they set the frame in which the question becomes serious.
Mortification and resurrection are not a tidy program for spiritual improvement. They are, if the sources are read together, a description of how the whole creation moves from old to new — the Adamic head falling away, the divine Seed maturing, until what was put to death rises in a form that no longer needs dying.
An Invitation
The paradox at the start remains. Dying is how you become more alive. But whose dying, in whose power, toward what end?
The voices in this wiki answer differently on the details. They agree on the direction. Perhaps the most honest response to these texts is a question of your own: what in you is still waiting to fall away?