What is the fifth thing God has done for believers?
God's fifth act on behalf of believers is reckoning them as crucified with Christ. In God's mind they have been put to death, fulfilling the law that the soul that sins shall die. This is substitution: Christ died in their place, and they experience that death in Him.
Les explains that this is the fifth thing God has done on believers' behalf: He has reckoned us as crucified with Christ. Crucifixion can only put to death, so believers have been, in the minds of God, put to death. This was necessary because of the first law God gave the human race—that the day Adam and Eve ate, they would surely die—and because Ezekiel says the soul that sins shall surely die. Since all are sinners as sons of Adam, all had to die. God provided a loophole: He died in our place. Believers still experience that same death He experienced in the person of Christ, which is substitution. Les then points to Romans 6:6.
Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.