<p>8:36 <i>Even as it is written: For your sake we are killed all the day long, we were deemed sheep for the slaughter</i>&ndash; See on Rom. 8:13. The key word in this verse is &ldquo;deemed / accounted&rdquo;. Because we are counted as Christ, the lamb slain (and the allusion here is definitely to Isaiah 53), then we should not be phased by our experience of His cross in this life. Indeed we should expect it. We cannot look passively at the cross. It must change how we see ourselves. It must radically affect our self-perception and self understanding. For we are in Him. It was us who hung with Him there, and who hang with Him still in the tribulations of life. For we are to account / impute ourselves as the sheep for the slaughter, i.e. the Lord Jesus, for whose sake we are killed all the day long in the sharing of His sufferings (Rom. 8:36); with Paul, we &ldquo;die daily&rdquo;, because we are in Christ. And if we suffer with Him, we will also reign with Him (Rom. 8:17; 2 Tim. 2:12). To see ourselves as in Christ, to have such a positive view of ourselves, that the essential &lsquo;me&rsquo; is actually the sinless Son of God, is almost asking too much of men and women living with all the dysfunction and low self-worth that seems part of the human condition.</p>