Romans 6:1-14
Notes
Transcript
Review
Review
Romans 1:18 through Romans 3:20 All of humankind is unrighteous
Romans 3:21 through Romans 3:31 we are justified through our faith in Christ; faith that is a gift from God
Romans 4 examples of faith in Abraham and David
Romans 5:1-11 Paul tells us that the immediate benefits we get from being justified through faith in Christ are peace with God, and hope in glory and being reconciled (reestablishing a close relationship) to the Father and by this we are given grace
Romans 5:12-21 we learn of the universal need of justification because Adam sinned and the curse of death came to him and through him to all humanity and because we are born dead sinners, we need grace for faith in Christ
Think of Romans 3:21-5:21 teaching us about justification and our need for it
Now the next section Paul will teach us about sanctification in Romans 6 through Romans 8.
NOTE: I know I’m not smart enough to do this, so I’m gonna trust the Holy Spirit to! When we are finished with the lesson today, there ought to be a sin in your mind that YOU need to apply the lesson to.
You are going to be tempted to think of a list of 14 sins or maybe even 14 people that you say to yourself “so and so needs to do this”. STOP! That is nothing more than your flesh using misdirection to keep you from allowing the Spirit to work in your life. It’s easy to do because at the very least we are all ate up with pride so we trick ourselves into believing we aren’t as bad as fill in the blank.
The only way you end this lesson today not understanding that you have sin that needs to be dealt with is if you take the bait the flesh and the devil offer and don’t listen to Paul when he says 2 Corinthians 13:5 “5 Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?”
You may think your sin or sins are more or less vile than those of someone else; but they all are short of the perfection of God and opposed to who we are in Christ!
Chapter 6
Chapter 6
1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? 2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
God has pronounced us righteous…now what? What do we do now?
The question is natural and many if not most of us that have been saved asked it as well. “I just got saved…now what?” Why does Paul ask the question this way?
He set up the question in Romans 5:20 “20 Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound:” That’s the idea in justification, no matter what our past, or our deeds or thoughts…there is no wickedness that the grace of God doesn’t overcome.
But because of the effects of the fall, some might think “OK, I get it, I sin and the more I sin the more grace I get”.
This is also the accusation that had been aimed at Paul by conservative, law keeping Jews:
Romans 3:8 “8 And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.”
Paul was constantly accused of teaching there was no need to worry about obedience, or moral behavior, it’s just grace.
Kinda sounds like some accusations I have heard that say because you believe this that means you can just sin as much as you want to and it doesn’t matter.
Well Paul begins to address both of those by reminding us what it meant to be justified:
3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:
Many see baptism today as “just that thing we do after we make a profession of faith” it’s way more than that
Baptism is a sign of the believer’s fellowship with Christ, in his death and resurrection; of the believer being engrafted into Christ; of remission of sins; and of giving up into God, through Jesus Christ, to live and walk in newness of life.
Paul is saying when we were justified by the pronouncement of God, that at that moment it’s as if we were there with Jesus on that day on Calvary. And not just there looking up at Him, we were in effect hanging there at the same time on the same cross as Him. The thing is, as the nails pierced His hands it freed ours. As the nails pierced His feet ours came loose. And as He took His last breath, we took our first!
When you think of it like this, that means you have what happened, what’s happening, and what’s going to happen
His death gave us life; The old man who was dead in sin and trespass died with Jesus that day
When He was in the tomb we are walking around breathing on earth, and as such we should act like He’s with us the way that we were with Him on the cross and act like He acted when he was walking around breathing on earth; the new man, a new creation was born and lives today
When He was resurrected on the 3rd day, it sets the stage for the future glory we will have by being in and with Him for eternity
We are dealt with forensically
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. 7 For he that is dead is freed from sin. 8 Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: 9 Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. 10 For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Verse 6 going in reverse:
God’s purpose is that we would not serve sin or be slaves to it
But before our rescue is possible, the body of sin must be destroyed
Just as a check against the heresy of gnosticism, Paul is not saying our literal bodies are evil. We are created in the image and likeness of God that we might multiply and take dominion and our bodies are the vehicle that God uses to not only do that but also to show good and truth and beauty; but the sin nature or body of sin must be destroyed (done away with or defeated)
The old self we were in Adam must be defeated and give way to the new self IN CHRIST. this isn’t something we do, it’s something done to us.
7 tells us how this happens
The only way for us to be justified from sin is for the wages of sin to be paid either by the sinner or the substitute
We deserved to die for our sins. And in fact we did die, though not in our own person, but in the person of Jesus Christ our substitute, who died in our place, and with whom we have been united by faith and baptism.
Romans 6:8–10 “Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.”
8-10 The guarantee of the continuing nature of our new life, beginning now and lasting for ever, is to be found in Christ’s resurrection.
not resuscitated (brought back to life from the dead) Christ was raised to a whole new kind of life
There is a difference of time (the past event of death, the present experience of life), of nature (he died to sin, bearing its penalty, but lives to God, seeking his glory), and of quality (the death ‘once for all’, the resurrection life continuous).
These differences are important for our understanding not only of the work of Christ but also of our Christian discipleship, which, by our union with Christ, begins with a once-for-all death to sin and continues with an unending life of service to God.
11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 14 For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.
Up until now Paul has given us the indicatives. The indicative is a statement of fact. Paul has told us who we are IN CHRIST!
Now he gives us the imperatives. The imperatives tell us what we are to do because of what Christ has done. The very act of discipleship is coming to a better understanding of what Jesus has done to make us who we are and then how we live in light of those facts!
Paul uses military terminology throughout his writings. Here “instruments” are weapons
We are to consider (reckon) ourselves dead to sin but alive to God through Christ
Reminding us of what he has written in Romans 6 to this point
Military example: basic training lays the foundation that the soldier builds on later with specialized training. It’s not remembering the training that makes the difference. It’s being a soldier that goes through the training and it’s the training that makes the difference.
Remember who you are because of Who’s you are. Those in Adam are slaves to sin. We who IN CHRIST are slaves to Christ. Christ has won and we are in Him. Paul is telling us remember what’s true, that we have victory in Christ.
We are not to let sin reign in our body to make you obey its desires. On D-Day in Normandy, the soldiers were told that when the gate fell and explosions were coming and bullets flying, every fiber of their body would want to stay in the craft. They were told they must remember their training and overcome that desire. If they stayed in the craft they would die. They were told they HAD to move forward toward the beach
It’s the same with sin, everything about the flesh wants to sin. Doesn’t matter if it’s mind or body sins. By Adam we were born sinners and that’s all we’ve known. However, because of who we are IN CHRIST we have been given a new nature. A new creation that longs to be holy. We are to resist the flesh and the devil and not give ourselves to that to which we no longer belong!
We are not to offer our bodies to sin to be used for unrighteousness; but offered to God for righteousness
In Christ we are weapons of righteousness not weapons
We are in Christ and His slave now and we are called to discipline ourselves and strengthen our “Christian muscles” by being in the Word, and praying, and serving, and coming to church, and singing. And it’s not just an every so often thing.
Discipline - noun
1a: control gained by enforcing obedience or order
b: orderly or prescribed conduct or pattern of behavior
c: self-control
2: punishment
3: training that corrects, molds, or perfects the mental faculties or moral character
4: a field of study
5: a rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity
Discipleship is the act of disciplining ourselves to remember who we are in Christ and doing those things we are called to do again and again and again. Over time, we want to do those things sin as a slave master wants us to do less and we want to do the things of Christ more
Paul finishes by reminding us again who we are in Christ when he wrote in Romans 6:3-10.
The law is not our hope, grace is; it’s not our works that give us victory over sin, it’s Christ’s work on the cross. WE ARE NOT SLAVES TO SIN because we died to sin with Christ when He died on the cross. We ARE slaves to Christ because
Conclusion
Conclusion
Here in Romans 6:1-14 Paul gives us all the theology to know who we are in Christ after we are justified
Then he tells us what we’re to do with it
Consider it to be true of you
Don’t give yourself to that which you don’t belong to any more
Do give yourself completely to the One you DO belong to
Because all the theology Paul gave us is true
Quoting Voddie
We are no longer under the first Adam.
We are no longer a slave to sin.
We are no longer under the dominion of death.
We are no longer under the Law
By faith, we are now under the federal headship of the last Adam, Jesus Christ.
In Him we have been victorious over death
In Him we will ultimately be free from the presence of sin in our own bodily resurrection
In Him, in the meantime, we are to live a life unto God
And even though every fiber of our being our whole life has been conditioned to go the opposite direction, we are to believe what’s true not what we were used to
“As a man nailed to the cross; he first struggles, and strives, and cries out with great strength and might, but, as his blood and spirits waste, his strivings are faint and seldom, his cries low and hoarse, scarce to be heard; — when a man first sets on a lust or distemper, to deal with it, it struggles with great violence to break loose; it cries with earnestness and impatience to be satisfied and relieved; but when by mortification the blood and spirits of it are let out, it moves seldom and faintly, cries sparingly, and is scarce heard in the heart; it may have sometimes a dying pang, that makes an appearance of great vigour and strength, but it is quickly over, especially if it be kept from considerable success.” -John Owen On the Mortification of Sin