Great and Precious: Romans 6:4

Intro:

Our promise for this week comes to us in Romans chapter 6. For those familiar with the book of Romans you will likely note that this is a book that is chalked full of some of the most amazing promises that you will find in scripture as it is the most comprehensive exposition of the Gospel of Grace that we find in the whole Bible. Thus it is not surprising that we could turn here for some of our time exploring the great and precious promises of scripture.

Specifically today we are going to consider the promise that is at the heart of chapter 6. Now there isn't necessarily one specific verse that explicitly sets fort this promise but we can see the promise implicitly stated for us in verse 4. There, after outlining what for us is several chapters of just how it is that we are saved by the amazing free and unmerited Grace of God the Apostle turns and asks the question that many might ask after considering the Grace of God.

Essentially, if God’s grace is so magnified in the salvation of sinners so that where sin is the darkest there grace shines all the more brightly then perhaps in order to allow for God’s grace to burn as brilliantly as possible we ought to continue on in sin that grace may abound all the more.

Paul clearly realizes that this is one of the ways that the sinful heart of men might take and twist his exposition of the sovereign salvation held before us in the gospel of Christ.

Peter talks about this in 2 Peter 3:14-16

2 Peter 3:14–16 ESV

Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.

The twisting of scripture is nothing new and this kind of twisting of the grace of God as expounded by Paul was obviously common enough that even Peter makes mention of it here in his letter.

And so we find that in Romans chapter 6 Paul makes the case that it is exactly the opposite, that when the glory of God’s grace is made manifest in the salvation of a sinner that the one thing that must not happen is that the sinner saved by grace continue on in their sin. In fact the grace of God in salvation makes this an impossibility! And this impossibility becomes for us the promise of this chapter, as we see there in verse 4 that when we die with Christ and are buried with Him that we also are raised with Him and are granted the wonderful promise that we to will now be enabled to walk in newness of life!

English Standard Version Chapter 6

How can we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

And so this is our promise for today, that there has been granted to us through the grace of God in salvation through the cross of Christ a newness of life that we as His children are now privileged to walk in.

Now lets pray and then continue on in our exposition of this promise this morning:

PRAY

Now as we consider this promise one of the key theological truths that underlies this entire chapter is sanctification. I watched a series on sanctification by Mike Abendroth on AG TV that was what prompted me into the consideration of this promise this morning.

We need to understand what sanctification is and what it is not and how it is that sanctification is effected in our lives if we are to rightly lay hold of this newness of life that is promised to us here in this text. There are a lot of pitfalls that the believer can fall into in seeking to live out their new life in Christ and the place to begin seeking to avoid these is in rightly understanding this thing called sanctification.

And so lets consider sanctification for a moment and then tie that understanding of sanctification to the promise made in Romans 6 so that we can seek to see ourselves and those around us in the body of Christ rightly and to the glory of God walking out this new life that has been brought to us through our union with Christ.

What is Sanctification?

So what is sanctification?

When we see this word come to us in the NT we can look to the use of the Greek in the Hebrew translation of the OT to help us understand what it means. We find that this Greek word is used to speak of the setting aside or consecration of items to the Lord in the OT. In other words to sanctify is to make something holy or to set something apart specifically for the Lord and for His service. The priests in the OT were set apart, utensils were set apart for the Lords service in the temple, offerings and sacrifices were set apart for the Lord. Once something had been sanctified it had been set apart for God and therefore it was not to be made use of for common tasks again, it was as the phrase goes, holy unto the Lord.

Now there is an important distinction that needs to be made between what theologians call definitive sanctification and ongoing sanctification.

Abendroth tells us that definitive sanctification is that work whereby God sets us apart for Himself. This is the work that God does in choosing a people that are to be his.

We read of this sanctification in Hebrews 10:10

Hebrews 10:10 ESV

And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

The once and for all setting aside of a people for Himself through the work of Christ.

Now this is different from ongoing sanctification. Ongoing sanctification is the process that takes place between our salvation or our being justified (the other word we often hear in conjunction with sanctification) and our being glorified in heaven. This is the process through which the work of Christ is applied to our lives and we are thus enabled to live out this new life that is set before us.

Now one of the biggest cautions that Abendroth gives us and rightly so is that often times many Christians are prone to think of holy living itself as sanctification. This is the danger of misunderstand this promise here in Romans 6 and why it is that we are considering the nature of sanctification as a way of rightly understanding the promise here.

There is a tendency to, knowingly or unknowingly, believe that while justification is the work of Christ for us that sanctification then becomes our work. That Christ justifies us and that as a result He then calls us to be sanctified or to say it as bluntly as many people live, that He calls us to sanctify ourselves.

Now when I say it that way it sounds so wrong, that we ought to sanctify ourselves sounds and is a grave heresy. And yet many of us live that way even if we wouldn't be so bold as to say it. We live as though it is our job to effect sanctification in our lives. As though justification is Gods work and sanctification is ours.

However this is not true, both of these are works of God.

The Baptist Catechism answers the question, What is sanctification, this way:

Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.

Sanctification is the work of God’s free grace. Sanctification is the work of God in us.

In other words justification is the work of God for us and sanctification is the work of God in us. In justification God declares us to be righteous by imputing the righteousness of Christ to our account and in sanctification God works in us to renew and enable us to walk in newness of life.

The walking is not sanctification it is the result of our being sanctified by the power of God.

Now its not just the catechism that teaches us that sanctification is the work of God we can also clearly see it in the scriptures:

2 Thessalonians 2:13 ESV

But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.

1 Thessalonians 5:23 ESV

Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

John 17:17 ESV

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

Jesus prayed that the father would sanctify those who would come to Him by faith!

We see this illustrated as well in Romans 6:17

Romans 6:17 ESV

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed,

You have become obedient from the heart. Our obedience, our walking out these new lives of holiness and righteousness is said to spring forth from obedient hearts. Well the question is where do these hearts come from? We have the answer to that in Ezekiel 36:25-27

Ezekiel 36:25–27 ESV

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

Clearly we see that this sanctification that results in our living lives of holiness and righteousness and godliness then is the work of God, the work by which He removes the heart of stone and puts in its place a heart of flesh a heart of flesh that is able then to walk in God’s statutes and obey His rules.

Again, sanctification is the work of God in us, it is not our work!

Back to Romans 6

Now why is this so important? Well lets turn back to Romans 6.

Romans 6:16-18 talks about the difference between being a slave of sin and a slave of righteousness. That we were once slaves of sin and that we have become slaves of righteousness.

One of the commentaries that I read put it well. The commentator shared an illustration about a man who was a slave of a cruel master and that man was then set free from that cruel master by a king who took the slave and put him to death and then when the slave had died and was buried the king raised the salve to life again. The picture being of our salvation. As long as we are slaves of sin and live to sin we are bound to do its bidding. And yet when we die as Romans 6:3&4 tells is with Christ and are raised with him that death then frees us from our former master and now makes us slaves to the one who raised us from the dead.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 For one who has died has been set free from sin. 8

The question is, how does this work? How does sanctification, God’s work of sanctification produce new life in us?

The answer is found in verse 8:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

There is a correlation in this verse between our dying with Christ and our living with him. We died with Christ by having our old man nailed there to the cross with Christ, we can see that right, we don't physically die with Christ, this is clearly talking about the death that took place at the cross when as it says in verse 6 our old self was crucified with Him.

Now let me ask you, how much work did you have to do to nail your old self to the cross, whose work was that? Whose work was your death on the cross? Quite obviously it was the work of God we have absolutely no ability to effect what took place at the cross whatsoever!

Well then look at the correlation. If the work of the cross was the work of God the work that nailed our old self there with Christ and put it to death then likewise our living with Christ is also God’s work. And this living with Him is not talking about our eternal lives at some point in the future but rather our lives now.

Look at verse 10:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11

Christ is living now, He is risen and seated at the right hand of the father living to do the will of the father. And so we find in verse 11 that just as Christ is living now:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And this is actually the answer to the how part of this whole thing. Maybe you have been thinking about how to ties these two things together as we have been talking about them this morning. How is it that sanctification is the work of God in us and yet we are the ones who walk out the newness of life. Isn't there something that we need to do in sanctification? After all these verses talk a lot about living our lives a certain way, they talk about this walking newness of life, that sure seems like something we DO. And yes it is. We do that, we walk in newness of life we walk in obedience to our Lord. We seek to live righteous lives. But the point is is that that is not sanctification that is the results of our sanctification by God and we see here in this verse the touchstone the meeting place between God’s work and our responsibility.

We are to Consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

While it isn't said explicitly here what Paul is talking about is faith. You see he says this this way because of the reality that we don't see these things clearly yet. We cant see our old man hanging on that cross, we have died with Christ and yet we don't see a corpse laying anywhere, no one put you in the dirt and then raised you up, we only have pictures and illustrations of what happens on a spiritual level.

And as a result of this we have to by faith consider or reckon ourselves as dead to sin and alive to God. When that old master comes around and seeks to make demands on your life again he can seem forceful and domineering and nearly impossible to say no to and the right and proper response to temptation is not to simply try harder, to try as hard as you can to effect your own sanctification. The answer to sin and temptation is to exercise your faith in Christ, have faith that no matter what that old master may seem to be claiming in your life right now you are not bound to obedience to him any longer you have been set free.

Just as we are justified by faith alone we can likewise say that we are sanctified by faith alone.

And so it is that when we exercise faith in God and His sanctifying work in us it is then that we can:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14

Again this is not sanctification this is our faithful response to the sanctifying work of God in our lives.

And as if to highlight that even more that section ends with yet another statement that we are called to have faith in we must have faith that as a result of the sanctifying work of God in our lives:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Mortification & Vivification

Now as we consider our faithful response to the work of God in sanctifying us we need to see that there are two primary headings under which our response can fall and we see both of these there in verses 12 & 13.

The first is mortification. My favorite theologian is John Owen because my favorite puritan book is the Mortification of Sin in believers and it is an exposition of Romans 8:13

Romans 8:13 ESV

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

In it Owen talks about how it is that we do this thing called mortification or the putting to death the deeds of the body. This is the first response to the sanctifying work of God in us. We no longer present ourselves to sin to do its bidding.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness,

There is much that could be said about mortification and I would highly recommend reading Owens book but what we need to realize is that this mortification is an act of faith whereby we, as a result of the sanctifying work of Christ in us no longer present ourselves to sin to do its bidding. Sin is on longer our master!

This takes faith, faith that what God has said He has done has actually been done. Sin once was our master and demanded full obedience and as a result of the work of Christ sin can no longer lay claim to your obedience but that doesn't mean sin wont do everything it can to cause you to let go of faith and doubt the promises and work of God.

This is why the answer to battling indwelling or besetting sins isn't to simply try harder. We know that we have no power in ourselves to resist sin and temptation and when we simply try harder our inner man knows from our life before Christ that we don't have that kind of power.

No the answer is to have faith in the work of Christ, to lay hold of these great and precious promises and fight our sin not as a battle of will power but as a fight of faith.

The second faucet of our response is what is called vivification or our being made alive to righteousness.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

Not only do we not present ourselves to sin to do its bidding but, positively, we present our lives to God that we might, as we have seen, walk out this new life that He has set before us.

The life of one in whom God is doing this sanctifying work is one in which we will present our bodies to God for obedience. Again this doesn't mean that our obedience to Christ is our sanctification. Our obedience to Christ flows from a faithful response to the sanctifying work of Christ in us.

And so as with our seeking to put to death our sin so also our seeking to live righteously is not a matter of willpower and trying harder but a matter of faith in the work and promises of God. Do you trust these promises, do you have faith in Christ? Your life of obedience to Christ is the fruit of this work inside of you.

Again Paul says:

English Standard Version Chapter 6

14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Sin is no longer the master, as a result of the sanctifying work of Christ we have a new master and this will be shown as we grown in our obedience to Him as we increase in both mortification and vivification.

Conclusion:

Now as we close this morning I want to acknowledge that there is a tension here but it is a tension that the scriptures fully embrace and set before us. You may be thinking that if sanctification is God’s work in me and my obedience in these things is a fruit of that work then is there really any thing that I need to do. If sanctification is God’s work then I get to sit back and just wait for that fruit to be evident in my life, right?

Well that would be incorrect.

We understand from scripture that this sanctification is a process, it takes time.

2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Are being transformed, that is actively in the present tense.

The key verse where we see this tension brought to bear is Philippians 2:12-13

Philippians 2:12–13 ESV

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

We are called to work out our salvation, meaning to grow in our obedience to Christ in these things, to see the fruit of our salvation, our sanctification growing in our lives and yet we find as Paul calls these people to en devour to work out their salvation, He at the same time reminds them as we have seen this morning that this is a work of faith, that the ground for their seeking to grow in their obedience to Christ, their seeking to press on and walk out this new life, to as we saw last week run with endurance the race that is set before them, the ground of this is the faith that it is God who is at work, IE it is God who is working in us to sanctify us.

Paul knew this and sought to live out this kind of life in his own life so that he could say later in Philippians 3:17

Philippians 3:17 ESV

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.

And what is this example that he is calling them to imitate?

Philippians 3:12–14 ESV

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Press on, strain forward in faith knowing that sanctification is God’s work in us and that as a result of that work we will be enabled to run this course well and will be consistently transformed as we die to sin and live to God and that the great joy that is set before us in this course is that one day, at the end of this race we will receive that great prize, the upward call of God in Christ Jesus!