New Patterns for a New Kingdom (Part 1)

PRAY: Lord God of heaven and earth, we pray to you in humble recognition of our need. We need you. Let not a single heart here be arrogant and ignorant of how desperately we need your intervention in our lives, not just once, but every day. So we seek you this Lord’s day, that by the power of your own word you may do in us what our own words and feeble efforts could never do. Transform us by your grace for your glory, that we may taste and see your goodness. Through Christ we pray, Amen.

INTRO: Have you heard that trees never stop growing? Well, it’s actually true. Despite differences due to the DNA ingrained in its species, a tree never stops growing. A more mature tree may increasingly slow down its growth in height, due to factors like gravity, but it continues growing in the girth and strength of its core, and in most cases at a faster and faster rate. The rings in the cross-section of a tree trunk are proof of this ever-increasing maturity in trees.

Why am I talking about tree growth? Because that’s what the Christian life should be like in the process of our sanctification, becoming increasingly more like Christ… by the power of God to the glory of God.

If we put that in the context of what Paul has been teaching in these early chapters of Romans (and especially from the latter part of ch. 3 through the early part of ch. 6), we might say it like this: For those who have been justified by faith in Christ’s righteousness for right relationship to God, and are therefore positionally sanctified in union to Christ, being dead to sin and alive to God, that means there will also necessarily be ongoing growth in Christ—progressive sanctification.

But unlike trees, God has made us beings in his own image who are aware and responsive and responsible. So just as God has called on us to cooperate with our salvation by responding in faith, he has also commanded us to cooperate in our sanctification.

Just so, we have come to some applicational verses from Paul in Romans 6, where Paul indicates that…

The believer must learn to live consistently with new life in Christ.

But Paul doesn’t only command that we must do so, he also gives us help as to how we might do so.

Romans 6:11–14 ESV

11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 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 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

The most obvious shift in the text is that the verbs transition (in 11-13) from indicative to imperative, from description to command. Paul shifts his attention to what we must do with the truth he has just explained.

The believer must learn to live consistently with new life in Christ.

As we’ve explained from the end of chapter 5 and into chapter 6, my understanding of what is happening here is that Paul is shifting from position to practice. - Just as I believe the text has given us indications that Paul has been emphasizing the positional change in right relationship to God, I believe the text indicates now that Paul is shifting toward the need for us to actively participate in living according to the new position that God has placed us in by the purchase of Christ’s death and resurrection.

The nuances in the text are complicated, so we need to always keep a measure of humility in recognizing that not everyone agrees with the details as we are interpreting them. But whether or not we agree on exactly when and how Paul makes this shift to progressive sanctification, let’s be sure we don’t lose sight of the main point, upon which I think we should agree: The believer must learn to live consistently with new life in Christ.

Now as we look closely at this section of imperatives (11-13) and final promise (v. 14), remember that this is application on the foundational truth Paul has laid. Know too that both the commands and imagery are instrumental to understanding the argument that follows, with an ongoing emphasis on progressive sanctification. (There will be a continuing emphasis on this imagery in the following pat of chapter 6.)

Ok. To this point that we must learn to live consistently with our new life in Christ, Paul’s first command teaches us that…

A foundational help and motivation for ongoing growth in holiness is to consider the implications of our union to Christ. (verse 11)

“So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” This first imperative involves careful reflection on the truth that Paul has just described, in order to let it have its ongoing intended effect.

The main verb means to count, to judge, to calculate, to reason about, to keep a mental record of, to hold a view, to charge it to your account. Paul is saying we should keep pondering this, mulling over it, believing it, counting on this truth. Make it a practice to consider the implications of having been united to Christ in his death to sin and life to God. Meditate on the sanctifying change that Christ has achieved and is still achieving.

Again, my understanding is that Paul has said that in being united with Christ’s death, you have died to sin’s controlling authority over you: v. 14 “for sin will have no dominion over you.” So too, Christ’s resurrection life means that you have been given new life in Christ and will experience an assured final resurrection to eternal life with God. Ok, but although your relationship to sin and your relationship to God have been changed in Christ Jesus, and sin’s authority over you has been defeated, the influencing power of sin in this world and even in our very lives is not yet completely destroyed. As David Powlison explains, “Conversion is the first step in a long salvation, initially from sin’s penalty, gradually from sin’s power, and ultimately from sin’s presence. It is the birth that leads to a lifetime of growing up into Jesus’ image. Sanctification is discipleship into his way of life.” (David Powlison, How Does Sanctification Work?, JBC 27:1 (2013))

So here, now at this turning point in Romans 6, Paul is saying that the facts form the foundation for the outworking of this truth in your everyday existence. So too, the outworking in your daily existence will reveal that said foundational union to Christ is true of you. That makes this both a means of help and a motivation. It helps with our ongoing sanctification if we understand that in Christ God has placed us in a new kingdom with a new authority, in whose power we are being enabled to live.

So too, the truth of our new standing in Christ motivates us in at least these two ways:

1. The fact of our justification by the accomplishment of Christ and not our own merit, but all of God’s grace, and of being united to Christ by God’s grace, is motivation for the grateful heart to not let such grace be wasted on us. ‘God, what you have done for me is not lost on me, and I long to live for you in this faith you have given.’

2. And here’s a second way this motivates us: As we live it, we are more confident it is true. “As believers experience victory over sin, their confidence in a full and complete triumph over both sin and death increases.” (Tom Schreiner) So we are motivated to be like Christ in deep gratitude to God, and we are also motivated to put away impurity and clothe ourselves in Christ because we know that that will only further confirm to us our identity in Christ.

Now, meditating on the truth of what God has done for you is foundational for progressive sanctification, for growth in holiness. Yes, we should know who we are in Christ, but we must also take action live like we are new in Christ. In this text, Paul describes it this way:

Because we have been given new life in a new kingdom, we must actively deny the old master and serve the new master. (verses 12-13)

The following commands will now show that we must actively and daily submit ourselves to God, making decisions to not live in allegiance to the old master but live in ever-increasing allegiance to our new kingdom and Lord. Paul elaborates this point in vv. 12-13 with two negative commands and one positive command (with two parts). He uses the imagery and activity of living in service to a new kingdom with a new master. The image possibly even leans toward that of military service.

- Having been set free from its dominion (6-11, 14a), don’t let sin reign in your mortal body.

Paul is here personifying sin, like he is a ruler. Personification is when things or ideas (or even animals) are described as if they have a human quality. The trees groaned. The sky wept.

Sin wants to rule over you like a tyrannical king, and formerly did rule over you this way, but you have a new master and new power to live for that Lord and his kingdom. So this is why Paul says don’t let sin reign in your mortal body. We are part of Christ’s spiritual kingdom, but we still are still mortal people. That means that part of what Christ accomplished is not yet complete. There will come a day when there will be no more physical death, for anyone, because God will put an end to it completely. Sin too is still present with us in this fallen world, of which our mortal selves are still a part. So the power and influence of sin will not be completely broken until we are perfectly set free from the very presence of sin… and that day is still coming!

But Paul’s picture here then is that since we have been transferred into a new dominion with a new Lord—to a new kingdom with a new master—we must no longer let the old master rule us. We must not serve him anymore.

It’s probably helpful to understand even here the metaphor that Paul uses after this to make his point further. Rather than a military metaphor, he goes back to slavery as a metaphor. In Paul’s day, slaves (or bondservants) in the Roman empire often earned some wages and could eventually save up to purchase their freedom. But even these freedmen needed work, so they would sometimes continue in service to their previous master. For the purpose of Paul’s image, he says, don’t do that! This is not a good master! He does not intend your best interest. He seeks to destroy you. He is not a master worthy of your devotion and service!

“Don’t let sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.”

Again, sin is being personified as a sovereign ruler who would make us obey the passions of our “bodies.” Body almost certainly refers to the whole person (like v. 6), to include all our faculties and abilities—the emotional and thinking part of us too, not just the physically tangible self.

Although sin is no longer master, his ongoing presence means that he is still a threat. And the threat is not just an external one, but an internal one: “passions.” (desires, lusts, cravings… describing these in this case as bent toward evil) In fact, sin’s influence on us, as we know, is predominantly from within. John Owen therefore describes indwelling sin as the ever-present enemy within us who seeks to regain mastery over us.

However, since we have died with Christ to the reign of sin, we can say no. We can, and should, say ‘we do not serve you anymore.’ “For sin will have no mastery over you…” v. 14. - As Robert Mounce wrote in his commentary on this chapter, “In Christ we have died to sin. Sin no longer has the authority to enforce its demands. Death has severed the relationship.” (NAC Romans)

As we said last week, being dead to sin’s mastery isn’t the same thing as sin itself being completely gone. Progressive sanctification is ongoing deliverance from the power of sin’s influence in our lives, and that includes our active cooperation in the Spirit’s operation as we submit to Christ.

So Paul continues the ruler metaphor in v. 13, adding further imagery.

- Don’t present your faculties and abilities to sin as weapons for unrighteousness.

“Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness.” Can you picture it? Our “members” are like various parts of our bodies, but Paul is using that to illustrate for us that we must not present any faculty of ourselves, any natural ability or inclination that God has given us, that sin may wield as weapons (or tools, equipment) for unrighteousness.

And remember too that unrighteousness is a failure to actively align with God’s moral principles based on his own perfect character. Righteousness will be the opposite, which is to closely walk in God’s moral standard. Righteousness and unrighteousness by definition take their very meaning and purpose by relationship to the character and commands of God. So think with me about the deep irony, that we should ever present any aspect of ourselves to be used for un-righteousness, instead of submitting to God that he might take our feeble abilities and human faculties and use them for righteousness.

And that is precisely the opposing contrast that Paul provides, which is the only way of living that is consistent with what Christ has accomplished.

- Since you are alive to a new kingdom, present yourself to God and your faculties and abilities to Him as weapons for righteousness.

“Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life…” The good news is, by Christ’s defeat of sin and resurrection life, we are now enabled in this reign of grace (by his own power at work in us by his Spirit) to refuse sin and present ourselves to God. That’s exactly what Paul calls on us to do.

Again, the alternative to be presenting ourselves to God makes absolutely no sense. But Paul is under no misconception that sin will stop fighting for control of us until God finally sets us free from the very presence of sin. Until then, we must keep presenting ourselves to God as an active, daily practice of our new faith.

Similarly, we take everything that we are and have and present them to God in order that we can depend on him to use every aspect of us as his weapons for righteousness. “… and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.” I absolutely love the clear dependency of this image. By faith in the work of Christ, we are placed in right relationship to God as a new master, and we the servants, the soldiers, of his kingdom. But we are in utter dependence upon him to take our feeble members and accomplish righteousness. That’s how I understand this, which makes good sense to me in understanding the supernatural work of God in and through frail human creatures.

So there’s this tension between our active submission to God with his own work through us. But that tension seems like the accurate picture Scripture provides of the Christian life. When we align ourselves in submission to God, presenting our faculties and abilities to Him, he aligns us to righteous living, producing the fruit of sanctification.

Romans 6:22 ESV

22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life.

But we’ll be coming to that text soon.

Verse 14 of our passage for today is not another command, but instead is a comforting promise:

Romans 6:14 ESV

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

This promise circles back to a reason or a basis for the previous exhortations.

Our confidence for carrying out these commands is not us, but Christ. Sin will not master us, and the law does not condemn us, because we are under the reign of God’s grace. (verse 14)

You are now able to follow these commands because by faith you have been made alive to God, and sin’s dominion over you has been put to death with Christ. Again, this is only true for those who have been united to Christ, who are “in Christ Jesus” (the end of v. 11).

The tension is that this certainty, this confidence, is absolutely no excuse to go on sinning as if it doesn’t matter. And yet here is a concluding comfort for those who know they are entangled in a constant battle with sin (see also 7:14-25). We know that Christ has won the war and is indeed making progress in our ongoing sanctification.

Now with this summarizing statement in the form of a promise that sin will not have mastery over us, Paul now adds the law as a category which we are no longer under, if we are under the reign of grace. Leave it to Paul to open up a new can of worms in the same breath that he’s wrapping up another, which raises a new question. And then he’ll leave off of actually answering it for a couple more paragraphs, coming back to give the question of the law a more full answer at chapter 7.

But he’s almost certainly using the law and the reign of grace as salvation-historical eras—the covenant with Israel when God gave the Mosaic law, and the new covenant in Christ. However, this is not to suggest that the law itself is bad. (Romans 7:12 “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”) Neither does it mean that God has abrogated his moral law (which indeed seems an impossibility since the moral law is grounded in his own character).

Nor does this suggest that there was no grace in the former covenants. Although God’s grace has always been plentiful, the new covenant is uniquely an era of grace because of Christ’s accomplishment as a gift of God’s grace, now most fully and comprehensively made available to all mankind, just as God had promised.

But what does the end of the Mosaic law era have to do with comfort and confidence in the current context? To be under the new era of grace is great comfort because then the law will not condemn us with its righteous demands that we cannot fully keep. And we know it does not condemn us even as we grapple with sin and seek to grow in Christlikeness, knowing we are do so imperfectly.

When Paul comes back in chapter 7 to describe the role of the law with regard to sin, and even then to describe his own struggle to obey God’s moral law in the present, Paul’s own confidence is in the work of Christ for him and in him. He will therefore say at Romans 8:1 “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Our inability to be perfectly righteous according to the law should not cause us fear. Instead, the law shows us our inability, and we know that Christ has fulfilled the righteous requirement of the law, so that by faith in him we too live to fulfill the spirit of the law by the Holy Spirit in us (Ro 8:4). May I once again encourage you to read and re-read Romans 6-8 together, especially while we are studying this section that predominantly focuses on progressive sanctification?

Once more, then, what should we take away from what Paul exhorts in this section of Romans 6?

Conclusion: The believer must learn to live consistently with new life in Christ.

As long as we have mortal bodies, we are in an ongoing power struggle with sin, even though we have been freed from its dominion by being united to Christ. Sanctification (being set apart to God in holiness) is the process by which we are made progressively more and more into the image of Christ, who is perfectly holy, who rules over sin instead of sin ruling him. Our confidence for both the beginning and the continuation of our sanctification is not ourselves, but Christ. Even so, God calls on us to cooperate with this purification by actively submitting to our new master instead of the old master, sin.

By God’s grace to us through faith in Christ Jesus, we have the privilege of investing every aspect of ourselves as weapons for what God is doing, both in us and through us. So we actively depend on God and deny the old master and serve the new… to whom be the glory and dominion both now and forever. Amen.

PRAY

———