Sin and Grace Perspective

Sin and Grace

July — Freedom Month —- we are going to send time in Romans 6

The Greek word for sin — means to miss the mark.

was an archery term… to sin was to miss the bulleye to miss the mark

In order to understand our text for the next few weeks we need to examine

Sin

we often talk about grace and sin —— we love the depth and length of GRACE

but so often have a compromised view of sin

our target has too wide a bulleye

hitting the target may be the first goal as a new CHRISTIAN

but hitting the bulleye is the goal as we mature.

We like living in a space with a bigger bulleye… having a little wiggle room in case of error

Yet the standard is not wide at all… it is very NARROW

our goal is to hit the mark

keep that in mind as we move forward today

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Dead to Sin and Alive in Grace

Focus: Understanding the transition from being dead to sin to being alive in Christ

Historical Context: Paul's letter explores justification by faith and the resolution of Jew and Gentile beliefs

I like the analogy of the old phrase, wanted dead or alive.

If I can tie that into something kind of humorous, like, have you ever noticed that New Mexico is out west?

Have you ever read any history stories to realize how much of old West story?

But when a less than honorable person would come out here and commit crimes, it was a different legal time.

It wasn't a let's get an attorney and sit them in a jail cell and take care of them for six months, ten months until we get through a process,

or even get through the process and have them convicted as a murderer

and spend twenty years in isolation wait one to or waiting for execution.

The stories will tell you that out west when somebody committed a heinous crime that justice was a lot swifter.

They used the phrase frontier justice, they caught you stealing horses, and you ended up being tied up for the rest of your life in a tree, you understand.

But when they couldn't find somebody or they couldn't capture somebody like Billy the Kid,

they would post signs all over the place that would say.

Wanted dead or alive.

And it would put a varying amount of compensation there for you either bringing the person in dead or alive.

I found this very interesting because the point of Romans 6 is that

we are dead to sin and alive in grace.

We literally were dead and now are alive.

But it's a little bit of a kind of common thing in this world, right?

Where God's truth gets a little twisted.

And I want to twist it back to God this week.

You see, God wants you dead and alive.

Just a change of one word, but that's our focus today.

That God wants you to be dead to your old self, dead to sin.

and ALIVE IN HIM

DEAD AND ALIVE

to live knowing you are dead to SIN

God knew you couldn’t hit the mark

The "Wanted Dead and Alive" Analogy

Comparison to Old West bounty posters: "Wanted Dead or Alive"

Divine Shift: God wants believers both "dead and alive"

Dead to the old self and sin

Alive in grace and the Holy Spirit

LIVING in —ABIDING IN HIM

One of the reasons we come to church every week

is to be challenged by the Holy Spirit to give ourselves a deeper and more complete

For accurate understanding.

So Paul has written this letter,

and he's talking about justification by faith and kind of fighting those battles

between Jew and Gentile beliefs

and bringing them back to the core of the truth,

that it's all about Jesus, it's all about Christ.

But now Paul in chapter 5 gave us some conclusions on that, therefore, and then therefore.

And now we open chapter 6, and Paul once again is lifting Christ up.

He's lifting Christ to a place

where we no longer have to be bound by the law and sin.

He's he's adding on to that.

This isn't a fresh idea, it's what he's been building through this whole series.

So it's a little bit confusing as Paul plays this around on this piece of paper,

which has played around in our minds for over 2,000 years or just about 2,000 years.

It's this concept of the law and sin.

The Evolution of Law and Sin

Historical Timeline of Spiritual Law:

Adam: One rule/law - EVILNESS BEGINS

Descendants to Moses: No formal law

Moses to Jesus: The era of the Law, where sin increased as awareness of the Law grew

a different dynamic in the Bible after Moses, these people are struggling with this law and how to fulfill this,

and they're not meeting the law and they're being condemned,

and they're sinning because of the law, and sin starts to increase in the world, right?

We can all take that for granted, but we need to bring it into our text today that sin was increasing because of the law.

I think what I've missed for years is I kept looking at the volume of laws increasing,

yet it's the volume of sin that was increasing compared to these laws.

Jesus: Fulfilled the law on the cross to provide justification

Perspective on Sin:

Sin increased not just in volume but in relation to the laws established

Redefining the Perception of Sin

Rejection of "Wiggle Room":

Divine law lacks the flexibility or rationalization found in worldly justice (e.g., speed limit tolerances)

HAVING THAT BROADER BULLEYES

borrowing that pen and not returning

God says in Malachi that he hates divorce,

yet Christian divorce rate, in some readings, is greater than that of non-believers.

And therefore the number of divorces has increased.

We could use the example of abortion.

We could use an example, something simple like driving on the highway.

There's there's none of us that have this unbelievable adherence to it says 45.

WHAT IF YOU COMMITTED TO NO WAY WILL I BREAK THAT LAW

, and I would never break that in any way.

I would be totally laser focused on not breaking that speed limit.

The "Five-Second Rule" Fallacy:

Rejection of the idea that grace allows for brief, justified indulgences in sin

Sin is Repulsive:

Sin should be viewed as something disgusting (likened to vomit) that one would never pick back up,

rather than a minor mistake to be rationalized

If you dropped it out in the dirt, you wouldn't have any second rule, but if you dropped it on the floor at the home, people say there's a five-second rule.

If you drop down and pick it up right away, it's okay.

Now we know that that's not necessarily true or false.

It just depends if you're willing to eat something with a little bit of dirt on it, right?

But if somebody ate something

and regurgitated it on the floor,

we wouldn't in any way execute a five-second, a one-second, or a thousand-second rule.

It would be something that's disgusting,

something that we wouldn't put into our bodies.

And I apologize for starting your day before breakfast or after breakfast with that image.

But it's the image of sin.

We think we can take some sin in,

and if it drops,

there's a there's a five-second rule

that God's grace will cover us and protect us.

But what Paul, through the Holy Spirit wants you to see that our sin,

no matter small or big in your mind,

it's all sin, but it needs to be like that vomit.

Where we wouldn't pick it up and say, I'm sorry.

We would clean it up and get rid of it forever.

That's the world.

we're gonna make a law, and if you break this law, you're gonna pay this price,

but the reality is that most people know that well,

a lawyer might be able to get me out of it,

or I can talk my way out of it,

or maybe I'll get arrested,

and uh the cop will have something else to do, so he won't show,

so I'll get out of it, and then society starts telling us that well, that law has some wiggle room in it.

a wider and wider bulleye ——

Practical Application

Internal Change: A true change in nature is reflected in small acts, such as returning a 50-cent pen taken by accident

as we spend some time in the early part of Romans 6, I think we need to get this concept,

this build-up that he's been doing through chapter 1 through 4,

the conclusions he makes in chapter 5,

and this kind of new thought process to get us to a place

where we understand that we can't lose our salvation,

that we can grow in him and build trust in him

and get to know him based on real truth and not the world's convoluted truth.

Paul says here in Scripture that we're saved by grace.

And he asks an interesting question.

Should sin increase, so therefore grace increases.

You see, God wants you to be dead and alive.

He wants you to be dead to that sin, to that, to that vomit,

to those things that you now in your mind you you start to see as something disgusting,

something you would absolutely never do.

And we we build to those things.

We realize that we're we're dead, but those things never they just don't hold any power over us.

I think that's part of the equation we need to get involved in this morning as we wrap up this introduction into Romans 6,

is what God says sin really is.

You see, we spend a lot of time talking about the the resurrection.

We we talk a lot about Jesus on the cross of blood covering us.

But I think sometimes we miss a clear understanding of the why that all that stuff is important.

It's because sin isn't a little white lie.

Sin isn't that piece of candy that breaks your diet.

That you just kind of say, Well, I'll make it up at the gym.

It isn't drinking two more beers.

It's not that.

It's disgusting.

It's vomit.

It needs to be something that's so horrible to us we wouldn't get involved in, and therefore we're dead to that.

You see, my Jesus died for that.

It's no longer that one thing or the lack of any rules or the adherence to rules.

It's Jesus came and abolished it and said, These things are done.

They're completed.

It is finished.

when Jesus died on that cross, we became wanted dead and alive.

So we need to keep shrinking that bulleye

we need to not be okay with “good enough”

we need to be disgusted by SIN

and THEREFORE —- GRACE WILL INCREASE

God wants us to live in Him, to abide in Him.

So much that He died for us.

Jesus' desire isn't for you to come and visit or call daily.

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Call to Action: Study Romans 6:1-14 during the week to internalize the concept of being dead to sin's power