Romans 6:1-14
Before we read God’s word, let
us look to him in prayer. Our Lord, we have come from a
busy week. Our hearts are still pounding,
still racing with the pace of life. So still each of our hearts
that we might rest in your sanctuary. Lord, our ears have heard so
many noises, so many voices, even the voice of the tempter.
And so we pray that you would silence the voices that are around
us that we might hear the voice of the shepherd. Lord, our, our
lives are cluttered with information. Our minds over filled with things
that we don’t even need to know. But this we do need now, we need
your word to feed us and nurture us and to guide us in all truth.
And so do that for us, we pray in the name of Christ, amen. Hear the word of the living God,
Romans chapter six, beginning at verse one. The apostle Paul
says this, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin
that grace may abound? By no means, how can we who died
to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us
who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? 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. For if we have been united with
him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him
in a resurrection like his. 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. For
one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have
died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die
again. Death no longer has dominion
over him. For the death he died, he died
to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves
dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin
therefore reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey their
passions. 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. For sin will
have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under
grace. The word of the living God, you
may be seated. Sometimes we like to rewrite
hymns, make a little jingle to reflect common heresies, common
false teachings that float around. And so there’s this there’s this
hymn. This is a fake hymn, right? A
funny hymn. Free from the law, oh happy condition. I can sin
all I want and still get remission. That is the hymn of the antinomian. That is the hymn of the one who
is anti-law. That is the hymn of the one who
says, the one who says like Paul is addressing here, I can sin
all I want and grace will abound more. The same sin, the same
heresy, the same false teaching that floats around our world
today was floating around Paul’s world. And he’s gonna say to
them, he’s gonna say to us, you have died to sin. You have been
raised to a new life. And I want us to think just for
a few moments today in our little four sections on Advent studies
on what Christ brings us. The new Adam brought us a new
obedience, right? Adam disobeyed in our place,
Christ obeyed in our place. So in Christ, in the second Adam,
we have righteousness, we have obedience. That also brings us
to become a new man. That’s what we want to think
on today, then new life, what Christian living looks like,
and then the new creation in the weeks to come. But there’s
a, there’s a stake in the ground. The apostle Paul drives in, in
this passage, Romans six, and he says it very well. He says
it very loudly in verse 11, you must consider yourselves dead
to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ. Now, I’m not going to
explain Romans six sort of in the same way. I didn’t really
explain Romans five last week. I’m going to talk about what
I want to, which is the new man. That’s a little bit of a departure,
but we’re going to be biblical. So don’t worry. Consider yourselves
dead to sin and alive to Christ. That’s the theological and practical
stake that Paul is hammering into the ground. And today we
want to look at this, considering yourself dead to sin, alive to
Christ next week, what that means for your daily Christian living.
How do we understand that we are dead to sin and alive to
Christ? Well, think first about Another
passage in Romans, I think it’s Romans 3.23. The wages of sin
is death. We all know so well that Adam
and Eve in the garden, our first parents were told, don’t eat
from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They ate because
Adam is our first parent, our federal head, our representative.
We ate with him, we died with him. The wages of sin is death. And so you jump from Adam and
Eve’s life and you go through the book of Leviticus. You go
through all those sacrifices. Uh, if, if you do this, you’ve
got to do that and you’ve got to do it this way and that way.
And on this day, and then this particular way, and very specific,
the old Testament sacrificial system, there was a sacrifice
for, for everything. Sins of omission, sins of commission.
There were sacrifices for the day of atonement and on and on
and on. And all of those were placeholders. All of those were
pointing to a greater sacrifice that would take place one day
on Mount Calvary, at the place of the skull, at Golgotha, a
place outside the camp of Roman crucifixion. And we know from
our studies of the Bible that the day of atonement, Yom Kippur,
it was the day when the priest would lay his hands on the head
of a goat. And that goat, that scapegoat
would be sent outside the city, outside the camp, out into the
wilderness to carry the sins of the people away. Well, we
know that didn’t really do it. It would not be until Christ,
his perfect life, a spotless lamb, the obedient son went to
the cross outside the camp. And the priest placed all the
sins of God’s people on Christ. And when he died the death of
death, All deaths on that cross, the wages of sin is death. Those
wages were paid, those debts owed. And so in Christ Jesus,
Paul tells us here in Romans 6, in Christ Jesus, you died
when Christ died. And when he died, your sin was
crucified. Now don’t lose me here. Don’t
start writing your grocery list thinking about Tuesday and whatnot.
I want you to think really hard with me. Were you at the cross? No. Were your sins nailed to
the cross? Yes, they were. And when Paul
says, when he drives this theological and practical stake in the ground
and he says, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ,
it’s because the wages of sin, which are death, were paid by
Christ at the cross for you. And so dear Christian, your wages,
your debt, what is owed to you, not only because you were born
with Adam’s sin, his unrighteousness, original sin, we sometimes call
it, But you have lived a life that from that sin nature has
produced other sins. We’re born in sin and we commit
actual sins. And so at the cross, though you
weren’t there, your sins, not even yet committed, were nailed
to the cross. And so in Christ, you died when
he died. And when he died, your sin was
crucified. And so you can say, when Paul
says, consider yourselves dead to sin, you can say, okay, boss.
Yes, sir. I hear what you’re saying. And
it’s possible. because those sins were taken
to the cross. Those sins were laid on my savior. And the wrath and the curse,
the cup that Jesus so feared in that night of agony in the
garden, he drank it to the dredge. He drank the bottomless pit of
God’s wrath due to us for our sins. So consider yourselves
dead to sin, alive to Christ. Another way for us to understand
this in addition to the wages of sin is death and Jesus work
and all that is this death severs from life and activity. When
something or someone dies, it is gone. Um, It is no more, right? It’s heart stops beating. It’s
life ceases. It’s activity is no more. The reality of death is very
hard and stark in our human eyes. We grow attached to someone and
we live a life with them. Maybe, maybe you’ve experienced
the death of a spouse and then they’re gone. The, the reality,
the, the, the activity of that person, that loved one is over
with. And that’s a hard thing to say. It’s a hard thing to experience,
but I say it in order to drive this point home into your mind
and heart. When Jesus died on the cross and he took your sins
with him, your sins died. They are no more. And the corruption
and the lust and the deceit and the lawlessness, the evil and
the wickedness that you inherit from Adam and you, well, we really
live a prolific life of sin until Jesus, don’t we? All of that
is in the grave with Jesus. It is dead. It is no more. It is finished. It is put aside. And Jesus’ death
at the cross, where he paid for your sins and he paid for my
sins, That death severed these lawless ways. Sin’s dominion,
sin’s power, sin’s darkness, sin’s hold, sin’s bond, sin’s
chains have all been broken. And what Paul is really saying,
that body of sin, not a physical body, but that way of living
in sin is, it’s dead. It’s gone. It’s over with. Now, Some of you are pretty slick
and you’re thinking to yourself, but I still sin. If Paul is saying,
consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ. If Paul
is saying the wages of sin is death and Jesus has paid for
those sins and now we’re hearing death of Christ has severed that
sin and lawlessness from us, how is it I still sin? Well,
it’s a mystery. We know, do we not, in the Christian
life that though it is true Jesus died, though it is true Jesus
paid for our sins, though it is true we are a new man with
a new life, we still have remaining sin in us. Paul calls it the
flesh, lived by the spirit and not the flesh. We know there
is remaining sin in us and that’s why we say ugly words. It’s why
we say ugly things. It’s why we fail to thank God. It’s why we fail to worship God.
It’s why we have strife in our relationships. It’s why Christians
still sin. And so when the apostle Paul
is saying to us, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ,
he is pointing to a past reality that has future implications. We’re going to talk more next
week about the implications of being a new man, a new creation.
When we talk about the new life, but, Just to mention a thing
or two about it now, you are able because your sin has been
crucified. It was buried with Christ at
the cross. You are able by God’s word, by
his spirit, by his grace and by his help and through the life
of Jesus and the realities in you, you are able to put to death
what is earthly in you. You were able to what the Puritans
so well called the mortification of sin. We put to death our old
nature’s desires. We have to mentally say in our
minds and believe in our hearts and live in our lives, no, I
can’t go back that way. I can’t do those old nature things. I now live for God in Christ. And so this reality, this truth,
this truth that our sins were nailed to the cross. Our sins
died when Jesus died. This reality gives us strength
for living the Christian life with the, well, the tough reality
of ongoing sin in our lives. It shall not have dominion over
you. Our desires are to please the Lord. Oh yes, we still sin. We live contrary to God’s desires,
but death, Jesus’ death has severed from us the life and the activity
of sin. Well, there’s a third thing we
want to think about in this passage. The theological stake in the
ground that Paul is driving is consider yourselves dead to sin
and alive to Christ. So the wages of sin is death.
Jesus has paid for those wages. Death severs from life and activity
of sin. It’s no more. And the third thing
we want to think about is the new man. Paul says here in Romans
chapter six, a number of times, in fact, I think he says it about
eight or nine times, our sin died. Our old nature died at
the cross and we were raised with Christ. Sin nature dead,
new man raised up and alive in him. You know, we have a little
saying in our country. I think we have life. Liberty
and the pursuit of happiness. Well, for the Christian, it’s
life, liberty, and the pursuit of godliness. We are a new creation. If anyone is in Christ Jesus,
he is a new creation. The old is gone. The new has
come. We have been born again. We are
regenerate, right? We’re new creations. Ephesians
says we are created in Christ Jesus as his workmanship. We’re created in Christ Jesus
with a purpose, to live for God, to serve God. And every day of
our lives, we are to live for his glory and for the good of
others. And so our life is a constant
shedding of the old nature. It’s a constant shedding of the
old man. And it’s a constant putting on
Jesus Christ. In fact, in the book of Colossians,
I’m going to ease into next week just a little bit, but Colossians
uses language of dress. Take off your dirty clothes.
Some of you men know what it’s like. You go out in the yard
and do your dirty work. And you’re really not allowed
past the laundry room door, right? You take it off there and you
streak to the shower. You don’t bring your dust from
getting up leaves in the yard. You don’t bring your oily clothes
in from tinkering with the car, tinkering with the lawnmower.
You come in and you take off that clothes and you go get a
shower and you put on new clothes cause we’re going out to supper
and you’re not going out looking like that. Well, that’s the same way
Christian life works. We put off the old man and we
put on the new. And it’s possible because the
old man was crucified with Christ. The old man died at the cross. The old nature was nailed to
that tree and it went into that grave. And what rose was not
the old dirty life, but the new resurrection life. And I want
to speak of a couple of things where this practically works
out in your everyday life. You should live a life as a new
man, as a new woman, as a new creation in Jesus, constantly
remembering faith. I believe in God. I believe in
the Bible. I believe I’m a sinner. I believe I’m saved by grace.
I believe the spirit is at work in me. I need to repent of my
sins and I need to strive after obedience, not an obedience that
will save me, but an obedience that will please the Lord and
show the world what new life, what the new man looks like.
The other reason, other important thing, the other practical thing
about this doctrine, the new man is it’s our best witness. You know, we live in 21st century
America, where over the last hundred years, the church has
decided to close up the Bible and do church the way we want
to. And that includes doing evangelism the way we want to. And evangelism
is kind of like used car sales. What’s it going to take to put
you in this car by the end of the day, or to translate, what’s
it going to take for me to get you into heaven today? And so
we don’t persuade people that they’re sinners. We don’t persuade
people that they’re in need of Jesus. We just say, do you want
to be saved? Like we’re selling them life
insurance. And so there’s, there’s, there’s much more to the Christian
life. And I think the best way we can be witnesses is not necessarily
in what we say, the words must be said, be clear about that.
You live the new life of the new man whose sinful ways have
been nailed to the cross and buried in the grave. And you
live a resurrected life of obedience before a watching world. And
it will be, I guarantee like, um, You know, when you lose a
little weight and everybody says, what you been doing? Bottle that
up, I want some of it. They’ll do that when you see
the new life bursting out of your household. When they drive
by and see your windows lighted up, figuratively, spiritually,
right? They would say, there’s something
up with this family. There’s something sweet about
this household. There’s something glorious about
the way of living here. I’ll have what they’re having.
We like to say, well, make sure you show them what you’re having
by your new creation, your new man, your new life living. There’s another sad, but practical
thing we must mention. Our old nature flares up. The
old man in us comes back. We live with remnant sin. We
live with, A perpetual and ongoing, and our confession says it so
well, an irreconcilable war in us. We’re like the apostle Paul
in Romans chapter seven. I know the good. I know the good
thing that I ought to do and that I do not do. Yet I know
the wicked thing, the thing that I ought not to do. And that is
the thing that I do. And that’s our daily struggle,
isn’t it? The Christian life. to let the
old nature take over, to resurrect it, so to speak. To go back to
the grave and get our grave clothes and to put them back on and say,
don’t I look fine? Because we can’t help ourselves
sometimes with the lust of the world, the lust of the eyes,
the lust of the flesh and the pride of life. And so there is
a reality that old nature flares up. But I wanna tell you as we
end today what the remedy for that is. The apostle Paul in
Ephesians chapter four says that when Jesus Christ was raised
from the dead and he ascended up into heaven, he was a victorious
king going back to his throne where he would reign again. It
says in his victory train, instead of receiving gifts, instead of
receiving victory spoils from the cross, he gave gifts to his
church. And Ephesians four goes on to
list those gifts. He gave the apostles. But it goes on to say
he gives the pastor, the teacher, he gives the work of the church,
the ministry of the church to build us up until we reach the
full measure of the statue, the stature of Jesus Christ. And
so when we offer Sunday school or table talk or morning sermons,
night sermons, even if they’re on the dark book of Jude, Uh,
when we have a Wednesday Bible study, a men’s lunch, a lady’s
Bible study, when we have all these things, what are we doing? We’re feeding the new man so
that you can live the new life and so that you can please the
Lord, but also be a great witness to the watching world. You can
say all you want, come to Jesus, dear neighbor. You can say all
you want, come to Jesus, coworker. But if you, the new man, are
not living the new life and being fed by the living word, not sure
what they’re going to see. But one of the great hopes we
have of life together in the church, through the ongoing ministry
and labor and the word of the living God, both read and preached
and taught and proclaimed, and you read it in your own life,
your table talks and all the rest, is it builds up that new
man. It helps you live that new life.
And it raises you up to the full measure of the stature of Jesus
Christ. We were made in God’s image,
that image broken by sin. And God is conforming us, the
new man, into the image of Jesus again. What does the world see? Are you feeding and nurturing? Let’s go to God in prayer. Our
Father, we pray. that we would understand in our
minds, that we would recognize in our hearts and put into practice
in our lives steps and disciplines and habits and routines that
keep the old man in the grave and live as new men and women
and boys and girls in Christ and his resurrection power. Give
us your help and strength. We pray in the name of Jesus,
our great and glorious Savior. Amen.