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Romans 6.1-5
April 11th 2021
Well alright.
That song was so applicable to our message today – I have been crucified with Christ.
I am really stoked to teach today because we have sort of passed through most of the early “case building” that Paul does (which was at times really heavy) and have now, at least for the moment, stepped into the application side of things.
I have to say, all the knowledge in the world really amounts to nothing if a person is unable to apply it to themselves.
And so it is with the faith.
And Romans 6 – 8 are frankly some amazingly revelatory chapters relative to insights on application.
In order to get the full flavor of our discussion today, were going to read the first eleven verses, but we’re only going to cover the first five.
Last week Paul finished the chapter, after delivering some super important teachings on the glorious work of Christ (compared to the defective works of Adam) and said:
“That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”
To me, that word “might,” as in, “even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord,” brings every individual into the mix, offering them the ability to have “grace reign through righteousness unto eternal by Jesus Christ our lord.”
So now at verse 1 of 6, Paul says to the believers at Rome, having shown all the Christ has done for the world but ESPECIALLY those who believe:
Romans 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?
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:
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.
11 Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now, you will recall that over the past number of weeks Paul has FIRMLY established a few incontrovertible points.
That all men, women, and children are sinful from the Fall of Adam until the end of times – in various ways and means.
That no matter what individual people do (on their own) to overcome the sin they have inherited and accrued to themselves, they remain sinful in that their person misses the mark.
That the singular solution, in light of our fallen state and individual choices, is Christ Jesus and His work of love for the whole world, and that . . .
His finished work “superabundantly” overwhelms any and all evil introduced to the world by Adam and/or ourselves.
It is from this last point – that Christ’s “glorious works of love” (on our behalf) “superabounded” over all the evil human beings could possibly do – and now Paul now begins to address what we might call the true Christian identity. Obviously, he is speaking then, to believers. And so we enter into chapter six where after pointing out that Christ salvivic work SUPERABOUNDS over us, Paul asks:
Romans 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
If we agree with everything he has presented in the first five chapters, “what are we gonna say then?” he asks, “How are we going to respond to these facts as they have been presented? Should we continue in sin that grace may abound?”
This is a tremendous question – it’s a question every one of us ought to stop and ask ourselves here and now because at “it’s very heart” is the key to the true Christian attitude.
Remember, from the previous chapters we showed that the grace-filled works of Jesus “superabundantly” overcame and paid for all of the worlds evil – universally reconciling our lost souls to Holy God for eternity. Whether there is faith or not.
But to those of faith, who have read and heard this message as believers, what is the response to these facts? Unbelievers don’t really care, do they? But speaking directly to those who believe, Paul now asks believers how they will respond in the face of all that Christ’s sufferings accomplished!
And he offers up a response that was present with some believers during his lifetime, and is in the heart of some misguided believers even today.
We’ve talked about this response before – “antinomianism” (lawlessness) which suggests that
“since Christ work superabundantly overcame all sin, and since sin is what brings about His superabundant grace, shouldn’t people sin like crazy in order that His grace might abound even more?”
Or, as Paul asks here in the King James, “Shall we” (or those who agree with the facts he has presented) then “continue in sin, that grace may abound?”
The first two words of verse two give us his response to his own question, saying: “God forbid,” which is another way of saying, “Not at all,” or “May God stop such thinking!”
Over the course of being in ministry, I have met two types of people who actually think that this is the way Christians operate or that it is an acceptable way for Christians to think and even live their lives.
The first group are the unsaved – no matter how religiously inclined or intellectually astute they may be.
If I have heard it once I have heard people say it a thousand times,
“Oh, so all a person has to do is say a sinners prayer and then they can (???) “go on sinning like there is no tomorrow?”
Anytime (and every time) I hear this statement I am certain that it is coming from the mouth of someone who has not had their heart changed by God and therefore has no personal experience with the gratitude a believer has for the work of Christ in their lives.
In fact, I have personally come to believe that a core indication that a person has been saved is when this perspective ceases to be a question in their minds.
How can I say this?
Because WHEN the Holy Spirit really moves in and gives a person new life, that new life “gets it” – it really does – and the idea of purposefully sinning fades like a shadow at high noon.
So even though a convicted believer might not be able to articulate “it” well or explain “it” well, they realize that “sinning like there’s no tomorrow” is the last thing a true Spirit-filled Christian would want to do or justify doing – even though they can, at times, find themselves doing it.
An unregenerated person cannot experience this from the heart and so they approach the faith through human logic that says, “well, if Jesus took care of everything and all you have to do is believe it, why NOT sin like there’s no tomorrow?”
This is personal Christianity interpreted through the minds of carnal unbelievers. The sad and revealing thing in my life is that this view is frequently present in our LDS friends who knowing Jesus ontologically (meaning the things about Him and his life) they often miss knowing Him (epistemologically, meaning from the heart) and operating with carnal or soulish minds, cannot for the life of them comprehend the perspective of a genuine believer “saved by grace through faith alone.”
And the result is they mockingly mock salvation by grace and grace alone.
The second group are those who we might call “carnal Christians” or better put, are what we might see as babes in Christ.
It’s a lot of verses but Paul speaks to this type of believer in Galatians 5 at verse 13 where he says:
13 For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.
14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
15 But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.
16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.
19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
24 And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.
26 Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.
Going back to Romans 6, Paul begins to frame the principles behind why believers ought to answer no to the question, “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
And in verse two he begins teaching the principle to his reader, asking:
2 . . . . How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?
How are we . . .
Dead to sin?
Are you, and I, dead to sin?
Do you see yourselves as being “dead to sin?”
In some things we are able to answer in the affirmative, right?
I am dead to murder.
I am dead to rape and pillage.
But can you identify wholly with the idea of being dead to sin entirely?
What does Paul mean by this?
Where does “sin live” in us and once we discover its location, how on earth do we die to it if we are alive in these bodies? Is it even possible?
I would suggest that Paul is beginning to describe to all of us what the true Christian identity looks like or perhaps better put, “Of what the true Christian identity consists.”
You see, it is virtually impossible for something that is dead to “take action.”
You’ve heard me say this before but the ONLY time we can ever be certain an alcoholic will NEVER take another drink is when she is . . . dead.
As long as she is alive in her body and mind, will and emotion (which is the place where her alcoholism lives) she runs the risk of going back to drink.
Only that which is alive can take action, make decisions, and in the case of an alcoholic, take another drink.
Paul is going to get into the details of this concept in a few verses but let’s look back to John chapter 3 when Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night.
Beginning at John 3:3 it says:
“Jesus unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. (he cant understand it nor the principles upon which it works – neither will he ever see it in the glorious eternities)
4 Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born?
5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Unless a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh;
Let me stop here and point out that in Romans 7:18 Paul will say,
“For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing . . .” so with the Lord also telling Nicodemus, “listen, “that which is flesh is flesh” we can concur that to operate by the flesh is not how a true Christian lives their lives, and we must therefore operate by something better, something new, something eternal, something heavenly, and if we’re NOT operating by our flesh (but instead by the Spirit) the flesh is dead, unalive, inoperable even in the simple fact that it is not being used!)
And so, Jesus continues to Nicodemus, saying
“Listen, that which is flesh is flesh”and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7 Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.
8 The wind bloweth where it wants, and you hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”
And when someone born of the Spirit chooses to operate by the spirit, the flesh has less and less say in the choices a person makes – to the point in some instances, that the flesh has no say at all.
In fact, it is dead.
Where Paul writes that we are “dead to sin” is an extremely strong image. To “be dead to something” is as strong an expression as a human can utter because it means a thing has absolutely no influence over them at all.
When all the cancer is dead the cancer has no ability to affect the body – none – it is dead.
When a person sadly says to another, “You are dead to me,” there are fewer statements that invoke such utter indifference the one has to the other persons existence.
Obviously, when a Christian is “dead to sin,” then, the sense is that the sin has entirely lost its influence over him and he is not subject to it any longer.
If you have ever died to a specific sin in your life you will relate to this concept completely.
It no longer has ANY sort of appeal, draw, or power over you. What freedom, and liberty and therefore joy and peace!
This is what Paul is saying – but with regard to all sin, and about the source of all sin – our flesh.
This image of “being dead to things” is repeated throughout the New Testament.
In Galatians 2:19, Paul writes:
“For I am dead to the law.”
In Colossians 3:3, he wrote:
“For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.”
Isn’t that radical and paradoxical? “For you are dead” and “your LIFE is hid with Christ in God.”
The apostle Peter, speaking of Jesus in 1st Peter 2:24 also speaks of us being “dead to sin.
Now this is important: Paul writes as if it is obvious that Christians are dead to sin. In other words, all Christians are – ARE (a forgone conclusion) dead to sin.
Listen – we do not struggle against sin, because to struggle against it is to give it life. How do we wrestle with a dead body?
We do not avoid it because to avoid it makes it alluring and gives it life. It does not exist to us because we are dead to it.
We talked about this last week as sin was paid for, God is not angry at you or the world anymore because of it, so all the reasons are lined up for you and I to be completely dead to sin.
Most people will not embrace this. They keep sin alive in their lives. I suggest that this is an unfortunate way to live the faith.
Our new identity does not see the world in terms of “this being sin or that being sin” – how could we? We have been freed from not only the angst and power and imprisonment of (the concept of) sin but we are DEAD to it all together.
SIN IS DEAD.
How do we fight cancer if it is dead?
What is not dead in the least is love – which is something we live to, right? But sin is dead.
I wish I could teach churches this concept. They are still relating to sin, speaking of sin, acting like sin is still at play and therefore focus upon it and address it.
Discipline people for it. Counsel people over it. Monitor people of it.
That’s like taking an alcoholic who has overcome his alcoholism by Christ, and who lives by the Spirit, and is dead to the whole culture of alcohol, and putting bottles of the stuff in his car, and images of it around the house, and having people drink all around him all day 24–7.
To be dead to something is to not see it or speak of it at all!
This perspective and approach allows us to freely to relate to others who “remain in bondage to the flesh and things of this world,” in a much different way. Because it’s a way that actually works and is effective.
So we see each other not as sinful (due to Christ’s finished work) but as failing to walk by faith and love and allowing the flesh to override the Spirit.
So, we treat the cause (failing in faith and love) and not the symptoms. To treat the symptoms of failing faith and love is an endless task. To address the cause is to provide solution.
So, Christian do not live to sin nor does sin dominate over us as it did in our “former lives.” Isn’t it interesting that when we speak of ourselves in our bondage days we speak of our “former lives.”
Speaking of his sin bearing life, King David describes himself in a very interesting way, saying in Psalm 22:6:
“But I am a worm, and no man.”
And yet since Christ, every sinful person, who has found new life in Herself becomes a new creature, and is transformed from their former life “as a worm” wriggling about in the mud on earth to a beautiful butterfly – which is supported by the fact that the Greek word for transformed in scripture is “metamorpho-o”.
Consider the environs and perspectives and lifestyles of a caterpillar (our former earth-bound lives) to a Monarch butterfly, whose entire existence (not just how they appear, but their entire perspective and environs) are completely altered as they have gone from a life of crawling around under the earth to floating above the earth on heavenly streams of air.
So does the Christian experience a life driven by the Holy Spirit with the vital point being – “you are no longer captive to sin anymore than a Monarch Butterfy is captive to the life of a capterpillar.”
Do not even speak of being a caterpillar – you are not one anymore. Your conversation is not about that state anymore. You have a new identity. See yourself for who and what you ARE not what you used to be!
Speaking as if this death of the former self is a well known fact for every Christian, Paul asks
“How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”
I mean, what a tragic sight – to see a former caterpillar, now endowed with glorious wings to fly and soar and see the world from a completely liberated perspective – groveling in the muddy earth like the worm he or she formerly was?
It’s unthinkable! It is NOT even part of the new identity! As Christians we are “new creatures,” “all things become new” and as such, we are freed from all the confines of our former lives which included conversations about sin. We are dead to sin. That caterpillar is gone!
Do you believe it? (beat)
Then be it. Damn it.
What does this look like in practical terms? In actual day to day application?
I have said this before but it bears repeating because it is an approach that works because it is how God established things to be, not man.
Someone comes to me, they are homosexual in their flesh. They believe in Jesus. Someone comes to me. They are sexually active with another. They are filled with guilt. They want to confess their sin.
They want to unburden themselves of what their conscience says is wrong. They want to talk about IT. They want to express IT. About the caterpillar in the mud.
“Shawn, I have been . . . . blah blah blah.”
“Okay, wait,” I have learned to rudely interject. “Say that again?”
“I have been . . . “
“Stop!”
“Who has been?”
“I . . . have . . .”
“Who ARE you?”
“what do you mean?”
“Are you the former caterpillar or are you a present butterfly?”
“What?”
“Do you believe Jesus same lived, died, resurrected and paid for the sins of the world?”
“I, I do.”
“I thought so. I though that was who you are?”
“but I . . . “
“No no no, YOU did not blah blah blah. Not you the new creation in Christ. That being would never do anything against her Lord and King. So it wasn’t the YOU I know.”
“Wasn’t I the one who.”
“No, the flesh that you are incharge of, faithlessly and weakly did not listen to your real identity, which is who you are, and acted in a way that was part of your former dead life. But that is not YOU. Anymore than a caterpillar is the Monarch Butterfly. You are speaking of a dead person. You are identifying with a fleshly former person who is rotting in the ground. But that is NOT who YOU are.”
“But I still blah blah blah”
No, out of weak faith and failing love for God and others YOU allowed a dead man, a dead woman to rise up out of the grave and live. You gave her or him life. You did not live to who your really are. In that moment you acted like a Monarch Butterfly that leaves her heavenly flight above the earth and wallows in the mud of your former existence.
But LISTEN carefully – THAT IS NOT YOU. It’s not who I know. It’s not the child of God that He knows. It’s not the lover of Christ. That being who acted is dead. I do not recognize him or her. I only see YOU.
“And so what is wrong with me?”
“Oh, you lost track of your identity. You started to behave like a former self. This is the direct result of your flesh reigning over your spirit. So let’s forget about talking about and focusing on your fleshly former dead rotting person. Let’s focus on what your new person lives by and feed upon – which is the Word of God, the Spirit of God, faith and the two great commandments. Let’s fortify that person, and I don’t ever want you to come and talk to me about the dead guy.
At verse three Paul explains the impossibility of a Christian who possesses this new identity to continue in sin, by asking a rhetorical question which presents us with a illustration:
3 Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
In other words, Paul asks:
“Don’t you realize that all who were baptized INTO Jesus Christ were baptized INTO His death?”
Let’s ask ourselves a question: Why was Jesus crucified and why did He suffer physical (and I would suggest a momentary spiritual) death?
Paul tells us in this very chapter when he writes:
“For the wages of sin is . . . death.”
So . . . stay with me . . . if our baptism is a “baptism into Christ’s death and burial,” and Jesus died and was buried because of sin – our sin – what then died and what was buried with Christ?
Our sin – past, present, and future – and the former man or woman that committed them.
And when we are baptized into His death (which admittedly may be speaking of the spiritual baptism we experience metaphysically and not water baptism at all) we are symbolically showing that we too have DIED to sin . . . because IT WAS buried with Him!
If we had an alligator living in our house, terrorizing our children, chasing us outside and around the neighborhood and snapping at us constantly with its massive jaws and someone comes to the house, nooses the beast, takes it out in the yard, chops its head off and buries it ten feet underground and then pours ten feet of concrete over it, does that alligator still haunt and chase and threaten you?
Never! Is has been killed, it is dead, and it has been buried under ten feet of concrete.
Certainly, we might recall the time when it lived among us. And yes, we could live in the past and believe in the lies and myths that Mr. Gator might somehow creep back from the grave and into our lives.
But we don’t sit around and focus on that gator when it lived. We don’t put its picture up on the mantle, or see its reflection in the mirror. We look forward, putting our hand to the plow and we never look back.
Why?
We have seen with our own lives that Jesus the Alligator hunter, took that beast by the neck, dragged it out of our lives, chopped its head off, and then, making sure all of it died, threw Himself into the pit with it, and laid there while God poured ten feet of solid concrete over the grave.
And then He rose up from that grave – and now lives with us in the house, reassuring us that not only is the sin dead but that HE IS THERE LIVING WITH US.
So, we look to Him daily. We trust in Him. And we do NOT relive nor see ourselves in the past.
The point being we give it no attention. We are dead to it and it is dead to who we REALLY are – to our true identity.
So, this is key. How do we see ourselves?
Let me tell you something PIVITOL – “everything in the Christian walk, the way we live our Christian lives, is directly related to our identity in Him.
Who we are, who we think we are, who we see ourselves as, and who we really trust that God has made us through the death and resurrection of His Son.
We will continue on with this next week.
Comments/Questions/ Prayer
