Living the Life Part 1 Romans 6 Pastor Charles Price

Transcription

1 Living the Life Part 1 Romans 6 Pastor Charles Price Good Morning. Is it the same Jesus in the crib and on the cross? The answer of course is yes, it is, because He was on the same mission in all that He did from His birth to His ascension. And at His birth Joseph was told, She will give birth to a son (told about Mary), She will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. That was the end product. It was the purpose of His coming, of His life, of His death, of His resurrection. And it is an ongoing event. And this morning I want us to look in Romans Chapter 6. I am going to read to you Romans Chapter 6. And I don t want you in your mind to detach what we are going to look at from Christmas, the context in which we are set up this morning in preparing ourselves for that event. And next Sunday we will very specifically talk about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ. And by the way, I encourage you to invite friends, neighbors who might not normally be here, next Sunday. It will be appropriate particularly for them if they have an interest in Christmas and what lies behind Christmas. But I want to look into Romans Chapter 6 this morning. And in so doing, when the angel Gabriel said to Joseph about the birth of Jesus, He will save His people from their sins, why is sin such a difficulty for us? And why do we go on battling with sin through this life? And Romans 6 addresses this. Let me read it to you. What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 1

2 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 2

3 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have looked in earlier weeks at the first five chapters of the book of Romans. And we have looked at them under the title The Gospel of God, which is a phrase Paul uses in Chapter 1. And we talked about how it is that people are reconciled to God and what that means to be reconciled to God. But now in Chapter 6, 7 and 8 Paul now begins to talk about how do I live this Christian life? How do I enjoy this life that I have received on the basis of being reconciled to God and indwelt by His Holy Spirit? And in that issue of how we live this life, a very big part of it is how do I deal with sin? If you remember, we finished in Romans Chapter 5 contrasting the reign of sin, as Paul calls it, with the reign of grace. In fact we looked at the four kings in Romans Chapter 5. The reign of death that s the first king that is reigning, the reign of sin, the reign of life, and the reign of grace. And you remember that the reign of death is met and overcome by the reign of life. And the reign of sin is met and overcome by the reign of grace. Grace is God pouring into our lives what we do not have in ourselves and what we don t deserve in ourselves to equip and empower us to be what we would otherwise not be able to be and to do what we otherwise would not be able to do. Grace is not simply a force; it is a person; it is the Holy Spirit of God living within us that is the source of our equipping and empowering. And how Paul has finished Chapter 5 is in saying, Where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness. And Paul picks up a question now in Chapter 6:1, which is an obvious logical question to ask in the light of that. He says, What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? If where sin increases, grace increases all the more; well, if you want to know more grace, why not simply engage in more sin? Because the more sin, the more grace, so that s the logical question. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 3

4 And Paul s answer is, By no means! And he goes on to say there in Verse 2, By no means! We died to sin (whatever that means); how can we live in it any longer? And that s why we are going to address from these verses this morning, this question of our relationship to sin. Once you have been reconciled to God, once you are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, what is our relationship with sin? Now if you read through Romans 6 you will realize, of course, that it offers some wonderful promises and is very optimistic about our relationship with sin. Not only in Verse 2 does it say that we died to sin, but Verse 6 says, Verse 12: Verse 14: Verse 17: Verse 18: We should no longer be slaves to sin. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Sin shall not be your master because you are not under law, but under grace. Though you used to be slaves to sin, (that s past tense) You have been set free from sin and have become slaves of righteousness. Now these are wonderfully optimistic promises about our relationship to sin. We died to it, we are not slaves anymore, it doesn t reign anymore, it s not our master; we have been freed from it. But you say, hang on a minute, I find myself day after day battling with sin, with temptation. And so we do. And when we go on into Chapter 7 we will discover that that is the normal expecting experience of every believer, that there is a law of sin that fights against the law of the Spirit of life, he talks about there. So what does Paul mean here and what does it mean that we have been set free from sin? Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 4

5 Well the context in which Paul gives us this is one in which he also alludes to two wrong responses to sin that Christians can very easily make. One is to try and deal with the problem of sin by legalism. The other is to respond to sin with licence. Let me explain those two. Legalism is very easy to adopt. It is to conclude now that I have been reconciled to God and forgiven of my sin, my job now is to live life by the rules that God has given to me. And that is very attractive because people feel secure living by rules. It is easy to identify what they are, easy to measure ourselves. But in due course we find ourselves being bound up in this living under the pressure of what I ought to do and should do and mustn t do and shouldn t do. And it is an externally imposed set of rules. I have known people come to Christ. I have known them become excited about their salvation. I have known them enjoying new liberty and freedom in Christ. But slowly, often under the influence of other Christians in fact, usually under the influence of other Christians they settle down and conform to a routine of certain behavior that makes them feel a comfortable part of the pack that they now belong to. And their lifestyle is driven by this expectancy that there are certain things I should do, shouldn t do, must do, mustn t do and they become bound by that. Now of course we all live in a culture at large and we all live within a culture of our circle of friends and acquaintances. And as part of a church, no matter which church you belong to, you will find there is a certain kind of culture that we find ourselves increasingly conforming to. And sometimes it is simply the imposition of things that are not to do with the Spirit of God but to do with the regulations and rules that we try to live by. And some of these are ambiguous in the extreme, but the point is we are simply being driven by external rules. I know somebody who told me that a couple of decades ago now he was in Holland meeting with some Dutch Christians and they were lamenting about the worldliness of American Christians. And particularly, in the conversation, that American Christian women who wore make-up, which Dutch Christians didn t do because that was worldly. So they were lamenting the fact that the Americans were doing this. And my friend said that they were so concerned their tears were trickling out of their eyes, down their noses, dropping onto their cigars and rolling down and spilling into their beer. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 5

6 Because back in America they were lamenting the fact that Christians in Europe smoke cigars and drink beer, because that s worldly. Now it s okay to live by these things, of course, but not to impose them on other people. C.H. Spurgeon, who was a great preacher I have quoted him often people say he was one of the greatest preachers ever, and possibly he was. And he was the means of many, many people coming to Christ - the great preacher in London during the 19 th Century. And Spurgeon used to smoke and he used to get a lot of criticism for this. But Spurgeon said, I say grace before I light my cigar as I do before I eat my meal. I thank God for the pleasure of this tobacco, the way it will soothe my nerves and calm me down. And other Christians were saying, Mr. Spurgeon, don t you know that Christians don t smoke? Well, you go ahead and don t smoke, but I don t see anything wrong with it, he said. Now of course we know it probably isn t the smartest thing to do now. One day D.L. Moody was sitting with C.H. Spurgeon in his study in London. And Moody was quite a porky man and a great evangelist. And Spurgeon lit up a cigarette and Moody said, Mr. Spurgeon, I don t think that cigarette is very glorifying to God. And Spurgeon apparently leaned across and patted Moody s stomach and said, I don t think this is glorifying to God either. But we don t make gluttony; you know, Scripture actually says more about gluttony than it says about smoking for sure. We don t make much of an issue of that. But the point is this: that we feel comfortable living under these rules because, okay, I am living the way I am supposed to live. And the problem becomes when we begin to judge other people according to those rules. I am always nervous when I go to a church where everybody looks the same, dresses the same, acts the same and there is no independent thinking and there is no individuality about it. Everybody has just conformed to a pattern. And we kid ourselves this is being holy. And Paul says in Verse 14, in rejecting legalism, You are not under law, but you are under grace. You are not under law. You are not being driven by the law. The law was a schoolmaster to bring you to Christ. But then he speaks of the law being a curse in the book of Galatians. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 6

7 The other extreme from legalism is licence. That is to say that now I have been brought into relationship with God and my sins have been dealt with and forgiven and I am justified before Him. And because God is kind and merciful and gracious and because I am eternally safe, frankly, if I sin with the Lord is unfailing love and with Him is plenteous redemption, as the Scripture says. And so it really doesn t injure me and it really isn t quite as important as it used to be. I had a letter only this week not an ; it came in the mail from somebody who is a viewer of Living Truth, who was asking me what I thought about this. Because this lady is in a context where she has been sitting under some teaching that says because you are justified and because that is irrevocable and because you are safe and secure and because, as Romans 6 says, you have died to sin now because Christ has dealt with it all, you are free to live the way you want to live. Extending to the fact you no longer need to confess your sin because God doesn t see it as sin anymore. She said, I like the idea but something about it doesn t ring true. Could you help me in understanding what the Bible really says about this? So she is being taught you are free just to be yourself. And if you sin, it s not the end of the world; it s not a big issue even. Now this is not normally people s theology but it very easily becomes our attitude. We wouldn t stand up and justify it but we talk to ourselves about this. I know this struggle, but it s not really that important; I m secure, safe. Now Paul raises this question as a logical consequence of what he has been teaching in Romans Chapter 5, where sin increased, grace increased all the more. And so the question comes, shall we go on sinning that grace may increase? And his answer you might think should be, for sure, why not? But he doesn t. He says, By no means! The King James says, God forbid! I think if we really understand what it means to be justified, it is very likely we will come to this point and think well maybe I am just free now not to be bound by the law. Antinomianism that means against the law is probably something most Christians go through at some stage if they really grasp what justification is about. So why does Paul say, By no means! Of course not. He says it there in Verse 1; again in Verse 14 he repeats it when he says, Sin shall not be your master because you are not under law, but under grace. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 7

8 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! He gives the same answer twice in the chapter because he knows this is an issue that is going to come up in thinking about this. So what then does Paul mean in these verses when he says that we are no longer under law but under grace and that we have died to sin, that sin no longer has power over us? Well there are two things here that we need to look at to see what does he mean and how does this work out in my day-to-day experience? First of all there are some things we need to know and then secondly, there are some things we need to do. Here are the things we need to know: there are two of them. First of all in Verse 3 he says, Do you not know? In other words, you need to get hold of this, you need to know this; you need to understand this. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Now I talked not very long ago about what it means to be baptized into His death, so I am not going to labor that section other than to remind you, of course, that what he is saying there is that the death of Christ was our death. He was our substitute; He died in our place. And so in the counsels of God, when Christ died, I died in Him because He was acting as my substitute. And therefore, before God, I have died for my sin. How come? I died for my sin in the personal substitute when Christ died for me. And so Verse 5: Verse 6: We have been united with him in his death. We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 8

9 And then in Verse 11: In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Count yourself dead. When I was young and I first came across this verse and the King James Bible that I grew up with said, Reckon yourself dead, I thought that meant, you know, pretend you are dead, act as if you are dead, reckon you re dead. Say, No, I m dead, I m dead, all the time knowing I really wasn t dead to sin. I was very receptive and very responsive to it. So what does he mean? Well Verse 7 helps us understand. The one who has died has been set free from sin. What he means there is this: being set free from sin does not mean in this context in Romans 6 that we don t sin, that it has no power over us in the sense that we still respond to temptation and sin. But that the power of sin has been broken. What is the power of sin? Its power is death. Sin, Verse 16 says, leads to death. Verse 23: The wages of sin is death. So sin s power is death and that power has been broken by the fact Jesus Christ died once for all to address the justice of God and satisfy His wrath and take away our sin. And we died in Christ because He was our substitute. And as Verse 7 says, The one who has died has been set free from sin. We have been set free from the power of sin, so sin is not going to destroy you because it has already destroyed in death the Lord Jesus Christ. And so the power that has been broken in sin is its power to destroy you because the death, that is the consequence of sin, has already been satisfied and met in the person of Jesus Christ. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 9

10 Now of course there is more than simply dying with Christ. Okay, it is dealt with, the consequence is dealt with. Verse 8 says, If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. So we have to understand the other side which is having died with Him, we are to live with Him. But before we look at that, there is a second thing we need to know as well, because in Verse 16 he says, Don t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? Now you need to know that you have died with Christ and therefore the consequences of sin have been fully met. You need to know that. Don t you know that he says. That frees you from this burden of what is going to happen to me. But don t you know also, that having been freed from the power of sin, which is death, that if you offer yourself to sin, you will become a slave of it in the life that you live. But if you offer yourselves to God, you become a slave of obedience, which leads to righteousness. See, having been forgiven and cleansed and reconciled to God and declared the consequence of sin has been fully met in Christ and its power has been broken in our lives, and then we feel well that gives me liberty now to feel permitted, entitled to sin, that grace will always cover me; therefore it allows me to go on sinning. What will happen, he says, in the course of time sin will begin to master you. To whomsoever you obey, you become a slave. And sin is a cruel master. It holds us in bondage. It can be habit-forming. It can be addictive. The word slave is a good word through its power that may rise up in the way we live our lives. So the fact that you are freed from its consequences, you had better understand it is still a dangerous thing in your life. It can enslave you here and now and bring you into bondage here and now. Or, the alternative is if you are a slave to obedience, which will lead to righteousness. You know God has placed into all of us an alarm system that we call our conscience. We all are born with that. Paul, earlier in Romans says Gentiles who don t know the law of God, don t know what s right and wrong necessarily, have inbuilt within them the law of God, a conscience that is written in their hearts. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 10

11 And though it is an alarm system that will let you know something is wrong here, it is extremely fragile and we can damage it and we can distort it. In fact, we can rip it to shreds and we can destroy ourselves in the process. Paul, in 1 Timothy 1:19 talks there about the need to hold onto faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith. He is obviously talking about Christians here. Instead of holding on to a good conscience, they have rejected their conscience and as a result, they have shipwrecked their faith is the phrase he uses. I think it is a very significant phrase because our conscience is like the watertight hull of a ship. And if that hull springs even a little leak, just a little leak that you really don t notice for a little while even, in the course of time that leak will allow water to seep into that ship until it has capsized and has sunk and it has become a shipwreck. Now, he says, with your conscience, if you allow the little things, just a little thing that violates your conscience, you will create a leak that leads to shipwreck because it never stays the same. Paul talks later in the passage about ever increasing wickedness. That s why there are things in your life and my life but not the big things they are the little things we need to be careful about and watch over. When some Christian falls in some big sin, that isn t the issue; that s the consequence. It will have begun with some little violation of conscience where a little leak has been produced and the water begins to flow into the hull and maybe it grows, and eventually shipwrecks their faith. I have seen that happen in people s lives. You have probably seen that happen in people s lives. You know, we know that we have damaged our conscience when we find it easier to sin this time than we did last time. Or we find ourselves doing things this year that a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, we would never have done because we have allowed that little violation of our conscience to grow. The first time you violate your conscience and you do something that you know is wrong, your conscience will scream at you, it will probably keep you awake at night. The second time you do it, you won t feel quite as bad, you won t stay awake quite so long. The third time it will become easier still. Fourth time, easier still. After a while you will begin to wonder what was the fuss about. You will begin to justify it. You will begin to say, well no, I know it s wrong but this is why it s okay, this is why I can do it. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 11

12 Usually licence finds its way in this way, by the way. They have rejected conscience, Paul said there, and shipwreck their faith. And as Verse 19 says here, Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to everincreasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. Let me tell you something. If you tolerate any particular sin in your life today it will be bigger next year. It will be bigger. You won t hold it as it is. Well, this is my pet little sin, you know, and nobody knows about it anyway and I can handle it. You can t. It will grow. It will develop. It will take on a life of its own. It will enslave. So Paul says you need to know that when Christ died, you died in Him. When you died in Him, you died to sin as Christ died to sin and the power of sin is broken the power is death and that death has already been met in Christ. So as far as your eternal security is concerned, you are safe. But the second thing you need to know is that whatever you offer yourselves to, you are going to become a slave either sin or obedience, resulting in ever-increasing wickedness, or resulting in ever-increasing holiness, the godliness of your life. You need to know that, and on the basis of knowing that, says Paul, there are also some things we need to do. We don t just passively sit back. We need to do. Verse 12 and 13 actually it begins with something we do not, and out of that do not then we do. Verse 12: Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Notice, it has become the reigning part of your life; it has become a ruler. You have become enslaved to it. And you find yourself, well I don t want to do it, but I do it. And you confess the sin to God today and I will never do it again and tomorrow you do. Why? Because you have become in bondage to it. So, Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 12

13 (Here is the do, the positive) rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. The negative do not s are only possible as they are replaced by the positive do s. Do offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life because that is your standing, but do offer yourself to God in the light of that. And do offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness. Whatever parts of you that lead you into sin, offer those to God in order that, as you do so, they might become instruments of righteousness, not instruments of sin. This word instrument is a good word that Paul uses here, an interesting word. We had instruments played here on the platform this morning, musical instruments beautiful guitar playing, keyboards, the drums. An orchestra plays musical instruments. A surgeon, on his operating table, uses his instruments as he cuts open somebody and goes in and cuts out or whatever he is doing. Now the instrument is of no use by itself. This guitar sitting over here, this piano over here, in itself is of not much use. It only finds its value in whose hands it is in. Sometimes Jared plays the violin to us, very beautifully. He will pick it up and move his bow across the strings and produce this beautiful music. If I had access to the same violin with the same bow and I began to move it across the same strings, every dog in the neighborhood would begin to wail. It all depends whose hands the instrument is in. If a surgeon takes his instruments on his operating table and performs some delicate microsurgery or he does a by-pass on a patient, with incredible skill, and we admire it. If I was to take those same instruments on the same table with the same patient, within a few minutes he would be dead on the table cut the wrong things. Instruments need a skilled user. Now, says Paul, think of yourself as an instrument, think of the members of your body as instruments. As an orchestra has a variety of instruments, as a surgeon has a whole tray of different instruments, so think of yourself as instruments to be either, if you yield to sin and give yourself to sin, you will become enslaved and it will be destructive in your life. It will be ever-increasing wickedness. Or, you wean yourself from your sins I know that sometimes takes a process and you offer your life, you offer the parts of your body, he says here, as instruments of obedience which leads to righteousness, which leads to holiness. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 13

14 The question is whose hands are they in? Romans 12, as little later on in this letter, Paul says in Verse 1, Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God this is your spiritual act of worship. Now this involves a disciplined intentional giving of ourselves. It involves an intentional deliberate do not let sin reign in your mortal body, do not offer the parts of your body to sin as Paul says here in this chapter - a deliberate turning from. And when we are in those situations where we are battling with temptation or we are being sucked down some avenue which we know is wrong but it has this attractiveness to us as well. He says do not cut that off, and intentionally, God, I give this to You as an instrument of righteousness. You see the answer to sin is not legalism and it s not licence. It is life, the life of God implanted within us with new appetites, with new desires, with new energies. And you live according to this life that is within us. And that life will express itself in a multitude of ways. But it is where we are giving ourselves as instruments to the Spirit of God living within us. An orchestra is made up of different instruments. We are made up of different personalities, different gifts, different strengths, different weaknesses, different histories, different experiences; we fight different battles; we are all different. But in the differences there will be seen evidence of the presence of Jesus Christ. Let your light shine before men, said Jesus, that they may see your good works and praise your Father who is in heaven. Well if it is your good works, why don t they praise you? Because they will recognize that behind these good works, whatever form they take, whatever their nature, behind them is the Spirit of God at work in your life because the Holy Spirit is playing on the instruments that we have given to Him, of our bodies and the members of our bodies. So what he is saying here is this: you need to know that when Christ died and you were united to Him, you were baptized into His death. You died and therefore the power of sin is broken because the power of sin is death and death has been paid fully. And you are no longer under sin. You are no longer under the power of sin. Its course that leads to death has been broken. But though you need to know that, you need to know that you have got to take the members of your body and present them to God as instruments of righteousness. And to do that is a disciplined, day-by-day, fresh in every situation, at every fork in the road, Lord, I give myself to You. Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 14

15 Coming back to Christmas, Paul uses in Verse 19 the phrase that you offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness ; that is what will happen if you submit to sin, become a slave, and it s ever-increasing. In speaking of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ at Bethlehem, in Isaiah 9:6: For unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. If there is an ever-increasing wickedness if you yield to sin, there is an ever-increasing governance of God as we yield in obedience. Both are increasing, both are growing; we are never static, we won t be the same way next year at this time that we are now. We will either be ever-increasing godliness or ever-increasing wickedness. You cannot deal with this by legalism, imposing laws from the outside. It s what the Pharisees tried to do. They were well motivated. But the holiness that begins inside they had transferred to the outside so it became not doing this, not doing that, not doing the other thing. And Jesus said, You are like whitewashed sepulchres because you look good on the outside; inside you are dead bones. You are like a cup that looks washed on the outside, is washed on the outside, looks good, people are impressed, the neighbors like you, but inside you are full of greed, you are full of self-indulgence, you are full of lust, you are full of all kinds of things. And you have never honestly faced those things inside you and brought, in the inside, those things to Jesus Christ in ever-increasing surrender. I give the parts of my body to You as instruments of righteousness. We battle. We are not promised we are going to be victorious all the time. This keeps us humble, this keeps us dependent. If any man says he has no sin, he is deceiving himself. But if a man sins, if we sin, we confess our sin, He forgives. But also we grow stronger every time we bring it to the cross, every time we deal with it, every time we say no, every time we yield to God instead of yielding to sin, every time we grow stronger and stronger. And His presence in us is expressed in ever-increasing holiness. That I think is the message of Romans 6. If you are not a Christian this morning because you have never personally come to Jesus Christ and said, Thank You, You died for me, You dealt with my sin on the cross. You were born for that purpose, You died for that purpose. You rose again to implement that purpose. Would You please forgive me, cleanse me; unite me to Yourself that my standing before God is the standing of Jesus Christ, both in that I have died to Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 15

16 sin in Him. I am now alive with His Spirit within me equipped to live a new quality of life that reflects His presence and His enabling. You can do that this morning. Just tell Him. Say, Lord Jesus, Thank You. Please take over my life. And He will. Though Paul is writing this to those of us who are Christians and saying, Christians, the penalty of sin is done. You know that. We know that. But how do you live? You live in the power of the life of God indwelling you. Let s pray. Father, we thank You this morning that You are sufficient for us. Just forgive us, we pray again, that we don t align ourselves, our spirits, our hearts with yours. We pray that You will help us to take seriously the do not yield to sin and become its slave and to take so seriously the do offer your body, the members of your body as instruments of righteousness that Your character and holiness may increasingly grow Living the Life Part 1 Price 2013 Page 16