Dead Man Walking Romans Series Part 2: Redemption Power New Life Assembly Romans 6:1-14 August 8, 2010 AM Main Sermon Idea: We who believe follow Jesus on the path from dying to sin to being alive to God s purposes. Introduction Everyone loves getting something new. There s a certain allurement to new things. New things supposedly work the best. It s only as they get older that they develop character, and by that I mean don t work the way the factory made them to work. But there s something else about new things. When I get a new computer, which is what I usually have experience in getting new from time to time, it s amazing how fast it is and how spacious it is and how many programs it can work through! There s something to be said about the new life that every believer has in Christ as well. Turn with me in your Bibles to Romans 6. As we start a new chapter today, we have already discussed the grace that Christ made available to every human being in chapter five, and also how He is different than Adam in that He fixed all of Adam s mistakes. Now, we will come to find today that our new life has some bells and whistles. One of them is that we are not slaves to sin anymore. I. We no longer have to sin in our new life (1-4)! A. Sin is part of the old creation. 1.Sin has been beaten by Christ and by the believer. a. Paul picks right up with a question from the last point that he has made in his argument. If sin increases God s grace, shouldn t we sin a whole bunch so we can see more of God s grace? b. This is a question that his proponents, the Judaisers, would have asked. The Judaisers were a group of Jews who believed that a true believer must not only accept Christ s salvation, but also follow either select Mosaic laws, such as circumcision, or all of them. c. Throughout his life as Paul gets older, he becomes more ambivalent toward this group. Originally in the Jerusalem Council, they resolved certain principles should be followed. One of them is meat sacrificed to idols. Paul later in 1 Corinthians says it s okay to eat whatever meat you want. d. This kind of question makes logical sense, but it is not what Paul was pointing out. He was showing how God s grace is greater, not 1
that we can keep on sinning and God will be okay with that lifestyle. e. I must be absolutely clear here, because the New Testament, not just Paul, is crystal clear on this subject. We are not speaking about the occasional sin that believers might commit as they grow strong in their walk with Christ. We are discussing the lifestyle, or behavior of continual sin. That is what Paul responds Absolutely not! to. f. Application: If you call yourself a Christian but are continually in sin, living a lifestyle of sin, and think that God doesn t have a problem with that, then you re not really saved. The new life brings a change in which sin is vile to a believer, not an occasional good time! Sin must be eradicated from every aspect of our lives. We are called to be a holy people to God. If you re playing with sin, get rid of it now! It will grow on you like a cancer! 2.Baptism shows us how we are linked to Jesus in death. a. Paul now gives us in verse two his principle, that since we have died to sin by becoming new creatures and experiencing the new life, we can t live for sin anymore. b. When a person is dead, they do not respond to stimuli that living people respond to. If you cut them, they do not bleed. If you slap them, they will not slap back. c. Illustration: Ravi Zacharias, a Christian apologist, tells a humorous story in which a man is brought in to the doctor by his wife. She tells the doctor the man thinks that he is dead and will not be dissuaded otherwise. She of course, is fed up with him and wants the doctor to fix him. So the doctor argues with the man for several hours. Finally, he convinces the man that dead people do not bleed. As soon as the man agrees with him, he pulls out a giant needle and stabs the man in the arm. The man s arm begins to bleed, to which the man looks up at the doctor in complete shock and responds, Great Scott, doctor, I guess dead men really do bleed! d. Paul uses the image of baptism to explain to us this idea that we no longer need to react to the stimulus of sin. When a Christian is water-baptized, they go under the water, symbolizing dying and being buried with Christ. e. When they come up out of the water, this symbolizes the resurrection that Christ had. That resurrection will be actual in the end times. 2
f. Application: We don t have to sin anymore. Sin is no longer part of our programming and we don t need to do it at all. We now have the power in our new life with God to stop sinning. It is a choice we did not have when were slaves to sin before meeting Christ. Don t give sin a chance! B. Newness of life required a death first. 1.The old life was buried with the body of sin. a. When we died with Christ in the water and were buried, it was the image of dying to our former life, the life where we were sinners, strung out on drugs, promiscuous, alcoholics, or whatever God saved you out of. b. To share in Christ s death is to know death to sin. Jesus died because of the weight of the sin of the world upon Him. He made the sacrifice so that our sins were not counted against us. c. Illustration: Get one of the guys in the audience to carry some weights. Load him up with whatever he can carry and then take some of the weights off until all are gone. Then ask him if he can take double what he already had. When he says he can t take it, then say, Well then, why would we take on the weight of sin once again if we enjoy the liberation of Christ? d. Application: When we die to our sins, we don t have to do them anymore. this is part of the new creation, that we don t have to sin. Before God saved us, we weren t concerned with sin. Now, we can live sin-free! The power of the Holy Spirit enables us to live without sin. We don t need it anymore. It is no longer the fuel of our happiness. 2.Jesus resurrection begins our new life in Him, apart from sin. a. Because we are raised back up from death, our resurrection makes us invulnerable to sin. Sin leads to death, as Paul has argued, but if you die and then come back to life, that life does not have a component of sin. b. So in dying to sin and in the act of dying that Christ did, there is a mastery over sin that occurs for someone who has life after death. Spiritually, we kill off sin because we face its ultimate victory, death, and defeat it in the new birth. c. We are deadened to sin and the fallen world and made alive to the power of God and the kingdom of God. We are literally transformed so that we are new creatures with new lives! 3
d. Through the power of resurrection, we can experience the new birth as new creatures living a new life. We can live this new life without desiring sin, but rather being repelled by sin. e. Application: We don t fit into this world anymore. Part of saying that this world is not my home is recognizing what is now foreign to us. You wouldn t eat monkey brains would you? That s what some cultures consider a delicacy. We must learn to react the same way to sin of every kind as we do to foreign delicacies. Until we are completely uncomfortable with sin, we cannot say, This world is not my home. II. We mirror Jesus in dying to our sin and living for God (5-11). A. Jesus death was a death to global human sin. 1.Jesus took our sins and our sinful body to the grave with Him. a. In baptism, we show the same death that Jesus died. In this way, we show that whatever came before death, our old life, is no more. Beyond this, we also can be raised to a new life. b. Everyone who believes in Jesus goes through this monumental change that we call the new birth. It is where we are made into new creatures and have a new life with God. c. In our old life, we did not know God. We did not respond to the things of God. We had no hope, as Paul said in chapter five. We were lost and dead and without meaning. d. The reason Paul gives for our death with Christ is so that the body of sin might be destroyed. Scholars argue over the meaning of the body of sin, but we know that it is all that we used to be, all that Adam gave us. This may be a reference back to the section on Adam. e. The weight of our sin is no longer our weight to bear. We were not designed to deal with such a heavy weight. Now we can live in the new life that restores what was lost in the Fall! 2.Jesus broke the bonds of both sin and death. a. Paul has argued previously that sin and death reign together, that they feed off of one another. Spiritual death was passed on from Adam to all human beings, and because of the reign of death, sin was our default action. b. Now sin reigned in the reign of spiritual death, causing more of the same until its reign brought the reign of physical death and the separation was complete, leaving death and sin the victors. 4
c. But when Christ in whom sin did not reign, took on the weight of sin and defeated it through holiness and the power of the Holy Spirit, He only died physically, and even that was temporary. d. Three days later, Jesus arose from the grave, defeating the reign of sin, so that both the reign of sin and the reign of death would be annihilated for those who trusted in Him. e. At the cross, Christ defeated sin. At the grave, Christ defeated death. And now He gives to each of us who trust in Him that same opportunity to daily defeat sin, and to defeat the sting of death s victory at physical death. f. Application: We must keep on living the life we are given in the new life. Don t go near death. Don t go near your old life or the old sins you used to do. Walk in the power of the Spirit, defeating death and sin in this life as well as eternal life. Put on God s armor and fight the fight Christ fought. Paul says we died with Christ and are raised with Christ. Let us fight as Jesus did and win also in our personal lives as He has won for the world. B. Jesus death gave us life. 1.Through conquering sin, Jesus made death null and void. a. There is a principle in verse 7 that speaks to the truth of death s reign. If you conquer death, then sin no longer has its sting in death. b. Those who die have experienced their penalty for the sin in their life. Death is the consequence of sin. So if we die with Christ, then sin no longer is our master. Its mastery ends the moment death takes its hold. c. So in dying with Christ, sin has lost its grip on us. But there s still another problem. If we have died, how can we also beat death with Christ? d. This is why Paul says in verse 8 that we must hope in Christ, trust in His sacrifice and in His resurrection. If Christ died and sin has no hold on Him, and that has happened for us as well, then when Christ is risen, we also must rise if we truly follow Him in these ways. e. But this requires trust. It is still hard to trust someone who has gone before us and is telling us that it will all be fine. We have trust issues to begin with, but we fear the unknown. f. Illustration: No matter how convincing, a survivor s word that we will be fine when the same type of tragedy hits does not necessarily increase our trust. We still do not want to even go 5
through the ordeal, even if they prove that we will survive. No one likes suffering. That is why we must trust in Jesus because He has gone before and made a way for us. It doesn t me that we will never struggle, but it does mean that He won t let us down. 2.Jesus victory becomes ours through obedience. a. We base our death to sin on Christ s death that brought us life. So also, the life Christ lives, He lives for God s purpose and favor. In our newness of life, we also seek to please the Lord and be His delight. b. Death is the end game that brings life back to us. We often think of death in negative ways, but it does not have to be negative. For believers who are already living their new lives in Christ, we need not fear death. c. Christ died once for all to sin, the ultimate death that brought life to all who could not receive life for themselves. Even if I died for my sins, I still could not live for God. But since Christ, who had no sin, died the innocent death, He has taken on our guilt and beaten death. d. There is a word here that tells us to consider or reckon or count ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God. That word we have seen throughout Romans. It is the word found in the phrase God counted it to Him as righteousness. e. Application: So we are to accept that Christ s death and life are ours when we are obedient to Him. We must react to sin and to life the way Paul lays out. When sin comes around, we don t react to it, because we are dead to it. But when Jesus is working in us, we react to His will and commands because we are alive to that. f. Illustration: When I was a kid we had this way of ignoring one another. If one of my friends was upset with me, when I would speak to him or try to get his attention, he would look at one of my other friends and ask, Did you hear something just now? Is that the wind? His intention was the same as ours should be toward sin as believers. When we are tempted, we should react as though the a light breeze is blowing. III. We control our actions in righteousness (12-14). A. You re now the boss of sin instead of sin being your boss. 1.Paul s command shows that we can control sin now. a. Paul gives us a command in verse 12 to not let sin reign in our bodies. He would not command this of us if we could not do it as new creatures. 6
b. The mortal body speaks of our current state. This isn t a command that has to wait until after we are in our new bodies. But it also tells us that when we let sin reign, it destroys our bodies. c. Because we have the power to defeat sin, as Paul has argued, we must now obey righteousness. It is a choice we have every time that sin comes our way. We choose to pursue sin or righteousness. We didn t do that before we were given new life. d. When we don t resist sin, we are people of passions. This word passions is not positive in this context. It can be positive, like having a passion for Christ and the things of God. e. But here the word speaks of the negative passions, the sinful desires that rage within us. Even as believers we will be tempted to sin, otherwise, why would Paul command us to actively not sin? f. Application: We can only obey one master, either sin or righteousness. If we obey our sin, we let our passions get the best of us and lead us down the same old paths we went with our old person, the body of sin. We must reject our evil passions in favor of passion for the things of God and for holiness! We can do it, or the Bible would not be replete with commands to do so. 2.Our resources and bodies are part of that command to not sin. a. There is an interesting word as Paul describes the members of our bodies. He talks about our members of our bodies as tools or instruments. b. But the master the tools of our body serve is up to our minds. We can choose to use our body and its members to sin or to live righteously. c. When we used to sin and were the old creation, our body carried out the thoughts of our minds and the intensions of our hearts. We wanted to sin, so we did, and a lot. d. Illustration: I have friends on all sides of life, conservatives, liberals, etc. I had one friend that was vehemently against guns. Huge fanatic for gun control. So I asked them a question. I said, What if we take all the guns away? Then how will people kill one another? He responded, That s the point! Then I punched him and responded, If I wish to hurt you, I have a number of weapons at my disposal. I m blind. Can t use a gun legally, but I know how knives work and other weapons. My point was that you must change the human heart, not legislate legal ways to do what is in our hearts. 7
e. But we don t have to do those things anymore. We have a new desire. Instead of hurting, we re into healing. Instead of killing, we re into saving. Instead of brokenness, we re into redemption and reconciliation. We fight on a different side than we used to. But how will they know unless they see us putting away our sin and living as we were called? f. Application: What about you? Have you shown that you re into healing and salvation and redemption and reconciliation? What have you done lately to bring these kingdom traits to the table in your world? We must show forth the works of a good God in a depraved world. If you haven t done that in a while, it s time to start, or someone may question your salvation, and it might be an unbeliever before it s one of us. B. Live the dead to sin life! 1.Sin can t touch us because of grace. a. Now Paul restates the issue of law and grace, but this time in a positive light. Before when he argued through chapters 2 and 3, we were under the law, and we were under sin. b. But now we are no longer under those things. The Law does not hurt us because we do not sin. It was made to point out sin. But the law cannot condemn us because Christ has been our sacrifice. c. We are no longer dominated or ruled by sin because we are now ruled by the power of God s grace. We started this section talking about how grace increased in spite of sin, and now we see that it is the master instead of sin now in our new life. d. We have the choice to use our body and our resources, the members of our body as tools to exact righteousness rather than sin in the world now. e. Application: We are called to live differently, to be righteous, to be holy, to demonstrate the difference of the kingdom in each situation we find ourselves in in this world. It is up to each of us to show the world a difference. When we allow sin its former throne in our lives, we show the world that grace is not greater than sin. 2.The Law has no condemnation for us either! a. The legal death sentence is null and void. It has no power over us. It is leveled against sin, and Christ took our sin away! He washed them away by the grace that is in His blood. b. The word for sin ruling over us is the same used earlier for Christ winning against death. If sin has no reign, then the Law cannot point out sin. 8
c. Grace and law are not opposed. They work in concert. The Law proves that we are not in sin and grace makes us live for God. The Law cannot condemn because Christ has paid the price the law exacts, which is death. d. Sin and the law are no longer after you because God s grace has made you free from sin and consequently free from the law s requirement of death for sinning. e. Application: We are free! Do we realize what we can do with our freedom? We can say no, but we can also go on the offensive. We can serve the living God who gave us life when we were destined for death. We can show others freedom. We live in a nation that loves freedom. Our nation spreads this freedom, missionaries of democracy. If only we were as on fire about our freedom in Christ! How would each of our worlds look then? Make your world free! Use your every resource for righteousness! Conclusion We have only to begin to tap what it means to be free from sin and freed to do the work of righteousness, to mimic Christ not only in death, but also in life. It s not easy to die for something. But it s even harder to live for something. Dying requires the one effort. Living requires constant effort. So many believers are good at dying to sin once and dying to their old natures, or at least telling people about it. But many are not good at living for God. Let us not be numbered with those who are only half mirroring Christ! Let us be those who not only died to our past and sinful existence, but who also live actively for God and His righteousness! 9