LIFE OUT OF DEATH APPROPRIATING THE BENEFITS OF CHRIST S LIFE (Part 2) INTRODUCTION: The writer the Holy Spirit used to pen the letter to the Romans, writes as one who had experienced this truth of our Lord s message. 1 Timothy 1:12-13 And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. There are lives of individuals both in scripture and known from the history of our lives that have lived out before us the life change that the scriptures speak of. Note what Paul says of the Corinthian s behavior. 1
1 Corinthians 1:2 To the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours: Yet, in another passage he refers to their lives before salvation; before they met Jesus. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. Now as our attention focuses on Romans 6 the letter begins a new development of teaching about salvation and its practical effect on those who are saved. The subject now is that of the believer s holiness (Christ in you), the life of righteousness that God demands and provides for His children, the life of obedience to His Word lived in the power of His Spirit. 2
There is an inseparable connection between justification and sanctification; it is true that no believer will be sinless until he or she goes to be with the Lord by death or by His return, but a professed believer who persistently disregards Christ s lordship and His truth of righteousness by disobedience has no claim on Christ s saviorhood. Paul would clearly teach that is it one thing to profess to know Christ, it is another matter to show Christ. In Paul s letter to the Galatian churches he gives a brief and powerful summary of the divine principle that makes transformed life and transformed living possible. Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. It is one thing to accept Christ s death for us, and quite another thing to realize His life in us. 3
Dietrich Bonhoffer, a German Pastor and martyr, coined the term, cheap grace. It refers to the sad attitude, displayed in varying degrees of openness, which says, in effect, I ve been forgiven and I will go on being forgiven whatever I do, so I can do whatever I wish. I. THE INTERROGATION OF GRACE 1 This rhetorically asked question will need to be answered both for Libertine and the Legalist. First, the Libertine: to continue carries the idea of habitual persistence. It was sometimes used if a person s purposely living in a certain place and if making it his permanent residence. It is the word that John used of the determined Jewish leaders who persisted in trying to induce Jesus to contradict the law of Moses (John 8:7). Paul was not speaking of a believer s occasional falling into sin, as every Christian does at times because of the weakness and imperfection of the flesh. He was speaking of intentional, willful sinning as an established pattern of life. Before salvation, sin cannot be anything but the established way of life, because sin at best taints everything the unredeemed person does. But the 4
believer, who has a new life and is indwelt by God s own Spirit, has no excuse to continue habitually in sin. QUESTIONS: 1. Can he/she then possibly live in the same submissive relationship to sin that he had done before salvation? 2. Can justification truly exist apart from sanctification? 3. Can a person receive a new life and continue in his old way of living? 4. Does the divine transaction of redemption have no continuing and sustaining power in those who are saved? 5. Can a person who persists in living as a child of Satan have been truly born again as a child of God? Now the Legalist: In Acts 15:5-29 The Jerusalem Council Peter, James, and Barnabas make their case for salvation in Christ alone, by faith alone. The Legalist taught that in order to become a 5
Christian one had to observe the Law of Moses and receive circumcision. Acts 15:10-11 Now therefore, why do you test God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear? But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they." Conclusion: Scripture is made plain from Genesis through Revelation; a saving relationship with God is inextricably linked to holy living, and a holy life is lived by the power of God working in and through the heart of a true believer. II. THE INVESTIGATION OF GRACE 2 Grace abounds in removing sin, but never abounds in promoting sin. Certainly not! strongest idiom of repudiation in the New Testament. May it never be! It carries the sense of outrage that an idea of this kind could ever be thought of as true. 6
Again Paul moves to a rhetorical question. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? 1 Peter 4:2-4 that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God. For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. He does not argue the truth, he declares it. The person who is alive in Christ has died to sin, and it is inconceivable and self-contradicting to propose that a believer can henceforth live in the sin from which he was delivered by death. God s grace is given for the very purpose of saving from sin, and only the most corrupt mind using the most perverted logic could argue that continuing in the sin for which he has supposedly been saved somehow honors the holy God who sacrificed His only Son to deliver from all unrighteousness. 7
By simple reason it must be admitted that the person who has died to one kind of life cannot still live in it. Paul was not speaking of the present state of the believer as daily dying to sin but the past act of being dead to sin; death and life are incompatible. Christians obviously are able to commit many of the sins they committed before salvation, but they are not able to live perpetually in those sins as they did before. 1 John 3:9 Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God. Paul will go on to declare that a genuinely justified life is and will continue to be a sanctified life. Truth is, justification and sanctification are not separate stages in salvation, they are different aspects of the unbroken continuance of God s divine work of redemption in a believer s life by which He not only declares a person righteous but recreates him to become righteous. 8
When a person is redeemed, God not only declares him righteous, but also begins to develop Christ s righteousness in him. Salvation is not just a transaction of my sin and His righteousness, it is a miracle of transformation. Growing in the Christian life is always a process, not to be perfected until the day of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6). But there is no such thing as a true convert to Christ in whom justification has been accomplished but in whom sanctification has not already begun. In other words, there is never a cleavage between justification and sanctification. Holiness starts where justification finishes, and if holiness does not start, we have the right to suspect that justification never started either. Donald Grey Barnhouse There is no such thing as justification without sanctification. There is no such thing as divine life without divine living. 9
Romans 6 theme, it is impossible to be alive in Christ and also still be alive to sin. It is not that a believer at any moment before going to be with Christ is totally without sin, but that from the moment he is born again he is totally separated from the controlling power of sin, the sin life from which Christ died to deliver him. At salvation there is righteousness imparted but also righteousness imputed. Imputation put to my account. Impartation made a part of my life; produced in us. Imputation deals with the guilt of sin. Impartation deals with the power of sin. III. THE IMPLICATIONS OF GRACE 3-4 or do you not know A. Baptism: Symbolically 3 Seen as allegiance to Christ; termination of his old life; initiation of the new. 10
Baptism they stepped in the water; demonstrated the fact that they were in Christ B. Baptism: Spiritually 3a baptized into Christ Jesus means baptism into union with Him; into dedication to Him, and participation in all that Christ is and has done. Galatians 3:27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. BAPTIZE (to be baptized) the introduction or placing of a person or thing into a new environment or into union with something else so as to alter its condition or its relationship to its previous environment or condition. All of us that are Christians, have been baptized into Christ Jesus, thus permanently being immersed into Him, so as to be made one with Him. Paul affirmed the importance of water baptism in obedience to the Lord s direct command. But that is only the outward symbol of the baptism to which he refers 11
here. He is speaking metaphorically of the spiritual immersion of believers into Christ through the Holy Spirit. Water baptism is the outward identification of an inward reality; faith in Jesus death, burial and resurrection. Water baptism was a public symbol of faith in God. Titus 3:4-5 But when the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, Acts 22:16 And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.' These verses are not saying a person is saved by water but that water baptism is a symbol of genuine saving faith. Water baptism is not the means of salvation rather the demonstration of it. 12
C. Baptism- Spiritual Identification 3b-5 were baptized into his death not only were we identified with Christ but more specifically with His death and resurrection. That is the historical fact looking back to our union with Him on the cross. Also there is the historical fact looking back to our union with Him in resurrection. We died with Christ in order that we might have life through Him and live like Him. Paul emphasizes not so much the immorality but the impossibility of our continuing to live the way we did before we were saved. There can be no participation in Christ s life without a participation in His death and we cannot enjoy the benefit of His death unless we are partakers of the power of His life. Charles Hodge (theologian) As Christ s resurrection life was the certain consequence of His death as the sacrifice for our sin, so the believer s holy life in Christ is the certain consequence of His death to sin in Christ. 13
NEWNESS - refers to newness of quality and character. Just as sin characterized our old life, so righteousness now characterizes our new life. We are said to receive a new heart (Ezekiel 36:26), a new spirit (Ezekiel 18:36), a new song (Psalm 40:3) and a new name (Revelation 2:17). Death brings new life and it brings a new way of living. 14