VICTORY OVER SIN
ROM. 6:1-5
Three buddies were discussing death and one asked the group: “What would you like people to say about you at your funeral?” One said: “He was a great humanitarian, who cared about his community.” Another said: “He was a great husband and father, who was an example for many to follow.” The third said: “I’d like people to say, … Look, he’s moving!!”
Our daily overcoming sin in the flesh is related to two things.
1. Our identification with Christ 2. Our living in the fullness of the Spirit
HOW THE CHRISTIAN LIFE IS TO BE LIVED
Teach how to drive: teach first aid…..Number of insurance agent….map to hospital….help him memorize 911 PREPARATIONS FOR MISTAKES
PREVENTATIVE DRIVING: Here is how to avoid accidents
Christianity: Memorize 1 JN 1:9(911)….here a books on sin problems….
Paul here teaches us how to live preventative Christianity: How to walk in victory
Theologian John Owens once wrote that his biggest challenge as a pastor was persuading non-Christians that they were slaves to sin and Christians that they were dead to sin.
Need to undergo a shift in our lives, to see ourselves differently, as those with a new way of living.
Follows Paul’s arguments about our position and our possession in Christ(3-5)into the truths of the fullness of the Spirit that is ours(6-8)
A crowd that casually listens cannot gain from these powerful verses: because it takes practical application rather than technical knowledge.
Danger of sharing such great truths with CASUAL Listeners: More interested in their watch than the Word…..challenge is more to keep their interest than to address their questions.
Avoiding being a BETWEENER
(Live out their life between EGYPT/PROMISED LAND GOOD FRIDAY/EASTER SUNDAY
They know about what Jesus did to save them but not what He did to set them free.
6:1-5 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? (2) May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? (3) Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
(4) Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. (5) For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.
THE NATURE OF THESE CHAPTERS(6-8)
a. Chapter 6: The Doctrine of the Spirit filled life
b. Chapter 7: The Destruction of the Spirit filled life
c. Chapter 8: The Dynamic of the Spirit filled life
THE NEED FOR THE SPIRIT FILLED LIFE
(phrase is fearful to many-many today are too casual with Holy Spirit)
In 1982, "ABC Evening News" reported on an unusual work of modern art-a chair affixed to a shotgun. It was to be viewed by sitting in the chair and looking directly into the gun barrel.
The gun was loaded and set on a timer to fire at an undetermined moment within the next hundred years. The amazing thing was that people waited in lines to sit and stare into the shell’s path for one minute! NEED FOR GOOD THEOLOGY PEOPLE SEARCHING FOR MEANING IN LIFE
a. We are commanded to live the Spirit filled life(Eph 5)
1) Be being filled(not static but dynamic)
b. It is only possibility for victory on a day by day basis.
1) Satan attacks us on a daily basis: laughs at us saying I know there are ways I can attack you successfully, only simple temptations to make you fall into same patterns of sin. HOW CAN I OVERCOME IT?
How does a worm get inside an apple? Perhaps you think the worm burrows in from the outside. Scientists have discovered that the worm comes from inside. An insect lays an egg in the apple blossom. Sometime later, the worm hatches in the heart of the apple, then eats his way out. Sin, like the worn, begins in the heart and works out through a person’s thoughts, words, and actions.
c. The world is not going to see Jesus like they should unless we are.
1) There is an outward evidence that will be seen when you are truly filled
a) The fruit on a tree is never for the benefit of the tree. Not for personal enjoyment but to reach out to a hungry and starving world.
HANNIBAL LETTER: I heard you on Sunday, June 25th. You can too earn your salvation. There is a good reward for good works and an evil reward for evil works. You reap what you have earned. If you would quit telling them that the way to heaven is a free ride provided by the grace of God then maybe they would get off their dead _____ and do some earthly good.
Paul anticipates this same type of answer when Grace is preached. Do nothing….
a. In chapter 6 anyplace you see the word sin it refers to THE SINFUL NATURE which refers back to 5:21.
6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Shall we settle down and have a cordial relationship with our old sin nature that grace may abound.
WRONG INTERPRETATION of 6:1 – Statement in 5:20 ‘where sin increased, grace increased all the more’ wrongly interpreted. ‘If God loves to forgive, why not give Him more to forgive?’
You mothers wouldn’t tolerate this. Can you imagine your teenager saying, “Mom, I’ll keep my room messy so the whole neighborhood can see what a good housekeeper you are”?
By our identification with Christ we have died to our sin nature. It does not say that it has died. It is still existing within us but we have been divided from it. No more reign or dominion.
Sin no longer has reign over your life. Lit…Sin no longer has the power of condemnation over us. The power of sin is the LAW(1 Cor 15:56)
Also does not say that we are to die to sin. Nor are we dying to sin
Aorist Tense: Settled fact in the past with present effect now and for all time
Several years ago a pastor in Michigan baptized a man in Lake Superior. It was late October and about 9:00 PM. The Pastor had been talking with the man and his wife about accepting the Lord and sealing that decision with baptism.
The man was hesitant for a long time and then finally said, “Yes, I want to accept Jesus – and I want to be baptized tonight – right now in Lake Superior.
Lake Superior is cold. The average temperature (year round) is about 38 degrees. This was late October and the gales of November had come early. The waves were running 3 feet high.
The water was very cold. They were going to walk out waist deep into the water, but only made it about knee deep. The man lay down and the waves washed over him as he was baptized.
When they went back home for some hot cocoa and a hot soak for their cold feet, the pastor asked him why it was so important that he do this that night in Lake Superior.
“I was in the army, an officer in the infantry during Viet Nam. I saw and did things that no man should see or do. I wanted my sins buried in the deepest and coldest place…”
Three levels of faith
1) Word of God
2) Faith produced by Word
3) Actions which follow as a response.
Same process: KNOW – RECKON – YIELD.
A man left work one Friday afternoon. But instead of going home, he stayed out the entire weekend fishing with the boys and spending his entire paycheck.
When he finally appeared at home Sunday night, he was confronted by his very angry wife and was barraged for nearly 2 hours with a tirade of his actions.
Finally his wife stopped the nagging and simply said to him "How would you like it if you didn’t see me for 2 or 3 days?" To which he replied, "That would be fine with me!
Monday went by and he didn’t see his wife. Tuesday and Wednesday came and went with the same results. On Thursday, the swelling went down just enough where he could see her a little out of the corner of his left eye.
He healed eventually but the effect of what was done for us through the Cross is forever.
A PRINCIPLE EXPLAINED(the mechanics) (3) Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?
Regarding Henry. Movie starring Harrison Ford as a scrupulous man. He fooled around on his wife, was verbally abusive to his daughter, and dishonest in his business dealings.
One night, he stops by a convenience store to by a pack of cigarettes. He walks in on a robbery in progress and is shot in the head. He doesn’t die from the gunshot wound but suffers some paralysis and complete memory loss. They basically have to re-teach him everything.
As he begins to resume life as it was before the shooting, he’s appalled at the person that he was before. He can’t believe the person he once was in his marriage and family and business.
He changes everything about his life.
Question you see Hollywood asking is this: How do you change someone who is sinful and immoral? The answer they give is biblical: You kill them and start all over.
Baptism illustrates our death to your old life and resurrection to new life.
When you humble yourself in faith, repentance, and confession, you are buried with Christ and then resurrected to begin again.
a. Every believer in Christ is identified with Him in His death and life.
1) When He died on the cross I died positionally
b. Never says our sinful nature dies but that we died to our sinful nature. Separated/no more legal claim.
c. We receive the benefit of all that was accomplished by Jesus’ death and resurrection.
d. BAPTIZO – ‘immerse’ caught up in or absorbed in what happened on the cross. LADY STUCK IN BAPTISTRY
FOOTBALL(50,000 needing exercise watching 22 needing rest) immersed in our team’s activity. WE WON. Identified with their victory. Their victory becomes ours. HIS VICTORY IS OURS.
e. Two important areas of identification:
DEATH(6:6-7)
1) our sin was paid for
LIFE(8-10) We are resurrected from death to new life(sin no longer has legal
control but we have been given power to live in obedience to His will)
Sin has no effect on a dead man(Taiwan dancing girls) sin no longer has an effect
A POSITION ESTABLISHED (4) Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
a. Let this be an established fact in your life that you are positively as victorious over sin and death as Jesus.
Harry Houdini, the famed escape artist issued a challenge wherever he went. He could be locked in any jail cell in the country, he claimed, and set himself free quickly and easily. Always he kept his promise, but one time something went wrong.
Houdini entered the jail in his street clothes; the heavy, metal doors clanged shut behind him.
He took from his belt a concealed piece of metal, strong and flexible. He set to work immediately, but something seemed to be unusual about this lock. For 30 minutes he worked and got nowhere.
An hour passed, and still he had not opened the door. By now he was bathed in sweat and panting in exasperation, but he still could not pick the lock.
Finally, after laboring for 2 hours, Houdini collapsed in frustration and failure against the door he could not unlock. But when he fell against the door, it swung open! It had never been locked at all! But in his mind it was locked and that was all it took to keep him from opening the door and walking out of the jail cell. ESTABLISHED FACT IN OUR LIVES WE BY FAITH ACCEPT AND ACT ON
A PROCESS EXPECTED (5) For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.
Soldier hiding in WW2 Island. AWOL. 1944 until 1974 over 30 years. Bondage that was unreal. He chose to live under a false dominion.
Don’t be ignorant about what it means to be in Christ. Establish truth as a fact in your thinking processes and begin to put it into practice: yield, present.
• DO YOU NOT KNOW?(6:3) amazed at lack of knowledge. How would Paul feel about what believers know today?
JUNETEENTH: 19th of June they acted on truth. Almost 6 months passed until truth reached Texas and began to be acted upon.
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• Body is not designed for most peoples diets - New you is not designed for sin…..
Miraculous power of the Gospel: sets people free from sin’s control.
Ivan the Great was the tsar of Russia during the Fifteenth Century. He brought together the warring tribes into one vast empire. As a fighting man he was courageous. As a general he was brilliant. He drove out the enemies and established peace across the nation.
Ivan was so busy waging his campaigns that he did not have a family. His friends and advisers were quite concerned. They reminded him that there was no heir to the throne, and should anything happen to him the union would shatter into chaos. "You must take a wife who can bear you a son."
The advisers searched to find an appropriate wife for the great tsar. They reported to Ivan of the beautiful dark eyed daughter of the King of Greece. She was young, brilliant, and charming. He agreed to marry her sight unseen.
The King of Greece was delighted but had one condition, "He cannot marry my daughter unless he becomes a member of the Greek Orthodox Church." Ivan’s response, "I will do it!"
A priest came to Moscow to teach Ivan in Orthodox doctrine. Ivan learned the catechism in record time. Ivan made his way to Athens accompanied by 500 of his troops--his personal palace guard.
He was to be baptized into the Orthodox church by immersion.
His soldiers asked to be baptized also. 500 priests were assigned to give the soldiers a one-on-one catechism crash course. All 500 of them, were to be immersed in one mass baptism.
500 priests and 500 soldiers, a thousand people, walking into the blue Mediterranean.
The priests were dressed in black robes and tall black hats, the official dress of the Church.
The soldiers wore their battle uniforms with of all their regalia--ribbons of valor, medals of courage. and their weapons of battle.
Suddenly, there was a problem. The Church prohibited professional soldiers from being members; they would have to give up their commitment to bloodshed. They could not be killers and church members too. After a round of diplomacy, the problem was solved quite simply. As the priests began to baptize them, each soldier reached to his side and withdrew his sword. Lifting it high overhead, every soldier was totally immersed-everything baptized except his fighting arm and sword. That is a true historical fact. The unbaptized arm.
What a powerful picture of Christianity today. Many have yet to be fully immersed, and reconciled themselves to be dead to sin and crucified with Christ. Hold wallet up…hold workplace up…hold calendar with every other day but Sunday on it up…
