“The Other Side of the Grave Pt 2”
Romans 6:1-14
Review
Many lessons have emerged in our study of Romans thus far. We detected Paul’s passion and persuasion in the opening verses of chapter one. He modeled a passion to pray continually. He conveyed a passion to promote spiritual maturity. He clearly demonstrated a passion to preach the gospel. He felt an obligation to share the gospel. He also felt an eagerness to share the gospel to the Roman people. Paul’s great passion for prayer, promoting spiritual maturity and preaching the gospel stemmed from a deep conviction, a persuasion, a confidence that the gospel, the good news of God, was the power of God for salvation to everyone and anyone who believes. People are saved because in the Gospel message we learn of the possibility for the unrighteous to become sharers of the very righteousness of God through faith. The whole rest of the book then unfolds this great truth and plan of God.
We followed Paul’s argument through the first three chapters leading to the obvious thought bleak conclusion that ALL have sinned and come up short of sufficient goodness or righteousness to restore relationship with a holy God. We learned that there is NONE who sufficiently conform to God’s standard, no not ONE! Paul powerfully presents the hopelessness of ever measuring up to God’s standard. No has ever done it. No one ever will do it. Without some special work of God, all of mankind from Adam to Usama Bin Laden is doomed!
Beginning in chapter 3:21 Paul eagerly unveils the master plan of salvation for all who believe. Since all are guilty and face just condemnation the need is for justification.
Since all have come up short and bankrupt in the righteousness department without means to either get out of this debt or put aside sufficient capital to begin again, we need help. No pulling up by our bootstraps is possible. No vow to do better. No self-help course. No amount of counseling. Only a work of God will rescue us from our woeful condition.
That work was accomplished by Jesus on our behalf. We learned that those who put their trust in Jesus; those who abandon their own efforts to become righteous and believe God’s offer of salvation are, at that moment, justified before God. God rips the pages from the tragedy “Life and times of (fill in your name)” and replaces them with the heroic biography of the “Life and times of Jesus the Messiah.” He became sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. That is what the whole book of Romans is about – becoming righteous in Him.
We tracked Paul’s connection to the Old Testament as he illustrated this grand truth in the life of Abraham who God justified by faith not works. It is not the one who works that is justified because man cannot work enough to quality. It is by faith in Christ that we become justified. Paul then introduced us to just some of the benefits of this new standing with God.
• We can enjoy peace with God
• We can exult in hope of reflecting the glory of God in the future.
• We can exult in present tribulations that produce future character
• Our justification guarantees salvation or rescue from the coming wrath
• Our justification guarantees your complete salvation or rescue to eternal life
• We can exult in God through whom we have received the reconciliation
In the later part of chapter five, Paul compared and contrasted the realities associated with those connected to Adam and those connected to Christ.
• Righteousness and life came into the world through Christ 12-14
• Many receive grace through Christ 15
• Righteousness and justification came to those in Christ 16
• Those in Christ rule in life. 17
• Christ’s righteousness brought justification of life to all associated with Him
• Christ’s obedience will result in many becoming righteous 19
• Grace always outdistances sin
• Grace rules to eternal life through Christ’s righteousness 21
In the next three chapters Paul explores more fully the personal implication and ramifications of this wonderful truth of justification by faith. Paul wants us to understand our new identity in Christ. We are no longer in Adam. We belong to Christ. In the long run it is not necessarily what we have done but who we belong to.
Paul raises and answers several issues in these next three chapters. The first issue has to do with the essential nature of our new life in Christ. He anticipates reaction to the bold assertion that where sin increases, grace increases all the more.
Sin can never outdistance grace. In other words, no amount of sin will ever overpower God’s grace. There are six thoughts or instructions in these fourteen verses to consider that serve as a foundation for living above sin in our everyday life. Paul is not just concerned with principles but also with practice. He is not only concerned with the theoretical but the practical. It will hopefully become clear however that these are inseparable linked. You will never gain sufficient progress in the practical until you sufficiently understand the theoretical or the principles.
First, Reason the issue
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Romans 6:1
Since more sin generates more grace why not sin more in order to stimulate more grace? Shall we remain in a state of sin so we can remain in a state of accelerated grace? Does grace grant us a ticket to live dangerously? The reality is that such stinking thinking emerges from an unchanged core. A sinful heart looks for excuses to do evil. A heart that has experienced a change at its core looks for way to live more righteously. Grace does not encourage ungodliness in the godly, but teaches godliness.
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. Tit 2:11-14
Paul wasted no time categorically contesting such reasoning.
May it never be!
By no means! Never! Forget it! Absolutely not! In addition to a flat denial Paul offers the godly reasoning behind it.
How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Romans 6:2
Paul argued a similar point in his letter to the Colossians.
Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. Col. 3:1-4
So what does it mean to die to sin? By experience, most of us would agree that it couldn’t mean sin no longer has any influence over us as chocolate cake could never tempt a dead person. I best understand the concept of “death to sin” as death to sin’s guilt or legal jurisdiction. Paul told the Corinthians that the power of sin is the law. Later Paul insists that we are not only dead to sin but also dead to the law. In chapter 7 Paul uses the analogy of marriage to demonstrate his point. As long as a couple is married, there is a legal, moral and spiritual obligation that unifies them. Only death breaks that obligation.
When Jesus took on the sin of the world he came under a legal obligation to sin’s guilt. As soon as He died, that obligation was fulfilled and finally broken. The law of sin and death no longer had a case against Him. As a marriage obligation is broken by death so condemnation for sin against the law is eliminated by the payment of the penalty.
We do not impose penalty on people after they die. They are no longer subject to the penalty of a crime. Once a person serves their time, the law cannot impose any further penalty. As sure as identification with Adam’s sin brought sin and death to us, identification with the death of Christ brings justification and freedom from the penalty and guilt brought about by sin against the law through death. Paul again returns to his glorious theme. Until we understand the magnitude of what Christ did for us, we will not find the motivation to live differently. We must first reason correctly regarding the issue of sin and grace. Even though grace always outruns sin it is not a license to sin more but to live better. Living in sin maintains bondage. Living in grace facilitates freedom.
Reason the issue. Also realize the reality of what identification with the death AND resurrection of Christ means.
Second, realize the reality of your identification with Christ’s death and resurrection and its implications
Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 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, Romans 6:3-5
Baptism perfectly demonstrates our identification with Christ. The concept of baptism has always been a public proclamation of one’s allegiance to a person or cause. Water baptism declares one’s allegiance to Christ in his death and resurrection. The word baptized here is a passive verb. God has linked those who have identified with Christ in both His death and resurrection. God didn’t link us to Christ’s death as and end but as a means to a greater glory. We were crucified with Christ in order that we might be freed from sin’s claim on us and set us free to experience resurrection into a new way of life through identification with Christ’s resurrection. As God gloriously raised Christ from the dead, having died to sin, so God raises all those who identify with Christ into a new way of living.
Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away (point time); behold, new things have come (perfect = point in time with continuing results). 2 Cor. 5:17
Peter affirms that upon believe each believer becomes a partaker or sharer in the divine nature.
For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become (point in time action verb) partakers(sharers) of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust. 2 Peter 1:4
This is not just a change of behavior, it is a change created by God at the core of our identity.
For we are His workmanship, having been created (point time) in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them. Ephes. 2:10
Christianity is more than a change in thinking and beliefs. It is more than embracing a creed or set of moral principles. The gospel is the good news of salvation from death and damnation. Christianity is about new life through identification with Christ. It is not what we do but whom we belong to and what he does that matters. Whose name is stamped on your heart?
Realize the implications of our identity
knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Romans 6:6-10
Paul calls us to keep our thinking straight. The word for “knowing” communicates the idea of perception. It is in the present tense indicating a continuous state of perception. There are two things that God must employ radical means to change. Sin has corrupted to the core so simple reformation or resuscitation is not adequate. We were DEAD to God and alive to sin. We must die to sin and become alive to God. There must be a radical change or we will continue as before. Dead people must rely on others to resurrect them.
The old self must die. God must regenerate a new person. Paul affirms this work in the spiritual dimension and calls us to engrain it into our thinking.
The person we were (our old self) was put to death with Christ. This then enables a supernatural resurrection and continual transformation work to transpire.
Regeneration of the spirit facilitates further transformation of the soul and body according to the image of Christ. This new core becomes the new base of operation through which God continues the transformation process of our whole being. Our death and subsequent resurrection with Christ renders the sin principle, still at work in our soul and bodies, powerless to condemn us and rule us. The word used here can be translated differently. Destroy, render powerless or inoperative, condemn to inactivity, take out of play, put a stop to.
The verb is a point time verb meaning at our salvation, God ripped the control from the flesh and restored it to a regenerated spirit.
Because the old owner is dead the body or members programmed and owned by the previous owner no longer has the legal right before God to rule us and we have no obligation to listen to it. Just as sure as death severs obligations of a marriage we are no longer legally obligated to the flesh. The old self is dead and the remaining vehicle has been put under new management. But just as I can allow an old life to continue to rule by choice and choose to be continually influenced even after the death of a spouse, I can choose to continue to allow the old ways to impede the new life. Paul said I pound my body to keep it under control.
To illustrate, think about the following analogy. We became linked to a deadly parasite at birth that continued to pump its death producing influence throughout our whole body. The only way to become free from its influence is to die at which point its death grip is broken.
We had to trust the doctors to do the procedure and bring us back to life.
Once the core is broken it is necessary to deal with all of the areas infected by that parasite.
In order to do that we must become linked to a life giving serum that bit by bit removes any trace of the old virus and opens up increasing opportunity for new life.
Now if (since) we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also (as certainly) live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Romans 6:8-10
This union with Christ is a done deal! Jesus died once for ALL! All those who died with Him, at a point in time, will certainly live with Him forever because Jesus died once-and-for-all to sin and death and lives forever to God. We, having been vitally linked like Siamese twins, forever share His eternal life. His life runs through our spiritual veins.
Therefore, Paul urges us to not only know these things to be true theologically but to reckon them to be true for us personally.
Third, Reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God.
Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Romans 6:11
We must change our focus from a fixation on sin and death to a focus on living this new resurrection life. It was Paul’s passion.
More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Philip. 3:8-11
Paul admitted to not having fully lived out resurrection life which God poured in but it continued to be his goal.
Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Philip. 3:12-14
Even though we may or may not fully sense or appreciate this new identity, we are to reckon it to be true. This is a continuous action verb meaning to continually reckon to be true.
To reckon, suppose to be true, reason through, esteem, take inventory.
This is a fundamental change in focus from trying not to sin to concentrating on living out our new identity with Christ. The whole point of this passage is to emphasize the fact that we have been regenerated, made alive, resurrected from one who was once dead because of sin to one who is forever alive to God. By reason of our execution with Christ, we also share in His resurrection life. Fully and obviously this is a work of God done to us. We could neither crucify ourselves nor resurrect ourselves. Since we are people of the resurrection we are not only to think differently but also to live differently.
On the basis of God’s work, we have a new obligation, not to sin but to God.
Fourth, Resist letting sin rule in your body any longer
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, Romans 6:12
Having died and been fundamentally changed at the core of our being, we are to cooperate with the Spirit in bringing the rest of our life in line. Paul strongly urges us to STOP letting sin continue to reign in our bodies by obeying its drives. Stop letting the residue of the old life continue to dictate the direction of our life. Those who have been remarried can probably understand this more than others. Even though your first spouse may have died does not mean that their influence on you ceases. Even though death has broken any legal and moral obligation to sin and lust, there still remains a residue trained by the old self. There are patterns and habits ingrained in the very fibers of our being that need to be denied and new patterns developed. Paul calls on us to take a stand against the rule of sin in our life. Paul then specifically calls on us to think about how we allow the individual members of our body to be influenced and used.
Fifth, Refuse to present your member to sin as sin as weapons of unrighteousness
and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness;
Members here refer to the combined capacities and faculties of our body and soul. Stop consciously presenting your ability to think, feel, choose, create or act in such a way as to serve the old way of doing things. Allow the new core to dictate how your members will be used. The old self lived as a slave to sin that served the cause of Satan.
Sixth, Render yourselves and your members to God as resurrected weapons of righteousness
but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace. Romans 6:13-14
Since we died with Christ, sin can no longer enslave us. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death. Paul urged the Romans to decide to present themselves to God in light of their resurrection and their members to God as weapons of righteousness. Paul differentiates between offering themselves and offering their members to God. Paul urged a new way of living to the Colossians as well. Since they have died and were raised and their new life is now hidden with Christ…
Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him…Col. 3:5-11
Paul will provide more detail on this new way of life in the coming chapters. It is a new walk of faith.
"I have been crucified with Christ; and 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 up for me. Galatians 2:20
Until we come to a deeper realization of our identity with Christ we will continue to struggle reckoning ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, resisting the rule of sin in our body, refusing to present our members to sin and rendering ourselves and our members to God. Paul urges a new focus on the new life not the old lusts. God killed us with His Son so that we might die to sin and begin a walk in newness of life. The beginning of that walk has to do with deep realization of His work for us and in us. What should I leave with today?
Reason it through.
Shall we give God more grief so we can get more grace?
How can we who died to sin continue to live in it? Spiritually inconceivable!
Realize the reality of your identification with the death and resurrection of Christ and the personal implications of that connection.
You are not the same anymore.
The person you were died and a new person was born to carry on a pilgrimage to total victory over sin. We were killed and raised in order to walk in newness of life.
Reckon yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God.
Resist letting sin retake control over your body.
Refuse to present your members to sin as a weapon for the cause of unrighteousness.
Render yourselves and your members to God as weapons for the cause of righteousness
