LIVING THE RESURRECTED LIFE
Romans 6:1-13
Let me ask you a question this morning. What impact has Easter had on your life? The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most history-making, earth-shaking, life-transforming, and eternity-changing truth ever (copied). If the resurrection of Jesus Christ has not made a permanent change in you and your life, this morning you need to reexamine yourself and to understand what it means to have and live the resurrected life offered by the risen Lord Jesus Christ. The resurrected life begins with death, death on the cross upon which the Son of God hung.
I. The resurrected life must begin at the foot of the Cross.
A. The Death of Christ.
1. Do you understand the work of Christ upon the cross? Man, in his disobedience to the command of God, sinned and fell from his state of innocence and is under the sentence of death, spiritual death, eternal death. Man is separated from God and under the bondage of sin’s chains. Romans 3 tells us that this sin nature was passed on to every person since the creation of Adam and Eve. That means you and I were born with this sin nature and were spiritually dead, being separated from God, not only by the inheritance of Adam’s sin but also by our own willful choices to sin and therefore falling short of God’s standard of righteousness, we were all under the sentence of eternal separation from God.
2. God’s Word tells us that “God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses”, sent the sinless, spotless Lamb of God, Jesus Christ to take all our sin, every one of them, upon Himself. All our sin was imputed to Him. Isaiah 53 says, “And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (v. 6) In Romans 3:24 we read that God put forward Christ “as a propitiation” for our sin. All our sin was imputed to Christ. God then poured out His wrath against sin on the son of God, Jesus Christ, propitiating or appeasing His wrath, satisfying His holy, righteous demands against sin.
3. Dr. Jack Arnold wrote “God took out his wrath on Christ instead of on sinners. Now anyone who will place his faith and trust in Jesus Christ as personal Savior from sin will receive the forgiveness of sins, and the wrath of God will never again come down upon that one because Christ bore God's wrath on that believer's behalf. Why? Christ satisfied the holy, righteous demands of God against sin. Now, through the death of Christ, a holy God and sinful men can meet, and God can have fellowship with men.”
B. The Death of the Believer
1. The price of entry into the resurrected life is His death, but the process of living the resurrected life is your death. (adapted)
2. One writer has properly stated that “There can be no resurrection without death. Death always precedes resurrection... if you want to experience resurrection in your own life, you must die. (Jeremy Meyers)
3. In our text we read, “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin...Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Our “old man” is crucified with Christ when we were baptized “into the Body of Christ” when we place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our personal Savior from sin.
4. This is what Paul meant when he said in 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.”
5. Living the resurrected life means being crucified, dead to self and dead to sin and walking in the newness of life through faith in Christ. (Romans 6:4)
6. We are dead with Christ to sin by having borne our punishment in him. In Christ we have endured the death penalty and are regarded as dead by the law.
7. Through the shed blood of Jesus Christ in His death on the cross, Ephesians 1:7 tells us that “we have the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace.” Romans 4:25 states that as believers not only was Christ “delivered up for our trespasses” but that He was raised for our justification. Neither Satan, sin, nor the sepulcher could hold the Son of God in its grip as He defeated the enemies of our souls by raising from the dead.
II. The resurrected life finds its power in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A. Paul declares in I Corinthians 15 that “if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!” (verse 7). But the fact is that Christ has been raised from the dead and we have been justified by faith (Rom. 5:1)
B. Fait accompli is a French expression which means "an action which has already been done and which cannot be changed" Our justification is a "one-time transaction" that is secure throughout eternity!
C. Justification is the act of God removing the guilt and penalty of sin from a sinner who places his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, in Whom that believer stands a righteous person before God’s law for time and eternity. This is all made possible by and based upon the satisfactory propitiation which Jesus Christ offered on the Cross as the complete payment of the penalty for sin and secured in His resurrection.
D. It is because of this justification that we can walk in the newness of life.
III. Living the resurrected life is living a transformed life.
A. Sin’s penalty paid for, sin’s chains broken, we have new life in Christ. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, then your life is defined by and in the resurrection of Christ.
B. Second Corinthians 5:17 declares “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.”
C. First 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."
D. The resurrection gives the assurance us that Jesus will transform our lives every day. We live empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit Who enables us to live changed lives. Paul refers to this as “the power of the resurrection.”
IV. Living a resurrected life is a fruitful Christocentric life
A. Before you die with Christ to self and find new life in Christ, the Bible says that you are the slave of sin, but when you come to Christ you are set free to become an instrument of righteousness and are no longer bound to sin and self. Christ becomes your life.
B. Romans 7:4-6 asserts, “Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another—to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.”
C. Commenting on this J.B. Phillips wrote: “There is, I think, a fair analogy here. The death of Christ on the cross had made you "dead" to the claims of the Law, and you are free to give yourselves in marriage, so to speak, to another, the one who was raised from the dead, that you may be productive for God.” (Phillips: Touchstone)
D. Living the resurrected life in submission to Christ results in a fruitful life. Having new life in the resurrected Christ means living life daily, walking with Jesus. It means focusing on the risen Lord and not on ourselves. When we live for Him and not for ourselves, we will bear fruit and be productive for Him.
E. The late nineteenth century preacher Phillips Brooks said, "The great Easter truth is not that we are to live newly after death – that is not the great thing – but that we are to be new here and now by the power of the resurrection.” Can this be said of you? Are you living the resurrected life?
