Scripture referenced 5 passages
The passage this message was preached from, in full, with every other passage it reached for.
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Romans 6:1-14 the main passage for the sermon, read and expounded throughout
1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
2 May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer?
3 Or don’t you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
5 For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection;
6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin.
7 For he who has died has been freed from sin.
8 But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him;
9 knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no more has dominion over him!
10 For the death that he died, he died to sin one time; but the life that he lives, he lives to God.
11 Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12 Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.
13 Also, do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
14 For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace.
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Keep this verse
2 Thessalonians 2:13-15
quoted to illustrate the timeline of salvation, sanctification and glorification
13 But we are bound to always give thanks to God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because God chose you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief in the truth;
14 to which he called you through our Good News, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
15 So then, brothers, stand firm, and hold the traditions which you were taught by us, whether by word, or by letter.
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1 Corinthians 1:18
cited as the thesis sentence for Corinthians: the message of the cross is foolishness to those perishing but the power of God to those being saved
18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved it is the power of God.
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Galatians 2:20
quoted to illustrate being crucified in tandem with Christ: no longer I who live but Christ lives in me
20 I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. That 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.
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1 Timothy 3:16
described as one of the earliest hymns of the church and read aloud as a closing benediction: He who was revealed in the flesh, vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory
16 Without controversy, the mystery of godliness is great: God was revealed in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, and received up in glory.
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Recap
The message in order, in a few minutes of reading.
Pastor Mark opened Memorial Day weekend by walking through the cost of American wars, then turned to Romans 6:1-14 and the question of what it means, in actual daily practice, to be someone who has died to sin and been raised with Christ. The thread connecting the two was death, specifically what it means that something is genuinely, finally dead.
What was said
Memorial Day exists to remember those who died in service, not just those who served. Pastor Mark listed the death tolls from American wars going back to the Revolution, ending with the Civil War, and shared the story behind a poem called "The Blue and the Gray," which commemorates the women of Columbus, Mississippi who, in 1866, laid flowers on the graves of both Confederate and Union soldiers. That image of remembering the dead, of recognizing that dead men do nothing anymore, carried directly into the passage.
Before getting to Romans 6, Pastor Mark introduced a distinction he kept returning to throughout the sermon: position versus practice. Positionally, belief in Christ is a binary switch, dead to alive, sinner to justified. In practice, the Christian life looks more like a slope with hills and valleys, shaped by the ongoing sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and the believer's willingness to yield. He used a diagram he had introduced during a series in Thessalonians to show the distance between the moment of belief and final glorification, and argued that the messy middle is where Romans 6 lives.
Romans 6 opens with the antinomian objection: if grace really covers everything, why not keep sinning? Paul's answer is "may it never be," and he grounds his refusal in the past tense. "We who died" is not an ongoing process, Pastor Mark said. It is a completed act, as final as the names on the stones in a military cemetery. The word baptizo, he explained, carries the meaning of actual change, not just immersion, the difference between dipping a cucumber and producing a pickle. Being baptized into Christ's death means being genuinely changed, identified not only with his life but with his death and burial.
That identification, Pastor Mark said, is what makes the resurrection language in the passage meaningful. Christ was raised and is never to die again; death is no longer master over him. For believers, the same logic applies. The old self was crucified with Christ, and Paul's one-word Greek construction for "crucified with Christ" suggests something done in tandem, two things nailed together. The purpose, stated in conditional or subjunctive terms, is that the body of sin might be made powerless. Pastor Mark noted the conditionality carefully: the provision is made, but whether it is realized depends on whether the believer's will aligns with God's.
The imperatives in verses 12 and 13 follow from all of that. Do not let sin reign. Do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness. Present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead. Pastor Mark observed that even the word "reign" acknowledges the ongoing skirmishes, and he pointed ahead to Romans 7 where Paul admits that the things he wants to do he cannot seem to do. Paul is a realist, he said, but a realist who insists the surrendered life is both possible and genuinely different from the life around it.
He closed by tying the Memorial Day image back to the passage. Positionally, God looks at a believer and sees the righteousness of Christ, imputed and credited to that person's account. The call of the passage is to "reckon," to count things accurately, to treat sin as the dead thing it is and to walk in the direction of the life that is already credited to you. The next sermon, he said, will turn from the death language that drives this chapter toward what it looks like to come up out of the grave and walk in newness of life.
Doing a Bible study?
Here is a guide we have prepared for you: the passages in order, questions for the group, and room to write.
- Pastor John mentioned that Memorial Day is specifically about those who died in service, not just those who served. How does sitting with the weight of actual death, rather than treating it as an abstraction, change the way you hear Paul's language in Romans 6 about dying to sin?
- Pastor John described the diagram showing that our position in Christ and our practice as Christians do not always match. Where in your own life do you feel the biggest gap between who God says you are in Christ and how you actually live day to day?
and 3 more questions in the guide
Read the full transcript 6,125 words
1:52
Speaker 3Change the atmosphere. Build your kingdom near. Pray.
7:27
Speaker 2It's true God. We we do lift up your great and mighty name. Just recognize who you are, who we are before you, that you're great, you're awesome, that you're holy, that we're your creation, we've fallen short, but you really are our redeemer, our healer, our friend. It's your kindness that brings us to repentance and We just thank you and I thank you for your I thank you for your word and I pray that as we hear it, it wouldn't just sound like ancient literature from long ago but it would be it would truly meet us and hit us right where we're
8:05
Speaker 1at. Amen.
8:07
Speaker 2As we sing this song, God, I pray that it would it would really prepare us. Amen. Let's sing that again, shall we?
9:00
Speaker 3Above all the distractions in this day. Your words bring us life. For your words bring light and your voice speaks promises. Lord, your love offers more
10:00
Speaker 2Amen to that. Amen. Y'all can have a seat. I'd like to pray. As we participate here in the the worship through giving.
12:06
God, I thank the the Psalm for the word of the Lord holds true and we can trust everything that you do and it's true and it's hard. It's hard to trust. Sometimes we want to just break off on our own and say, we we want to do it on our own and then and then we can fall flat and it it hurts but I I thank you God for when you lead us back to you. I thank you God for everything that comes from your hand. We acknowledge that you are our creator and our sustainer and so would you receive these these gifts here from us as we give with an open an open hand, a joyful heart.
12:48
Just saying we love you and we trust you. Amen.
15:00
Speaker 1Hang on, Renzi. Y'all can hear me? Good. So, it's Memorial Day weekend and for those of us who live in Jackson, that's the real signal for it's the summer season. It's here and if you are on the square yesterday, you saw that or in the parade, you saw it's it's really filling up but I typically, I just bounce right over holidays.
15:24
I don't I don't mention em a whole lot. I don't go into em with any depth so much. It's more perfunctory than anything else but Memorial Day, I want to mention. Memorial Day is tomorrow and it commemorates those who have died in the service of this country. It's not like Veterans Day, and Veterans Day is to commemorate or to celebrate all who have ever served in the armed forces for this country, but Memorial Day is those who have died in service, and so the death of that individual is the thing.
15:59
In the Gulf War nineteen ninety one, I was 19 years old and in college. My dad had been drafted into Vietnam, and he was there for a year, and he was training for a year. And in 1991, was 19, and they had said they're not doing the deferment anymore. So the draft, I was thinking, hey I'm A1 prime, I'm big, I don't have flat feet, I don't have anything that would keep me out of the draft, and it was very real to see those bombs raining down over Kuwait and Baghdad. Gulf War was 1991.
16:37
There were two ninety four lives lost. It was a very short military campaign. The Philippine American War, I don't think many of us remember, but that was 4,196 American soldiers were lost in that one. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars from 2001 to the present is above 6,500. 6,717 lives have been lost in that.
17:00
And some of y'all know some of those people. And I know some of those people. Some of y'all probably served with some of those people. So Memorial Day today, we are remembering those who have died. The Mexican American War, none of us remember that.
17:15
For the most part, we've gotten over that. Right? 13,000 lives were lost, though. War of eighteen twelve was 15,000. I was a little bit about surprised by this one.
17:26
The American Revolutionary War was 25,000 people. As a percentage of how many were there, it was pretty high, but not nearly as high as these next ones. The Korean War, 54,000 lives lost. I knew people who served in Korea, and I knew that they had lost people. I didn't know those people but the Vietnam War is very close to me because my dad was there and he lost friends there.
17:55
He didn't talk about it when I was a little kid. He never talked about it. Now he gets back together with his buddies that survived, and they get together every year. They're threatening to come out here next year. I hope they do.
18:08
58,000 lives lost there. And if you've walked past the memorial wall there in Washington and seen those names engraved on that black stone, that's a pretty impressive memorial where you walk into the war, basically, and see the wall go from being short to being deeper and deeper and deeper and then coming out of it, shortening back up. It's pretty impressive. World War one, hundred and sixteen thousand five hundred and 16 soldiers were lost in The US side. World War two, almost half a million.
18:42
Getting close. 405,399 people were lost in World War two. That's just Americans. That's the ones we're remembering today. But the reason I mention all of these probably is because of the American Civil War.
18:59
American Civil War and y'all know I'm from Georgia. You can hear it. The war of northern aggression is the way it's most often broadcast down there. At the end of this war, all of casualties on both sides are included in this figure. Memorial Day, just a little history of this.
19:23
Now, this is not the history of Memorial Day. It's a history of Memorial Day. I looked it up on Wikipedia like everybody else. Tried to figure out where it was coming from. I have heard and had heard when I was a little kid Some stories about Memorial Day and one of them and I remember distinctly, I was trying to find if it was true or not, if it was just a preacher's tale.
19:45
Yes, speaking of tales, this thing, Where is it, Renzy? Better. Is that better? Alright. So, Memorial Day history.
19:55
This is the bound copy of the Atlantic Monthly from 1867. And it turns out it was true. The story that I had been looking for is one of the history of the memorial. Now, both sides during the Civil War before it was over had started remembering their dead because you remember your families and you remember those who have gone on that you loved and have died. So, in the South, the confederates were laying flowers on their graves before the war ended, of course, and in the North, they were doing the same for the union soldiers but this poem was written.
20:29
It was in the Atlantic Monthly in 1867. And I want you to see this. The name of the poem is The Blue and the Gray. I forget the artist the poet's name right now. But the women of Columbus, Mississippi, this is from the New York Tribune right here.
20:44
This little thing, if you can't read it, I will. The women of Columbus, Mississippi. Some of y'all are from near Columbus, Mississippi. I've been through there and spent some time there. The women of Columbus, Mississippi animated by a nobler, by nobler sentiments than are many of their sisters have shown themselves impartial in their offerings made to the memory of the dead.
21:07
They strewed flowers alike on the graves of the Confederate soldiers and of the national or union soldiers. They did that in 1866. So one year after the war had ended in April, they went out and they spread these flowers over the graves and there were quite a few union soldiers in their cemetery. At the time, they've all been moved back to wherever they were from now. The start of that poem is by the flow of the inland river whence fleets of iron have fled where the blades of grave grass quiver.
21:38
Asleep are the ranks of the dead. Under the sod and the dew waiting the judgement day. Under the one, the blue. Under the other, the gray. Why to start off like this, right?
21:54
So, I wrote three or four different sermons this week and I could not decide on which one preached. Now, know the passage because we're progressing through. We just progressed through scripture. We're up to Romans six. So, it's the time.
22:07
We're going to preach Romans six. I know that but I I there's so many different ways that you can take it that I actually, not different ways like the scripture means different things. It's so rich and so deep that I think we might come back to it two or three weeks in a row now. Romans six one through 14 is the passage for today. It's on the back of your bulletin.
22:27
If you have one, I'm using the New American Standard Version of the Bible but before I get to that, there's a lot of prolegomena today. Before I get to that, I wanna talk about something. Y'all know what a binary function is? In computers, it's zeros and ones. It's either on or off.
22:43
It's a switch that's either on or off and a lot of times in church, we speak of binary things and lately, if you hear binary, that it's it's usually these days in talks of gender. And people are starting to say that it's not binary. A binary function is a position that's either on or off. It's either black or white and in our last sermon, in the last passage part of chapter five of Romans, we were talking about identification with Christ or identification with Adam. You would be one or the other.
23:22
By the default, you are identified with Adam. The Bible presents that as the case that is for everyone of us. We are identified with Adam until we receive the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ, sacrificial death on our behalf and we access that and then we're identified with Christ. Now, last week, I baptized Elisa Wakub up here and she was performing an outward symbol or we were performing an outward symbol of something inward that had happened, a change that happened in her life and she went from her identification with Adam was buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of life. So, that was a symbol for that and I told you, I come back to these again this week.
24:03
A lot of times in church, we go as we are Christians, everyone else is non Christian and where that is true, people who are not Christians don't necessarily like to be defined by who we are. Does that make sense? It is binary. That is true. It's theologically true.
24:22
It is true. That there are Christians and there are non Christians. Now, in Paul's day, there were Jews and Gentiles and it was Jew and everything else and we we listed as Christian and everything else. Believer and unbeliever. So, we're defining them on our terms.
24:40
They are on whatever we are, non whatever we are. You got that? It can be condescending. I'm just letting you know. Saved and unsaved.
24:50
Found and lost. It's a binary function. Now, it's true. Positionally, that's true. So that's why I mentioned it.
24:56
Before we get into the work here today in Romans, I want you to think for a minute about practice though. So, yes, it's true. Positionally, there is a time in your life when you do not know Jesus, you have not accepted him, and then you do and everything changes when Christ comes into your life, into your heart, God looks down from heaven and instead of seeing a sinner upon whom his wrath justly should fall. He sees the righteousness of in Christ, of Christ. It's been imputed to you, not of your merit, not because you deserve but purely by the grace of God.
25:32
So, that is positionally but in actual practice, it's a non binary function. I'm going to start with a diagram I used a while back when we're going through Thessalonians. I pulled this up. I'm just going to read this verse real quick and then I'll go through the diagram but we all all always to thank God for you brothers and sisters loved by the Lord. Hope so he's speaking to Christians because God chose you as first fruits to be saved through the sanctifying work of the spirit and through belief and the truth.
26:05
He calls you to this through our gospel and Paul's gospel is always the message of the cross that Christ died once and for all to save those who would put their trust and faith in him. By our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, so then brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the teachings we passed on to you whether by word-of-mouth or by letter. Now, I put this into a diagram while I was preaching through that and for some of you, you come up and said, this is really helpful. I like this diagram. So, God chose from the beginning.
26:41
Don't ask me to explain it. It just says it. So, I put it up there, okay? It is what it is. God chose from the beginning.
26:49
He chose how people would come to know him and that would be by Christ's work. Christ's work on the cross, his death, burial, resurrection. Not to mention, his perfect life up to that point. No sin. No sin.
27:02
From Adam, he is the second Adam. He started off. No sin. He continues throughout his life without it in submission to the spirit of God. Christ did his work and then, after he was dead and buried and resurrected and ascended into heaven, the gospel witness goes out.
27:23
So, that is the witness of the good news of Jesus Christ sacrificial death. You got that? Gospel witness goes forward and in between this gospel witness and someone's belief is that time where either they haven't heard it because the gospel witness is always going out but they haven't heard it yet or they have rejected it. They're holding it off. But at the moment of belief, the Bible says, binary function, switch on from off.
27:49
Switch to life from dead. Christian from non Christian. Believer from unbeliever. At the moment of belief, you are saved. No doubt about it.
28:01
The sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit happens in between and this is where I'm talking about this being a non binary function because in our position and in our practice, they don't want to always match. They don't always look like they ought to look. We don't immediately get to be completely perfected in Christian perfection at the moment of our belief. Oh, that we did. Wouldn't that be great?
28:25
But the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and our reliance upon God is happening. Now, ultimately, we'll be we'll be saved on that great and mighty day of the Lord that's coming. It is coming. And then glorification happens and that's throughout eternity. We are with Christ.
28:43
We're one with him. So, this is the timeline. Now, in actual practice, we don't just go from, okay, reprobate, reprobate, reprobate. Wow. They're just exactly like Christ.
28:57
For most of us, it's much more like this. There are hills and valleys along the way. We're sanctified as we yield our lives to Christ. We are sanctified and he builds us up and we should be growing every day more and more into greater and greater similitude likeness to Christ. As we surrender our yield and and yield our will.
29:19
Now, there are times where we hit a point and we just, I can't do this anymore and we give up or we wander from God or we have something that gets in between us. Usually, it's sin of some sort, some description. I mentioned all this before I get to the passage today because if you're not a believer, you can just think, oh, Christianity as a whole is just behavior modification. That's all it is and it's not. Positionally, it is something where the grace of God becomes so real in your life.
29:54
That you change. Now, that change in your actual practice depends on your will. You still have your old nature and we'll get to that in a couple of weeks. Today, we're talking about the sinful life that you live and since it's Memorial Day, I thought that tying that in with the dead is because that's what this passage says over and over and over again and it doesn't stop saying it. It says it all throughout this whole chapter.
30:21
I want to mention this one more time too. First Corinthians one eighteen and this was the thesis sentence for Corinthians. The message of the cross, that is the gospel of Jesus Christ. The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved, it's the power of God. Now, what I wanted to point out right here is the being saved part.
30:42
If you look at this, you say, okay, you're saved here at belief and you're ultimately saved here. There's that land between saved and saved where the glorification part is reality where you are knowing just as you are known and you're there experiencing life with God. The message of the cross, to those who are perishing and to those who are saved are two different things. One is foolishness, one is the power of God. Now, the aroma of Christ to one or the stench of death to the other.
31:16
It also says in Corinthians. So, here we are at Romans. Finally, we're up to where we're starting today. Romans six one through four, I'll start off with. We're going to 14 today.
31:28
So, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Now, this is the obvious question after all he's presented in Romans up to this point. All people have sinned. No one is righteous.
31:42
No, not one. As humans, we look and we have big sins and little sins. It's just sin to God and it separates us from God. If grace is really true and Paul has presented that it is really true, the goodness of God and his grace is the only way to come to him. The only way to be justified is by faith and God's grace.
32:05
Through Christ's blood, all of that but by grace through faith. What shall we say then? If it really is grace, my goodness. It's free. None of that stuff that was charged to my account is now charged to my account.
32:18
Should I keep on running up a tab? That's the question. If that's free, why not just keep going? If I hadn't been saved today or if I hadn't been saved before that doggone wedding, I could've had as much to drink as I wanted to. You know what I'm saying?
32:34
Never mind. That was not a good one today. Wish I hadn't got baptized and saved. Have you ever seen oh brother, where art thou? They made sin and look so like so much fun.
32:48
He says, it almost makes me wish I hadn't got baptized and saved. That's this question. It's the antinomian objection actually. The antinomian, the anti law. If you really take away the law, what's to keep chaos from ruling?
33:05
Why not just go? The antinomian objection is what this whole chapter seeks to answer. So, what shall we say? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? And Paul, of course, says, Mega Neuto, may it never be?
33:18
Absolutely not. That's unthinkable. Show not. Uh-uh. Okay?
33:23
No. Flatly. How shall we who died? Now, this tense of this verb is very very important. It is a simple past tense.
33:35
It happened once in the past. Bam. It has been done. It's not those of us who are dying. We're not slowly suffering a fate.
33:46
Dead. We who died. That's past tense. All of these stones right here are for guys who died. They're not dying.
34:02
Does Sidney Marceau still do anything? He's dead. He does not still do anything here. Jason Frywald over there. No.
34:15
Now she remembers him. She's remembering him by putting flowers on his their graves, but they don't do anything anymore. They're dead. That's what the force of the verb is very very strong. It is binary, live or dead and it's dead.
34:32
So, how shall we who died and it's died in a particular sense. We died to sin. When we accepted Christ's substitutionary atonement on our behalf, it's figured in baptism. We'll get to that in a minute. We died with Christ.
34:50
To sin. He died to put an end to the power of sin. So, how we going to still live in it? How we going to keep on doing that? Why would we want to keep on doing that?
35:03
If we're dead to sin, why would we keep on? Paul says, or do you folks not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death that keeps saying death over and over. It's not going to get any lighter, okay? Death and dying and dead, died. We've been baptized into his death.
35:23
Now, I'm baptist. I grew up baptist. You know, it's baptist church. Y'all all know that. I hope I'm more center of the gospel Christian than I am any persuasion of Christian, baptist, or whatever but we do practice immersion baptism and last week, I used these verses and kind of pointed to the figure of baptism.
35:40
The immersion in the water. I feel feel like that's a good use of the Greek and the coming back up from the water. I think that that's good but I want to say that Bapto is to dunk something. Bapto, just to baptize but Baptizo which is the word right here is an actual change. It's where something goes from cucumber to pickle, okay?
36:03
Where because you can dip and this is this is the old, actually, this is the ancient Greek outside of the Bible. This is the ancient Greek thing. It says, you can dip a cucumber. Can dip a cucumber and if you dip it in a certain solution, it becomes a pickle but it's the Baptizo that is the word for changed, completely changed. So, not everybody who gets dumped.
36:25
Gets changed. Does that make sense? Hopefully, you've been changed so you get dunked. Does that make sense? Okay.
36:34
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death. We are identified with Christ not just in his wonderful exemplary perfect life but in his sacrificial death on our behalf and when we say that, Paul actually says, I baptized I've been crucified with Christ. We'll get to that in a minute. Therefore, we've been buried with him. So, dead, now buried.
37:03
Therefore, we've been buried with him through baptism into death. We are mortifying, killing that sinful self 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. Now, with Elisa, I I just said, baptized, buried with Christ, and raised to walk in newness of life. If you think about this, we're identifying with his death because we have seen and understood his resurrection. That's what we want to be raised to walk in newness of life, to not have the baggage that goes with sin, to not have the burden and the load of guilt that comes with it.
37:47
So, that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the father, we might too walk in newness of life. So, dead, death, died, death, died, dead, dead. On Memorial Day weekend, I think about this and think, positionally, if you are a believer in Christ, God looks at you and sees God's son, the perfection of Christ because he's imputed to that to you positionally. Don't you want to live like that? Don't you want to live up to that?
38:20
Now, it's a it's a slope, you know, an upward climb. If we become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. He's saying, if you really get what he did for you, if you really understand that that grace is grace, it's unmerited favor that you didn't really do anything including turning towards him. You didn't do anything to deserve it. Then, certainly, that resurrection is something out there that you're going for.
38:52
You're raised to walk in newness of life. Would you like for it to be behind you? 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. And I said, Paul said in Galatians two twenty, I love the word right here.
39:13
I have been crucified with Christ. That word is one word, crucified with Christ. It is one word that means to be crucified in tandem. In a in a very, very real sense. Our sin was nailed to the cross with Jesus and we, the sinful old man, was crucified along with him and it's no longer I who live, Paul says to the Galatians.
39:41
Good sketch for Romans, Galatians. It's no longer I who live but Christ lives in me and the life which I now live, I live in the flesh by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. Knowing this that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with. This is a new American standard version of the Bible so that we would no longer be slaves to sin for he who has died is freed from sin, completely acquitted, freed, let loose by grace, completely gone. Now, that might be done away with and the self there actually, the Greek says that our old anthropost man, was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be made powerless, made powerless because it's dead.
40:32
There's no power in what's dead. So, Paul has a realistic view of both the position that we have in Christ but he also has a realistic view of our practice and he sees that it does not always match. He's saying, he died so that it might be made powerless but do you see the mites in there? That's conditional. Subjunctive tense.
40:53
It depends on two wills. The will of God is that you would walk. Be holy just as I'm holy. Be perfect. Just as I'm perfect.
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That's his will and he's made the provision available and he's made the possibility available for you to walk in his spirit and walk in righteousness. He's imputed it to you and looks at you though you already have as though you already have it. If you will align your will with his will, you will increasingly look more and more like his son and less and less like Adam. For he who has died is freed from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, it's conditional, you know, if we have.
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He's saying, if you are a believer but he's saying it like, no, think about this. There's a death that's involved, dying to self, dying to your sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, past tense. Crucified with Christ, past tense. If that's the case, We believe that we shall also live with him.
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Christ didn't stop at the grave, right? Good Friday was bad but resurrection Sunday came and so Paul looking back with that, he says, we believe if we have died with Christ, baptizo, been changed, then we shall also live with him. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Hebrews says, he's eternally sitting at the right hand of the or he is sitting at the right hand of the father. Making intercession for you.
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Having been raised from the dead, he's never to die again and death is no longer master over him. Do you remember Jesus's, I I think we can call it fear in the garden where he's saying, not my will but yours be done. Let this cup pass for me if it's possible, lord. Not my will but yours be done. He answers.
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Death was lingering over him right there. The specter of death was hard for even Jesus to deal with but he says, death is no longer master. He's conquered the grave. What else is there to fear? Nothing.
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Raised to walk in newness of life? Yeah. Ascended to the father, sitting down because his work is finished at his right hand. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. Every sin that will ever be forgiven was forgiven at the cross.
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But the life that he lives, he lives unto God. He lives a godward life and he's Paul saying that that's possible for us but we do have to die to sin. Now position and practice. The more we look like so there's black and white. Right?
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I had it up there. Christian, non Christian. If if they look pretty good and we look not nearly as good as we hoped but we look a whole lot like them, we're still saved. Does that make sense? We're still saved because of belief in Jesus but that doesn't help them at all because if we all look just about the same, well, they're kind of good people, whatever.
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It's when we live a yielded life, yielded to God, that it makes a difference on people around us and I've seen that. I've seen that in this church. I've seen that in marriages. I've seen the truth of scripture saying that if you will deny self and if you will live this life and reckon yourself, let's keep going. Even so, consider yourself to be dead to sin.
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In some versions, it says, reckon yourselves and since I'm from Georgia, I like that one. I reckon a lot. I like to reckon. Reckon is an accounting term. It is how you count things.
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So, even so, count things this way. You're dead to sin. Sin is dead to you. You're dead to sin, okay? But alive unto God in a godward direction in or through or with Christ Jesus.
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Now, we get into some imperatives and this is imperative saying that, okay, based on what I've just said, all people are sinful. God is still gracious. He's made a way. The only way is this way through Jesus. And then he gets to this part about how it doesn't seem like we're living it out and he asked it first, can we just keep on sinning?
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Because positionally, we're good, right? He's got the bill. I can just keep eating, right? Paul has some imperatives for us and they're direct and they are commands. That's the imperative tense is a command tense.
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Therefore, do not let sin reign in your body, your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. You know what temptation is like? You know you have an enemy. You know you have the world all around you that continues to live for itself. Don't let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lust.
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Remember the question, what shall we say? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be? No. Don't let sin reign in your mortal bodies and do not go on.
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Continue to be presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of the righteousness of God. Now, you've been imputed and been counted with the righteousness of God and he's saying that if you'll just put it in neutral, not go after your own lust but surrender your will to mine. God says, surrender your members as instruments of righteousness, I'll use it and what's more than that, he'll use everything in the past too. He'll use everything in the past too. For sin shall not be and this is a future tense.
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Shall not be master over you. You're on an upward trajectory. You've been imputed with his righteousness and one day you will know glorification. You'll know what it's like to be right there in the presence of God. Sin shall not be master over you for you're not under law but you're under grace.
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So, law and grace, this is this section we're going to go back and forth with a lot. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body. Even when he says rain, there's something in rain that says, I know that it's going to sneak up on you. I know that there are going to be skirmishes and battles all along the way. In fact, in chapter seven, he goes, the things I want to do, I can't just seem to do and the things I don't want to do or the things I end up doing.
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So, Paul is a realist. He knows that in practice, this is not an easy thing to get but he does know it's possible and I know it's possible and I'm going to present it just that way. I pray. As possible and as making a huge difference when we surrender ourselves but it takes humility to do that. So, that's the benediction slide.
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That's the last slide. Would y'all stand with us? I'm going to invite the band back up. The next sermon that I'm planning on doing and we'll see if it actually happens. Instead of concentrating on the death part, death part, death part, died, died, died, which I think is necessary.
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It leads off in every sentence. It leads off with the death because that death in Christ makes the life part possible. So, I'm planning on focusing on the life part in the next couple of weeks and seeing how we come out of the grave, how we walk back up the hill, out of that depth of that war. So, this is amazing love. Would you sing with us?
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Speaker 3Please?
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Speaker 1This is from first Timothy three sixteen. Second Timothy three sixteen, y'all all know is, you know, that all scripture is God breathed but first Timothy three sixteen is probably one of the earliest refrains or hymns of the church and there's some mystery in here and I like that because when we have things so particularly binary, it is off putting. It's true but it's off putting. He who is revealed in the flesh, that's Jesus Christ. He lived in flesh just like we have to live in flesh.
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He knows what it's like to be where we are. He was vindicated in the spirit or justified by the spirit. He never stepped outside of the spirit's leading and we have Christians. We have the Holy Spirit. We can be vindicated.
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Though everyone is against you, you can be vindicated if you're with the spirit. He was seen by angels. Proclaimed among the nations, believed on in this actual real world and he was taken up in the glory. That resurrection, that ascension is what we can look forward to but they skip the part of his death in this part. Let's go this week and do our best to reckon ourselves as dead to sin.
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In Jesus name, would you go and walk in newness of life. Amen.
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