Romans chapter 6 verses 1 to 11. Please
listen now to the reading of God's word.
What shall we say then?
Are we to continue in sin that grace
may abound?
By no means.
How can we who died to sin still
live in it?
Do you not know that all of us
who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death?
We were buried therefore with him by baptism
into death, in order that just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory
of the father,
we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him
in a death like his, we shall certainly
be united with him in a resurrection like
his.
We know that our old self was crucified
with him in order that the body of
sin might be brought to nothing.
So that we would no longer be enslaved
to sin.
For one who has died has been set
free from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ,
we believe that we will also live with
Him.
We know that Christ, being raised from the
dead, will never die again. Death no longer
has dominion over him.
For the death he died,
he died to sin once for all. But
the life he lives, he lives to God.
So you also must consider yourselves
dead to sin and alive to
God in Christ Jesus.
This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Please be seated.
Well,
Muhammad Ali
is considered
by many the greatest heavyweight boxer
of all time.
In the 19 sixties
seventies, he was undoubtedly the most famous boxer.
His name was,
a, was known in households all around the
world.
Interestingly,
Muhammad Ali was not his birth name. His
name was actually Cassius Clay Junior after his
father, Cassius Clay Senior.
However, after becoming world champion at age 22,
Clay converted to Islam
and changed his name to Muhammad Ali,
claiming that Cassius Clay was quote his slave
name.
He said he didn't choose the name Cassius
Clay, neither did he care for it. He
didn't want it. He wasn't gonna keep it.
Now, many people were upset at the name
change, but Ali was correct in this.
There is a sense in which
whoever names you, owns you.
This is why our parents name us and
exercise
authority over us while we are in their
house, living
under their name.
In this morning's text, in Romans, Paul makes
it clear that Jesus
has broken
the chains of bondage that death once exercised
over Christians.
He writes that if you are united to
Jesus by faith,
you are no longer under the household of
Adam.
And therefore,
you are no longer
under the domain of sin.
In fact, the main point that I have
for you this morning is this.
Christians
don't live like a slave to sin.
Live like you belong to your savior.
Again, don't live like a slave to sin,
live like you belong to your savior. And
we're going to have a false message this
morning under 3 headings.
1st,
the significance
of being in Christ.
2nd,
the freedom
of being like Christ.
And 3rd, the blessing of being with Christ.
So let's look at the first one, the
significance of being
in Christ.
In verses 1 and 2, we read, what
shall we say them?
Are we to continue in sin that grace
may abound?
By no means.
How can we, who die to sin,
still live in it?
Now last Sunday, Julio preached on these two
verses, and he did a really great job
explaining that it is an utter contradiction
for someone to, on the one hand, claim
that he is a Christian who has received
forgiveness by grace,
and on the other hand,
continue
to unrepentantly
indulge in sinful behavior.
The notion that because salvation is by grace,
when it's free to live without any care
for obeying God's laws known as antinomianism.
And it is a total distortion
of the gospel.
Antinomianism
teaches that since justification is by faith and
not by works,
God's law has no bearing on the individual
anymore.
Has no bearing on me.
It says that I have the freedom
to live however I want because my sin
has already been paid for.
But Paul asks,
how can we
who died to sin
still live in it?
It is incongruent incongruent.
It is a contradiction.
More than that, it is a slanderous
lie
against the holy character of God.
And yet, it is tempting to believe this
lie, or at least to want it to
be true.
After all,
who wants to have any restrictions
on how to live his or her life?
Who wants to follow rules?
Isn't it so much better to just follow
our own heart?
Well, if lying means
that I that I can get ahead,
then why not lie?
If cheating means that I'll get a better
grade, then why not cheat?
If I can close that business deal by
bending the rules,
why not do it?
If no one gets hurt when I access
that website,
it was to stop
me. If I can take something
without it ever being noticed, without it ever
being missed,
why not take it? And if I can
do any or all of these things
without consequences,
then why not?
Doing the right thing is not easy, so
why bother? Especially if so called good works
have no bearing
on my salvation.
If God is gracious,
then why shouldn't I continue in sin that
grace may abound?
Well, how does Paul answer this question? He
says, by no means.
You see, there are consequences
to sin. There are always consequences to sin.
If someone who claims to be a Christian,
unrepentantly,
in done indulges in sin, he hurts himself.
Because sin slowly
and surely
will consume him.
He hurts other people
because sin always privileges the self above all
others.
He distorts the gospel
because he turns grace into licentiousness.
And he drags the name of Jesus through
the mud because he claims to follow Jesus
while displaying
the sinful lifestyle
Jesus died to eradicate from his people.
Look at what Paul writes in verse 3.
He writes, do you not know
that all of us who have been baptized
into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death?
Paul draws a connection between baptism
and the death of Jesus.
So, his argument so far is that a
sinful lifestyle
does not comport with Christianity
because Christians have been baptized
into Christ's death.
Now, this is a very profound statement by
Paul, but its meaning is not easy to
understand.
Yet, we need to make an effort to
unpack it because once we understand what Paul
means, then everything else he says here makes
sense.
The key to understand how to decipher Paul's
argument here is to understand the meaning of
baptism.
Baptism
is a visible and material representation
of an invisible
and spiritual reality.
Again, it's a visible and material representation
of an invisible and spiritual reality.
It represents
our being united to Christ by faith.
This spiritual union
with Christ
impacts our sinfulness in 2 ways.
1st,
his death on the cross pays for the
guilt of our sin
so that we are justified
or we are legally declared innocent before God.
2nd,
since Jesus pays for the debt of our
sin with his own death,
sin no longer has any claim over us.
We are not in its debt.
Sin doesn't own us anymore
because the wages of our sin
has already been paid by Jesus.
Jesus with his death
purchased us from the domain of sin. Sin
no longer
owns
us. Sin no longer is our master.
Instead,
Jesus is our Lord. We belong to him
now.
Baptism
is a public
visible sign
that you
and all that is yours,
everything in your household, including your children,
belong to God because Christ has purchased you.
So,
his death impacts you by taking away the
guilt of your sin
and by removing
sin's claim over your life.
Again,
you belong to God now.
You have been adopted
into his family.
This is why you and your children are
baptized in his name, the name of the
father and of the son and of the
Holy Spirit.
Baptism
means you enjoy the privileges of being a
member of God's household.
But since you now have his family name,
baptism also means that you represent
God's household.
This is why Paul writes that it is
absurd for Christians to live
sinful lifestyles.
You have been baptized, he says.
You have been baptized
into Christ's death.
A death that purchased you away from the
domain of sin.
That's when the transaction took place at the
cross, at the death of Jesus. That's when
you no longer belong to death anymore.
You do not belong to God's family,
so act like it. That's essentially Paul's argument
here.
Paul completes this idea in verse 4 saying,
we were buried therefore with Christ by baptism
into death,
in order that just as Christ was raised
from the dead
by the glory of the father,
we too might walk in newness of life.
The image of being buried with Christ by
baptism
does not have anything to do with the
mode of baptism. It's not an image of
baptism by immersion, for example. That's not what
Paul has in mind here.
Rather, it's supposed to take us back
to Genesis
3 19
where after Adam sins,
God pronounces a curse on Adam saying,
by the sweat of your face, you shall
eat bread
till you return
to the ground.
For out of it you were taken, for
you are dust, and to dust you shall
return.
In other words,
remember that in Romans 5, Paul wrote that
sin and death had entered into the world
because of the sin of Adam.
So everyone in Adam's household
has sinned, has his sin, and bears his
curse.
And if anyone dies in Adam, he is
buried in Adam
and is returned to the cursed ground.
That's the connection.
Dead in Adam,
buried in Adam,
cursed in Adam.
But in Romans 5, Paul also wrote that
anyone who is in the second Adam, that
is to say in Jesus,
will have eternal life. Because unlike Adam,
Jesus
obeyed the law perfectly.
In 1st Corinthians 15 verse 48,
Paul lays out these two destinies in this
way. He writes,
as was the man of dust, that is
Adam,
so also are those who are of the
dust.
And as is the man of heaven,
Jesus,
so also are those who are of heaven.
Paul completes the thought here by stating
that your baptism into Christ's death
means that you, who belong to Jesus,
are buried with Jesus
and not
with Adam.
And since Jesus' death breaks Adam's curse,
the ground or the grave or the dust
has no claim over you anymore.
You were baptized into Christ death.
You are buried with him.
The cursed ground could not contain Jesus, and
neither will it contain you.
The gates of hell will not prevail
against you, Jesus says.
The same power
that freed Jesus from the grip of death
at his resurrection
also delivers you from bondage to sin when
you are born again.
Thus, Paul writes
that you can live in newness of life.
That is to say, you can overcome
the temptation to sin and you can grow
in godliness.
So for you, what is the practical significance
of being in Christ?
Well,
since being in Christ means that he has
removed the guilt of your sin
through his atoning death,
then you can be sure
that you are truly
justified,
that you are truly innocent before God, no
matter what accusations
Satan may bring against you.
This means that you have really been reconciled
with your heavenly father.
You are his son.
You are his daughter.
His wrath is not on you anymore.
He loves you and cares for you, and
he delights
in blessing you.
When you go to him in prayer,
you can be sure that he receives you,
and he hears you.
And you can be sure that he works
all things together
for your good.
And because God has forgiven you,
when you sin against others,
you have the freedom
to confess your sins.
You don't have to hide.
You don't have to endure unending shame.
You can accept your shortcomings
and ask for forgiveness
because God knows everything about you.
And he loves you. And he has already
forgiven you.
But not only this,
being in Christ also means that your heavenly
father
loves
and has forgiven
anybody who is in Christ. He has love
he loves and he has forgiven other Christians.
So when another Christian
sins against you
and he asks,
and he or she asks for forgiveness, you
now have the freedom
and the responsibility
to forgive
him or her.
In other words, because in Christ we are
reconciled to God,
we can also be reconciled to our brothers
and sisters
in the faith.
And not only this,
but remember that Paul wrote in Romans 510
that it was while we were God's enemies
that Christ died for us and reconciled us
to God.
This means
that in Christ we have the freedom and
responsibility
to not only forgive other Christians,
but also to love and forgive
unbelievers.
If we truly believe this,
and we live it out,
imagine what this can do for our marriages,
for our relationships with our children,
for our relationships with our parents, or with
our siblings,
or with our neighbors.
Because in Christ we are a forgiving people,
we have the freedom and the power to
be a forgiving
people.
If you are unforgiving
and resentful
and proud,
perhaps the chains of a sinful nature still
bind you.
Because in Christ, we are
a forgiving people,
we are to be a forgiving
people.
If you are in Christ, resentment
is not your master.
Praise the Lord. More importantly,
not only is resentment not your master, but
sin is no longer your master. Which brings
us to our second heading this morning, the
the freedom of being
like Christ.
The freedom of being like Christ.
Christ not only justifies you by removing the
guilt of your sin,
he also sanctifies you by removing the corruption
of sin, breaking its power over you.
Look what Paul writes in verse 5.
For if we have been united with Jesus
in a death like his,
we shall certainly be united with him in
a resurrection
like his.
The word translated as united
carries the sense of being planted together,
of being
fused or engrafted.
The image is that of a believer
who was dead in his sin,
but was fused with Christ in his death
and buried with him or planted
with him as it were.
What happens next is best described by Paul
in 1st Corinthians 15 verses 42 to 45
where he writes,
so it is with the resurrection of the
dead.
What is sown is perishable.
What is raised is imperishable.
It is sown in dishonor.
It is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness.
It is raised in power.
It is sown a natural body. It is
raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is
also a spiritual body. Thus it is written,
the first man, Adam, became a living being.
The last Adam
became a life giving spirit.
In other words, we were perishable,
dishonorable,
and weak,
being under the power and domain of sin
and death.
But by grace, we were united to Christ
by a spirit wrought faith.
We were fused
with that glorious,
powerful,
imperishable seed.
And we were
buried or planted
or sown
with him.
Therefore,
since we were planted
and fused with Jesus,
When he was raised by the power of
God, we were raised with him and utterly
transformed.
We were sown perishable,
but raised imperishable.
We were sown in dishonor,
but raised in glory.
We were sown in weakness,
but raised in power. And not only this,
but the original Greek reveals another interesting fact
that our English translation conceals.
Verse 5 literally says,
that we are united to Christ,
not in a death like His, as the
ESV translates it, but that we are united
to Christ in the likeness of His death.
We are united to Christ in the likeness
of His death.
What is interesting about this is that Adam
was made in the image and likeness of
God without sin.
But since Adam sinned
at his death,
the image and likeness of God in Adam
had been corrupted
by sin.
But we are united to Christ in the
likeness of his death.
And since Christ did not sin,
the image of and likeness of God in
Christ, even at his death, was not corrupted
by sin.
So in
Christ, by virtue of our union with him,
the image and likeness of God in us
is restored.
Therefore, through our union with Christ we are
transformed,
and we are transferred
from the realm of Adam
to the realm of Christ.
From the kingdom of dust
to the kingdom
of heaven.
From the domain of sin
to the domain of righteousness.
In verses 6 7, Paul spells out the
practical implications for us. He writes,
we know that our old self was crucified
with him in order that the body of
sin might be brought to nothing,
so that we would no longer be enslaved
to sin.
For one who has died
has been set free
from sin.
Paul now personifies
the sinful nature we inherited from Adam, calling
it our old self, and referring to its
body as a body of sin.
One may choose to obey
the old self.
Since it has a body, one may feel
its tight grip
pulling us away from the well lit path
of virtue
and toward the dark and murky path of
sin.
But Paul's point is this,
that old self
does not own you anymore.
His body of sin cannot overcome you
because Christ took that old self and nailed
nailed it with him
to the cross.
In fact, Christ has brought that old self
to nothing.
And verse 7 states
that you now live under God's power, not
under bondage to sin.
This is not a future aspiration for the
Christian. In it is, in fact, a present
reality
because Christ has already
conquered
death.
Now this does not mean that Christians don't
sin anymore.
Paul is going to spend chapter 7 in
Romans explaining his own struggle and battle with
sin.
But it does mean that sin no longer
owns you, that sin no longer controls you,
that sin no longer has authority over you.
It means that since you are united to
Christ,
you have the freedom
of being like Christ,
victorious over sin.
The fact that
you battle with sin,
that you struggle against it is evidence that
it is not your master anymore.
It means that you can name your sin,
but you are no longer named by your
sin.
Since sin has lost its authority over you,
you're not in its household anymore.
Thus, there really is no such thing
as a gay Christian
or a racist Christian or an adulteress Christian,
just to name a few.
For Paul writes in Colossians 2 verses 14
and 15 that Christ not only cancelled the
record of our sin, that is to say
that he removed our guilt, but that he
also triumphed over the power of sin by
taking our sin and nailing it to the
cross.
So your sin doesn't get to name you
anymore.
Instead, through your baptism,
you bear God's name.
You don't identify with sin anymore
because the old has passed,
and the new has come. In Christ, you
are a new
creation.
So, as Christians, we identify with Christ,
and Christ identifies with us.
He reconciles us to the father,
and we reconcile to one another through him.
He is our high priest before God's throne,
and we are his ambassadors before the world,
having the freedom and the power to live
like him.
All the rich implications
of our being baptized into Christ's death,
of our being buried with him,
of our being raised with him to newness
of life are summarized by Paul in 2nd
Corinthians 5 verses 14 to 21, where he
writes the following.
Again, 2nd Corinthians 5 14 to 21.
For the love of Christ controls us. Notice,
it's not sin that controls us anymore. It's
not Adam that controls us anymore. It's not
the old man. It is the love of
Christ that controls us because we have concluded
this,
that one has died for all,
therefore all have died.
And he died for all, that those who
live might no longer live for themselves,
but for him who for their sake
died and was raised.
From now on, therefore, we regard no one
according to the flesh. Even though we once
regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard
him thus no longer.
Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is a
new creation. The old has passed away, behold
the new has come.
All this is from God
who through Christ
reconciled us to himself
and gave us the ministry
of reconciliation.
That is,
in Christ, God was reconciling
the world to himself,
not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting
to us
the message of reconciliation.
Therefore,
we are ambassadors
for Christ,
God making his appeal through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God. For our sake, he
made him to be sin who knew no
sin,
so that in him we might become
the righteousness
of God. How good it is to know
that we are reconciled to Christ, that we
are reconciled to God, that we are reconciled
to one another.
We We are not to live in shame
anymore.
The guilt of our sin is removed.
So we have the freedom to forgive, we
have the freedom to ask for forgiveness.
And, yes, that entails other people. If others
don't want to reconcile with us, what that
means for us is that we still,
through the power of Jesus Christ, have the
power, the ability, the capacity, the responsibility
to love them, to pray for them, and
to desire that they too might see the
light that by grace we have seen. So
having considered both,
the significance of being in Christ and the
freedom
of being like Christ,
we now turn to our 3rd and final
heading, the blessing of being
with Christ.
In verse 8, Paul writes,
now we have died with Christ, we believe
that we will also live with him.
The primary focus of Paul in these verses
is to assure believers
that we have the ability to live lives
of obedience.
In other words,
in the previous verses, Paul has demonstrated that
Christ has broken the power of sin over
us.
But an important corollary to this, to this
good news, is in a positive sense,
Christ has also given us the power
to obey God's will. It's not just that
sin doesn't have power over us anymore, it's
that now we have power to obey God.
In other words,
not being in bondage to sin anymore
also means that we are now free to
obey God.
We died with Christ.
This broke sin's power because Christ took our
sin and nailed it to the cross.
We also live with Christ.
This gives us power to obey because we
partake of Christ's righteous life.
What a great blessing
the preposition with
turns out to be for the Christian.
It is our union
with Christ
that enables us to enjoy the fruit of
righteous living in this life.
People may tell you that you cannot overcome
certain sins,
but that's not true
Because you are not alone.
You are with Christ.
Or better yet,
Christ is with you. Both in the chain
breaking power of his death,
and in the purifying power of his life.
In verses 9 and 10, Paul writes, we
know that Christ being raised from the dead
will never die again. Death no longer has
dominion over him.
For the death he died, he died to
sin
once for all,
but the life he lives,
he lives to God.
Christ did not die because death had any
power over him.
Instead,
Christ willingly
sacrificed himself to pay for the sins of
his people.
But now that he has done
it, he has accomplished his mission to redeem
his church. It is finished. He has paid
the price to purchase us.
We now belong to him.
He has the receipt.
His
hands, his side,
his feet bear witness to his payment.
Since death has no claim on his sheep
anymore,
it has no power over our shepherd either.
He will never
die again.
Because he was the perfect
spotless sacrifice,
the father accepted that sacrifice. His once for
all death was enough.
Thus, the author of Hebrews writes in Hebrews
10 14,
for by a single offering,
Christ has perfected
for all time
those who are being
sanctified.
This is why reformed churches have councils,
but not altars,
and pastors,
but not priests,
Because there are no sacrifices being offered in
our churches anymore.
Christ,
once for all, sacrificed to redeem his people
was sufficient.
So our Lord neither offered is sorry. So
our Lord is neither offered up on an
altar, nor is he hanging on a cross.
Instead, as verse 10 tells us, he is
alive,
and he lives to God,
ever interceding
for us as our high priest.
So Paul concludes
in verse 11,
so you also must consider yourselves dead to
sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
The word translated as consider
is the same word that Paul used in
Romans 4:3,
where he wrote that Abraham believed God and
it was counted to him. It was considered
for him as righteousness.
The word that means it is the word
that means to reckon something is true, to
credit something is true, to impute
something
as true.
Paul says, you must consider yourselves
dead to sin and alive to God.
This is exactly
what God considers you.
God considers you to be justified
and sanctified before him.
He considers you righteous
and holy.
And the reason for this
is that you are truly
united
to Christ who is righteous
and holy.
God makes you clean by imputing
Christ's righteousness
to you. And what God makes clean, you
must not call common.
Even though Muhammad Ali's birth name was Cassius
Clay Junior,
he really was not named after his father.
Rather, both he and his father were named
after Cassius Marcellus Clay,
a wealthy
19th century politician
who had once been a slave owner, but
who had become
a staunch supporter of the abolitionist
cause in America.
It's somewhat ironic, therefore, that Ali had forsaken
that name, calling it his slave name.
In adopting Islam,
Ali may have gotten a new name, but
he remained as spiritually enslaved
as ever.
That is because as we have seen today,
there's only one man who can break the
chains of slavery
and he didn't write the Quran.
Unlike Cassius Marcellus Clay,
Jesus did not become an abolitionist after owning
slaves.
Instead, Paul,
while he himself is in chains in Rome,
writes for us in Philippians the following
verses regarding Jesus.
He says that of Jesus that though he
was in the form of God,
he did not count equality with God a
thing to be grasped.
But he emptied himself
by taking the form of a servant, the
form of a slave,
being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, he humbled
himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore,
God has highly exalted him and bestowed on
him the name that is above every name,
So that at the name of Jesus every
knee should bow in heaven
and on earth and under the earth, and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord
for the glory of God the father.
So remember the significance of being in Christ.
Because he died on the cross, you are
no longer guilty before God.
And live in the freedom
of being like Christ. Because he took the
form of a slave,
you are no longer in bondage to sin.
And enjoy the blessing of being with Christ
because he humbled himself. You have been given
his name and exalted with him to glory.
So Christian,
don't live like a slave to sin.
Live
like you belong
to your savior. Let's pray.