Romans 6:1–14

0:00 Good morning, brothers and sisters, it is so good to be with you this morning. If you don't know me, my name is Chris Gaiman, I am one of the elders here, and it is a joy to come and preach the Word of God to you this morning. This morning we will be in the book of Romans, Romans chapter 6, I believe it's going to be on page 942 in your pew Bibles if you want to turn there, and you'll probably want to turn there because we will be all over the first half of this chapter. So a couple weeks ago, I was asked to preach this last sermon of the year, and I had been trying to memorize portions of Romans chapter 6 in my own fight against sin, and I thought it would be helpful to memorize it, so I thought, well, this is going on in the noggin up here, so I might as well just preach on Romans chapter 6 as I've been memorizing it.

0:45 And then I started looking into it and studying it and becoming more familiar with it, and I realized this is a phenomenal passage to preach at the end of a year. It's a phenomenal passage to preach at the end of a year because for many of us, you know, some of you people, you know, make New Year's resolutions and change your life in better ways every single year. I don't know how you do that, but good for you. But a lot of us come to the end of a year and we look over the past year and we start asking questions about it. We start seeing its failures, we start seeing its joys, its successes, and we start evaluating it and thinking through it. And over all of that, Romans chapter 6 is a great passage because it tells us what is true of us regardless of what year we had. And it gives us strength and energy and faithfulness to run after Christ. So maybe this past year was not a good year for you. Maybe it was like a bit of a fail. A couple months ago, the Carlsons and my family went out to ice cream after church, and we went to the ice cream shop nearby. I don't know what it's called. And it has one of those metal tables that's like bolted to the ground. And the kids were kind of getting up on the table

1:49 and jumping off this table, and my youngest son, Noah, whom I love greatly, was sitting on the edge of this table, and I went to go take him off, and he said, no, Dad, I can do it. And instead of getting his legs out in front of him and landing on his legs, he just leaned forward and just, you know, pure, the most pure face plant I've ever seen in my entire life occurred right there. Eric laughed at him. I couldn't believe it. It was terrible. I kind of chuckled, too. I asked Noah if he'd be okay if I shared that story? And he said, what story? And I explained it to him and he said, I don't remember that. And I said, I bet you don't. Maybe that was your 2024. Maybe great excitement, great hope, and just an absolute face plant. And you come to the end of the year in despair over your sin. Or maybe 2024 isn't just a face plant, but maybe it's just a year where you're kind of like the Dawn Treader in that one chapter where it just gets out into the ocean and there's no current, there's no wind, there's no movement.

2:51 You're just kind of listless. You're just existing. You're not sure what you're supposed to be doing. You don't know which way is right and which way is wrong. You're just afloat. You don't know what to do. Or maybe this year was a great year for you. Maybe this year you loved God and saw sins conquered. And praise the Lord if that's you. Well, regardless if you feel like this year was a bust or if this year was listless or maybe this year was encouraging to you, Romans 6 is going to give you the theology and the fuel to what to do. For some of you, that will encourage you in faithfulness.

3:24 For some of you, it's just going to pick you up and get you back. And that's what we're going to be talking about this morning. So let's read Romans 6 and dive into this passage. 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 are 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.

3:59 For if we've been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old man 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've 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.

4:34 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. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members as instruments for righteousness. Amen and hallelujah. Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, you who are our rock and our redeemer.

5:06 Brothers and sisters, the main idea that I want to explore with you this morning, the main thing I want to drive at is if you are a Christian, or just to say it like this, Christian, you are dead to sin and you are alive to God because you are united to Jesus Christ. Christian, you are dead to sin and alive to God because you are united to Jesus Christ. Therefore, go live as a free man to God. Therefore, go live as a free man to God. I'm going to break that down into three points, and they roughly break down into the paragraph distinctions there in the ESV.

5:38 The first one is going to be that first paragraph. We're going to be looking at the foundation of why you are dead to sin and alive to God, the foundation, and that is union with Christ. We'll talk about that. That's the foundation. That second paragraph, we are going to be looking at the reality. What does it mean that we're dead to sin and alive to God? What does that actually mean on the ground, the reality of it? And then thirdly, that third paragraph, we're going to be looking at the Christian life. What do we do with that? What do we do with that knowledge and how do we lean into it? How do we apply it? So the foundation, the reality, the life, all of this centered around dead to sin, alive to God.

6:14 You know, I think for many of us, when we think about salvation, we think about, you know, Jesus died on the cross and the wrath of God was removed from us and the punishment that we deserve was removed from us. And so Jesus dealt with the penalty of sin in his death and resurrection. Hallelujah. Amen. And then we look forward to the end and we say, well, Jesus will one day deal with the presence of sin. He will deal with how sin still infects everything. He's going to eradicate it, remove it, and we will walk in freeness of life and newness of life. But there's this gap in between the penalty of sin being removed and the presence of sin being taken care of.

6:46 And that gap is our lives that we live now, where we don't have the fullness of the promise yet. And that gap is what Paul is talking about. Paul wants you to realize that the death of Jesus is not just to get rid of the penalty and to get you into heaven. He wants you to realize the death and resurrection of Jesus means something for the power of sin in your life today. Paul wants you to be a free man. So this is my goal this morning. I just want to encourage this church as you look forward in 2024 as you look or 2025 as you look back into 2024. I want to encourage you that you can walk with God because God has done everything for you in Jesus Christ. That's what we're looking at this morning. Okay, so point number one, foundation of union. The foundation is union with Christ. So we go hop back into the text here, verses 1 and 2. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may abound? So Paul starts off with these two questions, and these questions follow on the heels of chapter 5.

7:45 Paul ends chapter 5. You can see, if you just glance at the page a little bit, verse 20, he says, now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. So Paul's been arguing this entire doctrine, this entire idea that because of what Jesus Christ has done, we are now, we can now stand right before God. We are justified by faith alone. We can stand right before the throne. And God will look at us on that final day and say, you have the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And that news is so great. It's so amazing. It's so awesome. It's so overwhelming.

8:20 that even if sin increases, grace just covers it up. As sin goes up, grace is just all the more. It's all the more greater. It would be like trying to exhaust the grace of God for the Christian would be like trying to fill the Grand Canyon with five-gallon buckets of water. You just can't exhaust it. You can't fill it up. You can't overdo it. The grace of God is so powerful, so large, so huge, that even where sin increases, grace increases all the more. Well, that obviously, then, just brings up a very simple question. It doesn't take a, you know, a philosophy professor to think of this question. This question is very simple. Okay, well, if sin increases and grace increases all the more, then why not sin more and just get more grace? Why not have an excuse for sin and get more grace from it? Now, you have to read Paul well here because you could see, you could say that Paul is just angry and he brings up this objection because he's just angry about it and just wants to kick it to the curb and just be like, ah, that's dumb and move on. But that's not what

9:20 Paul's doing here. Paul brings up this objection because Paul wants to talk about this issue. Paul brings up this objection because he wants to start unfolding the glories of what it means that you are united to Jesus Christ. He's like Gimli who just wants to get into the minds of Moria and look around. Paul wants to go here. He's not being forced here. He's excited to go here. This is where he wants to go. So here's the question. Should we continue in sin so that grace may abound? When Paul first answers it, you see there in verse 2, by no means. It's an emphatic no. I think the King James says, God forbid, don't think that way. Don't think like that whatsoever. It's not what is going on. Paul doesn't want us to think like this. And Christian, just as a quick side note here, you do realize that there is never an excuse for sin in your life.

10:11 There's never a moment of your life where you have an excuse for sin. Oh, I was just tired. That's not an excuse for sin. Oh, she's just really annoying. That's not an excuse for sin. Ah, the urges were just so strong. That's not an excuse for sin. Well, if I sin, I get more grace from God. That's not an excuse for sin. There's no excuse for sin. By no means. Don't think about it. Don't let it come into your mind, Paul says. We do not continue in sin that grace may abound. And then he goes and he gives us the answer why that is. And I think the answer is just utterly shocking.

10:42 So if I were to sit down with a couple of you and I were to ask, you know, hey, why shouldn't we sin? Why should we not sin? I think I get a lot of good answers. I think some of you would say, well, it's dishonoring to God. Amen. Some of you would say, oh, it brings reproach upon the name of Christ. Amen. Oh, it harms the church. Amen. Oh, it destroys the image of God in another person. It destroys the image of God in the sinner himself. Amen and amen. All those things you can find in the Bible. But all of those things are not what Paul brings up here. Paul, look at his answer.

11:14 Paul answers the question by saying, he asked another question, how can we who died to sin still live in it? How can we who have died to sin still live in it? You see what Paul is saying. He's not interested in the consequences of sin. He's interested in as to who you are. What has actually happened to you when you became a Christian? And he says, look, you died to sin. It's no longer who you are. You don't any longer live in that realm. You don't any longer live under the power of sin. You died to sin, and therefore you don't continue in it because you're dead to it.

11:49 Maybe a silly illustration here. So imagine I'm a surgeon. I'm not a surgeon, but imagine I'm a surgeon, and I go and I catch a fish. All right, and I take this fish to my surgeon table. This is going to kind of sound like Sid from Toy Story. I'm not trying to be weird here, but anyway, I take the gills out, and I put lungs in its place. and I take off its little fins, and I put arms and legs, right? This thing's a new creation now, right? We put it down. I don't know what you want to call the thing. It just, you know, scurries around, okay? It's a weird illustration.

12:19 I get it. Do you get the point, though? The point is that it's a new creation. It's a totally new creation. It can't live in the ocean anymore. It now breathes air. It's now made to walk on land. It can jump back into the ocean, for sure. It can go for a swim in that realm, but it cannot live there. And that is Paul's point. he's trying to tell you, Christian, you are something totally new. You're something totally unique. You're something totally reborn in Jesus Christ. How can you go back to the realm of sin when you have been made something completely different? That's how he answers the question.

12:54 You see what Paul is saying here. Brother, sister, if you're a Christian, you're a new creation. The old is gone. The new has come. But that would make us stop and raise our hands and say, okay, Paul, I hear that. That sounds great. But let's, come on, Paul. I mean, I'm a pretty bad guy. And I sin way more than what I ought to. And oftentimes, sin seems like it has dominion in my life. It seems like it has control in my life. So I have two questions for you, Paul. When did I die to sin? And how did I die to sin? When did I die to sin? And how did I die to sin? And Paul, with a big smile on his face, says, oh, that's great. That's exactly what I wanted to talk about. So verses 3 and 4. 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.

13:53 See what Paul says here? Paul says that when this happened and how this happened is answered when you were baptized into Jesus Christ. That is when you died to sin. That is how you died to sin. Now, a quick just side note on this passage about baptism. It would be easy to read these couple verses and to think, oh, Paul is teaching that when somebody gets baptized back here, that's the moment when they die and rise again. Some people call this baptismal regeneration. And that's emphatically not what Paul is teaching here.

14:24 And we know that it's emphatically not what Paul is teaching here because if he is teaching that in verses 3 and 4 of chapter 6, then you honestly should just rip out chapters 1 to 5 of the book of Romans, crumple them up, throw them into a fire, because they're basically meaningless. He spent all of chapter 4 trying to show you that Abraham was justified like years, like decades, before he was ever circumcised. And so it would make no sense for Paul to come here and say, well, now, actually, you need to be baptized in order to be regenerated. It would make no sense with the entire argument that Paul has been laying down in the book of Romans.

14:57 So what is he doing? Well, he's just doing what the New Testament understands as a whole. That baptism is linked with salvation in the sense that when you get saved, you become, you go and you get baptized. You're commanded by Christ to be baptized to join a church. The New Testament doesn't conceive of an unbaptized, unchurch-membered Christian. That's how the New Testament thinks about us. And therefore, Paul can just talk about baptism like this. He's using baptism, linked to salvation, to illustrate the point of death and new life. When you were baptized, you went into the water as if you died.

15:28 And when you came out of the baptismal waters, it was symbolic of you rising to new life. That's what baptism signifies. That's what he's using baptism to illustrate and to bolster his point that you died with Christ and you rose again. All right, so that's the baptism piece. But his point's not to discuss baptism. That's not what he's really interested in. What he's really interested in is union with Christ. What he's really interested in is all this language that we see, words like into, with Christ, united with Christ, all this language that unites us to Jesus Christ.

16:01 The main thing that Paul is driving at here is that being united to Jesus means that anything that has happened to Jesus or will happen to Jesus has also happened to you and will happen to you. It means that the things that are true of Jesus are also true of you. It's not a doctrine that we think about very often, but it's a glorious doctrine. It's a wondrous doctrine. It's incredible. What happens to Jesus happens to me. If he dies, I, by faith, am united to him, and I die with him. If he rises again, I will rise again.

16:32 It's kind of like having a child. Not quite, but it's kind of like having a child. So we have a two-year-old, Phoebe. She's absolutely adorable, and we love her very, very much. But two-year-olds are basically united to their parents, right? Like, where we go, she goes, right? She might be sitting there playing or something. We just pick her up, and she's like, I guess we're going over here now. And we go over here, and we, you know, put her in the car seat, and I guess we're going to this place. And what we eat, she eats. She takes our name upon herself, our ways of life. She goes where we go. She stays where we stay. She's brought into conformity with the ways of our house. And similar to that is union with Christ.

17:04 It's like Christ puts you in this car that he's driving, and if he drives through Hades, you're going with him. if he makes it all the way to heaven, you're in the back seat. You're strapped in for the ride. You're united to Jesus Christ. But you know, it's actually far more glorious than just you're in the back seat of a car of Jesus. And that's verse 5. Look at this. For if we've been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. That language there, united with him, said twice, is just kind of literally put together the words put together with him and it's it's botanical language it's language of of grafting if you don't know what grafting is if you have an alive plant or an alive tree or something like that you can take a dead branch from another tree or you take a branch from a dead tree and you take that branch and you can graft it into the alive tree and then the life of the tree starts passing into this dead branch and giving it life. That's the language that he's

18:05 saying. So it's not that you're just in the back seat of the car with Jesus and you go where he goes. It's that his very life is connected to yours in such a way that the very spirit that animated him from the grave, raised by the glory of the Father, is now animating you. You are united to Jesus and therefore you have all the benefits and blessings that Jesus has because you're united to him. Anything that is in his tree is now becoming a part of you. You were grafted into him. You are united to him. Amen. So this doctrine of union with Christ is this massive doctrine in the New Testament, and it has like a hundred facets. It's incredible. You can just look at, why are you justified? Well, you're justified because you're hidden in Christ. You're united to Christ. And when God looks at you on the final day and says, you have the righteousness of Jesus, that's because you're with him. When Jesus stands before the throne, I mean, sometimes we think about the final judgment, like we're going to stand there and give an account. And maybe that's how it works. I'm not exactly sure. But I think maybe one, a better image to be, would just be at the final judgment, God looks at Jesus and says, who are you united to? And Jesus says, this church, this universal

19:10 church. And then we just walk in. Because we're united Jesus, we gain eternity. That's the doctrine that he's getting at, and he's trying to link it to death and life. Now, our second point, we'll deal with more of the details of what that looks like, but just a couple things to think about with this first point. First, if you are not a Christian, if you're not a Christian here this morning, this is the heart of the gospel, and it might be different than what you typically think of when you hear Christians talk. Christians, sorry, you might think that the gospel is just a get-out-of-hell-free card, right? I trusted in Jesus, I got my get-out-of-hell-free card, and I no longer go to hell. But the doctrine of salvation and union with Christ is far more amazing, far more glorious. What Paul is arguing here is not just that you had some transaction that helped you out. He's arguing that you are united to God himself in the person of Jesus Christ. You have a new life in him.

20:04 Christianity is not just a, hey, we'll take care of you someday. It is new life today. It's a turnover today. Are you burdened by the weight of sin? Do you know a judgment's coming? You can have life today. You can be united to Christ today. Come to him and believe. Christian, for you, do you ever stop to think that salvation, in union with Christ gets us here, salvation to you is an incredibly deeply personal thing to Jesus Christ? It's personal to him. Sometimes we think of salvation as just merely transactional. Like Jesus came to our bank account and there was much of sin in it, and he withdrew the sin, and he deposited his righteousness, and all that's true.

20:47 That's wonderful. That's great doctrine. Praise the Lord. But this union with Christ means that Jesus has taken your salvation personally upon him, and he has united himself to you. So what is true of him is true of you. That means, Christian, that Jesus wanted you to be united to him. That was his choice. He loved you, and he wanted you to spend eternity with him, so he united you to him. That means that you will make it all the way home. He's going to be in eternity and in heaven forever, guaranteed. There's no doubt that he won't be, and if you're united to him, you will be there as well. Or, more to our text, you know that Jesus Christ wants you to learn how to defeat the power of sin in your life.

21:37 You know that Jesus Christ wants you to walk as a free man. So what did he do? He united you to him in his death and in his resurrection so that you would be free. Some of us live as if this time between salvation and the new heavens and the new earth just needs to be like endured. It just needs to be, we're just gonna slog through this and then bam, the glories will come. Christianity is telling you more than that. Christianity is telling you that you can have life now. You can have freedom from sin now. You can have a face-to-face relationship with God now.

22:10 Union with Christ says that you're not alone and that God is on your side. He wants you to be a new person and live as a new person. He is for you, not against you. Christian, let that encourage you this morning. So moving on to the second paragraph then. So we brought up, you know, union with Christ, and that's the basis. We're united with Jesus in his death, and we're united with Jesus in his resurrection. but okay what does that mean how does that actually play itself out what does that what does that look like what does that mean and Paul then in this next paragraph goes to explain that so a quick outline on the paragraph verse five there we've already read it but he says look if you've been united with him in a death like his we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his united with him in a death like his is one topic united in a resurrection is another topic verses six to seven deal with united in death versus eight to ten basically deal with united in life. Okay, so Paul kind of gives a broad, you know, overview, and then he pulls these two things apart in the next couple verses. So we'll start with six to seven. What does it mean that we are

23:12 united with Jesus Christ in his death? Verse six, we know that our old man 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. Here, Paul gives us the in order that clause right there in the middle you saw that we were crucified with him in order that what was the reason what was the purpose why were we united with him in death were we united with him so that the body of sin would be brought to nothing a couple things to think about here first the the old man what is the old man i know your bible probably says self man's a better word i don't have time to prove to you this morning but it's a theological word it's a better word if you want to you could cross out self in your bible and put the word man it's a better word okay we know that the old man, what is the old man? Well, the old man is who we were when we lived under the dominion of sin and death. That's the old man. All right? We know that the old man was crucified. Why does Paul use the word crucified here? Why does he use crucified? Well, in one, it's just getting back to union with Christ. Jesus was crucified, and so therefore we're crucified, Paul says in Galatians,

24:15 have been crucified with Christ. So in one sense, it's just picking up on the same language that happened to Jesus. But I think there's something else here going on as well. And that Paul uses the word crucified because it's a vivid term. It's a violent term. The word crucifixion, the word cross, to people at this time, if they heard that, they would shy away from it. It's like hearing Voldemort. It's just like, oh no, I don't want to hear that. I don't want to talk about that. I don't want to think about that. And Paul brings it up. He says, look, our old man was crucified. What does that tell you? Well, it tells you that God was on a mission to kill the old man in you. It tells you that God wanted to destroy the old man in you. You didn't just fade into death with the old man. No, God went after it, and he crucified it with his son at the cross. The old man is dead. Well, for what reason? In order that the body of sin, if you think they're body of sin, you might be tempted to think, okay, the body's sinful, and the spiritual's good, and we just need to get rid of the bad

25:17 body and, you know, rise again to the spiritual life. That's not what Paul is talking about with body of sin. That would be a dualist view. The body is good. The resurrection will be bodies, right? So that's not what Paul's talking about. Body of sin is just kind of saying this old man thing. It's a body that has been given over to sin and to the realm of sin. We know the old man was crucified with him in order that this body of sin might be brought to nothing, might be brought to an end might cease to be. Now that's, that's theological. It's amazing. It's theological. So we say, okay, Paul, what do you mean? Like practically, Paul, what do you mean? And he tells you in the next phrase, and it's just a wonderful phrase. He says, look, what I'm saying is that you're no longer, that you would no longer be enslaved to sin. That's why Jesus Christ, That's why we are crucified with Jesus, so that we would no longer be a slave to sin.

26:12 And we don't think about this enough. I mean, going back to my earlier point, if I was to sit down with a bunch of you and say, why did Jesus Christ die for you? There'd be a lot of great answers once again. To remove the wrath of God, to bring us eternity. Oh, that's great. Amen. It'd be really rare, I think, to hear a Christian say, oh, Jesus died so that I would no longer be a slave to sin. Jesus died on the cross, and I died with him. I was united with him in his crucifixion so I would no longer be a slave. Do you realize, Christian, that the thing that you struggle with the most, Jesus died to set you free from?

26:48 Do you realize that Jesus wants you to walk in holiness today? And so he came to this world to crush the power of sin over you. He came to this world to be crucified and you crucified with him. He came to destroy the slave master of sin that had dominion over your life. And he did it by uniting himself to you in his death. When he died, your old man died with him if you were united to Jesus Christ. So Paul can conclude with this verse 7. It's just a statement of fact.

27:19 It's just a maxim. It's just, the one who has died has been set free from sin. That's the principle. If you've died with Christ, you're free from sin. I mean, there's nothing else to say about it. The wages of sin is death. Nothing else to say about it. The person who dies, the person who dies with Christ, he's free from sin. He's an entirely new man. He is no longer a slave. Brother, sister, the death that Jesus died and you being united to him by faith means that you are no longer a slave to sin. That might be a shock to some of you this morning. That might be something that you're like, I don't know how to get that in.

27:50 We'll talk about that in a little bit. But it's true. It's true regardless of how you feel. You are no longer a slave to sin. You have the ability and the new life to follow follow and obey and love God. We're turning to verse 8 then, 8 to 10, so the second section of this, right, we're going to deal now with union with Christ in life. So he says, 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.

28:21 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. Paul here turns to this imagery of life. we died with Christ, and if we die with Christ, we're going to live with Christ. And before we pull all that apart, I want us just to notice very briefly, very quickly here, that there's just a lot of confidence in the Apostle Paul here. He just seems to be able to say, we know that Christ being raised from the dead, and we believe that we will live with him. Paul is just utterly confident that he is with Christ, and he'll be with Christ in eternity. Some of you, some of us, You need a good dose of Pauline confidence this morning.

29:05 And you know how you get that Pauline confidence? You stop thinking only about yourself and you start thinking about all the glories of Jesus Christ dead and resurrected for you. And by faith in him, you're united to him so that you can be absolutely confident, brother, sister, that if he was raised from the dead and you're with him, you're making it. You're going all the way home with him. At any rate, the confidence that Paul has here is based in the fact that Christ was raised from the dead. Historically, actually got out of the grave. Christian faith rests on this historical fact. Jesus Christ got up from the dead. And therefore, Paul says he's not going to die again. Death doesn't have dominion over him. And you stop and you say, okay, hold on. I know a lot of people that have died in the Bible, and they died again.

29:56 I got Lazarus in mind, I got, you know, Old Testament people. I mean, why is it that the death of Jesus Christ means that Jesus now will never die again? Why can he not die again? Why did other people die again, but not him? Well, the answer is the link that the Bible makes from literally page one, that all death is a result of sin. If you sin, you're going to die. And so when I die, I will end up in the realm of death.

30:27 I don't know how this works, but say there's this, you know, this desk clerk person. And I walk in, and they pull out this stack of papers, and they say, Chris Gaiman? And I say, yeah, Chris Gaiman. And she's going to be like, those are all your sins. And there's a lot of them. And you totally deserve the dominion of death because the wages of sin is death. Here's the evidence. Come on in. This is where you belong. Nazareth, when he was pulled back from the grave, still had sin. That's why he died, because that is where he belonged, because of sin. Jesus just pulled him back. But when Jesus shows up at this desk clerk, death clerk, maybe, if you will, when he shows up at this desk clerk, the guy will say, okay, what's your name? It's Jesus of Nazareth. Okay, type that in, and just big red flashing letters, no sin, no sin, no sin, holy, righteous, good. It's like, okay, that's a problem. Excuse me,

31:28 Jesus, the computer is saying that you've never sinned before, but you're in the realm of death, and the only way you get to the realm of death is if you've sinned, so clearly you had to have sinned to be here. And Jesus says, no, no, nobody takes my life, I lay it down. I'm here because I want to be here. And I'm here to crush this dominion. I'm here to steal the keys of death and Hades. I'm here to declare to death that it no longer has dominion over my people. That's why Jesus goes to the grave.

32:01 The gears of sin leading to death are suddenly just grinded to a halt when Jesus walks in there because he doesn't belong there. And therefore he takes dominion over the whole thing. Why does Paul say that death no longer has dominion over him? Because Jesus has dominion over death. He is Lord of heaven. He is Lord of earth. He is Lord of all things under the earth. He is King of kings and Lord of lords. All death does now is grovel at the feet of Jesus. And on the final day when Jesus says to death, give me all your people, death has nothing to say.

32:31 Jesus is Lord of death. Brother, sister, you're united to that man. You are united to the God-man, Jesus Christ, who has dominion over death. And therefore, death has no dominion over you. Yes, you might die. You're getting out of that grave. That is Jesus' realm. And his people are there, and he will get them out. You've been united with Jesus in life.

33:02 He has come out of the grave, and therefore we have all confidence that we will too. He summarizes all this in verse 10. For the death he died, he died to sin. Once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. What does it mean he died to sin there? Well, he didn't die to sin like we died to sin. Christ never sinned, right? He didn't have to die to sin like we do. This is just getting at all the scripture verses in the Bible, that he was numbered among the transgressors, or that he became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God. He was treated as if he was a sinner. Jesus entered into this world, this fallen realm, and then was treated as if he was a fallen man himself at the cross.

33:36 God laid on him the iniquity of us all. He bore our sins and was numbered among the transgressors. That's what it means that he died to sin. Once for all, once again, confidence, right? Completely, it's a once for all done thing. You could take, basically, you could take the entire book of Hebrews and pick up this once for all thing and just try to plug the entire book of Hebrews into once for all. Because the argument of Hebrews is basically, look, Jesus is the final end of it all. right? When Jesus dies and rises again, died and rose again, it was once for all. There's nothing else to be done. Jesus has accomplished everything for us. That's why he says it is finished on the cross. It's once for all. And then it says, and then it says, but the life he lives, he lives to God. And that just means that he lives before the face of God. He lives to the glory of God. And once again, Christian, you're united with him. So what does it mean that we are united to him in life?

34:32 Well, it means, Christian, that you are completely free to live to God. No matter what happened this past year, you are free to live to God, to honor God, to glorify God. See the two poles here? You're no longer a slave to sin. Sin has no mastery over you. You have new life in Christ to live to God. That's what Paul is getting at in the center paragraph. let me summarize it like this. The defining feature of your life that Paul wants you to see is that because you're united with Jesus, you are actually fully, once for all, dead to sin, like dead to sin, and actually fully, once for all, alive to God. In other words, you're a free man. This is why Exodus, I had Exodus read at the beginning of the service, because it would be one thing for God to deliver the people out of Egypt. That'd be one thing he could do. He could go in, do the plague thing, and he could take his people out. But the problem is that Egypt was still a threat. They could come back and try to reclaim their slaves. That's why the Red Sea is so important

35:38 because God doesn't just deliver them from Egypt. He destroys Egypt. He crushes it down. And that Christian is what he has done for you with the realm of sin and death. He did not just save you to get you to the promised land. He also crushed any power that would come against you because you're united with him you are free from sin and death christian look you can hold your head high not just because the threat of hell has been extinguished by christ but also because you have been given the gift to live in obedience today you're no longer under the realm of sin and death it means christian that everything that you need for life and godliness is already yours in Jesus Christ. I think that Greg is going to be opening up the book of Ephesians next week, and Ephesians chapter 1 is all this. I mean, we've been seated with Jesus in the heavenly places. We were loved before the foundation of the world. We were predestined to adoption of the sons, all these glorious things that you have, and you have them now, Christian. You have them now because you have died with Christ and rose again with him. It leads to our final question. Okay, so what does

36:43 that mean? How do we walk in obedience today? What do we do with that? And luckily, this is one of the cases in the Bible where Paul just is eager to answer that question. So we turn to our last couple verses and think through that. Verse 11, so you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. Paul gives three commands there, three imperatives. The first is to consider yourselves dead to sin. Secondly, don't let sin reign in your mortal bodies. And third, don't present your members to sin, but present your members to God. Three commands. The first one is dealing mainly with how you think. The second one is dealing mainly with what you kind of say no to, what you put off. And the third one is dealing mainly with what you put on, what you give yourself

37:45 too. How you think, what you put off, what you give yourself to. Those are the three. You should know, by the way, that in the book of Romans, these are the first imperatives. These are the first commandments in the book of Romans. For all the doctrine of man's sinfulness in one to three, for all the wonder of chapter three and chapter four and justification before God, for all the glory, that you are no longer in Adam, but in Christ, as we sung about earlier, Romans chapter five. For all of that, it isn't until Paul has tried to prove to you that you are no longer in the realm of sin and death, that you are a free man, that he then starts to tell you what you ought to do. These are the first commands in the book of Romans. Very well then, let's look at the first one, consider yourselves dead to sin. Note, Christian, that the command is not, you need to go die to sin. You need to go be alive to God, as if that's something that you can actually conjure up,

38:47 as if that is something that you can actually do. How crushing would a command from God be, hey, you need to go be alive, even though you're dead. No, no, no, he says it's already true. You're already dead. You're already alive, and what you need to do is you need to start considering that to be true. The command is telling you that you need to learn and study what Paul has been saying up to this point and to consider it to be true. In other words, the fight of sanctification, the fight of holiness, always starts with comparing what the word of God says to you to be true against the 10,000 voices from the world, the flesh, and the devil that are lying in your mind. You take those two things together, and you go to war. Paul isn't looking for action here necessarily from our hands, from our eyes, and whatnot. He's looking for an Armageddon-like warfare in your mind. He wants you to take thoughts captive, and he doesn't want you to leave prisoners. Paul wants sanctification to start with what you consider yourself to be. And if all of

39:48 this is true, you are definitionally holy and completely dead to sin and alive to God. So Christian, when you think about who you are, you know what comes to your mind? What do you think about? Do you think about your accomplishments? Do you think about your sins, weighed down by them? Or maybe when you think over the last year, what's discouraging to you? Or what's encouraging to you. Take all those things. Understand all those things. Ponder those things. But whatever any of the answers to any of that is, it all must fall under the banner, under the umbrella, under the main idea. I, Chris Gaiman, because I am united to Christ, I am dead to sin, and I am alive to God. And none of those other things define me. That is the foundational thing that defines the believer.

40:44 And church, very practically, this is why we're a church. We're here to proclaim that message to unbelievers. We're here to press that message into one another. When you get together with one another, when you have coffee or you have a couple over for dinner or whatever, is this part of the language? As people, as they seek help, as they need help, are you saying, are we saying to one another, brother, sister, you're dead to sin. You're alive to God. you're dead to sin. You're alive to God. It's a wonderful thing. The first thing you need to do, brothers and sisters, is consider yourselves dead to sin, alive to God, and then press it into every single member of this church. Get this message out there. It will give you everything you need to begin life in godliness. Secondly, his second command is don't let sin reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey its passions. And once again, if all the theology that he has been saying isn't true, then this command is absolutely cruel. It would be like coming to a slave who is in chains,

41:47 whipped, and just totally discouraged, and just kicking them and saying, get up, stop being a slave. Why are you there? What are you doing? It would be a terrible thing to command to people who have not been set free. But Paul says, you've been set free, and so therefore you don't let sin reign. In other words, you don't go back to the realm of slavery to sin. You don't let it reign to obey its passions. Note here first, incredibly, there is an assumption by Paul that you can obey this verse. Some of you need to hear that there's an assumption by Paul that you are capable because of Christ and because of everything he's given you and the work of the Spirit and the Word and the church and all of it, all those gifts that have been given to you, you are capable of saying no to sin. There is such thing as a hardy, good, old-fashioned Christian no. No, I will not give myself to that. No, I will not believe that ideology. No, I will not follow the world in this way. No, I have been, I am dead to sin. I'm alive to God. So I will not present my body. I will not

42:55 let sin reign over my, or let sin reign to make me obey its passions. There's a good old-fashioned Christian know that you can have. There's an assumption by Paul that you can obey this, but also the Christian still lives in a world where temptation with passions are still coming at us. We haven't gotten to the fulfillment of all things where suddenly we just don't even have any temptation anymore. Paul here assumes that we still have passions that can go awry. We can still sin. So Paul is not bringing this up to try to teach you that you can become perfect in this life.

43:29 That'd be absolutely foolish. It's not what Paul is teaching here in any way, shape, or form. What Paul is trying to say is not that you can become perfect. What Paul is trying to say is that you are no longer a slave. You're free from sin. You can say no to sin. So when the passions arise, you actually have the ability to say no. But Paul also wants you to know that there is no passion that has ever gripped you except what is common to man. And God provides a way of escape. I think one of the problems that we have when we think about sanctification is that too many of us just don't want to fight anymore.

44:01 We just don't want to fight anymore. What we want is to pray to God and we just want the desire just to pop out of us and then we never have to fight again. That's how many of us want sanctification to work. Now, God might do that for some people from time to time, but if you're the 99.99999% of other Christians who have ever lived, that's generally not how it works. It works because you take the truth of the gospel, you apply it to life, and you learn to pick up your sword and you learn to fight. You learn to say no, you learn to say yes to things, You learn to devote yourselves to God.

44:31 You learn to devote yourselves to one another. Look, that's why it's called the new birth, right? Like, you know, when a baby is born, it doesn't walk. And we don't judge that baby for not being able to walk. Like, it needs to be learned. It needs to grow. And that's why we're a church, because we're trying to help each other grow in holiness and sanctification. Brother, sister, if all this is true, you can fight your sin, and you should pick up the sword and go do it. Don't wait for some weird miracle to poof it all away. God wants to train up soldiers. God wants to train up Christians.

45:04 Little Christs that honor him. Get back into the fight. Lastly, he says, do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. And your members to God as instruments for righteousness. The word instruments there is probably better translated weapons. Do not present your members to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. present your members to God as instruments or as weapons for righteousness. Paul conceives here that you were once in the dark Lord's army and you were using your members, that's your hands, your eyes, your mouth, your feet. You're using it in service to the enemy. You're using it in that particular way. And he said, no, you no longer do that. You've been transferred. You're in a totally new army. You're in a totally new place now. And you are now to use your members to honor God as instruments of righteousness. You do know, Christian, that every sin that we do is just friendly fire. Every sin that we do is just turning back and pretending like we're on the other team and firing at all the glories that Christ has done for us. Now, of course, Christ

46:05 forgives all that, and he covers all that over, right? Where sin increases, grace increases all the more. And yet, Paul wants you to know, look, you have been so free that you now have the choice to present your body, your members, to Christ in his army or in the other. And Paul wants you to present the members of your body to Christ. Secondly, on this members thing, the members of your body is dealing with, like I said, our hands and our feet and our eyes. Sanctification goes all the way down. It covers everything about us. No Christian gets to say to Jesus Christ, okay, I'm happy for you to take care of, you know, 90% of my life, but 10% I want you to leave alone.

46:43 No, absolutely not. You're dead to sin. You're alive to God, like fully, finally, once and for all. And therefore, Jesus reigns over everything. Jesus gets to command you in everything. So much of the Christian fight, Christian, will be you reading the word of God and realizing just how much you have been lied to by the world, the flesh, and the devil. And you need to listen. You need to listen to him, and you need to start making a holy war against sin. You need to start fighting back against it. And you can do that because you have been made new in Christ, and you can present your members as instruments, as weapons to God. We fight against sin. Christians are to have holy minds and hearts that lead to holy actions. You are to line up, Christian, like a soldier to Christ, kill the enemy, and love and serve the church and your neighbor and the world.

47:38 You are to do all of that because you are now a soldier to Christ. You're to put off the bad and put on the good. We often think sanctification basically comes down to saying no to things. But that's like less than half. I don't know what it is, it's some percentage. It's the Christian life is opening you up to an entire new world of saying yes to a thousand things, a billion things. Yes to God, yes to holiness, yes to love, yes to repaired marriages, yes to actually engaging our children, yes to evangelism, yes to serving the church.

48:13 There's a thousand new things that Jesus brings up in the new life. And if you are just living a life trying to say no to that one thing, like you're so focused on that one thing, you're just trying to say no to it, I think part of the advice this morning would be, okay, keep, you know, trying to say no. But open yourself up to a bunch of other things. Open yourself up to all these other good things. John Owen says in Mortification of Sin that some sins are conquered not because we go at them, but because we start practicing righteousness and holiness in other areas. And that starts to backfeed into sins that seem unconquerable.

48:45 If you're under something really heavy here this morning, I think probably what's happening is that thing has just stalled you out from doing anything else good. And you think to yourself, only if I get on top of that will I be able to love and serve God. Brother, sister, you are dead to sin. You are alive to God. That's not true. Go and start serving him. Go and start loving him. Go and start loving the church. Put your members to work for Jesus Christ. to honor him, and let him work out holiness in you as you do so.

49:18 So where are you at this morning? To go back to my intro, where are you at this morning? Was last year good? Was last year bad? Was it listless? It's just floating around? Regardless of how you answer that, brother, sister, you are dead to sin. You're alive to God because you're united to Jesus Christ, and that means you are a free man now. And let this next year be a year where you strap that armor back on, pick up that sword, get back into the fight, and honor God with your members, with your life, with your mind, with everything that you are. May he be praised in all that we do.

49:53 Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this text that is so encouraging to us, so convicting to us. Father, we know that so many of us, too many of us, give ourselves to sin too much, and yet, Father, the promise of this passage is that you have provided a way for us through Christ to fight sin and to love you and to honor you. Father, I pray that this would be a church that is marked by the word holiness. I pray, Father, that those here this morning who need to hear this word would be set free.

50:23 I pray those here this morning that are already walking the good fight would just be like, yeah, I want to love God even more. I pray for those this morning that don't know where they're at, that they found some purpose here this morning and a way to get back in to the fight. Father, I pray that you would do good work from your word. We thank you for it, we praise you for it. We pray it all in Jesus' name, amen.