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we continue with Paul's very very intricate reasoning In this passage we'll be looking at verses eight through 13. through 13. and I'd like to read that pass I'd like
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to ask Jerry Burris if he'd pray for the ministry of the word this morning Romans chapter 6 chapter 6 beginning in verse 8 . now if we have died with Christ
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we believe that we shall also live with him knowing that Christ haven't been raised from the dead is never to die again death no longer is Master over him
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for the death that he died he died to sin once for all but the life that he lives he lives to God even so consider yourselves to be dead
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to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts and do not go on presenting the
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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
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instruments of righteousness to God let us pray
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you're never giving us ministers to preach and open it up to us we thank you for sending your Holy Spirit to our hearts that we may be regenerators
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be regenerators and not only able but willing to listen to your word to take instruction correction rebuke when necessary for your word is good for all
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these things and pure and righteous we thank you that you are faithful there is no other father that proves as faithful as you
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who sent your son to die for our sins in order to save us from a death we earned peace we thank you for your mercy to us and
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please open our hearts today that we may hear your word true and faithful and grow by it into those you wish us to be in Christ's
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name we pray amen amen the greatest challenge I think that we have to understanding
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what Paul is saying in these passages in the middle of Romans is the fact the reality of sins
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believers continue to sin the church sins many of Paul's letters many of much of what he had to write to his churches
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was because of sins especially in the Church of Corinth individuals individual Believers sometimes come to doubt their salvation
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because they continue to sin they continue committing sins corporately sins are always present within the church the body of Christ
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and at times they grow to the point that a very painful surgery is necessary called
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excommunication we have we have the reality the ever-present and daily reality of ongoing sins and Paul does not deny this in fact in Romans 7 he writes for the
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good that I wish I do not do but I practice the very evil that I do not wish not wish and in Galatians he writes the spirit
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Wars and struggles against the Flesh and the flesh against the spirit that we might do not do what we wish so this reality is something that Paul
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does not deny that sins continue within believers he would agree with what John writes in his letter if
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we say that we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in US in US so we've just read last week that those
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who are baptized in Christ Jesus are dead to sin and yet they keep sinning doesn't that present an incredible
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challenge to our minds to our hearts challenge of what we're reading a few weeks ago I quoted an author who who commented about faith existing and even
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triumphing in what he called a present contrary reality contrary reality a reality that is contrary to what we read in the word the truth that we read
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there a con a reality that is present not future not past I didn't I didn't used to sin I still sin ongoing sins
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ongoing sins and so how does the church stand against sin without turning the gospel into moralism well frankly not very well
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in fact throughout its history that has tended to be the direction the church takes officially institutionally when sins become a bit too much for us to
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stand we turn to moralism we turn to programs we turn to fire and brimstone preaching brimstone preaching we turn to guilt we turn to fear
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or we turn to Purgatory maybe it'll all work out there but we recognize this conundrum that we read about baptism being baptized United with Christ and Death
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Rising with his resurrection to walk a newness of life and then we see sins and we see them in the mirror so how has the church dealt with this
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well one way of dealing with it is just to acquiesce to acquiesce and to say yeah people said so what we're going to do is we're going to set up a system whereby you can get
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more forgiveness for those ongoing sins so we're going to set up a confessional where you come and say father forgive me for I have sinned and then we're going to assign penance
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that you will do in order to make an amends for the sins and then we will grant you absolution we will say absolvo your sins have been
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forgiven but pilgrimages you need to maybe buy some indulgences because we think they're sins you
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probably aren't confessing so the church acquiesces and comes up with a program to deal with the sins that we know we can't get away from
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another way of dealing with it is called asceticism that we deny ourselves any and all physical pleasures
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physical pleasures and perhaps even go a step further and inflict upon ourselves physical hardship self-abasement beating ourselves this obviously is not
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something that the majority of the church has adopted but there have been in all ages those who believe that if anything is enjoyable it must be sinful
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and that the the way to True Holiness is to deny oneself all pleasures whatsoever well Paul actually deals with this in his letter to the Colossians
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and he says that such acts of self-abasement and self-flagellation he says are of no value against the fleshly
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indulgences Jesus has already taught us in The Sermon on the Mount that sin does not begin with the act it begins with the thought and so just keeping yourself from the
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ACT does not remove covetousness from your mind lust from your eyes lies from your tongue though you don't speak him and yet think
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them they are as if they have been spoken so we don't get out through asceticism either well Protestants aren't really into confessionals and we're not really
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into self-flagellation but we're really into discipleship into discipleship That's How we'll deal with it we will develop a discipline for our lives we
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will for example we will pray for an hour a day or we will Fast for 40 days the late founder of Campus Crusade once said that since he had learned to fast
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for 40 days he doesn't sin anymore for most of us we need to do it for at least 80 days or 120 days or however long it took to starve to death
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for him to say such a thing only proves that sometimes we live too long
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that so we are actually between a rock and a hard place both individually in Reading what Paul has to say and yet recognizing that we still sin but but even more so corporately as a church we are between a
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rock and a hard place if we try to follow what Paul is saying concerning Grace then it is said that we are soft on sin on sin but if we try to attack sins then we are
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illegalistic there's no way to win unless of course we do follow Paul follow Paul and do not Veer either to the right or
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to the left Paul says how can we who died to sin still live in it the reality is not in the sinning
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though that does sadly continue the reality is in the dying and the rising of Jesus Christ because as Paul says for he in verse 7
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for he who has died is freed is freed from sin so we have this contrary present reality in front of us and that is continuing sins
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but we have the truth of scripture also in front of us that says he who has died is freed from sin and Paul says that we who have been
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baptized into Jesus Christ have been United with him into his death in other words we have died he says that so your old self has been crucified with Christ
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and as Jesus rose from the grave so also we in baptism rise to walk in newness of
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so is this just a theory is this just an ideal that really cannot be worked out practically is Paul giving us the the best of all worlds and then afterwards saying well I
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realize that the world in which you live is not like this so let's make allowances or is he in fact telling us something that is absolutely and gloriously real
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that having died with Jesus Christ Believers are now free from sin well that is I think the greatest
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challenge to our understanding and yet it is one I think that has been misunderstood
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by many if not most within Christianity for the past 2000 years because of this there is this logic that is very
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reasonable that if we teach as Paul taught how will we keep people behaving how will we keep our parishioners from
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sinning well one of the problems that kind of drove this thinking was the inclusion of everybody in the
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community within the church so throughout the Middle Ages and on into the early modern period in most places in the world you were born into the church
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you grew up in the church you died in the church regardless of whether you were actually a believer a believer and So within the church there were
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great and many sins because they were great and many Sinners and unredeemed people the idea of Christendom the idea that that by the nature of your parents Faith
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you are also a Christian or by the nature of the society in which you live you are a Christian has been prevalent even in American thought you've heard people say that the
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United States is a Christian Nation right that God is our God and in him we trust right better than trusting in the money but that's not biblical
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which is why throughout the history of the church there have always been small pietistic anabaptist communities Baptist communities that maintain that the church is the
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body of Christ only and is not constituted by the community at Large well that had the advantage of least
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of limiting the number of people within a particular congregation to those who have professed Faith or at least for the most part but did that solve the problem of
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no because as I said before the greatest challenge we have before us as Believers is that we who have died with Christ to sin still sin
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and so how do we deal with this conundrum well maybe it's just a mind game a mantra listen to what Paul says in verse 11 even so
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consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus well that's a new American Standard they render the Greek word consider
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well that's got some flexibility to it right that doesn't necessarily mean it's so but I tell myself it's so
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I consider it to be so and therefore it becomes so for me it's a mind game I talk myself into not sinning by
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convincing of myself that I am dead to sin see it's not really a reality it's a reality of course for Christ and it will be a reality for me in the resurrection someday
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resurrection someday but for now I just have to convince myself that it's a reality and then live by that reality the problem is the word that is translated consider in verse 11 is the
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very same word that is translated reckoned in for example Romans 4 when Abraham believed in God and it was reckoned unto him to righteousness
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it is actually an accounting term where the figure is put in The Ledger on the asset side it's there it's there because the money's in the
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bank this is not a mind game it's just a bad translation in The New American Standard at least we should say reckon yourselves rather than consider yourselves and we
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might even go on to say know yourselves to be to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus in other words Paul doesn't backpedal at
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all in his entire passage he does not back up one step from the reality of Believers having died with Christ to sin just because Believers still sin
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so if Paul can attack this conundrum then hopefully he can guide ourselves to the solution we do not reckon ourselves to be dead to sin because that's what we
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need or want we do not reckon ourselves to be dead to sin as a as a Talisman against sinning we consider ourselves or reckon ourselves to be dead to sin
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because we are now remember now remember those who are of the faith walk by faith and not by sight
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which means that we walk by the word and not by the world we walk by what we read and not by what we see even within
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ourselves of course what we need to see within ourselves for any of this to apply is Faith in Jesus Christ if we don't see that within ourselves then nothing that I'm saying applies to
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you you are still dead in your sins you are still under the wrath of God you have no power to not sin because you are still in bondage to sin and therein
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lies the solution that Paul is presenting to us and that is what do we mean by sin
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well before we get into that let's look at one other invasion that is kind of like the asceticism or the acquiescing
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but it's more theological and it's more Protestant and it recognizes as Paul does that sin is not just a series of actions that God doesn't like
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doesn't like sin is a power that enslaves men and so we say okay Paul says we are freed from sin well what he means there
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is that we're freed from the guilt of sin but not its power so that yes we continue to sin but we're not going to be held guilty
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for it because Christ died and shed his blood it's kind of like a get out of jail free card but is that what Paul says does he say that we have been freed from
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the guilt of sin and not its power No in fact the words that he uses have nothing to do with the guilt and everything to do with the power
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of sin he says knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead is never to die again death is no longer Master over him see that's power
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now we know that Jesus never incurred any guilt any guilt and in fact it may trouble you to even read that he was subject to death as a
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master now I can't go into that at Great length but what we can acknowledge is that Christ Jesus the Incarnate God was susceptible of dying
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he could die now he could not die as we will die the wages of sin but he could die by giving his life
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for many for many he could die by that life being snuffed out through crucifixion so therefore he was mortal
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Paul tells us in First Corinthians 15 that Jesus has as we will exchange the Mortal for the immortal the perishable for the imperishable
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in the gospels we see that mortality in Jesus being hungry Jesus sleeping okay he had physical
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limitations but not sin so he was mortal and death was Master over him over him but that Master was defeated
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so that's it's a terminology of power he says therefore do not let sin what reign in your mortal body that is a term of power a king Reigns a king rules and what that
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means is he exercises power over his Dominion and Paul says do not let sin continue to do that which implies that there was a time when we had no choice and that is
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exactly what Paul is teaching sin is a power that enslaves not an action that offends he says he says for sin shall not be Master over you
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why because death is no longer Master over Christ and you are in him and this is the only way to be freed from sin
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from sin but the problem that we have with our understanding is because of the moralistic teaching of the church for Generations when we read Paul talking about Sin
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we hear Paul talking about sins and as a church instead of preaching about Sin and Christ's victory over sin
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we find it necessary to preach against sins and usually those that are most offensive to us sin is not the same as sins
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the difference between sin and sinning is where the solution lies to understanding Paul's teaching now of course they are related
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but they are not synonyms when he talks about Christ dying to sin or in chapter 8 condemning sin in the
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flesh and when he says that we who have died with him in baptism are freed from sin he's talking about something that is greater more powerful
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and is behind sinning and in fact as we get to chapter 12 someday we'll realize that for Paul the
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greater our understanding of this fact that sin is a power that has been defeated in the cross the greater our understanding of that
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fact the greater will be our resistance to sinning so these are not unrelated and we're not going soft on sin by philosophy philosophizing about Sin
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you know we're not doing that sins still matter Paul says in second Corinthians 5 that we must all appear before the Judgment seat of Christ why to give an account
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for the Deeds Done In the Flesh whether good or evil so sorry you're not going to get off that easy sins still matter but but moralizing has
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no effect on them if if I ST stand up here in the in the pulpit and preach against all these horrible sins
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horrible sins in order for the congregation to be happy I need to be preaching against sins that happen out there and not in here I got to preach against the social sins the gender fluidity the homosexuality
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and and that becomes the preacher's bread and butter and everybody says amen and goes out in sins because if you covet you sin if you lust
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after a woman in your heart you sin there's no way of getting to a sinless Perfection through moralizing
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and the only way that we can put to death the Deeds of the flesh is to fix Our Eyes Upon Jesus
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who died to sin once for all and in whom we are dead to sin the power of sin
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Paul understands what sin is and what has been done about it by Christ so he's he's looking at sin not
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moralistically in that other words what sin does sin does but he's looking at it ontologically that is what sin is and that's how our minds need to be
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renewed again Romans 12 verse 2. I think that's the meaning or a large part of the meaning is that we need to think the way God has revealed himself in Jesus
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Christ we need to bathe our mind in what Paul is saying about the victory of Christ in the cross and the resurrection we need to meditate upon the giving the
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outpouring and the indwelling of the holy spirit in which the Life of Christ who now lives to God is our life as Paul says in Galatians
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the life I live I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me it is no longer I who live he says but
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Christ lives in me now that is not to say that we will ever attain sinless Perfection no matter how long we fast Paul said to the Philippians I have not
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attained perfection attained perfection but this thing I do I press on and so we're not going to attain sinless Perfection we will still be in this body of death o Wretched Man Paul says in
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Romans 7 who will deliver me from this body of death or the body of this death it could be rendered but we know who will deliver us
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because he has delivered Christ we know who will raise our mortal bodies to be immortal our perishable bodies to be imperishable because he's already done it with Jesus Christ the point is
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what about now what about this rising and walking in newness of life
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Anders Nygren writes to him to Paul's sin is not basically separate moral missteps but sin is a power under whose bondage man lives it's not a being like Satan is a being or like the Archangel Michael is a being
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it is a force sin is a force a dark power capable of enslaving the minds of both angels and humans we do not know its origin
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we do not know where it came from it certainly was not a creation of God but that would make it a being but if it was the product of the
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rebellion of a creature that would make it a force and it is indeed the power of rebellion against a holy God that is what sin is
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what sin has done to mankind since the fall is to enslave it when when you look at an unbeliever and you see them sinning
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should you be offended no rather you should understand they are only acting according to their nature they cannot not sin because they are
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slaves to sin however when you look at Believers including yourself including yourself and you see sins the response should be how can this be
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how can I who died to sin still live in it well the reality is I don't live in it and therefore I can now
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do what I could not do before and that is I can present my life my body my thoughts my words as instruments of righteousness to God
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or I could continue to present them as instruments of unrighteousness to sin and Paul says as we go on just to see this is a whole he says
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he says verse 16 do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience you are slaves of the one whom you obey either of sin resulting in
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death or of obedience resulting in righteousness choose you this day whom you will serve that's kind of the response now response now each day
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you are no longer under bondage to sin sin is no longer your master sin's power is limited as we mentioned before by Death sin cannot reach beyond the grave
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because dead men don't sin now the impact of sin does go beyond the grave for it is appointed to man wants to die
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and then the Judgment our sins will go before us before us but they will not go with us and so sin is limited by Death either
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your death your death or a death on your behalf if your death then you will stand under the guilt and the condemnation of those sins before a
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holy God holy God but if the death of another an innocent lamb the death of a righteous Son of God in whom there was no sin
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then you will stand before God righteous blameless and without condemnation because of Jesus Christ
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but what Paul is getting at here is why wait
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death why continue to to enslave yourself when you have been set free why wait until the resurrection when you have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit
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now and that gives you the power now to present your instruments your bodies as instruments of righteousness those who have died with Christ have
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risen to walk a newness of life and this is what it means to be born again and we use that phrase we use those two words oh yeah I'm a born-again Christian
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even though that's redundant what does it mean to be born again Nicodemus didn't understand could a man go back into his mother's womb a second
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but Paul understood it means as he says in second Corinthians 5 all things have passed away behold all things are new it's like a newborn child only born without sin
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We Are Born Again sinless In Christ we are born again Justified and Sanctified and glorified in Christ
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and again Paul asks why wait why not live now what you are even though you don't see it yet
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that is walking by faith which is as the just shall walk shall walk Jesus said as much in John chapter 8 he says everyone who
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commits sin is a slave of sin this is the native condition of man this is what he was getting at he was saying everybody from Adam on down commits sin why
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because they are the slave of sin not the other way around they didn't start sinning and by force of habit eventually become enslaved by sin now
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sin now that is a improper anthropology we sin because we are enslaved we are under bondage to the power of sin Our Father Adam brought us under that
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subjection he Shackled the human race under sin under sin and so there has never been a single human being born normally of a father and a mother who has not sinned
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because we are enslaved but he goes on in the same passage Jesus does and he says if therefore the son set you free you shall be free indeed
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that's the context of that famous verse that refrigerator magnet verse it does not mean that we can throw off the shackles of King George III and we
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are free indeed no it means we can throw off the shackles of sin because it no longer is Master over us
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we are free indeed and what Paul says not then but now now at your baptism
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you are free from sin so rise and walk with newness of life that's the indicative what Jesus did through his death and Resurrection
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that's the fact of the matter now Paul is moving into the imperative on the basis of what God has done in Jesus Christ this is now what we must do
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as baptized Believers in Jesus Christ verses 12 and 13 therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lust I just finished a
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book on the War of 1812 one of those many wars that had no sense and no purpose except it did the British government had this nasty habit of waylaying our
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Merchant Ships coming on board and impressing Sailors from our ships to serve in their Navy and in their war against Napoleon against Napoleon now they claimed that they were only
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looking for deserting British Sailors but funny thing is Americans looked a whole lot like British at that time and spoke the same language and so many American Sailors were
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snatched up in that net and Americans were justifiably offended and they said to their government how can we who have been freed from Britain
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still live under that Dominion that's kind of an analogy of what Paul's saying here saying here Jesus Christ died to set us free Paul
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says how can you continue to serve that Master he's going to go on as he goes through this this chapter and say you did not gain any benefit from that
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Master that was a hard and cruel Master sin was why would you want to still serve him why would you want to still be under his
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dominion and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness but now he says choose you this day whom you
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will serve present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God
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and so for you older folks Flip Wilson was wrong the devil can't make you do it that that is the that is the Glorious message of Christ's death to sin once
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and for all the devil can't make you do anything only you can you can present your ins your members as instruments of unrighteousness or you
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can present your members as instruments of righteousness to God but we must have things in the right order we do not stop sinning in order to be freed from sin
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that's moralism that's moralism that is the basic message I'm afraid of much of Evangelical Christianity that you clean up your life in order to
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be presentable to God no that is not going to work that is what religion has tried and it continually fails
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continually fails because only the purest holiness is presentable to a god before whose eyes no sin
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can stand can stand David asked the rhetorical question Oh Lord if you should count iniquity who can stand can stand so get it into your minds that this is
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not a message about how to be good so God loves you it is a message about what has God has done so that you could be good that he has defeated the power of sin he
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has bound the strong man Daniel read from Matthew 12 today he has bound the strong man and now he's plundering the house freeing those who were in bondage to him
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those as the writer of Hebrew says Those Who through their own life who lived in fear of death because we all have this awareness no matter how hard we deny it
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that after death comes a judgment but this is what God has done we have to get it in the right order we have been freed from sin in Christ that we may
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stop sinning stop sinning this is a bondage that is Liberty we have exchanged Masters he goes on and we'll get into this Lord
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willing in the next couple weeks Paul goes on to say you are now capable of now serving and enslaving yourselves to
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whenever we sin we go back under the Old Dominion for that much time and there is no benefit but sorrow especially to the believer there's an awareness of a certain degree
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of treachery now treachery now in every sin that we commit there's an awareness from the conscience of the Holy Spirit that we are now betraying the master
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who paid for our freedom with his blood and so there's no pleasure anymore for the believer in sin sure there's the physical pleasure
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physical pleasure there's the there's the neurological pleasure neurological pleasure but there's no Soul pleasure for the believer
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in sin in sin because we are no longer slaves to sin understanding now what Paul is saying gives us a new mental paradigm
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again Romans 12 do not be conformed to this world but be transformed that's what we're talking about here be transformed by what the renewing of your mind that's where it starts
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and God in his graciousness has given us Paul and there's enough material in Paul to challenge our minds for all eternity
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but to renew your minds to get that new true mental Paradigm that Christ has set us free from sin will lead to a new reality a new life principle whereby we exchange
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the bonds of sin for the bonds of righteousness Paul writes to the Colossians for you have died and your life is hidden with
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Christ in God when Christ who is our life is revealed then you also will be revealed with him in glory let us pray
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father do help us to understand and to immerse ourselves in this glorious truth that you have condemned sin in the flesh through Jesus Christ and that through baptism you have United
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us with him in death and in Resurrection help us to see help us to understand that we have been freed from sin from
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its power as well as its guilt and then by the grace and the encouragement of your Holy Spirit help us to walk in this
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and to indeed present our members as instruments of righteousness For Your Glory and for our good we ask in the name of Jesus Christ
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amen please rise for the doxology from First Timothy chapter 6. he who is the blessed and only Sovereign
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the king of kings and Lord of lords who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light whom no man has ever seen or can see to him be
