Definitive Death to Sin (Romans 6)

Pastor Martin imagines a 43-year-old businessman who runs for the 7:37 bus, has a heart attack, and dies. Suddenly the bus stop, the secretary's buzzer, and his appointments mean nothing - he is radically and irrevocably cut off from that whole realm. So is the believer to sin.

running for the 7, whatever I said he caught, the 737. He has a heart attack and he dies. Well, immediately, what happens? He is radically and irrevocably cut off from that which constituted the realm of his life. It will do no good for his wife to set out his orange juice in his Wall Street Journal the next morning at 710. It will do no good...

14:06 - 14:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Read Romans 6 expecting a doctrinal indicative ('this is what you are') before any imperative ('therefore live like it').

A hamster lives in his world of wire cage and exercise wheel. Find him dead in the morning, and his whole world means nothing - he is cut off from his wheel and his realm. So the believer is dead to sin's whole realm.

And the world of your hamster is his little wire cage within which he has his little wheel that he gets on and runs and exercises. And you don't like him when he does it at night because he goes and keeps you awake. But that's his world, running on his little wheel and getting off the wheel and burrowing down in his wood chips for his little naps. Maybe occasionally you take him out and he crawls in your pocket and your pocket is part of his world.

15:02 - 15:28 Read in full sermon

Driving home: There is no neutral ground. You're either alive in your wire cage or dead to it.

Either alive in the wire cage running on the wheel of sinful activity - sipping orange juice, reading the Wall Street Journal - or dead to it. There is no neutral ground.

and there is no neutral ground. You're either alive in your wire cage, running on the wheel of your own sinful activity, belting down your orange juice and imbibing your Wall Street Journal of your worldly sinful perspectives, or you have died to those realms, and you are alive in Jesus Christ. Well, there is the distilled essence of the teaching. Now consider in the second place

18:33 - 19:02 Read in full sermon

An extended parable: a gracious master loses a subject to a tyrant; only death can release a slave from the tyrant; so the gracious master sneaks in by night and slays the slave, then raises him to life under his own loving rule. The picture of Christ's death-and-resurrection union.

Now let me try to use an illustration that summarizes the teaching of this analogy. Picture with me a gracious master whose subjects, when they think rightly about him, love his rule, love his commands, his precepts, for they are all just, they are all righteous. They are in the best interest of his own purposes as well as in the best interest and good of his own.

25:29 - 25:55 Read in full sermon

The point: When old sins come making demands, look them in the eye and tell them their claims died with Christ - then act accordingly.

When sin comes barking orders, the believer can look that old tyrant master in the eye and say, 'Sir, you have no claims on me - my death finished them all.'

When that tyrant of a master comes to the slave who was released from his claims by death and begins to bark orders, that slave can look him straight in the eye and say, Sir, you have no claims over me. You can bark all the orders you want. I was released from your authority and your power and your tyranny through death. And isn't that exactly what this passage says? Verse 11, "...Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin." It doesn't say sin is dead unto us, but we are dead unto sin. The implication in verse 12 is that sin, as this deposed tyrannical master, will seek to regain lordship a...

39:36 - 40:29 Read in full sermon

The point: Reject any theology that treats dying to sin as a 'second blessing' for advanced Christians - it is the identity of every Christian.

Pastor Martin critiques 'higher life' writers who assume the great problem is millions of justified Christians who have not yet died to sin - Romans 6 makes that creature non-existent.

which write their books and form their theories of the Christian life, assuming that the great problem with Christendom is that the majority of Christians are justified and adopted, but they haven't learned the secret of how to be sanctified. And so they either need a baptism in the Holy Spirit, or they need a second work of grace called by various terms, the higher life, the abiding life, entire sanctification, eradicate, all different terminology, but it has this

43:16 - 43:42 Read in full sermon