We Who Died to Sin (Romans 6:1-14)

Introduction: Book Recommendation, Scripture Reading, and Owen's Diagnosis

0:00 The following sermon was delivered at the Southeastern Family Conference, which was held at Bryan College in Dayton, Tennessee, in July 2001. The preacher is Pastor Edward Donnelly from the Trinity Reformed Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland.

0:20 Turn with me, please, in the Word of God to the Epistle to the Romans, the sixth chapter, and we shall read verses 1 to 14.

0:39 Before we read the scriptures, could I give one recommendation for other reading?

0:47 Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones has published a series of expositions on Paul's letter to the Romans, and the volume dealing with Romans chapter 6 is one of the most thrilling and helpful books which I have read. And I would urge you all, if you haven't got that volume, I can't remember the specific title, but it's Lloyd-Jones' exposition of chapter 6, published by the Banner of Truth. I would urge you to get and to read and to digest that excellent volume.

1:25 Let us now read God's Word from chapter 6, verse 1. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?

1:40 Certainly not. How shall we? Who died to sin, live any longer in it?

1:50 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

2:03 Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so, we, we, we, we also should walk in newness of life.

2:24 For, if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection,

2:38 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died, has been freed from sin.

2:58 Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him,

3:06 knowing that Christ, having died,

3:11 I'm sorry, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him.

3:21 For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lived, he lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

3:45 Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.

3:53 And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

4:21 Amen. May God bless his word. For our theme this evening, we take words found in Romans chapter 6, verse 2.

4:34 Our theme is, We, who died to sin. Paul says, How shall we, who died to sin,

4:46 live any longer in it? What is wrong with some Christians today is that they are far too uptight about the Christian life.

5:06 They are too worried about doing their duty.

5:13 They are too focused on what they, they ought to be doing to please God.

5:25 I can see the disapproval on your faces already. What would you think of someone who said that?

5:36 What sort of a wimp would make a statement like that?

5:41 That brings us to our theologian of the day,

5:45 a certain John Owen, 1616 to 1683. And in a most unscholarly way for which I apologize, I cannot give you the location, the quotation of this quotation. I wrote it in my notebook about 15 years ago. I have hunted for it time and time again and I cannot find it.

6:11 Believe me, Owen said this or something very close to it.

6:18 I think it's in volume 7 and if anyone can find it, I will be most indebted to them. And what Owen wrote was this, and this is our special, special, special for today. Our great problem is not lack of effort,

6:38 but unacquaintedness with our privileges. Our great problem is not lack of effort, but unacquaintedness with our privileges. We think of the Puritans as men who urged intense effort upon their people. In living the Christian life.

7:03 And so they did.

7:06 But one of the greatest of them all says this is not our great problem in the Christian life. He's dealing with sin in the life of the believer. And that's what our subject is this evening. None of us lives as we should.

7:26 And that situation is not new. And it is the one which Paul addresses in chapter 6 of Romans. And the sad fact is that not only do none of us live as we should, but some professing Christians are not even concerned or don't seem to be concerned about their sin.

7:48 Some past and present even go so far as to defend their sin. To defend their disobedience and to make excuses for their wrongdoing. To take God's grace, and use it as a cloak for their slack, sloppy, unworthy Christian lives. Some of them had the audacity to quote Paul in their support.

8:24 Either meaning it or with their tongue in their cheek. Paul taught, you see, that God justifies the ungodly.

8:38 And by the way, can I urge you to I urge you, dear friends, to hold on to the doctrine of justification. It is being poisoned. It is being altered. It is being filched away from the people of God.

8:54 We need to be careful. God clothes the ungodly with His divine perfect righteousness in a legal transaction outside ourselves. He justifies the ungodly. He shows great grace to great sinners.

9:18 Paul has just said that where sin abounded,

9:23 grace abounded much more. And the more the sin, the more the grace. The greater the guilt, the greater the mercy. And from this glorious truth, some men in their perverted thinking dared to draw a devilish conclusion.

9:44 And we have it in Romans 6.1. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin so that grace may abound?

9:56 If there is much grace for much sin, then there is more grace for more sin. And the more the sin, the more the grace. And God is glorified in showing grace. And in showing grace, He shows His mercy and His kindness.

10:16 Surely it follows then that the more we sin, the more gracious God will be. That in a strange way, the more we sin, the more glory we will bring to God. The more opportunity we will provide God to show His mercy and His compassion. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

10:38 That was the argument. If we're not saved by righteous living, why do we need to bother about righteous living now? If God unites us to Christ without us doing anything, why not then continue to be careless?

10:56 And that mindset, as you will realize, is deeply embedded in the evangelicalism of our day. One of the favorite texts of professing Christians is from this very passage. Verse 14. You are not under law, but under grace.

11:16 And many Christians are living their lives under the comforting umbrella of what they falsely understand that verse of Scripture to say. We don't need to bother. We're not under law. We're under grace.

11:31 We don't need to be careful about obedience. We're not under law. We're under grace. We don't need to mortify sin.

11:38 We don't need to be precise and strict. We don't need to separate ourselves from the world. After all, we're not under law, but we're under grace. Some of you may have seen the bumper sticker.

11:50 Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven.

11:55 Well, in a sense, that's true. We're not perfect, and we are forgiven. But what the bumper sticker is trying to communicate is that we don't need to be perfect. We don't need to think about being perfect.

12:12 We don't need to aim at being perfect. And in one cute, trite little phrase, it sweeps away all the struggles for holiness, all the yearning for godliness, all the quest for likeness to Christ. No need to worry. Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven.

12:31 And I'm told that that slogan is now available on a card ornamented with pink teddy bears. Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven. And that has poisoned the professing Christianity of our day. I was going to say, statistics show, but after this morning, I say statistics profess to show that there is almost as high a rate of marriage breakdowns among professed evangelicals as among people who make no profession of Christian faith.

13:14 There is as much addiction. There is as much financial misdeeds.

13:21 Christians are not notably kinder or more kinder or more loving than non-Christians. Professing Christians, as we heard this morning, they watch the same television programs. They spend their money in the same way. They live in the same way.

13:35 Cheap grace, it's called. And that's a horrible thing. Paul here rejects it out of hand. Certainly not, he says.

13:46 Let it never be. Don't even think about it. It's not to be imagined for a moment. We cannot continue in sin.

13:54 But on what basis are we not to continue in sin?

14:00 Union with Christ. Union with Christ. And this is practically important for us all. I hope none of us here, I don't think any of us here, would go so far as to say, let us continue in sin that grace may abound.

14:21 And yet, that poisoned atmosphere can affect us without our right, without our right to realizing it. You go into a smoke-filled room. For the first five minutes, the atmosphere is unpleasant and oppressive. And you notice it, and you wish you weren't there.

14:42 Stay there an hour. Stay there two hours. You don't notice the atmosphere any longer. You've become acclimatized to it.

14:51 And we're living in this atmosphere of so-called cheap grace. And without realizing it, it is perilously easy. For us to be affected and damaged by it.

15:06 And we realize because we have been taught that there are no quick fixes. That there are not three simple instant steps to perfect holiness. That we can't expect some transcendent experience which will lift us instantly into the full victorious life. But we are dissatisfied with ourselves.

15:30 We long to be more like the Lord Jesus. We don't want to continue in sin. And so this evening, we're going to follow Paul as he sets out in Romans 6, 1-14 the relevance of union with Christ to our personal holiness. And to focus on one of the greatest statements in the whole letter.

15:53 And I want to approach it very simply. Here is the text. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? We'll examine that text under two headings.

Our New Identity: We Who Died to Sin (Romans 6:2-10)

16:08 Our new identity. We who died to sin. And our new responsibility. How shall we live any longer in it?

16:18 First then, our new identity. Who are we? What is a Christian?

16:27 Paul says, we who died to sin.

16:32 He's going back to what we looked at yesterday evening from chapter 5. A Christian is someone who has been taken out of Adam and brought into Christ.

16:44 In Colossians 1-13, Paul says of God, He has delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son He loves. And that is who a Christian is. We've been delivered from the power of darkness and we have been transferred into the kingdom of Christ.

17:08 It is not primarily something we do. It is something God does. It is not first and foremost a matter of our felt experience. It is a matter of our position, our standing, our identity.

17:25 We have become members of a different people.

17:29 We have a new covenant representative. We stand in a new relationship to God. He deals with us on an entirely new basis through Jesus Christ. We're living a new existence.

17:43 We're living in a new world. If anyone is in Christ, a new creation. Old things have passed away. And I left out a wonderful and important word when I quoted that text last night.

17:56 Behold, all things have become new. In other words, we have a radically new identity. We are men and women in Christ. And this new identity, is the foundation for our sanctification.

18:20 In fact, friends, in the New Testament, this new identity is called our sanctification. And that is the term the apostle uses.

18:34 We're all familiar with progressive sanctification. That process by which day by day we die to sin and live to sin. And that is the foundation of our sanctification. To righteousness.

18:48 But when the New Testament speaks of sanctification, more often than not, it is referring to our original separation to God. Our change of status. Something definitive and final and irreversible. It refers to our being placed in Christ, set apart for Him.

19:14 In that sense, we are, we are already sanctified. Definitively sanctified.

19:24 You remember what the church in Corinth was like. The fighting, the party spirit, the heresy, the immorality, the carelessness. And Paul sits down to write a letter to these people. And he says in 1 Corinthians 1-2, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus.

19:45 That's how he describes them.

19:48 He doesn't say that one day they will be saved. They will be sanctified. He writes to these quarrelsome, confused, immoral people and he says, you are, in spite of all your faults, sanctified in Christ Jesus. They have been transplanted into a new body.

20:07 So our holiness is based on our new identity. To put it in theological terms, our progressive sanctification is founded upon our definitive sanctification. And what is our new identity? Paul gives it here and the new King James has an excellent translation.

20:33 We who died to sin.

20:37 Not just we died to sin, but we whose characteristic it is. We who are the sort of people. We whose identity it is. It's an unusual relative.

20:49 We whose identity it is that we died to sin. This is our birthplace. This is our birthmark. This is our special characteristic.

20:59 We are died to sin people. Dead to sin people. That's who we are.

21:05 And he amplifies this then in verses 3 to 10. Union with Christ in his death and resurrection.

21:15 The Lord Jesus Christ lived, and let us never forget it, he lived in this world of sin. He lived surrounded by sin. First century Palestine was an immoral, depraved, wicked place. And every day of his life he saw and heard sinful things.

21:45 Sin was the atmosphere in which he lived as it were in the country. The sinless one. Surrounded by it on every hand. Conscious of sin every day that he lived.

21:58 The sin in the faces and lives and hearts and circumstances of everyone he met. He lived in a world of sin. And he was tempted by sin. He was attacked and oppressed by the devil.

22:16 Tempted in all points like as we are. Sin assaulted him. Sin tested him. Sin sought vainly to entice him.

22:28 Sin attacked him in every way.

22:32 He was surrounded by sin. And he was tempted by sin. And he suffered because of sin. He was mocked.

22:43 He was criticized. He was hated.

22:48 I'm convinced that the unusual circumstances of his birth were well known in that little community. And that all his life he had to bear that stigma.

23:01 You remember how with malice his enemies said we were not born. We were not born. We were born to be born to be born. We were born to be born Our Lord was surrounded by sin.

23:17 He was tempted by sin. He suffered through sin in a world of sin. And then he died.

23:24 And he was buried. And his connection with that world of sin was ended once and forever. Verse 10 He died to sin once and for all. It was over.

23:39 He will never return to this sinful world. He will never return to this earthly life. He will never be tempted by sin again. He will never suffer from sin again.

23:51 Our leader, our giant, the one on whose belt we hang, has died to sin.

24:01 And if he has died to sin, what does that imply for us? If we are in him and he has died to sin, what is our relationship to sin then? If we are in him and moving with him, we too have died to the world of sin. Our connection with sin has been finally broken, broken forever.

24:24 We've been taken out of Adam.

24:26 Not only did Jesus die for us, we died in him. And again, as he did in the previous chapter, Paul places tremendous emphasis on this. Six times in seven verses. He underscores this truth.

24:46 Verse 2. We died to sin. Verse 3. We were baptized into his death.

24:57 Verse 4. We were buried with him through baptism into death. Verse 5. We were united together in the likeness of his death.

25:08 Verse 6. Our old man was crucified. We were buried with him that the body of sin might be done away with. Verse 8.

25:18 We died with Christ. We died, we died, we died to sin. It couldn't be clearer. That's who we are.

25:30 We who died to sin.

25:34 When someone dies, relationships end.

25:39 We can't call them on the telephone. We can't speak to them. We can't send them birthday cards. That's why death brings.

25:46 Grief. Because we realize that a final break has occurred. The relationship is over. We will never again on this earth see their faces or hear their voice.

25:59 They have died to us. And Christ has died to sin. And we have died to sin. And that old relationship with sin, which we once had in Adam, is gone.

26:12 We who died to sin.

26:17 But not only did Jesus die.

26:21 He was raised.

26:23 He was raised to a new life. To a glorious new existence. In a new heavenly dimension. Verse 10.

26:34 The life that he lives. He lives to God.

26:43 And if our covenant representative has been raised. And if he lives. What does that mean about us? We're in him, aren't we?

26:50 We're joined to him. We're part of him. So therefore, we have been raised. And we live to God.

26:59 Look again at Paul. Verse 4. Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. Even so, we also should walk in newness of life.

27:11 Verse 5. We also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. The word also is like the hook we were thinking about last night. Verse 8.

27:22 We shall also. Live with him.

27:27 There's always an also.

27:30 In our relationship with Jesus Christ. Also. Christ. Also.

27:36 That's the magnitude of our salvation.

27:41 We have left an old world. And we have entered a new one.

27:49 People today are going around looking for second and third and fourth and final blessings and so on and so forth. They do not understand what conversion is. It's magnitude. And glory and finality and its ultimacy and its irreversibility.

28:07 It is being taken into a new world.

28:11 This is our new identity as Christians.

28:17 We have died to sin. And we live to righteousness. This is who we are.

28:27 And that brings us back then to our original question. Shall we continue in sin?

28:35 Shall we persist in sin? That's the question. Shall we who are Christians keep on living in that old world? Shall we keep on obeying its impulses?

28:48 Craving its pleasures? Working for its rewards? Now that we've been forgiven. How about continuing in sin?

28:58 And already at the beginning of our study the question sounds foolish. It sounds absolutely ridiculous. Think of a sailor who has spent all his career. So far on a land base and he's transferred to a submarine.

29:18 He's been a couple of days in his new posting and he's off duty and he's sitting playing cards with his friends or watching a video or something and the submarines down so many thousand feet and he's bored and he wants something to do. He hasn't had any exercise for a while and he says, okay, lads, does anybody fancy a walk outside?

29:42 I think of the air hostess who has got a couple of very obstreperous small children. On board the plane. And she asks them if they would like to go outside and play.

29:54 How would people respond to a request like that? Would you like to go for a walk outside? They would take him quietly away and sit him down and say, now look, we're in a submarine. We're underneath the surface of the water.

30:07 You're not living on base anymore. You've been transferred to a new existence. And your question, it's not an option. It's not debatable.

30:19 It is just silly. It's just silly.

30:24 Because if you're in a submarine, you can't go out for a walk. And that's the sort of thing Paul is saying here. We who died to sin. What are you talking about?

30:35 What do you mean, shall we continue in sin? That's a nonsense question. That's a non sequitur. That just doesn't make sense.

30:46 Our basic identity is that we have left that world. We have left that world. We can't go for a walk in it. It's a way.

30:55 It's our new identity, you see, that makes it a nonsense question. It's our definitive sanctification. It's God putting us into Christ that makes it so foolish.

31:10 Or imagine for another illustration, a Christian businessman who's very happily married. He and his wife have a strong, good relationship. They love each other deeply. They've been completely faithful to each other.

31:24 They've been together all their married life. And he goes away a lot in business. He flies to another city, spends three or four days on business, and then comes home. And on one of these trips, a colleague says to him, Is there anything to stop you cheating on your wife?

31:45 Technically, there isn't, actually. She probably hasn't hired a private detective to watch him while he's away from home. He's not under video surveillance. Nobody's checking out on his movements.

32:01 Here he is in this strange city. He's living in a hotel. Technically speaking, there is nothing to prevent him cheating on his wife.

32:13 But what would that Christian man say? What would he say?

32:19 He would say, the fact that you even ask me that question tells me that either you have never been married or you know nothing, nothing of what marriage is. And there is everything. Everything in this world to prevent me cheating on my wife. My commitment, my love, the years we've spent together, the children she's born me, the preciousness of our memories, our future together, so that never for one millisecond does the thought of cheating on my wife enter my head.

32:58 And if ever it did, I would go into my hotel room and lift the photograph. And I would say, this is the photograph of my wife that I keep on my bedside table. And I would look at it and I would say, this woman is my wife. And I would reckon myself married to her.

33:19 And as soon as I did that, I would realize that what you're suggesting is ridiculous.

33:26 That's what Paul would say. We who died to sin. What do you mean, shall we continue in sin?

33:37 Our new identity, our identity makes it absurd. And I would say, my friend, that if you're seriously asking this question, I would say to you what that businessman would say to his unconverted friend. If you think it's possible to continue in sin, if you're happy playing around with the world, if you're a half-hearted Christian, if you're one of those people we heard about this morning who's trying to be as like the Philistines as possible, I have to ask you, have you ever been really joined to Christ? Do you ever really know what the dimensions of this relationship are?

34:24 Have you been taken out of Adam and brought into Christ?

34:29 It is absolutely unthinkable because of who we are.

34:35 Because we are united to him in his death and resurrection. Our new identity. We who died to sin. Union with Christ.

34:48 That's how it links to our holiness.

Our New Responsibility: Three Exhortations (Romans 6:11-14)

34:52 But then let's come secondly to our new responsibility.

34:58 Our new responsibility. How shall we live any longer in it? Paul now, good pastor that he is, turns in verses 11 to 14 to the practical aspect. How are we to implement this?

35:15 How are we to live it out? How are we to put it into practice? How are we to live? How are we to live lives which are holy and which are free from sin?

35:25 We need this counsel. We have a new identity. We have been taken out of Adam. We have been put into Christ.

35:33 We are living a new existence in a new world. But tragically, sin still tempts us. And we still yield to it far too often. And we're overcome by it.

35:43 And we deny our new identity. And we behave inconsistently. And we act as if we were still in Adam. So, Paul's a realist.

35:54 And Paul's a pastor. And he wants to help us. Okay, this is our new identity. How do we bring this new identity to bear on the question of our holiness?

36:08 On our walk with Christ? He gives us here three exhortations. I want to look at the first in more detail and then more briefly at the second and third. Not because they're less important.

36:23 I stress, I stress that. But because the first is less stressed and more neglected. His first exhortation found in verse 11. Reckon yourselves.

36:40 Reckon yourselves. Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. The first thing we have to do is to realize who we are. And to remember always who we are.

37:03 That is the simple exhortation that Paul gives us. We need to realize that we've been taken out of Adam and brought into Christ. To realize that we're dead to the world of sin and that we're alive to God. There's a tremendous emphasis in this chapter on knowing what we know.

37:23 Verse 3, he says, do you not know? Verse 6, knowing this, verse 9, knowing that Christ,

37:33 union with Christ seems to have been elementary teaching in the New Testament church. It wasn't some esoteric advanced theological subject. Paul assumed that they all know this. He says you should know this.

37:49 Reckon yourselves dead unto sin, but alive to God. It is a present continuous imperative. Practice thinking of yourself this way.

38:03 Learn to see yourself in this way. Remind yourself over and over and over again that this is your identity. Keep on day by day and moment by moment reckoning yourselves dead unto sin and alive unto God. We're in too much of a hurry to act.

38:26 We're too eager to do things. Paul says before you do anything, reckon yourself.

38:34 It's quite striking, friends, that this is the first imperative in the whole epistle to the Romans. This is the first time God tells us to do anything.

38:52 Six and a half chapters before we're told to do anything. Is that not striking?

39:02 Paul has shown at great length the gospel and our need and God's provision for our needs. And the place of faith and peace and assurance and what it means to be in Christ. And he's shown this whole breadth of what God has done. God has done this and God has done this and God has done this.

39:27 And it's only after he's laid all that out he gives the command. And the first thing God tells us in Romans is realize who you are in Christ.

39:40 In other words, God says to us, shut up. Sit down. Relax. Listen.

39:48 Understand. And believe. And then you're ready to do something.

39:56 And that's what John Owen meant in his quote.

40:01 In Romans 1-6, Paul is acquainting us with our privileges. Isn't that what he's doing? Owen is not minimizing effort. We'll see that later on.

40:14 But he's putting our effort into the context of grace and faith.

40:27 We are all natural legalists.

40:32 We are all potential Pharisees.

40:37 God's people are too ready to abandon faith and to slip back to works because we see faith as insubstantial and ethereal and works as solid and strong.

40:57 We need to be careful. In recent years, there has been a response a rediscovery of the regulative principle the importance of scripture of being governed by the word of scripture of god in our worship in our government in our doctrine in our practice there's been a welcome rediscovery of the place of scrupulous detailed obedience to the law of god my dear brothers and sisters it is perilously easy for conscientious obedience to drift over the line into legalism into legalism we need to sympathize more than we do with the pharisees we know who the pharisees were they were the baddies they were the opponents of christ they were the sinful horrible people read about the pharisees read about the pharisees the pharisees the pharisees were good people gone wrong gone rotten they were people who had died for the word of god less than 200 years before christ their ancestors had been martyred for the word

42:18 of god they were people who were concerned to obey god at all thing at all costs conscientious men and women but over the years they had lost faith and grace and covenant and they had lost faith and grace and covenant and they had lost faith and grace and covenant and it had become legalism a good thing gone sour you remember how paul could say in galatians 3 oh foolish galatians having begun in the spirit are you now being made perfect by the flesh we criticize those galatians we dissociate ourselves those foolish galatians look how far wrong they went could god say to any of us this evening oh foolish galatians foolish reformed baptists having begun in the spirit are you now being made perfect by the flesh has legalism begun to creep in our faith and grace being lost how many sermons are basically

43:35 do do do don't don't don't this is your duty this is not your duty that's not gospel preaching that's legalism that's moralism calvin coolidge the 30th president of the united states was a new englander apparently new englanders have great economy of speech they don't waste words we're told and one day he came home from church his wife said what was the minister preaching about today and coolidge said sin his wife wanted a little bit that teased out a little bit and she said well what did he say coolidge said he was a guinea could anybody ever come home from one of our worship services and say oh foolish galatians are you now being made perfect by the flesh and grace being lost he was preaching about sin and he was a guinea and that's all how many of us approach the christian life and our frame of mind is i must try harder if how many of us if we were asked tonight what is the problem with your life what is the most important thing we might say well i need

44:56 to read my bible more i need to study more i need to pray more i need to do more i need to be more i need to witness more we do need to do all those things don't misunderstand me but the focus is wrong the focus is wrong we're not thinking of our privileges we're not acting out of our privileges we're not acting out of faith we're not acting in christ we're trying to do it by the flesh in how many of our homes are our beloved children getting an impression of harshness and strictness and duty and legalism this is what you do because you must and where is the god of mercy and grace and kindness who would enfold them into his arms and change them and deliver them so that they are trained by the help of the spirit to love that lord and in god's time and way to come themselves to saving faith in a gracious savior we've all done it

46:15 we've all been pharisees i've often i've i've listened to myself talking to my children at family worship if you're a good girl you'll go to heaven what what have i said you don't go to heaven if you're a good girl that's legalism you see focus is wrong faith is left out grace is left out god is left the most important thing in your life is that god's purpose is that you will be like his son and that his presence will be like his son and that his presence will be like his son and that his presence by his spirit is with you working and because this approach is wrong it doesn't work i see young pastors going into congregations and they have made up their minds that what their people really need is a good kicking and a good hammering and they're the boys to do it and they put on their hobnail boots and they get their knuckle dusters and then they go and they give it to their people law law law pack them and beat them down

47:33 wound their consciences it doesn't work doesn't work diligent effort and we've all had it in our christian lives times in our lives when we tried so hard to please god and for a few weeks or months there was a degree of improvement we made a little bit of progress but then it all came to nothing and it fizzled out and we fell back and we were just where we were at the beginning and then we tried again and we tried again and we tried again and we tried again and we tried again and we tried again lots of effort but it was in the wrong context i think of the game of golf i don't play very often but i can assure you men particularly that when i play golf i put my all into it i spare no effort the course where i play is about 5 000 yards long and when i play a round of golf i walk at least 15 000 yards plenty of effort and there are men out on the course who are a disgrace they shouldn't be on the golf course they're pathetic shilly shallowing approach to the game in a round of golf they'll

49:00 only hit the ball 70 or 80 times i have no time for that let me assure you i hit it well over a hundred times no half measures with me and the veins stand out in my head and the sweat lashes off me and every muscle is tensed and i'm gritting my teeth and giving it my all and there's an old man of about 80 who makes me sick he totters out onto the tee and takes his club back to about here and gives it a little tap 150 yards straight as a die seven iron a little tap onto the edge of the green two putts down and four it's not fair and if john owen was my golf coach he would say brother ted your great problem is not lack of effort it is divine

50:18 thank you lots and lots of effort friends the context is wrong the context of our lives is not chocolate chocolate chocolate chocolate I must.

50:36 The context is, he has.

50:41 And because he has, therefore I can, by his strength. Walter Marshall, in his book, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, says, We must first receive the comfort of the gospel, that we may be able to perform the duties of the law. Receive the comfort of the gospel, and then we'll be able to perform the duties of the law. Faith is not insubstantial.

51:16 I sometimes feel when I say to people, we need to exercise faith, they're impatient with me. Yes, yes, we know that. Of course we exercise faith. But what do we need to do?

51:25 That's the important thing. We want you to tell us what we need to do.

51:30 But faith, faith is mighty. Faith is laying hold on omnipotence. The just God. Shall live by faith.

51:40 Our great task is to believe. Our great activity is to be the outpouring of faith, day by day, to the risen Christ in whom we are.

51:55 That's why Owen says, Unacquaintedness with your privileges.

52:02 Reckon yourselves. Reckon yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God. Soak yourselves. In the reality of your identity with Christ.

52:15 When you get up in the morning, say, I'm dead to sin, but I'm alive to God.

52:23 When you young people are going to your young people's meeting, as soon as before you walk through the door, say to yourself, I'm dead to sin, but I'm alive to God. When you go to the mall or to the places of temptation, where you might be liable to be taken aside, say to yourself, I'm dead to sin, that's who I am. And I'm alive to God. And keep saying it over and over, thousands and thousands of times.

52:48 Reckon yourself. That's not mind games. That's not Norman Vincent Peale and the power of positive thinking. That's not a tricky little psychological gimmick.

52:59 That is faith.

53:02 That is faith. And we're called to live by faith in Christ. And here is the power and the motivation for growth in holiness. Here is the power and the motivation for growth in holiness.

53:15 Not the cruel whip of duty,

53:20 but the gracious, melting, thrilling awareness of what our God has done for us in Christ.

53:32 The story is told of Augustine, that sometime after he'd been converted, he saw a woman whom he had known too well in the years before he came to faith. And she walked over to him with a bold, brazen look on her face and stood and...

53:50 looked into his face and said, It is I, Augustine.

53:56 And Augustine said, Yes, but it is not I, Augustine.

54:03 I'm not who I was. I've died. I'm a new person in Christ.

54:10 Reckon. Reckon yourselves dead to sin.

Exhortation Two: Refuse the Old Master

54:17 Let us move quickly then to our second exhortation from Paul. It is refuse. Refuse. Refuse to serve the old master.

54:27 Here in this passage, and we haven't time to elaborate on it, but sin is presented to us in many different ways as an alien power. That is the emphasis of verses 11 to 14. In verse 12, sin is described as a king reigning.

54:47 In verse 13, sin is described as a general directing soldiers and using weapons.

54:55 In verse 14, sin is described as a master tyrannizing. And later on in verse 14, sin is described as a king reigning. In verse 23, sin is described as an employer paying wages. A king, a general, a master, and an employer.

55:15 And when Paul says you died to sin, that's what he means. Sin isn't your king any longer. Sin's not your general. Sin's not your master.

55:24 Sin's not your employer. You're not under his dominion. You're not under his power. You don't have to listen to the devil.

55:31 So in verses 12 and 13, he says, Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts. Do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin. Here is the strong negative of holiness.

55:55 And I plead with you, because I'm passing over these things more briefly, do not in any way imagine that I think they are any less. I just simply feel that we tend to be better taught in these areas. And I felt that the first emphasis was one that I did need to make. But these are absolutely crucial and vital.

56:21 Here's the mortification of sin. Here's the putting to death. Here's what we heard about this morning. Here is the saying no.

56:30 Simple, decisive, essential. That which is hard and painful. Here's the effort.

56:38 Don't worry about lack of effort. There's all the effort that any of us will ever want in the Christian life. But it comes from a realization. From a reckoning.

56:50 From a position of grace and faith and liberation. It is not the dispiriting effort of slaves.

57:01 It is the effort of a free man.

57:06 Christ is not, in that sense, our example. He is our Savior. Thank him. God.

57:13 He isn't our ethical example.

57:18 You hear often of the benefit of a good example.

57:22 A good example can be a curse. A good example can be a burden. A good example can be a destructive, soul-destroying thing. Take a little fellow of nine or ten years of age.

57:38 He's not very strongly built. He hasn't got good coordination. Not good hand-eye relations. He would love to be an athlete.

57:49 But he's never going to be an athlete. He's just not made that way. But his insensitive, macho father is a natural athlete. And everything he does, he does easily and perfectly.

58:02 And his son's fumbling about with something and the father comes out. Let me show you, son. Here's the way to do it. Come on, let me see you do it.

58:11 The poor wee boy can't do it. Can't do it. Can't do it. Can't do it.

58:15 And the example of his father. The example of his father burdens him. What's the use of an example if you can't live up to the example? Or the girl who's not particularly academic.

58:26 She's reasonably intelligent. She comes in the middle of the class at high school. She does well. But her older sister was outstandingly brilliant.

58:39 Double A's in everything. Top of every year, every class. What does that poor girl have hanging over her head throughout her whole school? You're not as good a student as your sister.

58:52 A good example. But the example is soul-destroying. And if all we had was the example of a perfect life, what good would that be to us? But we have a savior.

59:06 We have someone who comes and stands beside us. In whom we are and who takes us and helps us and strengthens us and enables us. And he helps us to say no to sin. It is no claim.

59:22 It is not a claim on us. Satan can't compel us to sin. Paul goes on in the rest of Romans 6 to emphasize the degrading, destructive, foolish nature of sin. He says, think back to those days when you sinned.

59:36 Think back to the fruit of those days. The result of those days. Did it bring you any pleasure? Did it bring you any joy?

59:43 Are you not ashamed of these things? Let me quote Owen again. And I do know where this is from. From Volume 7.

59:52 Owen says, A due sense of deliverance from the dominion of sin is the most effectual motive unto holiness. A due sense of deliverance of being in Christ. That's the most effectual method. The most effectual motive unto holiness.

60:13 Lloyd-Jones in his exposition of Romans 6 uses the illustration, I'm sure you've heard it, of the emancipated slave in the United States in the middle of the last century. He'd run away from one of the states where slavery was practiced. He'd gone up north. He was a free man.

60:31 He'd been liberated. He had no master. And one day he's walking down the street. And across the road he sees his old master.

60:39 The man who used to own him. And the old master says, come here. Come here, boy. And the habit of the years takes over and the old instincts take over.

60:50 And he starts out across the street towards his master. And halfway across the street he says, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

60:59 He's not my master anymore. I don't belong to him. I never should have belonged to him. It was an abomination.

61:08 And now I'm a free man. And he turns his back on his old master. And he ignores him. The devil's the old master.

61:16 The devil clicks his fingers and says, come here. Come here. Come here. Do what I tell you.

61:22 He kids us into doing it. We find ourselves obeying him. We find ourselves listening to his voice. Crazy.

61:29 Paul says, reckon yourselves dead to that. He's not your master. Turn your back on him and walk away. Refuse.

Exhortation Three: Rededicate to the New Master, and the Liberating Promise

61:41 Reckon. Refuse. And lastly, rededicate. Be busy serving your new master.

61:51 Verse 13. Don't offer yourselves to sin, he says. But present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead. And your members as weapons of righteousness.

62:04 To God. This verb was used of military service. Reporting each day to our captain for duty. Here, says Paul, is the way to be holy.

62:16 To give yourself wholeheartedly each day to Christ your savior, your master, your king. When you wake, say, I'm someone who has died to sin. And I'm someone who is alive to God. And now I give to my master my thoughts.

62:34 My imagination. My heart. My eyes. My tongue.

62:38 My hands. My feet. Lord Jesus, I'm yours. Get out of bed each morning and say, Lord Jesus, I'm yours.

62:47 This is your day. And I'm in you. And I belong to you. I'm your man.

62:54 I'm your woman. And my task this day is to live for you in everything I do. Spend our hours. Spend our days.

63:05 Doing all we can to please him. The best way to be holy is to be busy serving God. When we were small, my mother had a phrase, some of your mothers may have used it too, which struck a chill into our hearts every time we heard it. And stirred us into frenzied activity.

63:31 And my mother's statement was, Satan has some mischief still for idle hands to do. And her approach was, if you have nothing to do, I can soon find you something to do. We never, as children, we never said we were bored. We never said we had nothing to do.

63:49 Because if we had nothing to do, we soon would have lots to do. But it's true. Satan finds mischief for idle hands to do. The path of holiness is not sitting sunk in introspection.

64:04 The path to holiness is not spending our days picking the scabs off ourselves. The way to holiness is not getting lost in morbid anxiety and despair. The way to holiness is by faith. Turning our back on our old master, whom we serve no longer.

64:25 And throwing ourselves into the service of our new master. And when we do this, we are no longer so vulnerable to the devil. The passage ends with a liberating promise. Verse 14.

64:46 14. For sin shall not have dominion over you. That's good news. Great news indeed.

64:54 We're free. But why is that so? Paul says, for you are not under law, but under grace. You remember that text at the beginning?

65:08 The favorite text of evangelicalism? Not under law, but under grace. And people misunderstand it to mean we're not under law, but under grace. It means they say that God's law has been abolished and we can sin and it doesn't matter.

65:25 That's their understanding of it. Paul simply means, for you're not in Adam, but you're in Christ. That's what the verse means. You're no longer under law.

65:43 You're no longer dominated by death and judgment and destruction. You're under grace. You're in grace. You're in Christ.

65:52 And because you're in Christ, sin cannot have dominion over you. Sin will not have dominion over you. We're no longer dominated. We're no longer driven by a condemning law.

66:06 We're in the body of Christ. And all his life and power and grace is available for us. Probably the greatest preacher of the last century, if we...

66:21 We shouldn't even say that. A great preacher of the last century was Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. Lloyd-Jones says of Romans 6, This chapter has been to me, since I came to understand it, the most liberating in my whole Christian experience.

66:43 He was over 50 years of age when he said that. He'd been a preacher for many, many years, for decades. He'd done most great good. But then he came to understand Romans 6.

67:00 He came to understand that he wasn't under law. He was under grace. He wasn't in Adam. He was in Christ.

67:11 He didn't have to do it. God had done it. And because of what God had done, he could receive from Christ the blessings and the strength that he needed. There's a little preposition in Romans 12, 1, which is sometimes misunderstood.

67:29 I beseech you therefore, brethren, here's the preposition, by the mercies of God. That preposition means by means of, via, through. It does not mean just that because God has been merciful to us, we should therefore present our bodies. It means that the mercies of God are, if you like, the vehicle which carries our bodies as a living service.

68:09 We present our bodies every day by means of God's mercies in Christ. We present them by Christ. Not just because of Christ or we're thankful to Christ. He's the agent by whom we present, in whom we live, in whom we suffer and serve.

68:32 By means of the mercies of God. Is that not a delightful way to live? Is that not a wonderful call to holiness? That we're called to obey, not a stern, harsh taskmaster, but a gracious, mighty, loving Saviour who has made provision in his Son.

68:55 Dear friend, just climb into Jesus Christ tonight. Climb into Jesus Christ. Say, Lord, here I am. All the mistakes and the blemishes and the stupidities and the failures, but I'm getting into your Son by faith.

69:16 And I'm in your Son because I'm in your Son. Whatever I do is acceptable to you, pleasing to you. Our reasonable service. Amen.

69:30 Let us pray. We are conscious, Heavenly Father, of the constant activity and assaults of our enemy, the evil one. We pray earnestly, O God, that no effort may be slackened as a result of this message. That no one will feel relieved in any way from our responsibility to obey you with every atom of our beings.

70:13 But instead, O God, that we may be awakened and energized, that we may be given a fresh vision of who we are. We are not pathetic, defeated little strugglers trying to do the impossible and probably failing. We are in Christ. Those of us who have trusted in him as our Saviour.

70:41 We are in him. We are dead to sin. To its authority and domination and usurped control. We are alive to you.

70:51 It is your purpose to make us perfect and you will do so. And you have given us your Holy Spirit and we live by your mercy. Lord, our attempts to serve you are pathetically feeble. Help us to feel them being borne along by the mercy of God in Christ.

71:16 That he, our Saviour, may transform them and use them to the glory of his name. Set us free, O God, to serve you and to live to you in our Saviour. In his name we pray. Amen.