Good morning church. This morning our reading is from
Romans chapter 6, verses 1 to 14.
What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that
grace may increase? By no means we are those who
have died to sin. How can we live in it in it's
any longer? Or don't you know that all of us
who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? We were therefore buried with
him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may
live a new life. For if we have been united with
Him in a death like his, we'll certainly also be united with
him in a resurrection like His. For we know that our old self
was crucified with Him, so that the body ruled by sin might be
done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin,
because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live
with him. For we know that since Christ
was raised from the dead, he cannot die again.
Death no longer has mastery over him.
The death he died, he died to sin once for all, But the life
he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count
yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you
obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of
yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer
yourself to God as those who have been brought from death to
life, and offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument
of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your
master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
So we are beginning a short three-week series this morning,
which follows on from the events of the first Easter this year.
Easter is not finishing. We're carrying on with it
tonight, Easter worship service in the next few weeks.
And in this series, you sort of want to ask the question, what
difference does the resurrection of Jesus that we celebrated last
Sunday? What difference does that make
to our lives here and now? See, the resurrection of Jesus
from the dead is one of the central truths of the Christian
gospel. And it sort of goes without
saying, the resurrection of Jesus made a huge difference to
Jesus. I hope that does go without
saying, but it's always worth remembering.
As one church historian put it, without the resurrection we
would never have heard of Jesus. We just remember lots of people
were crucified by the Romans in the 1st century.
Probably thousands of criminals died that way.
Without the resurrection, Jesus would have just been another
statistic, another failed Messiah.
But instead, because of the resurrection, we're still
talking about Jesus today. People are still worshipping
Jesus today. People are still putting their
faith in Jesus today. See, three days after he died in
a cross, Jesus rose from the dead, never to die again.
And and the passage we've had read out is Romans chapter 6.
The apostle Paul refers to that in verse 9.
He says, For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead,
he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over
him. So on that first Easter weekend,
Jesus died on a Roman cross. Three days later he rose again,
never to die again. This morning, followers of Jesus
worship a living Saviour. Jesus is alive today, and he is
alive forever. In that sense, the resurrection
of Jesus is the proof that Jesus is who he says he is, the Son of
God, God's king come to put things right in God's world.
The resurrection of Jesus is the proof that God the Father
accepted Jesus sacrifice on the cross in our place.
And all that is gloriously true. But the good news, the
resurrection of Jesus isn't just good news about Jesus, it's
about the new life that Jesus has won for anyone and everyone
who puts their faith in him. And that is the focus of the
passage we're looking at this morning in Romans chapter 6.
So at the cross of the resurrection, Jesus defeated sin
and death once and for all. And so we want to ask the
question, well, if sin and death are defeated, what will our
relationship be like to sin and death?
We're going to look at that in the next few weeks.
If we follow Jesus in this world, what does that victory
Jesus won? What has that got to do with us?
What kind of life can we now live in a world where Jesus is
resurrected and risen from the dead?
That's the question Paul is asking in this passage.
And the answer he arrives at is 1 full of hope and life for
everyone who trusts in Jesus. Because according to Paul here,
the moment we put our faith in Jesus, we become one with the
risen Jesus. We're united with Jesus in his
death and resurrection. Listen to how Paul puts it in
verse 5 of this passage. He says, for if we've been
united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be
united with him in a resurrection like his or verse
8. Now, if we died with Christ, we
believe we will also live with him.
Now what is Paul trying to tell his readers here?
I think in this passage Paul is sharing a truth that is precious
and life changing for everyone who follows Jesus.
Because actually, I say follow Jesus.
We learn here that a Christian isn't just a follower of Jesus.
A Christian is someone who is in Christ Jesus.
We learn here that we are one with Christ.
Through faith in Jesus, we're united with Christ.
We are in Christ, and Christ is in us.
If we trust in him, we are as close to Jesus as it's possible
to be. And as a result, we are now,
Paul says, set free from our slavery to sin, and we can now
live a new life in this world for Jesus and with Jesus.
These are the huge truths that Paul is trying to unpack for us
in this passage. He's telling us the death and
resurrection of Jesus didn't just happen to Jesus.
Of course it did happen to Jesus, but it didn't just happen
to him. The death and resurrection of
Jesus happened to us too. If our faith is in Jesus, why?
Well, because when we put our faith in Jesus, we are united
with him, with his death and resurrection.
We are dead to sin and we are alive to God.
We have been set free from the power of sin, Paul says, and
that is going to change everything about our life lived
in faith in Jesus. We are now free to fight against
sin, and we're free to win in that fight.
Independence on the crucified and risen Jesus.
And Paul's writing this because he knows the Christians in Rome
and the Christians of every generation reading this passage
afterwards need to hear this good news.
Because all too often in our lives as Christians, we get to
the point where we think sin is just irresistible.
Sin is inevitable in our lives, and we are powerless to change.
There was a book several years ago called You Can Change by Tim
Chester. And I remember seeing at a book
stall I was with a friend and a Christian friend, and he looked
at the time and went, I'm not so sure you can change.
That sounds great, but he didn't feel sure.
And I want to suggest that the way Paul describes sin,
personifying sin in this passage, it's like sin says to
us, just face it, you're a greedy person and you always
will be. You're a lazy person and you
always will be. You're an angry person and you
always will be. You're a lustful person and you
always will be. That's just who you are.
Stop trying to fight it, just accept it.
That is what sin whispers at to each and every one of us every
day of our lives. And sin can even bring truth in
the Bible. And well, who in the Bible is
that? Everyone's a Sinner.
There you go. So no one can expect you to
change. People have to just accept who
you are. You have to accept who you are.
This is just who you are. But the song we open with today
picks up the new identity with Christ that Paul desperately
wants himself and us to grasp hold of.
We are now one with Christ. If we put our faith in Jesus, we
are raised with Christ to a new life where we can say no to sin
and its desires. We can fight against sin, and
with God's help, we can change. See, every believer is now one
with Christ because Jesus died and rose again.
Therefore, we died to sin and rose again to new life.
And as a result, we can change with His help.
We can grow in our love for God and our love for one another
with his help. And we can help one another grow
as we remind one another of our new identity in Christ.
So that's what Paul's trying to get across in this bit of
Romans. Let's look at this passage
together. We're kind of jumping into the
middle of Romans here. There's quite a lot that's gone
before. She's very briefly kind of a a
story so far in Romans, Romans one to five, you can sort of
summarise as what God has accomplished for us in the
gospel. Across these opening chapters,
Paul wants us to see God has declared us righteous.
When we put our faith in Jesus, he's forgiven us our sins.
When we put our faith in Jesus, he's demonstrated his love for
us once and for all at the cross all through the life, death and
resurrection of Jesus in our place.
Paul's clear in these chapters, the Christian life's not about
what we do. It's about what God has done for
us through Jesus. That is why the gospel is such
good news. God sees us.
He knows we cannot save ourselves, so he sends his Son
in our place to rescue us. But then, as chapter 6 of Romans
begins, Paul anticipates a question his readers may be
asking. That's verse one of Romans 6.
What shall we say then, says Paul?
Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
And it seems that was a common complaint voiced against Paul's
gospel. And in fact, some people say
it's actually a question that every single person is going to
ask at some point or another. When you begin to grasp how
lavish the grace of God is to us in Jesus.
Hang on a minute. Either it comes early on or
later. But does this mean I can live
however I want? Does this mean that actually the
more I sin, the more God Forgives me?
Does this mean actually it just doesn't matter how I live?
And I've heard that question many times in life.
When I was about 10 years old, I explained this as the great
thing about being a Christian. You do whatever you want and you
say thank you Jesus, please forgive me, and you do whatever
you want the next day. I was a theologian even then,
just a very bad one. And actually this question is a
is a common objection raised by people from other faiths and
religions to the Christian gospel.
I got to a Buddhist friend pretty well when I lived in
Oxford about 1520 years ago. And he would say to me, I'm
attracted to Jesus, I I like his teaching.
But this grace thing, there's just no incentive to live a good
life. That's why Christians are all
hypocrites. So I need the rules and
spiritual disciplines of Buddhism to keep me right.
And again, some Muslims I've spoken to would voice the same
objection. Isn't God's grace in the gospel
just an excuse for us to keep sinning?
It's a really important question Paul is raising here.
And in verse 2, Paul responds to that question by emphatically
rejecting it. By no means.
That's kind of big, bold wording there.
And why won't a believer in Jesus simply go on sinning so
that grace may increase? It's because of the new identity
God has given us through faith in Jesus.
Verse two. Let me pick up the middle point
of verse 2. We are those who have died to
sin. How can we live in it any
longer? Or don't you know that all of us
who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? We were therefore buried with
him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may
live a new life. See, according to Paul here,
every believer in Jesus has died to sin.
When Jesus died on the cross 2000 years ago, so too did
everyone who puts their faith in him.
And when Jesus rose from the dead three days later, so too
will everyone who puts their trust in him.
We are one with Jesus, united with Jesus in his death and
resurrection, and so we are set free from sin.
Why would we go on sinning, Says Paul, when Jesus came and lived
and died and rose again to set us free from that slavery we
were all trapped in? See, at the heart of what Paul's
teaching here is a truth that later Christian theologians have
come to call our union with Christ.
And time and again, the New Testament, believers in Jesus,
disciples of Jesus, are described as being in Christ.
Actually, it's interesting that the word Christian appears.
I think it's three times. Yeah, in the New Testament, but
the phrase in Christ and related phrases like in him appear over
165 times. And that's just in the letters
of Paul, the letters of John and others that also appears in
Christ is the dominant way of describing believers in the New
Testament. And what does it mean for
believers to be in Christ? Well, it means a lot.
And it's, it's a huge idea that takes different pictures and
metaphors to understand it in the Bible.
So some examples of the pictures Scripture uses.
Jesus is a vine, and we are the branches connected to that vine.
That's the only way we can bear fruits.
Or we are stones being built together in a house.
But Jesus, he's the cornerstone that holds everything together.
We're a body made-up of many parts with Jesus as the head of
the body. We are the bride, loved
passionately by Christ, and Christ is the bridegroom.
All these pictures add to this picture of union and intimacy
every believer enjoys with Jesus.
They tell us we are now in Christ and Christ is now in US.
What happens to Jesus happens to everyone who believes in Jesus.
What belongs to Jesus is now ours.
It's like in a marriage ceremony.
What? What?
Look, what I have I share with you.
Everything I have, I share with you.
We have Christ's righteousness, and he takes all our sin and our
mess. We're connected to Jesus, and
our life now flows from our union with him.
And from this passage in Romans 6, the key truth Paul wants to
emphasize about our union with Christ is that because we are in
Christ, Jesus shares his victory over sin and death with us.
That is the good news at the heart of this passage.
And this is the language, it's like a representation where one
person's achievement is shared with and celebrated by the
people around them. And it's our language.
We're kind of used to when it comes to big sporting events
always when we're back in 2012, a long time ago.
So it's Super Saturday seeing Mofar and others winning gold
medals. And, and I was, I was sitting on
that sofa. I did not move a muscle but I
was able to say we won the gold. It's like when Noah and I
watched the Six Nations in rugby and and Ireland say do well or
get hammered by France. We are going, we won or we lost.
Neither of us got ourselves dirty.
Neither of us did anything except shout at a scream and
annoy the women in our family. Now actually everyone knows the
athletes. They're not just competing for
themselves. In a very real way they are
representing all of us. They're representing their
supporters. We don't actually run the race.
We don't win it personally, but we celebrate the win as if we
did because they're a representative.
Or take the story of David and Goliath in the Old Testament.
The other Israelites, they were all too frightened of Goliath
the giant to fight him. But when David defeated the
giant in battle, he shared that victory with all the Israelites.
We can say that all of Israel was in David even though they
hadn't fought the battle themselves.
And Paul teaches it's the same for those who trust in Jesus
death and resurrection. In our place we are in Christ.
When he was crucified, Jesus took the punishment we deserved
on himself. Even though he had done nothing
wrong, He acted as our representative.
And when Jesus rose from the dead three days later, we were
raised with him. We have new life in Christ
because Jesus chooses to share his victory over sin and death
with us. What's true of Jesus is now true
of us when we trust in him. So back to Romans chapter 6.
Paul wants to see that the death and resurrection of Jesus didn't
just happen to Jesus. It happened to us too.
And as a result, we are now dead to sin.
It's an amazing statement Paul makes.
And the picture Paul uses here is that of baptism verse three.
Let me pick up there. Don't you know that all of us
who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? We were therefore buried with
him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may
live a new life. See, baptism is one of those
amazing pictures of our union with Christ.
Baptism tells the story of the gospel.
It tells us what happened to Jesus, that he died, was buried,
and rose again. But baptism also tells a story
of what happens to every believer in Jesus when we put
our faith in him. We die with Christ, we are
buried, and we rise again to new life.
Paul says if you're baptized Christian, the moment you're
baptized, that's a picture of you dying with Jesus.
The old you, the one who lived under the reign of sin, that
person died under the water, and the new you, the one in Christ
was risen up out of the water to live a new life.
Verse five, in baptism, we remember our union with Christ.
We died to sin with Jesus and we're raised to new life with
Jesus. So Paul writes these Christians
in Roman. He says remember God.
Look back at your baptism. Remember what your baptism tells
you about your new identity. When you're tempted to give up
on following Jesus, when you're attempted to give in to the the
lies of sin, remember who you are.
Look back to your baptism. Remember what Jesus has done for
you and who you now are in him. Baptism is a picture of us being
dead to sin. And in verses 6 to 10, Paul
moves from the picture of baptism to the pictures of
slavery and freedom. Says now that we're in Christ,
we are set free from the power of sin.
Verse 6 For we know that our old self was crucified with Jesus.
So the body ruled by sin might be done away with, so that we
should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died
has been set free from sin. Paul wants to see that at the
cross and the resurrection, something remarkable happened.
We were rescued from sin and set free from its power because
Jesus died and rose again for us.
And it's kind of a different way of thinking about sin than we
often think. Often we think about sin as
basically the actions we do and something that comes out of us.
And in many passage of Scripture, that's a right
understanding of sin. But here in another place of the
Bible, sin is like personified like it's almost some people say
sin with a capital S and sin is likened to a ruler who reigns
over us or who wants to reign over us.
Sin is basically a tyrant, a slave master, a bully in the
playground telling us you need to listen to what I say.
And Paul says before Jesus came we were all each one of us
slaves to sin and we could not free ourselves from sins grip
over us. We needed Jesus to come and set
us free. Verse 10 the death he died, he
died to sin once and for all. At the cross Jesus defeated sin
and death once and for all and he shares that victory with
everyone who puts their trust in him.
Verse 6 Our old self was crucified with him.
So the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we
should no longer be slaves to sin in Christ.
We've been set free from sin as our master, and we have a new
master now, the risen Lord Jesus.
And he is a master who is generous and chooses to share
everything he has with us. It's amazing.
But actually, notice Paul is really talking objectively here.
He's he's dealing with facts here.
He's not presuming that everyone reading this will feel this to
be true or is emotionally aware of it.
Paul's describing objective historical fact here.
That's true of every Christian sitting in this room, whether or
not we feel it to be true. The moment you put your faith in
Jesus, you died with Christ. You're dead to sin, and you were
raised with Christ. You're now set free from the
power of sin. Those are facts Paul says in the
gospel that nothing can change. And so Paul wants to go on in
the last little bit, verses 11 to 14, to show us the difference
those facts make to how we live in Christ here And now.
Finally, he says in Christ we are now free to fight against
sin and we're free to win. In verses 3 to 10, Paul's
emphasis is in what Jesus has done for everyone who trusts in
him. And now in verses 11 to 14, Paul
shows us the part we get to play in response to that.
See, Paul's writing all this because he's saying actually,
the the truth is we're free from the power of sin if we follow
Jesus, but we're still not yet free from the presence of sin.
Sin is still real. Sin is still active in our
lives. Again, that's probably not
something I need to prove to you if you dial back the last 24
hours. So Paul's saying sin is a
defeated enemy for everyone who's in Christ, but it still
has teeth, it's still raging against us.
It's like the way the the devil is describing revelation.
He knows his time is short, he knows he's beaten, but he wants
to bring people down with him. So sin still wants to reign over
us, says Paul. Sin still shouts it's evil
desires at us. There still exists A struggle
with sin and selfishness, selfishness in the lives of
every Christian. And how do we fight against that
when sin shouts out at us? Paul says here, remember who you
already are in Christ and live in the light of who you are, not
who you once were, but who you are in Christ.
That's verse 11 if you want to look at that for a second.
After reminding us of all that Jesus accomplished for us
through his death and resurrection, Paul issues a
command in verse 11. He says count yourselves dead to
sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Or that could be translated, consider yourselves dead to sin,
but a lie to God in Christ Jesus.
According to Paul, it's sort of the battle begins in the mind.
It begins in how we think about ourselves.
The reality is we're free from the power of sin, but but that
fact and our feelings do not always go together.
So Paul urges us here, look to Jesus, remember who you are in
him and then don't listen to sin.
Listen to Jesus, consider yourselves, remember who you
are, because we all forget, because sin still sounds loud in
our ears. There was a great Welsh preacher
in the 20th century called Martyn Lloyd Jones and he used
to explain this passage and our struggle with sin with the
following illustration. He says on the 18th of December
1865 slavery was finally abolished in the United States
of America. So that moment, legally and in
reality, slavery in America was over.
But he said, imagine you were raised as a slave.
You'd only ever known life as a slave.
Suddenly, December 18th, it is over.
You're not a slave anymore. You are free.
But the next day you're walking down the street and you hear the
voice of your old master. Boy, come here, pick up the sack
for me. You just you're frozen.
Do you feel like his slave again?
The answer is yes. She's been a slave for so many
years. You hear that voice.
I've got to listen. I've got to obey.
But does that feeling make you his slave?
Again, the answer is no. Legally.
In reality, you are free. You're no longer a slave.
You do not have to listen to that man anymore, Paul says.
That's the same for everyone who is in Christ because of Jesus
death and resurrection in the gospel, our freedom has been
won. It has been declared we are not
slaves to sin anymore. That is a reality.
It has happened, but we will still hear the voice of our old
master and we'll still feel the pull of it.
We'll still be tempted to obey, to listen to him do whatever he
says. And that's the battle of verse
11. Consider yourselves dead to sin
and alive to God in Christ Jesus, even when we don't always
feel that way. Then you're no longer my master.
I don't have to listen to you anymore.
It is not inevitable that I must do what you say.
And if the battle begins in the mind, verse 11, it carries on
how we live. Verses 12 to 13 look at all the
different commands Paul gives in 12 to 13 in light of what Jesus
has done. He says do not let sin reign in
your mortal body. Do not offer any part of
yourself to sin as an instrument of of wickedness.
That's if you like the negative side, that's that's the act of
repentance. Turn away from sin, but then the
more positive commands, offer yourselves to God Instead, offer
every part of yourself to him. That is faith turning towards
the living God. He knows that we don't live in a
vacuum. Don't say, well, I'm I'm not a
slave to sin, but but what do I do now?
I know actually. Instead you turn to God, you
offer yourself to him. We have a genuine choice.
Offer yourselves to sin or offer yourselves to God.
Sin is no longer inevitable in your life.
We are dead to sin, says Paul through faith in Jesus.
And we are alive to God through faith in Jesus.
It's like there's a clash going on over every single one of us,
that sin is a power that wants to reign over us, and God's
grace is a power that wants to reign over us.
And I guess the fear is you go, well, who's going to win?
If they're both powers, they both want me to follow them.
But who's going to win? Sin or God's grace?
And that's where the good news of the resurrection comes in,
because the resurrection of Jesus shows that God's grace is
greater than sin and death. Jesus proved that at the
resurrection, and now His grace is able to set us free from the
power of sin. Again, according to this
passage, sin is a bully and a slave master, but we do not have
to listen to him anymore. Sin may whisper at us, you're
just a greedy person, a lazy person, a lustful person, you
always will be. And you say, no, that's not who
I am anymore. I am dead to sin and alive to
God in Christ Jesus. I am not a slave to sin.
Sin is no longer my master. Verse 14 I'm not under the law,
I'm under grace. I am in Christ.
Christ is in me. All of me is connected to all of
Christ. That is why I can fight and by
God's grace I can win. But again, the reason Paul's
writing here is he's he news. We don't win every time.
There's so many objective truths up to verse 10.
You might think, well job done, the battle's over, but actually
we still have a part to play. Verses 11 to 14.
And in a war, there are skirmishes and battles, and we
might not win everyone, but the response when we lose is to keep
fighting. And the response when we win is
to keep fighting because we know ultimately the victory has been
won not by us, but by Jesus at the cross and the resurrection.
So when sin says just give up, you're never going to change, we
say, no, I am alive with Christ, I am in him, He is in me.
And we can change as a result. We can grow in our love for God
and our love for each other, and we can fight in light of all
that Jesus has already won for us, the Christian life.
We're not fighting on our own. It's not like all we've got is
discipline and rules. You're fighting with with Christ
and with his Spirit on your side, and he's already won the
victory. And he calls you to fight here
and now in light of what he has done for you.
What difference does the resurrection make to us today?
Well, we are one with Christ. We are alive in Christ.
We are in Christ as close to Jesus as it's possible to be,
and it's as we rely on his strength, not our own.
We can live the new life Jesus has won for us as we rely on his
grace when we win a battle. And when we lose a battle, we
rely on his grace going. Ultimately, the war is won, so
I'm going to keep fighting. I'm going to pick myself up.
I'm going to help other believers around me pick
themselves up, and we are going to keep fighting in light of
that victory that Jesus shares with us.
And to fight that battle, Paul urges us, remember who you
already are in Christ. Offer yourselves to God, not to
sin, and live the new life Jesus now shares with you in this
world, a life you live for Jesus and a life you live with Jesus,
a life you live amazingly in Jesus, him providing you with
all the strength and the grace and the help that you need.
Here again, how Paul finishes this passage, verse 14.
For sin shall no longer be your master because you're not under
the law, but under grace. And the resurrection shows us
God's grace is stronger than all the forces of sin and death.
And Jesus shares his victory with everyone who puts their
faith in him. We are raised with Christ.
Let's live in the light of that. Let's pray together.
Let's let's pray. Father God, we want to thank you
that you know our hearts better than we do, Lord, that when you
open our eyes to great truths of the gospel, Lord, it's not just
to add to our understanding. It's because you know we need to
know these truths day by day as we live for you in this world.
We want to acknowledge that that sin and death, the devil, they
are defeated enemies, but they are still active and we still
need to fight well. Lord, thank you that we don't
fight in uncertainty, not quite knowing what the outcome will
be. We fight our battles here and
now in light of that greater, greatest battle that has already
been won for us, for everyone here who is struggling with
whatever aspect of sin in their lives.
We pray, Lord, that you would remind us of who we already are
in Christ. For everyone here tempted to
give up or give in, you would strengthen us with all that
Christ has already won for us. For everyone here feeling lonely
or weary, would you remind us we do not live in this world on our
own, that we are in Christ. Christ is in us, He is the Vine,
we are the branches. Keep us coming to Him, keep us
trusting in Him, and help us to rejoice in the new identity, one
for us by Him at the cross and the resurrection.
We ask it in the name of Jesus, Amen.