Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ: Understanding God's Grace (Romans 6)

Good evening.

It is so great to be with all of you tonight.

And I was reflecting during Mr.

Nate's sermon this morning on mothers about how I've come home and I've gotten to be with my mom, who all of you know is amazing.

But I was also reflecting on how I've gotten to come home and be with all of my mothers in the faith, and my fathers in the faith, and my brothers and sisters in the faith.

And it's such a beautiful thing that God has given us each other to build each other up and to pass along faith to our children.

And my faith is largely due to many of the people in this room who have poured into me all throughout my life.

And while I've been in Florida, I've gained another family of Christ, and that's God's blessings enumerating in my life.

And I'll get to do that this summer while I'm in Chicago.

And the point is that God's family is a thing that is just so beautiful.

And so I have the privilege tonight to get to study Romans with all of you as you have been studying for the past uh while with Mr.

Nate and George.

And we're going to pick up in Romans chapter 6, if you would all turn over there with me so we can study God's word together.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

Romans chapter 6, we've got a big question to answer that Paul is going to pose.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

Up to this point in his letter, Paul has made it quite clear to his readers that they are sinners, and that really all people for all time have sinned.

At some point in everyone's life, we sever our relationship with God and we accumulate a guilt that we can never atone for.

We may sometimes think that we can repay our debts or mend our relationship with God on our own merit through keeping God's law or for doing good deeds, like somehow we can tip the balances and outweigh our evil with good.

But ten times of keeping a law doesn't make up for one time of breaking it.

Thankfully, we learn as we continue on reading in Romans chapter three that we can be justified by God's grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received with faith.

That's Romans chapter 3, 23 through 25.

Romans 3 · chapter mention

And then in chapter 5 of Romans, Paul continues to speak of the beauties of God's grace, of the triumph over sin, how even though Adam brought death into this world, Christ has brought grace into this world.

And so Romans chapter 5 and verse 15 tells us that if many have died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ bounded for many.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin, for the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

For if because of one man's trespass death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.

For as one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace might also reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

What a beautiful way that Paul speaks of God's grace.

But he makes this statement in verse 20 that he's going to feel the need to clarify in our study tonight.

He says, Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

And someone might hear that statement and think, Oh, well, does that mean that I can live a life of unrepentant sin, and then God will just keep on having grace and it'll cover it and it'll all be okay?

And so that's the question that will drive our study tonight.

Romans chapter 6, verse 1.

Romans 6:1

What shall we say then?

How are we going to respond to God's grace?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?

By no means.

How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried therefore with by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

The letter of Romans is written to Christians.

People that heard the gospel and they believed the gospel and they obeyed the gospel.

And here Paul reminds them of how they came into God's grace in the first place.

All of you who have been baptized were baptized into Christ's death.

You were buried, and your old person of sin died, and now you can rise to walk in newness of life.

It's in baptism that we obey the gospel, the gospel being that Jesus came and he died, and he was buried, and he was raised.

And in baptism, Paul tells us that we also go through a death, a burial, and a resurrection.

That's what he describes in Romans chapter six, one through four.

And we can see him describe it also very similarly in Colossians chapter two.

Colossians chapter two, verse eleven, in him, Jesus, also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith and the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead, and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven all of our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

The Bible teaches us that through submitting to God's will and to baptism we then enter into his grace.

And when Ananias preached the gospel to Paul, he told him, Why do you wait?

Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins and call on his name.

And when Philip preached the gospel to the Samaritans and to Simon the Magician and to the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts chapter 8, they all responded in baptism.

Acts 8 · chapter mention

And in 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 21, we read that it's through baptism that we make our appeal to God, for him to cleanse our conscience through faith, through the power of the resurrection of Jesus, and then we enter into his grace.

1 Peter 3 · chapter mention

We receive the Holy Spirit, our record of debt is canceled, and we have the Holy Spirit as the promised seal of our inheritance.

It's in that moment also that we embark on our journey of putting off sin and putting on Christ.

Grace is not a license to sin.

Grace is not a license to sin, but freedom from sin.

And so that brings us back to Romans chapter six.

Romans six four, we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death.

In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

Now verse five.

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

For the one who has died has been set free from sin.

When we choose to obey the gospel and accept God's grace, we are putting to death the old man of sin.

Paul is very adamant about this point because he wants no one to have any confusion.

Salvation should result in obedience.

Forgiveness should result in change.

There was a poet in the 1900s named Wiston Hugh, and he also had the same concern that Paul had about people's reaction to God's grace.

And so in his poem, for the time being, he says that a crook might hear about God's grace and he might say, Well, this is great.

I like committing crimes, and God likes forgiving them.

So really, this world is admirably arranged.

If this was how a relationship with God worked, or if any relationship worked that way, it would be quite comfortable.

It would be quite easy.

I can do as I please, I can follow any path I want and ask for forgiveness.

I can lie, cheat, steal, and then say sorry, when I'm done.

I can be angry, rude, and selfish, and then I can wash away the guilt of all of that with a warm shower of grace at the end of the day.

There are many people who live their life in this way.

I go to the gym and play basketball, and there's the guys in their I love Jesus or Jesus Loves You t-shirt, but then they act in a way that they don't love me, and I know Jesus loves me, but I'm not sure if they love Jesus.

And it says Jesus is king, but then I know they're living with their girlfriend and getting drunk on the weekends, and it's like I'm not really sure what's going on here.

There are plenty of people who have their John 3.16 and maybe go to church every now and then, but they never let the power of the gospel change them.

They have not let grace transform their lives.

The crooks admirable arrangement, it's not admirable at all.

Because it leaves every relationship still broken.

It does not heal any wounds or transform any lives.

Nothing changes when I think that I can sin, that grace may abound.

Or to use the more modern statement, I like sin and God likes forgiving sin, so really I can just do how I please.

Everything with this way of thinking is flawed.

Even just take the first part.

I like sin.

Well, there are many sins that feel good, and there are many sins that seem to benefit me, maybe in the short term, but what about when it's the sin in your life that ruins your marriage?

Is sin still fun at that time?

Sin can seem like a good idea until the consequences of our actions start rolling in.

Like maybe when you lose your job because you don't have any integrity and your boss can't trust you, so you just can't work there anymore.

Or when you lose custody of your kid because you're deemed to be a danger to them.

Everything that's wrong or messed up with this world is a result of sin.

Anytime that I am mad or I'm feeling uncomfortable, any time that I'm going through anxiety or suffering from depression, all of that is a result of either my sin or the sin of someone else around me.

How about the statement, God likes forgiving my sin?

Now that assumption is even worse than the first one.

It's like saying that God's ideal world would be the one where I sin and you sin at the maximum amount, because then God would get to forgive at the maximum amount.

That's just ridiculous.

The world God created was supposed to be one of perfect harmony between God and man and the rest of creation.

And at the point of history where the world was at its most corrupt, its most violent, its most evil, we read that God was grieved to his heart, because the only righteous man left on earth was Noah and his family.

And so God sent the flood and wiped all the evil from the earth.

And when God's people rebelled against him at Mount Sinai and they worshipped the golden calf, he said to Moses, I've seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people.

Now therefore let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them, and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.

We know that if we keep reading in that day, God did relent of the disaster.

He didn't destroy all the people, but many were killed with the sword, and many were killed by a plague.

And so let none of us think that God is okay with sin.

And he will just endlessly pardon a endlessly rebellious people.

In Judges chapter two, verse eleven, we read that the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they served the Baals, and they abandoned the Lord, the god of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, and they went after other gods, for among the gods of the people who were around them, and they bowed down to them, and they provoked the Lord to anger.

They abandoned the Lord, and they served the Baals and the Astro, so the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them, and he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies.

Here's the thing God does have great desire to forgive, but his desire has a purpose of leading us to repentance and bringing us back to a restored relationship with him.

Because God's anger burns against sin and against evil, and he will not tolerate it.

And God knows our hearts, and he knows the ones that are so stubborn that they're not going to turn back to him because they just want to live in the passions of their flesh, and God will let that happen, but they will not have any forgiveness.

He developed that Paul, Paul actually developed this idea in Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

If you want to turn over there with me, Romans chapter 1, verse 18, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness, and all unrighteousness of men who by their righteousness suppress the truth.

Romans 1:18

In verse 21, although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Verse 24, therefore God gave them up in the lust of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the creator.

Verse 28, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, and then it lists all these evil things.

And then verse 32, though they knew God's decree that those who practice all of these things deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them.

It's it's crazy.

It's not as if they don't know better, Paul says.

They know perfectly well they're spitting in God's face, but they don't care.

And these are the kinds of people who are not recipients of God's grace.

The unrighteous who suppress the truth.

They know God, but do not honor him as God.

They don't worship him or obey his commands, they're trapped in the futile or temporal thinking of the world, exchanging the eternal glory of God for their own selfish passions.

And so shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

No.

Absolutely not.

Right after Paul described the unrighteous in chapter one, he says in chapter two that the judgment of God falls on those who practice such things.

Anyone who thinks God's grace means they can live in any way they want and still escape judgment and receive the crown of life is fooling themselves.

God will forgive.

God will forgive a broken and contrite heart that's turning back to him in faith and desiring to renew that relationship, but a stubborn heart he will cast into darkness.

So we get back to Romans chapter 6 and verse 8.

Romans 6 · chapter mention

If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.

Death no longer has dominion over him.

For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

What these verses are telling us is that we adopt a certain mindset when we become Christians.

We believe that we no longer have to be trapped by the futility of the world.

We believe that we can be freed.

We can be freed from addiction, we can be freed from anger, we can be freed from lust and greed, jealousy, anger, we can put all these things away and be freed from all the things that cause us pain and have ruined this world.

We can be freed from these things because we know that our sins are no longer counted against us.

Romans 5, 16 and 17.

Jesus' free gift, following our many trespasses, brought justification.

And those who receive the free gift of righteousness can know that they will reign with Jesus.

And so once we realize that we no longer have our guilt credited to our account, but Jesus' righteousness has been credited to us, then we don't have to be held back by our past, and we can move on.

Paul describes himself as one of his, in one of his letters, as the chief of sinners.

We know he persecuted Christians and he put them to the death.

But when he heard and he believed and he obeyed the gospel, he left that behind and he transformed into a worker for God, a proclaimer of God's good news, carrying the cause of Christ.

And it would have been easy.

It would have been so easy for him to think that he'd just done too much wrong, that he was just too far gone, that he could never renew that relationship with God.

But Paul understood the saving and transforming power of the gospel.

He was buried with Christ in baptism, and he rose to walk a totally new life.

His old self was crucified, his body of sin brought to nothing.

The life he lived from that day forward, he lived for Christ.

He considered himself to be dead to all of that sin and alive in Jesus.

The knowledge that God will pass over all our wrongdoings empowers us to live a purified life.

Additionally, Romans 6 and verse 5, if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.

And then again in verse 8, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him.

Our death to sin and our life for Christ is done in anticipation and expectation that we will one day live with our Father, with Jesus face to face.

We know that our lives today have impact and eternity, and so we live with hope, and we live with love and peace and joy, even amidst a chaotic world, because we have faith and hope that we are preparing for a life of perfect love and peace and joy.

Because God did not create us, his intention for us was not lives of hatred.

He did not intend for us to live with anxiety about tomorrow or to have depression about anything, but it's the broken world around us that's trapping us in those things, that's trapping us in those horrible feelings.

It's the sin, the world entrapped by sin.

And if this world was all that we had to live for, our anger, our sin, it would be the natural thing.

Because pain results in that.

But now we know that this world is not our home.

And we know that we were created by a loving father who created us with purpose and who cares for us and sees us and loves us and knows us.

And so we can no longer be trapped by that because we can live purified and we can live in a relationship with Him, looking forward to the grace and the life that we will have with Him.

And so we consider ourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God.

And so what will we do with that?

Verse 12 of Romans 6 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness, for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace.

God extends his grace to us, he is reaching out, and so we have a choice.

Will we be instruments for righteousness or tools for unrighteousness?

How will we respond?

We can live our lives according to the will of our loving Creator, according to the purpose he set for us, or can try to forge our own path.

If we choose Christ and we unite with him in his death, in the act of baptism, we must continually choose to align our will with his for the rest of our lives.

Unlawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession, a people zealous for good works.

God's grace should result in us renouncing ungodliness.

We know what that looks like.

We can read the scriptures and we can know what aligns with God's will and what doesn't align with God's will.

But we have to care.

We have to be intentional about putting evil away.

And then about choosing good works.

Because yes, doing good deeds will not save us.

We know that.

We know that doing good deeds will not save us.

Ephesians 2, 8 and 9, we're saved by grace through faith, not of our own doing, but verse 10, that is to result in good works, which we were created for.

James 1 and verse 27.

If we're to have a pure and undefiled religion before God, we visit those and help those who are in need, the widows and the orphans and the sick, and those in the body of Christ especially who need our help because we should be servants.

In Jesus' description of the throne room of God in Matthew 25, it's kind of scary.

Because it's the ones who didn't ever serve anyone and who didn't ever give of themselves anyone else that are cast into darkness.

Because God's grace results in us, it should result in us giving grace to others.

And God's forgiveness should result in us forgiving others because Matthew 6, if I forgive others, then God will also forgive me, but if I do not forgive others, then God will not forgive me.

And this really kind of pairs in with humility.

Because what we should understand when we come into contact with God and we read his word and we compare our lives to Christ's life, what we realize is that we're no good.

We've sinned and we fall short, and we were made to be this way, but we're living this way, and so we have nothing to boast about.

We have no righteousness of ourselves that makes us better than anyone else.

And when we do accept God's grace and we do do the will of God, we're not achieving status above anyone else.

We're simply unworthy servants, doing what was expected of us and doing only our duty.

And so we should be humble, knowing that we're nothing without God working through us.

And so we rejoice and we're grateful.

1 Thessalonians 5, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

What do we have to complain about whenever we know the grace of God that has ransomed us and our sins?

And so in our prayers, we give thanks, and in our conversations with our brothers and sisters in Christ, we give thanks and we have joy and we speak of God's goodness and our life, and we speak to those who don't know God, because the joy that we experience, we want them to experience.

So we're putting away sin.

We're putting on Christ.

Christ said to his disciples in Matthew 16, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

Sounds a lot like Romans 6.

But whoever or whoever would save his life will lose it.

But whoever loses his life, whoever puts himself to death for my sake, will find it.

What will it profit you?

What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world but forfeits his soul?

Because the Son of Man, Matthew 16, 27, is going to come.

He's going to come back with his angels in the glory of his father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.

Tonight, if you are here and you have not been baptized into Christ, and you haven't killed that old man of sin and been buried and raised to walk in newness of life, why not?

Be united with Christ.

Live in his grace and rise to walk in newness of life because there's no other life that's worth living.

And if you are living with Christ, but you've been struggling and you need the prayers of the congregation, you can come forward and you can talk to us about that.

You can do it after church and you can talk to your brothers and sisters in Christ, but don't go home not reconciled to God.

If there's anything we can do for you, you're going to come forward as we stand.

Let's see.