Right with God - Romans 6

Foreign.

We are continuing in Romans Today. We're into Romans 6. So if you have your Bibles, you can turn there with me. We're actually. I'm going to trick you.

We're actually going to start in Romans 5:20, so it's just a little higher on your screen as you turn there. Why don't we pray together? God, we thank you for your word. And as we come to it now, we're ready to hear from you. We pray, Holy Spirit, that you would illuminate the truths on the words of these pages, that you would plant them in our hearts, that we might have a fresh understanding, a fresh revelation of who you are and of the life you've called us to.

And so we ask you this, in Jesus, mighty name, Amen.

The city of Rome, in fact, the whole Roman Empire, was built on the back of slavery. The Romans had worked out that the best way to build an empire was to conquer and then to enslave and then to use the enslaved to build. And so they'd mastered slavery in some of its most brutal forms. It was such a feature of the Roman society that it was prevalent on every street, in every marketplace, in every home. Slavery was there.

And so by the time Paul writes this letter to the Romans, we spoke about this in week one in 57 AD. By the time he writes it, about 40% of Rome's population were either slaves or freed slaves. One of the ways that the Romans kept the slaves compliant was by giving them the distant hope of freedom. And to do that, they set up a structure, a way, a formal mechanism where slaves could be made free. That was called manumission.

And what would happen is the slave and their owner would go before a magistrate and the owner would formally declare them free. And then as a visible sign of their freedom, they would walk out of that court with a felt cap on, a little hat that said to everyone who saw them, I'm no longer bound to a master. I'm free. And this picture of a freed slave is the picture that Paul wants us to have in mind as we come to Romans, chapter six. As he writes to the Church in Rome, who understood slavery, who understood what it meant to be bound to a master, and who now need to understand what it is to be free.

Because Paul's call to them is this. We've seen it over and over again. His call to them is, you've been set free not by a master, not by a Roman magistrate, but by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God has declared you free from the most Brutal master, there is sin. And throughout chapter six, Paul is going to make this clear.

You need to know this, he says. You need to know it and you need to live like it. And as we work our way through the first half of chapter six, we're going to see four things that Paul wants us to do. Those will come up on the screen there. He wants us to consider what grace really means.

He wants us to see our identity in Christ. He wants us to know that sin has lost its power. And he wants us to live like someone who is free. And so let's look at Romans 5:20, and we're going to read through to the end of 6:2. God's law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were.

But as people sinned more and more, God's wonderful grace became more abundant. So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God's wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Well, then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not. Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?

We reflected on a few weeks ago that the chapters and the number verses were added several centuries after Paul wrote this letter. And what it means for us this morning is that when we come to the start of chapter six and we see the words, well, then we need to realise that he's referring to the things that have come just before. At the end of chapter five. And in these verses, Paul has made an incredible statement. He said that just as people sinned more and more, God's grace became even more abundant.

And then he turns to the language of slavery. He says that sin once ruled and brought us death, but now there's a new ruler. And this new ruler is God's wonderful grace. He's saying, your old master has been displaced. The ownership papers of your life have changed hands.

And the one that now rules does not lead to death, but leads to being made right with God and to eternal life through Christ. What an incredible reality that is. I want you to imagine life for the Jewish believers who were there in the Church in Rome, because before they had known the grace of God, before they had known the grace offered to them by Christ, all they had known was the law. The law said to them, here's the standard. Here is what God requires.

Here is the measure of a righteous life. And every single day they fell short of it. Every single day the law held a mirror up to their life and said to them that sin rules. And then Jesus came, and Paul says to them, grace rules now. Your standing before God has been secured by Christ.

And so chapter six then takes the next logical step, because Paul knows exactly what his readers are going to do with this new reality. If more sin produces more grace, then surely the logical conclusion is that we can keep on sinning because it's more opportunity for God's grace. If sin equals God's grace, if it gives an opportunity for it, then if I sin, all that's going to result is more of God's goodness and his grace.

Maybe today we would phrase it like this, and maybe it's a question you've asked. If being made right with God isn't about my effort, if God's grace is greater than my failure, then does it really actually matter how I live? Can I just live however I want, knowing that God's grace is enough? And Paul takes this question seriously enough that at the start of chapter six, he confronts it. And so he poses a question, as he often does.

He poses the question so that he can provide a response. So he says, should we keep on sinning so that God can show more and more of his wonderful grace? And his answer is immediate. Of course not. Of course not in the Greek.

Paul's response here is more forceful than our English translations. In fact, it's one of the most forceful, kind of strongest responses available. Paul uses it sometimes in his letters when he wants to reject something as not just wrong, but as completely unthinkable. Some translations have here, God forbid, others say, absolutely not. I think if we were to make it into our language, maybe it would be something like, you've got to be joking.

You've got to be joking. Paul is saying that the very idea that God's grace frees us up to sin is outrageous. And in verse two, he says, why, since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? I love the fact that Paul doesn't say since we are dying to sin, as like an ongoing process. He says, we've died to sin.

It's past tense. It's already happened. Paul is declaring, the moment you placed your faith in Jesus Christ, you died to sin. And so his question is a logical one. How can you continue to live in something that you've already died to?

How can sin continue to rule over you when you are dead to it? If we think again of those slaves there in Rome, many slaves spent years, decades, yearning for freedom. They saved to try and buy it. They fought in wars to try and earn it. They endured years of service, hoping that a gracious master would grant it to them.

And when that day came and they walked from the magistrate's court with a cap on their head, imagine how crazy it would be if you then saw them go back to the master, go back to the master as if nothing had changed, to return and pick up the shackles of slavery again. You'd plea with them, wouldn't you? You'd say, don't do it. Why are you still living in chains? Your old master has no claim on you anymore.

You've been declared free. You died to that life. Why are you going back to it? Paul is making the point that grace hasn't just covered your sin, it has freed you from sin's ownership. The old master has been displaced.

He says, you've died to that life. And so he implores you to consider what grace really means. It's given you a new master, it's given you a new freedom. And now he says, consider the new identity you have in Christ. It's there in verses three to five.

Or have you forgotten that when you were joined. When we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death. For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was.

Paul poses his next question. Have you forgotten? Paul, I think, knows that they've been taught the reality of this. They have a new identity in Christ. And yet perhaps he suspects they weren't living in the light of it.

And he points to baptism. It's a bit of a confusing connection here, but the word baptism comes from the Greek word baptizo. And baptizo had two meanings. The first was a figurative. It meant to identify with something.

And in the literal, it was used to describe the full immersion of one thing into something else. When a cup was plunged into a barrel of wine, completely, that was baptizo. When a cloth maker took some fabric and plunged it into some dye, fully submerged it so that it came out a different colour. That was baptizo. So the idea is always the same.

It's complete, total immersion. I heard a story of a pastor who was baptizing an old man. The man had come to know Christ towards the end of his life. He was in a nursing home. And as part of the ministry into the nursing home.

He'd made a decision to follow Jesus and he wanted to be baptized. And unfortunately, he was really fragile and frail. And so the nursing home said, no, not happening here. And so they took the old man to a backyard spa. And as the minister prayed for the man and baptized him, he was worried about the man's age.

And so he kind of dipped him into the water, but made sure his face didn't go under. He didn't want the man to, you know, swallow water or whatever it was. And so he did that, let him back up and people applauded and they prayed for him. And then the old man turned to him and said, you didn't do it properly. You didn't do it properly.

You didn't put me all the way under. And so the pastor had to re baptise the man, fully immersed him into the water. Now, Paul says, the moment that you trusted Christ, your inner being, the eternal part of you, your soul was fully immersed in Christ. Paul's speaking not of a physical baptism, but of a spiritual baptism. It's that you're so fully united in Christ, so fully immersed in him, that it's like what happened to him happened to you.

His death became your death. His burial became your burial. His resurrection became your resurrection. God looks at Jesus and says, that counts for you too. If you imagine a piece of fabric being dipped into a bucket of dye, baptized fully, fully immersed.

When you take it out, that piece of fabric is not the same anymore. It's a new colour. You can't look at it and see it as it was. It's been completely and permanently changed. The old colour is gone and a new identity has taken its place.

And Paul's saying, that's you in Christ. That is your new identity. You've been fully immersed into him. And then from verse six, he challenges that. Knowing your new identity means that sin has lost its power.

Let's read from verse 6. We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. For when we died with Christ, we were set free from the power of sin. And since we died with Christ, we know that we will also live with him.

We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. So you also should Consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.

Paul starts this with another couple of important words. He says, we know it's like he's saying, you know this, you've been taught this, but let me remind you of it. And what he reminds them of is that their old self was crucified with Christ. And that means that sin has lost its power over them, over you. You're no longer a slave to it.

And he points to something important. He points to the resurrection to prove it. Christ was raised from the dead, and so death has no power over him anymore. Sin did its worst, and Christ still walked out of that tomb, which means the master that once owns you has been defeated. Now, I think we can hear that and we might say, okay, so sin doesn't control me anymore.

But what does that actually mean? And we need to be really clear here, that Paul isn't saying that as a Christian, you'll never struggle with sin again. He's saying that sin is no longer your master. There's a big difference between sin being present in your life and sin being in charge of your life. Let me give you three important realities of this in the life of a Christian, of what this looks like.

Number one, sin no longer gets to define you. You're a new creation in Christ who still sometimes sins. But your identity is no longer in your sin and your failure. Your identity is in what did in you and for you. Secondly, sin no longer decides your direction before Christ.

We are living lives that consistently pointed away from God. But when we come to Jesus, our direction has changed and we are now pointed toward God. We still stumble, but the overall direction of your life has shifted, and that's evidence of God's grace at work. And thirdly, you now have the power to say no to sin. The Holy Spirit lives in you.

The same power that raised Christ from the dead is available to you to say no to sin. You're not trying to live the Christian life in your own strength. You've been immersed in Christ, filled with his spirit, and given what you need to walk in the freedom he's purchased for you. Aren't those incredible truths incredible realities of what it means? So Paul says there in verse 11, consider yourself like this.

Some versions say, reckon it to be true. I like that, reckon it to be true. Because what Paul is saying is, I want you to know, I want you to remind yourself, I want you to know deep down that sin has lost its power over you, that you are no longer a slave to Be sin, reckon it to be true. And then in verse 12, he says this. Do not let sin control the way you live.

Do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God. For you were dead, but now you have new life. So use your body as an instrument to do what is right for the glory of God.

Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God's grace. Paul starts before he tells you what to do and what not to do. He starts with chapter six, with these declarations of who we are in Christ. He's told us that our old sin, our old self, was crucified with Christ.

He's told us that the sin has lost its power, that we're no longer a slave to it. And here in verses 11 and 12, what does he say? He says, now live like it. Now live in light of these realities. Eugene Peterson paraphrases these verses like this.

You must not give sin a vote in the way you conduct your lives. Don't give it the time of day. Don't even run little errands that are connected with that old way of life. Throw yourself wholeheartedly and full time. Remember, you've been raised from the dead into God's way of doing things.

Sin can't tell you how to live. After all, you're not living under that old tyranny any longer. You're living in the freedom of God. I love that. Don't give sin a vote.

Don't give it the time of day. Don't even run little errands for it. Because here's what Paul is saying. This is the reality of the life of a Christian, is that sin will still present itself to you as an option. It'll still come and knock on the door.

But now you have a choice you didn't have before. You don't have to open that door. You don't have to run errands for a master that no longer owns you. And Paul gives them two sides of what living free actually looks like. First, he says, stop giving sin a foothold in your life.

Don't let it control the way you live. Don't give in to sinful desires. Don't let any part of your body become an instrument for sin. If we think of that freed slave again, the one walking out of the magistrate's court with the cap on their head, the last thing you would expect them to do is to keep on going back. To keep on going back, to keep doing favors for the old master.

To keep living as though the declaration of freedom was never made. So Paul says, don't live like that. But Paul doesn't leave it there. He also says to us that living free isn't just about what you stop doing, it's about what you start doing. And the other side of this is give yourself completely to God.

Notice that there in verse 13, he says, give yourself completely, completely. He's saying, your whole self, your time, your words, your relationships, your body, your future, everything. Use them to do what is right. Use them to bring glory to God. Peterson puts it so well.

I think he says, throw yourself wholeheartedly and full time into God's way of doing things. I think some of us do a good time with the part time. We think we're a casual or a part timer, but we're told here, full time, throw yourself full time into God's way of doing things. Because here's the thing, the slave who was freed wasn't just freed so they could sit around and do nothing. The slave who was freed was freed so they could live in freedom.

And it's the same for us. Christ didn't free you from sin just so you could avoid doing bad things. He freed you so that you could live fully, wholeheartedly, completely for God. That's the reality of God's grace in our lives. Around two years before Paul wrote this letter to the church at Rome, he wrote another letter to another church, another community of believers.

This time it was to the believers there in the city of Corinth, which is over a thousand kilometres away from Rome. And he said something to them that I was reflecting on this week because it really challenges us in light of what he says here. In Romans 6, in 1 Corinthians, he speaks of the experience of having been with the church in Corinth. And he says that when he was there, what he saw was a church full of people who were still living like they did before they knew Christ. They were still being led by their sinful nature.

And this is Paul's message to them in Corinth and to the church in Rome and to us. Live like someone who's free. God has a future. He's got so much for you. He's given you a new identity.

You've been filled with the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. The old master of sin has no claim on you anymore. Live like you know it, reckon it to be true, and live like it. And that's my prayer for us this morning, is that we would know our identity in Christ, that we would be so secure in it, that knowing it would transform the way that we live our lives, that it would transform the things that we prioritize, that it would direct the choices that we make, that the freedom that has been won in Christ would not just be something that we know, but it would be something that would shape the reality of each day. Isn't that an incredible promise and incredible encouragement that comes here from Romans 6?

Let's pray. Oh God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this section that's incredibly challenging. Lord, we thank you that it speaks into our experience. Lord, we know that following you is sometimes easy and sometimes hard.

Lord, we know that we still sometimes sin, but we thank you that we're not controlled by it. We thank you for your Holy Spirit that now resides in each one of us, empowering us to live a life of freedom, a life that is owned by you, that serves you. Lord, thank you for the invite to live wholeheartedly and full time for you. We pray that that would resonate in our hearts today, God, that as we go about our week the that we might have a realization of the areas where maybe we're living as a part time Christian, areas of our lives that we haven't given over to you. Lord, we pray for those this morning who might be struggling with a particular area in their lives.

Maybe it's an area of sin. Lord, we pray that they would know that the same power that rose Christ from the dead lives in them. That they can know that the fullness of freedom in you. Lord, help us to live wholeheartedly for you. Help us to say no to sin knowing that it is not our master anymore that we have been freed from.

We pray that you would continue to lead us by your Holy Spirit each and every day. We thank you for this. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Sam.