Sermon: Sunday, 17th November, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 6:1-14
There are times in our lives when we experience a radical change in our identities and this change must bring about a change in our thinking and in our behaviour. What do I mean? For example, when you get married, you become what you were not before, a husband or a wife. This becomes part of your identity. But it ought to also change your thinking and behaviour. Before, you might have done whatever you wanted in your free time, but now, you have a spouse to consider. You can’t carry on living as a single person. In fact, each day you need to remember this new aspect of your identity, so that your actions will be those of a loving husband or wife. You need to remember who you are. Likewise, if you have children, that too shapes your identity. You are now a parent and now have two or three or more people to consider when you are making decisions. You need to sacrifice time and energy for your children, as well as your spouse.
Last week, we were reminded of the marvellous truth that God’s grace is greater than all our sin. What a relief it is to know that although we cannot earn our way to heaven, or pay off our huge moral debt to God, God in his grace and love has provided Jesus as the Saviour and substitute who does this for us. We’re not treated as we deserve, but rather with grace. Hallelujah! This is the gospel! Christ does for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. However, some people might distort and twist this teaching and say that Christians might as well live any way they choose, ignoring God’s law – after all, God will just forgive us anyway. Some even wickedly argue that the more we sin the more God’s grace is displayed, and so we should sin as much as possible. Paul anticipates this false argumentation and responds: ‘What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase? By no means!’ (Romans 6:1-2a) People who argue that way fail to understand that when people are ‘born again’ they die to sin, and are raised with Christ. ‘We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?’ (Romans 6:2b)
The greatest and most radical change a human being can ever experience is when we become followers of Jesus, when we are converted, or ‘born again’. This is a permanent change to our identity. Before, we were ‘in Adam’ and slaves to sin. Now we are ‘in Christ’, united to Jesus through faith, and those who are dead to sin. Yes, we continue to sin. But we have been set free from the tyranny and penalty and power of sin. I am a dead to sin and alive in Christ person. And the more I understand my new identity, the more it will impact by thinking and behaviour. We are not in the kingdom of darkness any more. We are in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. This must permeate our thinking and impact our actions every day. This might sound strange at first, but I think it would be transformative in our Christian lives if we could say to ourselves each morning, ‘I’m a person who is dead to sin and alive in Christ. I have a new boss – King Jesus, and I live for him.’
Paul is not saying to us that we ought to try and die to sin. He is saying, as a matter of fact, that we are those who are dead to the control of sin. In other words, sin is no longer our master – Jesus Christ is now our master. Yes, we shall still be tempted. However, each time I am tempted I now have the God-given power to resist that temptation. I am a new creation. Is that right? ‘And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.’ (1 Corinthians 10:13) It’s so frustrating when I fall into the same kinds of sins again and again. Each time I sin, it’s an anomaly; a deviation from what ought to happen, because God always gives us a way of escape.
It’s not just Paul who wants you to grasp your new identity. John says: ‘No one who lives in him keeps on sinning… No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.’ (1 John 3:6 and 9) Of course, this does not mean that we become perfect before heaven. But it means that salvation is not a licence to sin more, but gives an inner resolve and power to hate the sin God hates.
Last week, we thought of being ‘in Christ’ as being like a rock climber unclipped from Adam’s rope and onto Jesus’ rope. Jesus is scaling the mountain as our leader and representative. What happens to him happens to us. We are ‘in Christ’. In verse 10 we’re told that Jesus died to sin. This does not mean he himself was sinful, but that he lived in a world surrounded by sin and was tempted by sin. When he was raised and ascended to Heaven, this was no longer the case. Let’s remember the truth that what happens to Christ our representative happens to us. ‘Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised 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.’ (Romans 6:3-4)
Kent Hughes: ‘The specific emphasis of verses 3-5 is that we are so profoundly identified with Christ’s death and resurrection that we actually did die with him and truly were raised with him, so that now we share in his resurrection life’.
There’s a danger that verses 1-5 sound too abstract for us, with all this talk about being ‘dead-to-sin’ people. An illustration might help. One of the most famous Christians of all time is St Augustine. Before he was born again, he lived a life of ‘wine, women and song’. One day, after he became a Christian, he met one of the prostitutes who had known him in his ‘old life’. She approached him seductively and said: ‘It is I, Augustine’. His answer was simple: ‘Yes, but it is not I, Augustine.’ In other words, Augustine had become a new creation with a new identity. The old Augustine she had known, who was a slave to sin, was dead. The new Augustine was in Christ and that changed everything. The question is- what helped Augustine fight off temptation that day? It was his understanding that the old Augustine had died with Christ, coupled with the fact that the new Augustine now had the power of Christ within, new power to resist temptation. And he did. This is the way we all need to be thinking more and more. Our sins were put to death on the cross and we were released from the bondage of sin and into newness of life.
Baptism is mentioned in verse 3. Baptism does symbolise the washing away of sin. But it also symbolises our union with Christ, marking our identification with the death of Jesus.
R C Sproul: ‘My baptism signifies my identification with Jesus’ death on the cross, and that I am mystically crucified with Christ. I identify with that act; I put my personal trust in the act of Christ on the cross, and as Christ was taken down from the cross and buried in the ground, so I, in terms of my old nature, am put to death and buried.’
‘For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.’ (Romans 6:5) In other words, when we become Christians, there is a new power at work within us, that of the Holy Spirit, and over time He changes our inclinations and desires and He given us power to resist temptation. We now have the life of God in our souls, because of our union to Christ. We are attached to Christ the vine, and his sap flows into us, his branches. We bear fruit.
Once again, let’s grasp that becoming a Christian involves a change of master – from slavery sin to freedom in Christ. ‘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…’ (Romans 6:6)
But there’s also a sad truth Christians must wrestle with. Even though we are no longer under sin’s dominion and have new power to resist, sometimes we still fall into sin. There’s the story of a great eagle (see Christopher Ash commentary on Romans) tethered to a post, walking sadly round and round: ‘One day a new owner announced he would release the bird. A crowd gathered – the rope was removed – and the eagle continued walking round and round in the same old rut. He was free to fly and yet did not. The sad absurdity of that scene is like the Christian who continues to sin.’ To my shame, sometimes I can relate to that eagle. Christ has set me free, and yet still at times, I wallow in the mud of sin.
Those who twist the gospel, arguing that it means we can live as we please don’t understand the gospel. The truth is, at salvation we are justified by God, declared righteous in his sight, but we also begin a life of sanctification, where we walk the path of holiness and not the path of sin. Practically speaking, how can we ensure that we see growth in this walk of holiness? This section ends with Paul commanding us to remember who we are, to root out sin in our lives, and to consciously offer ourselves to God. Let’s unpack this now.
Remember your identity. ‘… count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’ (Romans 6:11) To ‘count ourselves’ means to really grasp and keep coming back to this reality. We are dead to sin. Sin no longer has dominion over us. Say this to yourself each day. Pray for more of the Spirit’s power. Paul states four times in this short section that we are dead to sin (verses 3, 6, 9 and 11). He hammers the message home to us. He really wants this to shape our identities. This is something we need to keep on doing – we need to keep on counting ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ.
Kent Hughes: ‘Have you ever taken the time to consider the fact that you participated in the events of the cross, that you died and that you were resurrected with Christ? If not, why not do so right now. This is prevention theology’.
I love the idea of ‘prevention theology’ which Hughes mentions. Instead of just focusing on confessing our sins after we commit them, why not spend more time considering how to not commit them in the first place, by remembering who you are in Christ. Just as we invest in preventative health care by eating well and exercising to avoid ill health, so we must discipline our minds each day, with God’s help, to be sensitised to how out of place sin is in our lives as new creations.
It’s said that before her children would go out to a party, The Queen Mother would say to them: ‘You are royal children, royal manners.’ That is to say, you have royal identities so behave that way. Paul is saying to us that we are royal subjects of King Jesus and so we must live as such.
Respond to your identity. How do we respond? By weeding out sin in our lives and by positive planting through offering ourselves in service to God. We always need both the negative and the positive together – taking off the old and putting on the new. ‘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…’ (Romans 6:12-13) Let’s be honest and realistic – all Christians continue to be tempted and struggle with wrong desires and ambitions. But we can use our new freedom in Christ to fight these desires. Desires which are wrong must be fought against. Wage war against the enemy of sin. Since now in Christ we are ‘alive to God’ the natural thing for us to do is to give the whole of ourselves to God in service. Don’t withhold anything from God. Serve him in your work and in your family and in your community. Yield your mind and your heart and your will to God.