I’m Flesh Out (Romans 8v9-11)

When in Romans Do as the Righteous Do
“I’m Flesh Out”
Romans 8:9-11

It has become popular to refer to believers as “Christ followers” rather than “Christians.”  It’s the latest edgy thing to do.  It’s proponents think it is more real, more committed.

I guess I can see that.  But it seems to put too much emphasis on me rather than on the Lord.  “Christ follower” touts my decision to take discipleship to the next level and leave the average believer behind.

Christian, on the other hand, was a name given to believers by nonbelievers.  They listened to what believers were saying, then watched their lives, and concluded they were like Christ.  To me that indicates that Jesus was doing something in them and through them.  The emphasis is on Him, not me.

Our passage tonight is all about God doing something in me and through me while others observe.

Romans 8:9  But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.

We’ve seen in past studies that “the flesh” is that influence, that inclination, that we find at work in us to satisfy our physical appetites in sinful ways.  We’ve said that as long as we remain in our current physical bodies we will struggle against “the flesh.”

Context is also very important when you are seeking to understand the Bible.  Here in verse nine Paul uses the familiar term, “the flesh,” but the context is a little different than we’re used to.
Let’s start with Paul’s observation, “if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.”  He’s addressing believers – all those who have been born-again.

We might therefore use the word “since” instead of “if.”  “Since indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you,” then two things are true of you:

“You are not in the flesh,” but
“[you are] in the Spirit.”

After all this talk about our struggle with “the flesh” he says, “since you’re a Christian you are not in the flesh.”  I guess that could mean you should not yield to the flesh; but that’s not exactly what he said.

Since you are “in the Spirit” you are no longer “in the flesh” – even though you still struggle against “the flesh.”
Huh?

Perhaps an illustration will help.  Think for a moment about the birth of a baby.  For months he has been in the liquid environment of his mother’s womb.  Starting in the third trimester he makes the motions of breathing and in this way moves amniotic fluid in and out of his lungs.  The flow of amniotic fluid into the lungs is believed to be important in lung development.

Before birth these breathing movements have nothing to do with getting oxygen.  The baby gets his oxygen from his mother through the placenta and umbilical cord.  True breathing begins just after birth

When delivered he is thrust into a whole new environment.  It’s an environment of air rather than liquid.  He is fully equipped for his new environment and his lungs take over so he can live in the atmosphere of the earth.

Probably the most common description of getting saved is that we are born-again.  Jesus used the term in His Nic-at-night talk with Nicodemus.

Nicodemus wondered if a person could go back to the womb and be born a second time.  Jesus explained that He was talking about a spiritual birth using physical birth as an illustration.

In fact, Jesus mentioned that the first, physical birth involves liquid while the second birth involves the Spirit of God.

When a person is born-again he is (like a baby) delivered to a new way of living.  We are given the Spirit of God and our own previously dead spirit is made alive.  It’s like taking our first real breath and entering a whole new atmosphere.

It is in that context that Paul said, “you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit.”  Just like you’d say to a person, “You can’t go back into the womb,” Paul was telling us that we have been delivered to an entirely new way of living.

Sure, believers can still sin.  We always will struggle with “the flesh.”  But here Paul was establishing that you have once and for all been born-again into a whole new way of living.

“Now if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.”  The “Spirit of Christ” is another name for God the Holy Spirit.  It’s a name that reminds us of Jesus’ promise that after His death and resurrection He would send the Holy Spirit to live within us.

Among the many shades of meaning we could discuss, the one thing that strikes me about this last phrase is that the Holy Spirit living in me is what equips me to ‘breathe’ in this new atmosphere I’ve been born into.

It behooves us, then, to study the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit.  And when we do, one of the first things we learn is that the Holy Spirit is a Person, not a force, Who is God.  Thus we need to get to know Him, to understand Who He is and how He speaks to us.

So I am no longer “in the flesh” but don’t I still contend with the flesh?  Aren’t I still in my body?  Yeah, but…

Romans 8:10  And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

The reading again here is “since Christ is in you.”  Paul is still talking to believers in these verses.

“The body is dead because of sin.”  My body is “dead” in the way that God told Adam that in the day he ate of the forbidden fruit he would surely die.

Adam ate and he was dead.  Not immediately, but ultimately.

So with me and you, our “bodies” are dead.  Not immediately, but ultimately.  Because of “sin,” my body is dead.  It can’t pass into eternity.

But within this “dead” body of mine I now find “life” because I have been declared righteous by God.

I don’t know if this is a great illustration, but I was thinking about Jesus’ comment to the Pharisees that they were like white-washed tombs.  They looked beautiful on the outside but inside they were full of dead, rotting flesh.

This comment of Paul’s is sort of just the opposite!  Outside my body is dead.  For me and you, outside we look like dead, rotting flesh.

But inside we have the Holy “Spirit” giving us “life” because we have been declared “righteous” by God.  We are exactly the opposite of the self-righteous Pharisees.

Another illustration of this same idea is where you read that we, as Christians, have the treasure of the Gospel in earthen vessels.  Outwardly we look plain and ordinary.  But we contain the greatest treasure the world has ever known – the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Romans 8:11  But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

Again it’s “since,” not “if.”  Paul is telling believers that “the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you.”

For sure I am looking forward to the resurrection from the dead.  Even more so, I am looking forward to the rapture of the Church.  But Paul was talking about life now, not in eternity.

My “body” may be “dead,” but it is the only body I have until the resurrection or rapture!  Thus God “give[s] life to your mortal bodies through His” indwelling Spirit.

We’ve been talking a lot in Romans about our bodies being influenced by the “flesh.”  It’s that principle we find at work that seeks to influence and incite us to satisfy our normal physical appetites in sinful ways.

Our bodies can also be influenced by the indwelling Holy Spirit.  Even though dead, we can live and offer spiritual life to others.
I guess we are the walking dead – walking with the Lord in a newness of spiritual life while all the while dead and dying.

You know what all this means?  God has chosen to reveal Himself to others through you.

Pastor and author Bob Deffinbaugh, graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary, talks about Christians in terms of the incarnation of Jesus.  He says,

In the incarnation of our Lord, God chose to manifest Himself in the human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ.  [There is also a principle of incarnation we often neglect]. The principle of incarnation is more general: God has chosen to manifest Himself through humanity.

There is a sense, then, a very limited sense, in which Jesus is incarnate through you.  Now don’t get me wrong.  There are people talking about ‘incarnational Christianity’ who we would label emergent… or just wierd!

Here is an extended quote by Diffenbaugh to clarify what we mean:

The Lord Jesus was God, and at His initiative He added humanity to His deity.  We, on the other hand, have become one with God because He sought us out and gave us new birth through His Spirit.  Secondly, in our Lord’s incarnation perfect humanity was added to His undiminished deity. We are neither divine nor sinlessly human.  We are sinful human beings who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ and who have become one with God through new birth.  We are not “gods;” rather God is in us and we in Him (cf. John 17:21-23).  It is one thing to become “partakers of the divine nature” (Second Peter 1:4) and quite another to fully possess a divine nature (Hebrews 1:3).  He is the Vine; we are the branches (John 15:5). He is the Son of God (Hebrews 1:8); we are sons of God (John 1:12; Romans 8:14).

Keeping all that in mind, we are being reminded in these verses in Romans eight that God has both called us to live in a way that is consistent with His character and our calling, and He has also provided the miraculous power to do so in the Person of the indwelling Holy Spirit.

I can, right now even in my “dead” body, reveal the life of Jesus Christ as I yield myself to the influence of God the Holy Spirit.

If you don’t like the connotations of the word ‘incarnation’ when applied to Christians, author Jerry Cook uses the term, ‘strategic placement.’

He writes,

You are called not so much to do great things, as to be a great person – and that person is Jesus Christ.  The Church is the resident presence of Jesus in the world.

No matter how big church attendance is on Sunday, it will never penetrate the culture with Jesus.  The reason is clear: The church on Sunday is experienced by the church community; it is only observed by the unbelieving community.

However, Monday through Saturday, the church operates in the experience of non-believers.  It lives on their turf, moves in their society, and operates in their culture.  On Monday Jesus becomes incarnate through you.  And because He can be seen and touched, He can be received or rejected. True evangelism is possible.

This, I believe, was Paul’s intent in these verses.  God wants to make Himself known through you.

 

Recalculating Route (Romans 8v5-8)

You know I love tech-stuff but I must admit I’ve had my fair share of problems with GPS.

Now GPS is really important for me because I tend to get lost pretty easily.  Not really ‘lost’ so much as I don’t know exactly how to get where I’m going even though I’ve been there before and am in the vicinity.

Not long ago Geno and I were coming back pretty late at night from attending a board meeting for Calvary Chapel of the Antelope Valley.  After the meeting we stopped by to visit with Pastor Mike Morris and his wife, Mary.  His house was out of the way and I couldn’t get back to where we had started so we consulted my Garmin GPS.

All I needed to do was find Hwy 14 towards Mojave.  Instead the GPS voice  kept directing us to a back road, Tehachapi Willow Springs Road.  That route would get me to Tehachapi and then I’d pick-up the 58 toward home.

We thought it was directing us to be axe-murdered!  Man, is it dark and weird out there!

We stopped and told the GPS we just wanted to get back to an address in Lancaster.  From there we found the 14 & headed home along the more familiar route.

Our destination was being dictated by the set-points we gave.  We would ultimately get to our final destination but the route could be very different depending on what we were set upon.

Our text in Romans eight tells us that we can “set [our] minds” (v5).  Where we set them dictates our route as we journey homeward toward the mansions Jesus is finishing construction on for each of us in the heavenly city, New Jerusalem.

Romans 8:5  For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.

There is disagreement among commentators over whether Paul was contrasting nonbelievers with believers or if he was contrasting two different ways of a believer setting his or her mind.

Paul has been talking about our struggle as believers with the flesh – that inclination, that influence we all have residing within us to indulge our appetites in sinful ways.  I think he is describing the sad possibility that even as believers we can still “set [our] minds on the things of the flesh.”

New Testament scholar Gordon Fee gives this definition for “according to the flesh.”  In the flesh is the condition of humanity “before and outside of Christ.”  To walk in the flesh is to walk on our own, outside of Christ’s redemptive work, outside of the power of the Holy Spirit.  Whether we do seemingly noble things or incredibly wicked things, if they are done without the Spirit of God, they are done in the flesh.

Perhaps this clarification will help.  We tend to think of “the things of the flesh” as blatant sins.  Setting our mind on the flesh can mean that we give priority to the material realm over things that are spiritual.  While we might not be committing heinous sins, when we give the material world priority we are living just like we did before we were saved only cleaner.

I’m suggesting that, as a believer in Jesus Christ, we can set our minds on the material world and find ourselves on a route that will still get us home but not be the way that promotes spiritual growth.

Or we can “live according to the Spirit” and set our minds “on the things of the Spirit.”

Notice Paul didn’t just say, “set your mind on spiritual things.”  No, he first said, “live according to the Spirit.”  He was reminding us that the Holy Spirit of God, the third Person of the trinity, now resides within us.  Since He is a Person and not just a force or an influence we can listen to Him and “live according to” the comfort, the counsel, the conviction that He gives.

Then, after hearing from Him, we can choose to set our minds “on the things of the Spirit.”
Let’s say you are the passenger in a vehicle and you know exactly where you are going and how to get there.  But the driver has consulted some other source and is going out of the way.  He keeps missing key intersections and freeway transitions.

You will eventually get to where you are going… But he should have listened to you.  You might say he should have ‘minded’ you, obeyed you, or set his mind by your directions.

I remember the first two times we went to the coast from here.  If I had asked, rather than just looked at a glovebox map, I would NEVER have taken Hwy 198 to the 101!  Nor would I have stayed on Hwy 41 all the way to Morro Rock!  No, I would have done what any normal person does – take the 41 to the 46 to the 101.

Think of the Holy Spirit as the God Positioning Spirit – a heavenly GPS directing you along your route.

I don’t say that in any way to detract from the Holy Spirit, but only to emphasize in an everyday illustration that we sometimes ignore Him along the royal route to Heaven when, really, He knows the way we ought to be traveling.

Romans 8:6  For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.

When you set your mind on the flesh you are “carnally minded.”  It’s another way of saying the same thing.  In fact, “flesh” and “carnal” are the same Greek word.

When facing a problem, we have a tendency to put our best intellectual or physical effort into motion.  We draw on the best in our “flesh” to get the job done.

If you set your mind on the flesh and are carnally minded “it is death.”  That doesn’t mean you’re not saved or you are living in habitual sin.  It means your efforts and activities are all being done in a physical energy that lacks the life of the Spirit of God.

You can compare it to a person on life support.  Their own life is gone and machines are keeping systems working.  In our case the things keeping us ‘alive’ are all works of the flesh.  If I removed them, if I pulled the plug, I would see that my efforts have no life, no leading, from the Holy Spirit.

Francis Chan wrote,

We are not all we were made to be when everything in our lives and churches can be explained apart from the work and presence of the Spirit of God.

Outwardly there may be little difference between the activities, even the seeming successes, of the carnally minded and the spiritually minded man.  Or, to put it another way, I can be carnally minded but appear to be accomplishing much of a spiritual nature.

The example I always like to use is one we experienced together as a congregation.  Some of you remember the Sunday I had to announce that we were not going to be able to afford to build on our 5 acre parcel.  There just wasn’t enough money.

We felt our only options would have been, for us at that time, carnal.  Fund raisers and appeals and the issuing of bonds and those kinds of things just did not seem to be the way of the Spirit.  How can you get up and give the glory to God when in reality it was because of a slick campaign that the funds were raised?

So we just put the brakes on the new building.  And immediately God opened the door for us to purchase this building at a fraction of the cost of building from scratch.
One test that your setting is spiritual rather than carnal is the presence of “life and peace.”

“Life” describes the outward effect you are having on others.  They are feeling grace and not condemnation from you.
“Peace” describes what you feel in your own heart.  You’re not agitated, trying to make or force something to happen.

Romans 8:7  Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.

“Enmity” means hostility or opposition.  When I set my mind on worldly, material priorities I am opposing the things God wants for me.  I can even be hostile to obeying the Lord.

I don’t choose to forgive, or forebear, or be patient, or show longsuffering.
I do choose to manipulate or intimidate.
I do want to receive recognition for serving the Lord.

The carnal mind “is not subject to the law of God.”   It is not subordinate to the spiritual intent of God’s Law.  I may be keeping the letter of the law but I am failing to keep its spirit.

I can be angry, bitter, resentful, rude, etc., all the while thinking I am walking with God and that my reactions are justified.

It’s great that we don’t commit the really big sins, but aren’t you always surprised in those New Testament lists of sins when something we consider less ‘sinful’ appears alongside them?  Earlier in Romans, in chapter one, Paul listed “backbiters” and those who were “disobedient to parents” along with fornication and murder.

We should be growing more sensitive to sin itself, not just our sins.  It’s relatively easy to keep from murdering someone.  Not so easy to keep from backbiting them or gossiping about them.

The carnal mind cannot become subject to the law of God.  It will always be at odds with God until I am out of this body and with the Lord.
Romans 8:8  So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

To the extent my priorities are worldly and material I cannot please God.  Period.  End of discussion.

Other people, other believers, can look at me and envy me for my seeming success and spirituality.  But if my methods are carnal then it is all an outward hypocrisy.

How does this work out in practical, everyday living?  Let’s use marriage as our example.  When a couple is experiencing problems often their first solution is to do something in the realm of the material.  They move to a new house or city; they establish a date night.

Nothing is automatically wrong with those things.  But they are not in and of themselves spiritual.

Usually the real problem in the marriage is an underlying spiritual issue.  There is resentment… bitterness… unforgiveness.  The mind of one or both spouses is “set” on things like that, things that are carnal and of the flesh.

Those things must be dealt with spiritually.  A new house or a dinner date won’t overcome them.  One or both spouses must be broken and reset their mind(s) on the things of the Spirit.

Those of you who use GPS in your car have heard the voice say, “recalculating route.”  It’s usually when you miss a suggested turn or direction.

Christians and even entire churches sometimes need to recalculate their route because they have been set on the flesh rather than on the things of the Spirit of God.

I operate from the assumption that we all want God’s best for ourselves.  In this case, it is to “live according to the Spirit.”

Since we want God’s best, to “live according to the Spirit,” here is what we ought to do:

Take an honest appraisal of your recent decisions or current trials and ask yourself if you are putting your best flesh forward or relying on the Holy Spirit’s love and leading.
Ask God the Holy Spirit to give you a fresh sense of His indwelling presence.  After all, He is a Person and He lives in you!
Then “mind” any leading you get from Him.  Recalculate a route in your marriage or ministry with Him definitely leading.

The L Words (Romans 8v1-4)

Life, Leading, Love.

Those three powerful ‘L’ words provide a map of where we are headed as we navigate Romans chapter eight.

Life…
…is the predominant word in verses one through thirteen.  “Life” or “live” occur seven times.  Your spirit is alive to God but, more importantly, God the Holy Spirit lives within you.

Leading…
…is only directly mentioned once, in verse fourteen, where you are told, “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.”  But the Holy Spirit’s leading is the theme all the way down through verse thirty.  Through God’s providence and through God’s predestination, the Holy Spirit is leading you along the path prepared for your life.  You can expect the leading of God by His indwelling Spirit.

Love…
…is the focus of the concluding verses.  You read, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?…Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us…”  The chapter ends with “the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.”  You can experience the love of God by His indwelling Spirit.

Life, leading, and love are a good way of understanding what it means to be a Christian.
You have eternal life in Jesus and you can live it abundantly even now thanks to the empowering of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Since it is God Who has given you such life, you can count on His leading you at all times.
And, even when His leading is obscured by sufferings in this life, you can be certain of His unfailing love for you!

As you are probably already aware, the Bible as it was originally written had no chapter breaks.  The translators added them later for convenience.

Chapter eight continues Paul’s discussion from the previous verses.

The last image we had in chapter seven was of what was called “the body of death.”  We established from historical sources that the literal body of death was a form of torture attributed to Etruscan pirates by which they tied a dead, rotting corpse to a living victim and watched them both deteriorate.

The apostle Paul, familiar with this form of torture, applied it to the Christian life.  He showed how the new creation I am in Christ is still tied, as it were, to a body of death.

The body of death is not my physical body.  It is a principle I find at work within my body which influences me to sin by yielding the members of my body to fulfill lusts.  We call this influence, this principle, the flesh.

Until we are free from our physical bodies and with the Lord we will struggle against the flesh.  Are we to spend my our lives frustrated by defeats in this struggle against the flesh?

Not at all!  Chapter eight delineates how we win that struggle.  It announces that there is a power by which we may always achieve victory over the flesh.

Romans 8:1  There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

As a stand-alone verse this is often quoted to establish that because you are “in” Christ and have therefore been justified and declared righteous, you possess eternal life that cannot be forfeited.

While I believe that to be true, this verse is better understood in the context of what Paul has been discussing – which is not salvation but after-salvation sanctification.

If you were captured by pirates and tied securely to a body of death you were condemned and it was just a matter of time before you succumbed.

Ah, but as a Christian “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.”  You walk around with the flesh but you need not be in the flesh, as it were, because you are “in Christ Jesus.”

Some of the better manuscripts from which the Bible is translated do not include the phrase, “who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.”  That’s fine; we can leave it out because it is in the best manuscripts when we get to verse four!

If I must carry around the body of death until I’m out of my physical body, how is it I am not condemned?

Romans 8:2  For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

A believer is “in Christ Jesus” and that means he or she has received “the Spirit of life.”  For sure your human spirit, which was dead at birth, has come alive to God.  But this is really referring to the fact that God the Holy Spirit is living within you; He is indwelling you.  Since you are “in Christ Jesus,” God the Holy Spirit is “in” you.

Paul contrasted the Holy Spirit living within you and “sin and death” which cling to you in the form of the flesh.  He referred to them both as “laws.”  William MacDonald picks up on this and offers the following illustration to highlight what Paul meant:

The characteristic principle of the Holy Spirit is to empower believers for holy living.  The characteristic principle of indwelling sin is to drag a person down to death.  It is like the law of gravity.  When you throw a ball into the air, it comes back down because it is heavier than the air it displaces.  A living bird is also heavier than the air it displaces, but when you toss it up in the air, it flies away.  The law of life in the bird overcomes the law of gravity. So the Holy Spirit supplies the risen life of the Lord Jesus, making the believer free from the law of sin and death.

In chapter seven there were a ton of personal pronouns as Paul discussed his struggle against the flesh.  Chapter eight abandons personal pronouns and focuses on the Person of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 8:3  For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,

God’s law “was weak through the flesh” means that though it told me what to do I had no power to do what it said.  For example, the Law stated, “Thou shalt not covet.”  As soon as I read that, I realize that I do covet, that I have coveted, and that I will go on coveting.  There is something about me that is “weak,” i.e., powerless to do what the Law states.

I’ve often quoted this little poem, which begins,

Do this and live, the Law commands, but gives me neither feet nor hands.

God’s Law was given to men who possess a fallen, sinful human nature.  They are without the ability to fulfill it.  They may keep some of its rules and rites and rituals.  They may observe diets and days.  But even in these mankind falls short – to say nothing of the problems we find in our hearts!

Here is the whole poem:

Do this and live, the Law commands, but gives me neither feet nor hands.
A better way the Spirit brings.  He bids me fly and gives me wings.

As believers, as Christians, we find that God’s commands are also His enablings.
Jesus was sent from Heaven to the earth.  He took a body that was “in the likeness of sinful flesh.”  It was a real human body, but without a sin nature like you and I are born with.

This, of course, was accomplished by the virgin birth.

He came “on account of sin.”  That is, He came because you and I were condemned sinners to take our place.  Instead of you being condemned by your sin, Jesus took your condemnation.

Not only that, Jesus “condemned sin in the flesh.”  This means that not only did Jesus die for the sins we commit, but He died for our sin nature.  He died to resolve who we are, not just what we have done.

Something that is condemned can still exist and be very dangerous.  A condemned bridge can fall at any time.  Our flesh is condemned but is still very dangerous.

Think of a death row prisoner at Corcoran State Prison.  He may be condemned and awaiting death but that doesn’t mean he won’t cause trouble for the guards.  He’s biding his time violently until his execution.

Whether we call it a law or an influence or a principle, the flesh resides in your current physical body.

But so does God the Holy Spirit reside within you.  He makes verse four possible.

Romans 8:4  that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

As a Pharisee Paul could say he had kept the letter of the Law.  But he had never “fulfilled” its “righteous requirements.”  A life of absolute holiness was what the Law required.  And not just with regard to outward obedience.  No, the Law of God required an inner righteousness that we would call perfection.

It is impossible to fulfill the righteous requirements of the Law without God’s help.

Ah, but we have God’s help.  In fact, we have God’s Helper – which is the job description Jesus gave to the Holy Spirit when He told us He was leaving but that He would send us the Spirit, “another Helper.”

Language scholars point out that verse four is in a tense they the passive voice.  It means that the Holy Spirit produces a life of obedience which the Law commanded but could not produce.  The Holy Spirit furnishes the power; the decision is ours.

We’re talking sanctification.  After salvation God has promised to conform you into the image of Jesus and to complete the work He has begun.  You and I must cooperate with that work.

Here is another way of approaching verse four.  Once Jesus was asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Matthew 22:37  Jesus said to him, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’
Matthew 22:38  This is the first and great commandment.
Matthew 22:39  And the second is like it: ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’
Matthew 22:40  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

It is the Holy Spirit within us Who can empower us to love God and to love our neighbor and therefore fulfill the “righteous requirements” of God’s Law.

You and I walk around with the flesh but you need not be in the flesh.  We also walk around hosting God the Holy Spirit by whom we can cooperate with God’s sanctifying work.

The Spirit bids me fly and gives me wings!

The Corpse Bride Of Christ (Romans 7v13-25)

If you’ve ever read The Aeneid by the first century Roman poet Virgil you’ve come across this gruesome passage:

The living and the dead at his command,
Were coupled, face to face, and hand to hand,
Till, chok’d with stench, in loath’d embraces tied,
The ling’ring wretches pin’d away and died.1

It is a description of a form of torture in which they fastened a dead body to the victim, tying shoulder to shoulder, face to face, thigh to thigh, arm to arm

According to another source,

Cicero cites from Aristotle… the torture [was] inflicted by… Etruscan pirates.2

The gruesome details of the pirate-punishment are given in an essay by Jacques Brunschwig.3

A living man or woman was tied to a rotting corpse, face to face, mouth to mouth, limb to limb, with an obsessive exactitude in which each part of the body corresponded with its matching putrefying counterpart. Shackled to their rotting double, the man or woman was left to decay. To avoid the starvation of the victim and to ensure the rotting bonds between the living and the dead were fully established, the Etruscan [pirates] continued to feed the victim appropriately. Only once the superficial difference between the corpse and the living body started to rot away through the agency of worms, which bridged the two bodies, establishing a differential continuity between them, did the Etruscans stop feeding the living.  Once both the living and the dead had turned black through putrefaction, the Etruscans deemed it appropriate to unshackle the bodies, by now combined together…4

There are historical reports of this form of torture lasting into the sixteenth century.

The Aeneid by Virgil was written in the late first century BC.  The Etruscans had been around for a long time before the first century.

The apostle Paul, well-read and well-traveled, would have been familiar with this practice of the body of death as a literal torture carried out upon persons.

That being the case, we can see that he used it as an illustration in verse twenty-four.

Romans 7:24  O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Paul pictured himself, and every believer in Jesus Christ, as needing to be “deliver[ed] from this body of death.”  He was depicting the Christian as if he were tied securely to a rotting corpse.

What is “the body of death,” the rotting corpse, that we find attached to ourselves?  It is what we call “the flesh.”  The flesh is not the physical body itself.  No, it is something different.  It is a principle at work within me that demands I use my physical body in sinful ways to fulfill its lusts.

Even after I am saved and have received a new, spiritual nature, I find the flesh at work in my body.  And as long as I remain in my current physical body I will have the flesh to contend against.

Spiritually speaking, you’re carrying around “the body of death.” It’s a very good if graphic illustration of your life as a believer this side of Heaven.

As chapter seven closes Paul devoted a great deal of time to talking about “the body of death” and its effect upon you as a believer.  First he needed to button-up his discussion about God’s Law.

Romans 7:13  Has then what is good become death to me? Certainly not! But sin, that it might appear sin, was producing death in me through what is good, so that sin through the commandment might become exceedingly sinful.

Obviously we are in the middle of a longer discussion.  Paul had been talking about God’s Law.  He had answered an objection that if the purpose of the Law was to expose my sin, was the Law sinful?  His answer was “No!”

Now he answered another objection about God’s Law.  If God’s Law reveals my sin, “has [it] become death to me?”  In other words, Is my condition hopeless – leading only to eternal death?

The answer is “Certainly not!”  The Law shows me the exceeding sinfulness of my indwelling sin so that I will understand I cannot be saved by works I might perform, but that I might and can be saved through God’s intervention on my behalf.

Romans 7:14  For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin.

This verse serves as a conclusion and a segue.  “For we know that the law is spiritual” concludes what he’s been saying about God’s Law.  Exposing my sin, and showing me its exceeding sinfulness, is important because it prepares my heart to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“But I” – meaning Paul and every believer – “am carnal, sold under sin.”  “Carnal” literally means fleshly or made of flesh.  It’s referring to what we’re calling the flesh.

“Sold under sin” is in a present verb tense that means it is ongoing.  In fact, throughout these remaining verses Paul used the present tense in his verbs.  This was his ongoing struggle and it is ours, too.

If I am saved, how is it I am “sold under sin?”  With regards to the flesh, it still seeks to bring you into slavery to sin as it demands you fulfill its lusting appetites.

We all know the power of the flesh to bring us back into slavery to sin.  Many of us have experienced it firsthand.  Christians can and do sin – sometimes severely.

Romans 7:15  For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.

There should be no controversy over this statement.  Every honest believer can say this!  It summarizes very poignantly the struggle we find within our hearts between the flesh and the spirit.

I know we don’t go by experience, but isn’t this exactly how you feel sometimes as a Christian?  As if no matter how hard you try, your flesh clings to you like a rotting corpse, making it difficult for you to do the things you want to do in your heart of hearts and encouraging you to do the things you do not want to do?

Romans 7:16  If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good.

It’s very important you hear what Paul was saying.  He was describing a struggle against sin.  While he might do what he didn’t want to, he simultaneously consented with God’s Law about what he wanted to do.

His struggle proves something!  One of the commentaries I read puts it better than I can:

The very struggle with evil shows that it is not loved, or approved, but that the Law which condemns it is really loved.  Christians may here find a test of their piety.  The fact of struggling against evil, the desire to be free from it, and to overcome it, the anxiety and grief which it causes, is an evidence that we do not love it, and that therefore we are the friends of God.
Perhaps nothing can be a more decisive test of piety than a long-continued and painful struggle against evil passions and desires in every form, and a panting of the soul to be delivered from the power and dominion of sin.

I NEVER had this struggle before I got saved.  It is a mark of the Christian, of having received a new nature and a renewed mind, to recognize the awful, evil nature of the flesh, and the fact you are in a conflict against it.

Romans 7:17  But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.

Paul was not blameshifting.  He was still talking about the conflict within.  As a believer, with a new nature, he desired to serve the Lord heart, mind, and soul.  But he found, as we do, that “sin” still “dwells in me.”  The flesh is still there.

I know he’s talking about the flesh because he says so in verse eighteen.

Romans 7:18  For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells…

The “flesh” is there, dwelling within you.  It is no “good.”  It is altogether evil and bent on fulfilling its own lusts.

The remainder of verse eighteen and all the way through verse twenty-three can be tough to navigate.  It’s a spiritual version of Who’s on First?

That’s why I think Paul gives the illustration, in verse twenty-four, of “the body of death.”  It simplifies what he was saying by illustrating it.  I have the new, spiritual nature of God but I find that tied to it is a rotting corpse, the flesh.

Everyday, and every moment in every day, I am face-to-face with the flesh in my walk with the Lord.  It’s not going away until I am with the Lord either at my death or in the rapture.

Let’s read the verses all at once with the illustration in mind.

Romans 7:18  … for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.
Romans 7:19  For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.
Romans 7:20  Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
Romans 7:21  I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.
Romans 7:22  For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.
Romans 7:23  But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

Paul mentioned some ‘laws.’

There is “God’s law,” meaning His perfect standard of righteousness.
There is a “law, that evil is present within me” (v21) … called “sin” (v23) … that dwells “in my members” (v23), i.e., my physical body.  It’s the flesh.
There is the “law of my mind,” which I take to mean my mind that is spiritually renewed when I receive Christ and am given a new, spiritual nature.

So I am born-again and have my mind renewed.  I desire to walk in such a way that I would be pleasing to God and I desire to live according to His righteous standards as revealed in His Law.  But I am face-to-face with the flesh – an evil presence and principle within me seeking to use my members to fulfill its lusts.

Romans 7:24  O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

As long as I am alive, in this physical body, I will carry around with me “this body of death.”  It is a “wretched” condition to be in.

But I can and I will be “delivered!”

Romans 7:25  I thank God – through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.

The first half of the verse looks to the fact that I will be delivered.  One day I will be with my resurrected and exalted Lord for all eternity in my own new body.  When that day comes I will be free forever from the flesh.
What about now?  Quite honestly, while awaiting freedom from the presence of sin, I still face conflicts between my renewed mind and the flesh.

The new ‘me’ “serve[s] the law of God.”
But at any given moment the flesh “[serves]… sin.”

There is an ongoing sense that I am face-to-face with the flesh.

But I can be delivered – even now – from yielding to the flesh.  Unlike in the physical torture, I need not become corrupted by my flesh.

I can look my flesh in the eye and say “No!” to its urges and impulses.

But I cannot do it on my own, in any strength of my own.  It requires my yielding to the Spirit of God… And that will be explained and expounded in chapter eight!

I ❤ Exposed (Romans 7v5-12)

If you run across an item titled, X-rays of Strange Items in Kid’s Stomachs Amaze Doctors, you gotta stop and look at it.

The most commonly swallowed items include coins, barrettes, rocks and buttons.

More uncommon items x-rayed included the following:

A fork
A car key
Magnetic blocks that reconnected once in the stomach
Batteries, especially button batteries (which can create a circuit in the esophagus and burn through it)
Safety pins

The apostle Paul didn’t know anything about x-ray machines in the first century.  If he did he might have, in this section of Romans seven, used the analogy that God’s Law is like an x-ray device in that it reveals what is hidden inside the human heart and mind.

He says something pretty similar as it is.  He’s going to talk about how God’s Law was a spiritual diagnostic to reveal the human heart.
If you’ve ever had an x-ray you’ve probably seen the report from the radiologist.  After describing what the x-ray shows he or she summarizes the findings.  Verse five reads like a summary of the findings.

Romans 7:5  For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death.

“When we were in the flesh,” i.e., before we are converted to Christ, God’s Law “aroused,” meaning revealed and exposed, the fact that “sinful passions” were “at work in [the] members [of our physical body].

What are some of the passions revealed and exposed by God’s Law?  Elsewhere Paul lists some of them as adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries (Galatians 5:19-21).

Romans 7:6  But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.

The first part of verse six reminds us of what we learned in verses one through four.  There Paul explained that when we died with Jesus, we were set free from the Law the way a wife is freed from her deceased husband.  We were set free to marry another – to be the betrothed bride of Jesus Christ.

In our newfound freedom we are empowered to “serve in the newness of the Spirit.”  We are indwelt by God the Holy Spirit and are encouraged by Him to yield ourselves to the Lord.

The “oldness of the letter” is to live trying to please God by keeping the Law’s rules and regulations and rites and rituals.  We don’t live by Law anymore.  Love is a superior motive for daily living, for obedience, for holiness.

Paul is going to expand on “serv[ing] in the newness of the Spirit” in chapter eight.  But before Paul could describe this new and empowered way of living, he knew he had an argument to overcome.

A Jew, or a Gentile who had converted to Judaism, would hear Paul’s comments about God’s Law and think, “There must be something wrong with God’s Law if it exposes and reveals people’s sin.”

Paul must stop to respond to this objection and show that the problem was not with God’s Law but in man.

Romans 7:7  What shall we say then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! On the contrary, I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.”

I know I’m belaboring the whole x-ray illustration but would you say that x-rays are bad because they show you what is wrong?  No, of course not.

So why would someone think God’s Law was ‘bad?’

They might think that because they misunderstand the purpose of God’s Law.  The Jews had a long history of supposing that the purpose of God’s Law WAS to make them righteous.  They believed the diagnostic tool was the cure!

As a diagnostic tool, the x-ray is great.  But what if a person who had swallowed something said, “I’ll just stay right here, being x-rayed, until I get better.”  What if they thought the x-ray could help them get better?

We’d understand immediately they need something more to help them.  So does a man or a woman whose sinful passions have been revealed.

“I would not have known sin except through the law.”  The Jews had summed-up God’s Law with 613 commandments.  Of the 613 commandments, 248 were mandates telling you what you should do and 365 were prohibitions telling you what not to do.  Then there were endless commentaries on exactly how to ‘keep’ the various mandates and how to avoid the prohibitions.  The Jews thought that by ‘keeping’ the Law they were attaining and maintaining a righteousness that was acceptable to God.

“Covetousness” is the most internal of the prohibitions in the Ten Commandments.  Paul’s point was that God’s Law exposes what is already present in your heart.  It exposes a sin nature you are born with.

Romans 7:8  But sin, taking opportunity by the commandment, produced in me all manner of evil desire. For apart from the law sin was dead.

“Opportunity” is a word borrowed from the military.  It means to establish a base of operations.  When I hear a “commandment,” such as “Do not covet,” I realize that within my heart sin already has an established base of operations.  I do covet!  There is a base right there, in my heart, from which covetousness operates.

In fact, not just covetousness but “all manner of evil desire” has a base of operation in my heart.

“Apart from the law sin was dead” means I did not recognize my indwelling sin nature until it was exposed by God’s Law.

Romans 7:9  I was alive once without the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.

When was Paul “alive… without the law?”  I think he was referring to himself as a Pharisee thinking that spiritual life could be achieved and maintained by personal effort, by works of righteousness according to the outward tenets of God’s Law.  He had a certain kind of ‘life’ that he lived when he thought keeping the Law would save him.

“When the commandment came” is when Paul realized the inward, spiritual, holy nature of the Law and understood that it’s purpose was to show him his sin.  Thus “sin revived,” meaning it sprang to life as to his awareness of it in his heart.

Instead of bringing him life, he “died,” meaning he understood he was spiritually dead in his trespasses and sins and that the Law could not help him.

In terms of our analogy, Paul understood God’s Law was diagnosing his problem, not curing it.
Romans 7:10  And the commandment, which was to bring life, I found to bring death.

As a Pharisee Paul thought that keeping God’s Law outwardly would “bring life.”  But when it really exposed his heart he saw it’s true purpose.  He “found” it “to bring death.”

Romans 7:11  For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it killed me.

While expecting to merit eternal life by keeping the Law, God showed Paul his sin by revealing his covetous heart.  He realized he had been deceived by sin in that he thought it could be overcome by outward obedience alone.  Instead he would be “killed” for his sin.  He was headed for eternal death.

Romans 7:12  Therefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.

“Therefore” reminds us that Paul was answering an objection.  He was answering those who said he was teaching that if it revealed sin then God’s Law must be bad.  No, all of God’s Law is “holy,” and every one of its commands is “holy, just and good.”

The Law and the commandments serve a great purpose.  They accurately diagnose the spiritually dead condition of your heart by showing you all the sinful passions that have their base of operations there.

If God’s Law is His spiritual x-ray then Christians are His technicians who subject nonbelievers to the Law in the hope they will see what is really inside them – a sin nature that has set up a base of operations.
Once a person has the correct diagnosis – indwelling sin – he or she will be apt to receive the cure – Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen from the dead.

Life After Dead Husband (Romans 7v1-4)

It helps to arrive at your destination if you have some idea where you are going!

Let me show you where we’re going in chapter seven.  Look at verses eighteen through twenty-four:

Romans 7:18  For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.
Romans 7:19  For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.
Romans 7:20  Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
Romans 7:21  I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good.
Romans 7:22  For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man.
Romans 7:23  But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.
Romans 7:24  O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

We’ll comment on these in a future study.  For now we must decide what Paul was describing.  More to the point, we need to decide when was Paul describing.  What time in his life was he referring to?  Was this his current and on-going experience?  Or was he referring back to his experience before he was saved?

In other words, is this a struggle I will have as a Christian?

Some look at this struggle with sin and believe that it must have been before Paul was born again.
Others believe that he was a Christian involved in the ongoing struggle against the flesh.

I think it’s both!  This is the struggle of anyone who tries to obey God in their own strength by keeping a set of rules.

This is something that a Christian may do, but something that a non-Christian can only do.

Griffith Thomas said, “The one point of the passage is that it describes a man who is trying to be good and holy by his own efforts and is beaten back every time by the power of indwelling sin; it thus refers to anyone, regenerate or unregenerate.”

The point of the passage, and of our chapter, is that we should not seek to live by keeping the Law of Moses or any other law or rules or regulations or rites or rituals but by yielding to the indwelling power of God the Holy Spirit.  Any law emphasizes my human effort to be holy.  No amount of my human effort can sustain a victorious, fruitful Christian life.

Too many Christians put themselves under some law, some rules, and then struggle unsuccessfully to grow when God wants us to abide in a personal relationship with Him that will bear spiritual fruit.

I can illustrate this by pointing to the Pharisees.  They approached life by trying to keep the Law of God.  They were considered the super-spiritual elite among the Jews.

Jesus, however, had issues with them.  He pointed out repeatedly that their keeping of the Law was all outward, all external, having no real effect on their hearts.  As such they were, He said, like a freshly painted tomb.  They looked great but inside they were rotting away.

Even though Jesus was clear that keeping the Law was not the way to walk with Him, in the Book of Acts you see that many of the Jews still tried to put the saved Gentiles under the Law, demanding they be circumcised and keep the Sabbath and in other ways conform to the rules of Judaism.
No one is to try to live the Christian life by keeping the Law.  Not Jews.  Certainly not Gentiles.

That being the case, it’s natural to ask, “What is our relationship to the Law?”

Paul is going to tell us we are dead with regard to it.

Romans 7:1  Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?

I’m told that in the Greek texts the word “the” is not there in front of “law.”  Paul was referring to the Law of Moses but broadening the concept to include all law, any law, as a way of approaching my daily walk.

That’s important for us because a lot of Christian groups come along and pick out certain parts of the Law as still being binding upon us.  They say in order to be a Christian you must keep certain laws, that you must do certain things.  If you’re not careful you can be persuaded by them to adopt a certain outward lifestyle and begin thinking you’re on the spiritual track when in fact you might just be painting the exterior of your life while inwardly you’re rotting away.

It’s a given that laws are only binding upon you while you are alive.  Once you’ve died, the law can’t demand anything of you.  Paul is going to argue that you are dead with regard to the Law and all such laws.  He does it by giving you a specific illustration.

Romans 7:2  For the woman who has a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives. But if the husband dies, she is released from the law of her husband.

Paul used marriage as an illustration.  The death of her husband freed a woman from her marriage and she was then free to marry another man.

Romans 7:3  So then if, while her husband lives, she marries another man, she will be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, though she has married another man.

Among the Jews a husband could divorce his wife but a wife could never divorce her husband.  A woman who divorced her husband to marry another man was considered to be committing adultery.

This was all basic stuff to the Jews.  If you were married you were subject to the prevailing laws.  In the case of wives, if their husband died they were free from the law that would make them adulteresses if they entered a new relationship.

Romans 7:4  Therefore, my brethren, you also have become dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be married to another – to Him who was raised from the dead, that we should bear fruit to God.

Just as death breaks the marriage relationship, so your death with Jesus Christ breaks your relationship to the Law of Moses and law in general as a way of life.

The argument that gets raised is that if you are free from keeping the Law and all law you will be lawless, i.e., you will be free to commit all kinds of sin.

Think of the illustration of marriage Paul used.  The wife set free by the death of her husband.  Was she then free to become promiscuous or a prostitute or worse?  No, she was free to remarry another.

One ‘marriage’ was broken by death and a new ‘marriage’ is entered in to.  The Christian is now married to another – to Him who was raised from the dead.  It is in this new, living, vibrant, dynamic personal relationship to Jesus Christ that we derive power to live and grow and have victory over sin.

We are not dead to law so we can live as we please.  We are free from law to live as the bride of Jesus Christ.  As His bride we should bear fruit to God.

(This fruit-bearing is taken up in the next set of verses).

Applying this, Jon Courson wrote:

There is no reason to be preoccupied with your failings, your lack of prayer, your lack of love, your lack of anything.  There is no reason to try to live up to the rules, regulations, and expectations you’ve put upon yourself.  When you realize that you died with Christ positionally on Calvary, you’re free from the demands of the law and free instead to just love the Lord.

Francis Chan, in his book Crazy Love, wrote this:

Most Christians have been taught… to set aside a daily time for prayer and [Bible] reading.  It’s what we are supposed to do, and so for a long time it’s what I valiantly attempted.  When I didn’t, I felt guilty.

Over time I realized that when we love God, we naturally run to Him – frequently and jealously.  Jesus didn’t command that we have a regular time with Him each day.  Rather, He tells us to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”  He called this the “first and greatest commandment” (Matthew 22:37-38).  The results are intimate prayer and study of His Word.  Our motivation changes from guilt to love.

I gotta tell you, while I agree with Chan, it’s really hard to say what he said.  I mean, it’s Christian bedrock to encourage daily devotions.  Anything that sounds remotely negative with regards to daily devotions can get you killed as a pastor.  Or at least totally misunderstood!

Maybe I’d better quote another completely trusted source.  Pastor Chuck Smith has been saying stuff like this for his entire ministry.  In Why Grace Changes Everything he wrote,

How beautiful it is to experience the freedom and joy of a love relationship with God! Yet how sad  it is that there are so many who insist on relating to God in a legalistic way.  Their righteousness is based on what they can do for the Lord instead of on what He has already done for them. They carry around a huge list of “do’s and don’ts” to keep them bound to God.

The Bible tells us that love is the fulfillment of the law.  In fact, when asked which was  the  greatest commandment,  Jesus replied that it was to love the Lord with all our  heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourself. Love, not the law, is the key to our relationship with God and with one another.  God wants us to experience  the  beauty of being drawn to Him by a cord far stronger than the obligation and guilt of the law.

Later Pastor Chuck mentions devotions along with other things that can become law-oriented rather than love-led.

We must stand fast in the liberty wherein Christ has made us free. We must not allow condemning rules to come in and dominate our lives until we feel that, unless we are praying seven hours a day or reading 25 chapters of Scripture in our devotions, we are not really righteous.

Remember what I said earlier.  The wife is not set free from her dead husband in order to become promiscuous or a prostitute.  She is set free to marry another.  In our case it’s Jesus!

We need to go beyond ‘devotions’ to being devotional.

Slave Labor Of Love (Romans 6v15-23)

The advertising motto for “Outback Steak House” is “No rules, just right.”  I’d bet you that Outback Steak House doesn’t embrace their own motto. Try going to your local Outback Steak House, order and eat a meal, then try to leave without paying for it.

You might say that “no rules, just right” is wrong!

In a sense, that was what the critics of the apostle Paul were saying.  They understood his emphasis on the grace of God to mean that there were no rules and, thus, everything was “right,” meaning you could do whatever you wanted to – including continuing in sin.

But does emphasizing grace over rules, rites, rituals and regulations really open the door to all manner of sinful behavior?  That’s our subject as we close out Romans six.

Romans 6:15  What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!

The chapter opened with a similar question.  The Jews and other critics of Paul claimed that his emphasis upon the grace of God would open the door to all manner of sinful living.

Paul meets this criticism head-on.  Grace opens the door to all manner of godly living!  We are set free to serve the Lord, not to sin against Him.

David Guzik explains it like this:
God has made us “safe” for grace by changing us as we receive God’s grace; He sets us free and equips us to live righteously before Him. Since we have died to sin, it is unthinkable that we could continue our former practice of sin. Once the caterpillar has been made a butterfly, the butterfly has no business crawling around on trees and leaves like a caterpillar again.

Illustrations can be helpful when discussing spiritual truths.  Slavery was a reality in first century Rome.  Paul’s readers would immediately relate to it as an illustration.

Romans 6:16  Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death, or of obedience leading to righteousness?

You are constituted in such a way that you must “present yourselves slaves” to a master.  As Bob Dylan sang, You Gotta Serve Somebody.

It may be the devil, Or it may be the Lord
But you gotta serve somebody

In your natural state you were a slave who presented yourself to “sin leading to death.”  In other words, you were a sinner by nature and by choice whose destiny was “death,” meaning separation from God for eternity.

When you get saved you’re still a slave but now your master is God.  Because He is your master  when you present yourself to Him you find yourself walking by “obedience leading to righteousness.”

I think by that Paul means that you find yourself walking in obedience because it pleases God, your master, to do so.  You want to obey Him and that’s a better motivation than having to obey Him.

Remember what we said earlier: God has made you safe to be motivated by grace by changing you.

Romans 6:17  But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.

“God be thanked” because salvation is His free gift to us.  We did not and could not earn it.  While we were yet slaves of sin, ungodly, God saved us.  Jesus’ death on the Cross redeemed us from slavery to sin as He paid the price necessary to set us free.

“Obeyed from the heart” is a way of describing faith.  You are saved by believing.  You believe God and He declares you righteous.

You obey “that form of doctrine.”  First, this means, in general, the Word of God.  Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.

But that’s just the beginning.  God’s Word continues to affect you.  The word “form” was used of castings into which molten metal was poured.  He’s saying that after you are saved you go on to be cast into an image.

Whose image?  After you are saved you are predestined to be conformed – molded and shaped – into the image of Jesus.

“To which you were delivered” means that when you were saved it was just the beginning.  You were delivered from sin, but “to” something as well.  You were delivered to this work of becoming more like Jesus.

Romans 6:18  And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

It’s possible to be set free but still think like and live like a slave.  I’ve been using the more modern analogy of a prisoner.  If all you’ve ever known is prison life, you find it hard to live out in the world as a free man.  You often end up right back in prison.

As Christians we should be yearning for and learning more about the righteousness of God.  Why go back to the prison of sin?

Grace definitely does not lead you to sin!  You may choose to sin, but that is not the fault of God’s grace.

Because of the frailty of man, the Christian at infrequent intervals does yield to the evil nature and sin.  But the point is, God has so constituted him, that he need not do so (Kenneth Wuest).

Jesus Christ tells us to no longer behave as if we were slaves to sin. We have been set free from sin.  To use the prison analogy, if I am released from prison, it’s no longer where I live.

Romans 6:19  I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.

Paul explained that, in using the illustration of slaves and master, he was speaking in human terms.  He was using a familiar illustration from everyday life.  He seemed somewhat apologetic.  After all, many of his readers were still slaves of their Roman masters!  But, at the same time, that is precisely why the illustration was so powerful.
Before our conversion we surrendered our bodies as slaves of all kinds of uncleanness and to one kind of wickedness after another.  Now we should dedicate our same bodies as “slaves of righteousness,” so that our lives would be holy.

God’s purpose in setting you free from sin is not to give you the freedom to do as you please.  It is to give you true freedom, which is to do as He pleases – which is for you to live right and become more-and-more like Jesus.

Romans 6:20  For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.

Most people think themselves basically good; or at least more good than bad.  If they fall into bad behavior they might seek reformation of some kind.

It’s true that most people are decent, honest, law-abiding, helpful and even religious.  But apart from grace they are totally separated from God’s standard of righteousness.  They are “free in regard to righteousness” thus means they were unable to achieve it.  The only freedom a sinner knows is freedom from righteousness.

Romans 6:21  What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

Paul was speaking to folks who had converted to Christ later in life.  If you converted to Christ later in life you, too, have “fruit” from your former life to be “ashamed” of.

Don’t dwell on it.  Just realize that “the end of those things is death.”

When you put it like that, why would a person choose to yield their body back to the sin leading to death from which they have been delivered?  They wouldn’t – or at least they shouldn’t.

Romans 6:22  But now having been set free from sin, and having become slaves of God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life.

Again Paul stresses you have been set free from sin.  It is something that has already been accomplished.  You’re not working towards it; it was done for you on the Cross.

Likewise we have “become slaves of God.”  Perhaps this example will help.  God’s people were once literally slaves in Egypt.  He delivered them.  When God commanded Pharaoh to let His people go He said this about their freedom: “that they may serve Me in this wilderness” (Exodus 7:16).  They would become God’s willing slaves.

You’re free but only in terms of who you choose to serve.

You are now a willing slave of God.  You can’t wait for Him to tell you what to do.

He tells you to forgive people you’ve held grudges against for years and you do it.
He tells you to remain patient in your troubles and you settle in to them.
He tells you to serve others and you roll up your sleeves.

You have “fruit to holiness.”  It means that holiness is the fruit you produce.  Holiness is simply being set apart for God’s use.  It is the theological counterpart to calling you a slave.  You are a slave eager to do His master’s will.  His will is for you to be holy – set apart for His use.

Even in nature, fruit is a result, a byproduct, of other factors.  The lemon doesn’t have to work hard to be produced!  It just results from the right conditions.

“And the end, everlasting life.”  Your willing slavery, which produces holiness, will one day terminate in everlasting life.

This stands in contrast with the word death in Romans 6:21 and shows its reality.  One is just as long in duration as the other; and if the one is limited, the other is.  If those who are saved shall be blessed with life forever, those who remain lost will be cursed with death forever.

Everyone will live forever.  If it were up to me nonbelievers would be annihilated at death.  It’s not up to me.  God sends no one to Hell; but many will end up there.

Romans 6:23  For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The word translated “wages” describes the pay of the Roman soldier.  Sin is thus represented as a king, a mighty monarch; sinners are his subjects and vassals, his servants and soldiers, who fight under him, and for him, and all the wages they must expect from him is death.

Death is the wages of sin, because, like the pay of the soldier, it is just what was agreed upon.  God told Adam and Eve that, in the day they ate of the forbidden fruit, they would die.  It was clearly spelled out.

But “the gift of God” stands in stark contrast to our natural wages.  We earn death; we must be given eternal life as a gift.
“In Christ Jesus our Lord” brings us back to a major theme in Romans six.  It’s not just through Him that we are saved, although that is true.  We are  in Him.   What happened to Him happened to us.  He died on the Cross; we died in Him on the Cross.  He rose from the dead in newness of life; we have risen in Him with newness of life.

As believers, we have experienced a change of ownership.  Sin is no longer my master.  God is!

I don’t have to obey Him, but I get to and I want to.  Thus I am encouraged to present myself to God, to yield myself to His service.  It’s the only reasonable thing to do!

It is safe to walk by grace.  I don’t need to obey a set of outward laws or rules or regulations because my heart is set on pleasing the One Who set me free from sin.  Love is a superior motive to law.

If the apostle Paul did slogans he might have said, “No rules, just righteousness.”

ReBorn Free (Romans 6v8-14)

Institutional syndrome refers to deficits or disabilities which develop after a person has spent a long period living in mental hospitals, prisons, or other remote institutions.  One effect of living in these institutions is that once they return to ‘normal’ life they are often unable to manage many of its demands.

It’s not a great illustration, but I think you can see a little bit of this in a person who becomes a Christian.  God gives you life and freedom but you can be so affected by years of living in sin, responding sinfully by yielding your body to the world and the devil, that it’s hard to walk as a ‘normal’ person the way God intended.

You can and theses verses tell you how.

Romans 6:8  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him,

The spiritual fact is that when Jesus “died” on the Cross, we died as to our old state of being.  We are no longer seen by God as being ‘in,’ or identified, with Adam.  Jesus is our new representative and what is true of Him is true for us.

We “live with Him.”  We all either do or have ‘lived’ with someone.  You share space and supplies and responsibilities with the folks you live with.

In a much greater and, of course, spiritual way, you share everything that belongs to, or is true of, Jesus.

Live with Him certainly looks forward to the future after we are either resurrected or raptured.  But it also applies now as we realize that all spiritual blessings in heavenly places are ours to enjoy.

He was talking about experiencing resurrection life right now on a daily basis.  We often summarize this truth by stating that the same mighty power which raised Jesus from the dead is available in your life right now.  You have the present indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to apply the blessings and benefits of Jesus Christ’s resurrection.

Romans 6:9  knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him.

“Knowing” is a key word.  As we’ve said in each previous study, we appropriate these truths by faith.  These are spiritual facts that require only our believing for them to be activated in our lives.

“Christ, having been raised from the dead…”  Just a reminder that we believe Jesus rose from the dead in a glorified physical body.  It is a foundational doctrine of the Christian faith.

“Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.”  Jesus raised
many people from the dead during His earthly ministry.  These all were
raised in their regular physical body.  These all died again.

When Jesus was raised from the dead, He was the first to be
resurrected in a glorified human body.  He was raised and will never be dead again.

“Death no longer has dominion over Him.”  Death once held Jesus for a
time.  He was in the grave for three days – not as a prisoner, however.

Prior to the death and resurrection of Jesus, all people who died went
to Hades.  Hades was divided into two compartments – a place of torment, and a place of rest called Paradise.  When Jesus died on the Cross, He descended into Hades, into Paradise.  There He revealed Himself to all the righteous dead from all time as the Savior they had put their faith in.  Then Jesus led them to heaven in triumph.

(This is explained by the apostle Paul in a passage in Ephesians 4:8-10).

When He was in Paradise, awaiting His physical resurrection, He was Lord.  There is no basis anywhere in Scripture for thinking that Hades is some sort of kingdom over which the devil reigns.  Demons are not in Hades torturing and tormenting the souls of deceased unbelievers.  A few really bad demons are already incarcerated in Hell.  They are chained there, being punished.  The rest of the demons, and the devil, are on the loose.

There is an awful heresy among health and wealth preachers that says Jesus was tortured and tormented by the devil after He died and was in Paradise.  Nope.

Romans 6:10  For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

Since Jesus was sinless, how is it “He died to sin”?

First, He died to the penalty of sin by taking upon Himself the sins of the whole human race.  He met the legal demands of sin for all mankind who would trust Him for salvation.
Second, He died to sin in that He broke its power.  A major point of this section is that sin has no power over us anymore.

Jesus did this “once for all.”  What the Lord accomplished in His death, burial, and resurrection cannot be repeated.  It need not be repeated.  By the way.  This is one reason I don’t like crucifixes, where Jesus is still hanging on the Cross.  His work on the Cross is finished.  The empty Cross is our symbol, not the suffering Christ.

“The life that He lives, He lives to God.”  Of course Jesus, as eternal, always lived to God – He always lived in relation to His Father and the Holy Spirit.

But with His resurrection He lives to God in the fulfillment of all that
the Scripture has prophesied of His comings.  His successful completion of His mission at His first coming, punctuated by His resurrection and ascension, assures us that the rest of God’s plan will unfold just as it is written.

Jesus lives to God as the One Who will step forward and take the scroll and unleash the Great Tribulation on the earth.
He lives to God as the One Who will return to end the Battle of Armageddon
He lives to God to rule over the earth for a thousand years.
He lives to God to create a new heaven and a new earth.

Paul has described what is true of us positionally. Now he turns to the practical outworking of this truth in our lives.

Romans 6:11  Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“I reckon” is something Jed Clampet might say to Jethro.  We take it to mean “I guess,” or “I suppose.”

In reality the word reckon is far more confident and robust.  William
MacDonald quotes Ruth Paxson who wrote:

[It means] believing what God says in Romans 6:6 and knowing it as a fact in one’s own personal salvation.  This demands a definite act of faith, which results in a fixed attitude toward “the old man.”  We will see him where God sees him—on the Cross, put to death with Christ… The first step in a walk of practical holiness is this reckoning upon the crucifixion of “the old man.

That is the intention of the word “reckon.”  You are to count as being
really true what God says – that you are dead indeed to sin.  By faith
you conclude what God has declared.

God does not command you to become dead indeed to sin.  He tells you that you are already dead indeed to sin and alive to Him, and then He commands you to act appropriately.
We reckon ourselves dead to sin by responding to temptation as a dead man would.  The story is often told of Augustine being accosted by a woman who had been his mistress before his conversion.  When he turned and walked away quickly, she called after him, “Augustine, it’s me! it’s me!”  Quickening his pace, he called back over his shoulder, “Yes, I know, but it is no longer me!”

What he meant was that he was dead to sin and alive to God.  A dead man has nothing to do with immorality, lying, cheating, gossiping, or any other sin.

Instead we are alive to God in Christ Jesus. This means that we are called to holiness, worship, prayer, service, and bearing fruit.

The next verses talk about your choice of master.  You read of presenting yourself either to sin as your master, or to God as your Master.  The NKJV uses the word “present,” while the KJV uses the word “yield.”  You are to present yourself by yielding your will to God.

Romans 6:12  Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts.

Several years ago Bob Dylan wrote a Christian song entitled, You Gotta Serve Somebody.  The title captures an important spiritual principle.  You were created in such a way that you must serve someone.  You might not like to hear that, but it is true!  Only in serving the one you were created for will you find true humanity, purpose, and meaning.

Adam believed he could get out from under the service of God and become his own sovereign.  What did he find instead to be true?  He found himself the servant of Satan, and sin began to reign in his mortal body.  God promised him a Savior whom he could submit to, whom he could surrender to – whom he could serve.

You were once “in Adam,” the servant of Satan, with sin reigning in your mortal body.  Now you are “in Christ,” dead to sin.  Sin is still present, both within and around you.  You are still on the earth, still in a corrupting body.  Therefore you must daily choose whom you will serve, sin or the Savior, and whether you will let sin or righteousness reign.

Romans 6:13  And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin…

Sin expresses itself through your physical body and its appetites.  Your eyes, your ears, your mouth – all of the members of your physical body – can become the instruments of sin.

Since your sin nature was crucified you need no longer yield to its lusts.  Instead you can choose to,

Romans 6:13  …present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

It’s a choice, every time, but one you can always make.

Romans 6:14  For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

The first reason “sin shall not have dominion over you” was that our old man was crucified with Christ (6:6).
The second reason is that we “are not under law but under grace.”

Sin has the upper hand over a person who is under law.  Why?  For two reasons:

The law tells you what to do but doesn’t give you the power to do it.
The law stirs up desires in fallen human nature to do what is forbidden.

“Not under law but under grace” is another way to describe the radical  change in the life of someone who is born again.  For the Jewish person of
Paul’s day, living life under law was everything.  The law was the way to God’s approval and eternal life.  Now, Paul shows that in light of the New Covenant, we are not under law but under grace.  His work in our life has changed everything.
D. L. Moody used to speak of an old black woman in the South following the Civil War.  Being a former slave, she was confused about her status and asked: “Now is I free, or be I not?  When I go to my old master he says I ain’t free, and when I go to my own people they say I is, and I don’t know whether I’m free or not. Some people told me that Abraham Lincoln signed a proclamation, but master says he didn’t; he didn’t have any right to.”

You can listen to your old slave master but “you be free” because Jesus has set you free!  He alone had the right to do so, being the sinless Son of God – fully God and fully human.

Spurgeon said,

If God has given to you and to me an entirely new life in Christ, how can that new life spend itself after the fashion of the old life? Shall the spiritual live as the carnal? How can you that were the servants of sin, but have been made free by precious blood, go back to your old slavery?

Don’t stay ‘institutionalized’ in your flesh.

Shouldn’t Listen To My Old Man (Romans 6v3-7)

You’ve seen NBC’s The More You Know public service announcements.  They began airing on the network in 1989 as an attempt to raise public awareness about important issues.

Romans six is Paul the apostle’s ‘the more you know’ campaign.  He keeps using the words know or knowing.

You see “know” used in verses three and sixteen.
You see the word “knowing” in verses six and nine.

In fact there are three key words in this chapter, “know,” “reckon,” and  “present.”

“Know” is used in the sense of to believe as true without doubting.
“Reckon” is found in verse eleven.  It means to count, to compute, to take into account.  It is a banking term.
“Present” is found in verse thirteen and means yield.

Paul was saying that when you take into account what you know to be true you find you can yield to God rather than to sin.  You can cooperate with God in His work of sanctifying you day-by-day.

Let’s see what it is we are to “know.”

Romans 6:3  Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

The idea behind the Greek word for baptized is either to immerse or to overwhelm something.  The Bible uses this idea of being baptized into something in several different ways.

When a person is baptized in water, they are quite literally immersed with water.
When they are baptized with the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:11, Acts 1:5) they are spiritually immersed with the Holy Spirit.  We speak of Him being poured-out upon them.
When they are baptized with suffering (Mark 10:39), they are overwhelmed with suffering.

When Paul said we are “baptized into Christ,” he meant that we are spiritually immersed into Jesus when we are justified.  Then he goes on to say that our water baptism is a public, outward, testimony of the Lord’s inward, spiritual work.

The Bible Knowledge Commentary puts it like this:

By faith believers are “baptized (placed) into Christ” and thereby are united and identified with Him. This spiritual reality is then graphically witnessed to and pictured by believers’ baptism in water. The one baptism (by water) is the visible picture of the spiritual truth of the other baptism (identification with Christ).

Water baptism does not save you.  It does not complete your salvation.  It is a public testimony you give that you are saved.

That is not to minimize it’s importance!  It is a command.  It’s been said by commentators that the idea of an unbaptized believer is foreign to the New Testament.  And it would seem from both the Bible and early church history that folks were baptized immediately after receiving Christ.

What Paul wants you to know is that since you were baptized into Christ Jesus and therefore identified with Him, then you were baptized into His [Jesus’] death.  It’s a spiritual fact; a spiritual reality.

Romans 6:4  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 also should walk in newness of life.

As far as God is concerned, when Jesus died, you died with Him.  When Jesus rose, you rose with Him.  We might find it hard to get a handle on this but these are the facts.

Paul applied all this to our daily walk.  “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

It isn’t just that raising Jesus brought “glory” to the Father.  Jesus was raised, it reads, “by the glory of the Father.”  His glory is the sum total of His wonderful attributes.  In this case because God is both holy and love, His glory demanded that the sinless Son of God be raised in triumph over sin and death to be in a position to justify lost men and women.

Remember we are dealing in this section of Romans (chapters 6-8) with what happens next, after we are justified.  Do we remain ungodly sinners?  No, not at all!  We are dead to sin and “should walk in newness of life.”

Paul describes that life in verse five:

Romans 6:5  For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection,

When Jesus died, we died with Him.  Just so, when He rose from the dead, so did we.

A new illustration is introduced.  The word used here for “united” does not occur elsewhere in the New Testament.  It means sown or planted at the same time; what sprouts or springs up together.  It is applied to plants and trees that are planted at the same time and that sprout and grow together.  The name would be given to a field of grain that was sown at the same time and where the grain sprung up and grew simultaneously.

But the picture is even more intense.  In some instances two trees, for example, may touch and begin to overlap and begin to grow together.  They become a single top growing from two separate trunks.

Or we may graft two plants or trees together so that they become one.  It is reminiscent of Jesus telling us He is the vine and we are the branches.

Jesus and the believer are so united together they can be said to be one plant, one tree, one person.

This is true.  It is a spiritual fact.  The sooner we know it is true, the sooner we will begin to “reckon” it and walk in newness of life as we should.

Romans 6:6  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.

“Knowing this.”  It’s an appeal to know something that is already true, already a spiritual fact.  There’s nothing to do, just something to realize.

We are to realize that “our old man was crucified with [Jesus].”  The word “old” isn’t the normal word for chronological age.  It’s instead a word that is used of something that has been destroyed.

But who or what is this destroyed old man?  And how did he get that way?

The “old man” has to do with our natural birth.  It is what we are at birth.  It is everything we inherited from Adam.  It is who we are as human beings in Adam.  Adam affected both my standing before God, and my state in the world.

My natural state and standing as a human being is what is meant by the old man.  Now in chapters one through four we saw how my natural standing is changed by God.  When I believe in Jesus Christ, I am no longer ‘in’ Adam but I am ‘in’ Jesus.  I have a new standing, a new position.

Here in Romans six Paul seems to be focusing on my natural state or, as we sometimes say, my sin nature.
Because my old man was “crucified with [Jesus]… and is dead, the body of sin might be done away.”   The “body of sin” is not the “old man.”  It is something distinct from the old man.  What is it?

The “body of sin” is what is elsewhere called “the flesh.”  What is the “flesh?”  It is a little hard to define and commentators are all over the map.

It is not the physical body itself.  The physical body has its needs but they are neutral.

The “flesh” is something I find at work within my physical body.  It is that tendency, that inclination, those impulses, to use my physical body in sinful ways.

The flesh is a problem in my daily life because it has been expertly trained in sinful habits by three sources:

First, the old man trained and ‘imprinted’ himself on the flesh.
Second, the world system, in its spirit of rebellion against God, can have an continuing influence on the flesh.
Third, the devil seeks to tempt and influence the flesh towards sin.

The old man gives in to the flesh.  But what if our old man is dead?

Well, if that’s the case, “the body of sin [the flesh] might be done away with.”  In other words, with my old man dead, I just “might” be able to do away with the flesh!

“Done away” is the key phrase.  It means to render inoperative.  It is a word used to describe making something ineffective by removing its power of control.  It means to disconnect.

Since my old man is dead, it need not respond to any impulses or inclinations from the flesh.  When I know my old man was crucified with Jesus, it removes the power of control from the flesh.  There is a disconnect between them.

Remember, we are talking about second-stage salvation, what the Bible calls sanctification.  It is God working on me to make me righteous and me cooperating with His work.

David Guzik puts it like this:

God calls us, in participation with Him, to do actively day by day with the flesh just what He has already done with the old man – crucify it, make it dead to sin (Galatians 5:24).  But when we allow the flesh to be continually influenced by the old man’s habits of the past, the world, and the devil, the flesh will exert a powerful pull towards sin.

Until my physical body is redeemed at the resurrection or the rapture I will struggle with the flesh.  It remains with me.  But my knowledge of the crucifixion of my old man cuts the power cord.

Thus we should “no longer be slaves of sin…”  I need no longer yield my physical body over to the control of the flesh.  It’s not a matter of feelings, but of the fact I have been crucified with Jesus Christ.

Romans 6:7  For he who has died has been freed from sin.

Paul introduces another metaphor.  He suggests that the flesh be seen as a master that enslaves me to sin.  In the Roman Empire death freed a slave from his master’s control.  The master could bark all kinds of orders but the slave could no longer respond.

In the 1960 film Spartacus, Kirk Douglas played the escaped slave who led a brief but widespread slave rebellion in ancient Rome.  At one point in the movie Spartacus says: “Death is the only freedom a slave knows.  That’s why he is not afraid of it.”

We are set free from sin – i.e., from the sin nature – because the old man has died with Jesus on the cross.  I am no longer his slave.  Instead a new man, a free man, lives.

God is working in me everyday to make me holy.  It is a work I cooperate with.  I am to take into account what I know to be true – that my old man is dead and I do not need to serve the flesh but can instead present myself to God to serve Him.

You’re Better Off Dead (Romans 6v1-2)

There are three terms you should be somewhat familiar with as you read and study the Bible: justification, sanctification, and glorification.  They describe the various stages of salvation from the moment you accept Jesus Christ until you see Him face-to-face.

“Salvation begins with the judicial act of justification, proceeds through the lifelong process of sanctification, and is completed when we meet Christ [through death or at the rapture] in an act of glorification” (Norman Geisler).

We’ve been studying justification, which is the act of God by which we are declared righteous based on the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross.  It is an instantaneous past act of God by which your record is cleared and you are guiltless before Him.

Sanctification is the continual process of God making us righteous until we are glorified.  We are glorified when, after death or at the Rapture, we lay aside our current physical bodies.

Norman Geisler puts it like this: “Justification is the act by which God gets us out of sin (legally).  Sanctification is the process by which God gets sin out of us (actually).”

Justification requires no work on our behalf.  We are justified the moment we believe God apart from any works of righteousness.  Since justification is by faith, it is not a process or a performance; it is a pronouncement. If it were a process, it would take place gradually, over a period of time, as you performed certain commandments or sacraments.  Justification is the pronouncement of the Judge that you are “Not guilty” by virtue of His Son’s work on the Cross.  You are fully justified the moment you receive Jesus as your Savior by faith.

God’s sanctifying work does require our cooperation.  It takes place throughout your lifetime on the earth.  It is a process.  We must yield to His grace as He seeks to change us to be more and more like Jesus.

These next three chapters – Romans 6, 7 & 8 – describe for us why and how we who have been justified can cooperate with God in His work of sanctifying us.

Romans 6:1  What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

“What shall we say then?”  What I get from this is, “What comes next?”  God justifies me, then what?

Remember in chapter four Paul declared that God justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5).  This was a radical concept to Paul’s hearers.  Now if God justifies us by grace while we are ungodly, do we remain ungodly after we’re saved so that His grace abounds all the more?  In other words, what happens to ungodly sinners after we are justified?

You notice in these two verses “sin” is singular, not plural.  “Sin” is a noun in this chapter.  The noun form denotes the nature of sin whereas a verb form denotes the sinful acts that flow from it.

We’re not talking about continuing to commit individual sins.  We’re not talking about life-dominating sins.  We’re talking about the sin nature we inherited from Adam.

Here is my understanding of what is being asked in verse one.  Since we are justified by grace while we are ungodly, do we remain ungodly in order for grace to abound even more?

Romans 6:2  Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

“Certainly not” is a strong statement – like saying “God forbid!”  Just because God saved us by grace as ungodly sinners it does not follow that we continue in sin in order to reveal His grace.

Instead we immediately discover as justified individuals that “we” have “died to sin.

When a person physically dies he is free from all his former responsibilities and relationships.  He can’t be late for work and be fired; his parking tickets go unpaid.

You are just as free from sin as a dead man is from paying his parking tickets.

You are not said to be dying to sin, as if it were being overcome a little at a time.  No, there is a finality to it.  Sin has no power over you because your sin nature is dead.

Since we have died to sin, then we should not “live any longer in it.”  You have been set free once-for-all from the controlling power of sin.

Knowing and believing that you have died to sin is essential.  If you are a Christian you can say “NO!” to sin.

There are no steps involved in becoming dead to sin.  It’s done; you’re dead!  It happened for you at the Cross.  It’s something you need to know and believe.  Warren Wiersbe puts it like this: “Christian living depends on Christian learning.”

We still commit individual acts of sin.  Why?  Because we are still in this body of flesh with its lusts and habits.

As we go on in chapter six we will see that the way you apply this truth is by “reckoning” it to be true.  By reckoning it to be true you defeat the flesh.  But you begin by understanding the truth that you have died to sin and it no longer has any power over you.

Sadly, there are always going to be those who pervert the teaching about the grace of God in sanctification.  In the early part of the twentieth century the Russian monk Gregory Rasputin taught and lived the idea of salvation through repeated experiences of sin and repentance.  He believed that because those who sin the most require the most forgiveness, a sinner who continues to sin with abandon enjoys more of God’s grace (when he repents for the moment) than the ordinary sinner.  Therefore, Rasputin lived in notorious sin and taught that this was the way to salvation.

There’s a little bit of Rasputin in all of us!  Nevertheless the reality of the Christian life is that you have died to sin and God is working to sanctify you.

Having been justified, God begins His work of sanctification and you are encouraged to cooperate with it.

Here is something interesting to note.  Sanctification varies from individual to individual.  As an illustration I’d set forth Abraham and his nephew Lot.

Abraham was Paul’s prime example of justification by faith.  We know that Abraham was saved and that he remained saved.  In fact, the paradise section of Hades was named after him, called by Jesus “Abraham’s Bosom.”

Lot is a challenge for us.  He, in fact, continued in sin.  Given a choice by Uncle Abraham where to settle, Lot set his eyes toward Sodom and Gomorrah.  He moved closer and closer to those wicked cities until he was living in them.  The account in Genesis indicates he then became a city leader.  Through it all he had no influence on the morals of his peers.

When the angels came to deliver Lot and his family before God destroyed those cities the men of the town sought to sexually assault them.  Lot offered them his daughters to satisfy their lusts!

Lot argued with the angels.  In the end Lot had to be dragged out of the city.  His wife looked back and was turned into a pillar of salt.  Then on consecutive nights, while hiding in a cave, Lot’s two daughters got him drunk and slept with him.

I don’t know about you but the first time I read Second Peter I was shocked when Peter referred to Lot as a saved man whose righteous soul was vexed as he lived out his life in the world (2Peter 2:7-8).
Both Abraham and Lot were justified, i.e., saved, and remained so to the end.  Yet their sanctification differed dramatically, so much so that if Peter didn’t tell you that Lot was saved you’d assume he either was not a believer or that he had forfeited his salvation.

We each cooperate with God in sanctification differently.  You could see it as a spectrum with Abraham at one end and Lot at the other.  Abraham was not without his falterings; Lot seemed to be without any faithfulness.  Yet both were justified and remained so to the end.

You might be thinking, “Gene, what you are saying will encourage people to continue in sin.”  Well, that is what the Romans who were hearing Paul’s letter were thinking!  If I’m eliciting the same response that Paul did, then I must be saying the same thing Paul said.

I’m not trying to elicit that response.  It’s the response you get when you preach grace, abounding grace.

This discussion touches upon what is sometimes called the security of the believer, or eternal security, or the perseverance of the saints.  Theologians have struggled with it and continue to do so.

Along with the discussion of the security of the believer, an important component of it, is the doctrine of assurance.  The assurance of salvation is two-fold:

Is it possible to know absolutely and with confidence that one is saved?
Is it possible for one who believes themselves to be saved to know they will remain saved?

A key Scripture in any discussion of security and assurance would be Second Timothy 1:12 which reads (KJV), “for I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day.”

It would seem from that declaration that you can both know with certainty you are saved and that you can know with certainty you will remain saved.
Some of the confusion about the security and assurance of the believer can be cleared-up if we keep the stages of salvation separate in our thinking.  Remember we pointed out that first you are justified, then you are being sanctified, until finally you are glorified.

Security in your salvation is based upon justification.  When you accept Jesus Christ, you are declared righteous; you are justified and have a new position before God for eternity.  It is an act of God in time – an instantaneous, one time act.  Your only involvement is that you “believe” God.

Sanctification requires your cooperation and you see even in the Bible that some believers cooperate more than others.

Let me pose two questions for you to ponder:

Can a justified person become un-justified and then be re-justified?
Is there any indication in the New Testament that a person indwelt by the Holy Spirit can become un-indwelt and then re-indwelt?

The distinction I make, and it’s certainly not a perfect one, is whether or not a person was genuinely saved in the first place.  There are examples in Scripture of genuinely saved individuals who nevertheless sinned heinously.  And there are examples of those who were never really “of us” even though they professed faith in Jesus Christ.

You can have assurance you are saved and will remain so in Jesus Christ.

We’re not really talking to or about the unsaved or the severely backslidden in these verses.  We’re talking to and about the average believer who desires to walk with God in victory over sin.  The person Paul is describing is justified and is now going to be sanctified.

We are declaring that you can walk with God in victory over sinning because your old sin nature is a dead corpse that you have no reason to yield to.

The world and the devil are tempting a dead man!