Romans 6:1-11 Eastering Every Day

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan.

Easter, the Cross, and the Empty Tomb as the Center of Faith

Good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Felsick, I'm the lead pastor here and I am really glad to be with you all on this Easter Sunday. It is amazing to contemplate and consider the centrality of our faith, the cross and the empty tomb.

Jesus Christ has defeated sin at the cross and death at that empty tomb on that Sunday morning, 2 ,000 years ago. Our enemies lost their power, the fate of the forces of darkness has been sealed, the seeds of the new heaven and the new earth have taken root and the offer of salvation is now proclaimed to all, come to Jesus and live.

Come to Jesus and live. Ask him to forgive your rebellion against him, bow the knee to acknowledge him as your Lord and King and hope, purpose, freedom, forgiveness and eternal life will be yours forevermore.

The cross and the empty tomb are the starting place of the new covenant, a new agreement between God, his initiative, a new agreement between God and humanity. The covenant is his pledge to reconcile all who come to his son by faith, asking him to be their Lord and Savior.

But that's just the beginning of a new life granted to us through union with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Good Friday and the cross of Jesus is to be a daily and even moment-by-moment consideration as we navigate this sin-laden, sin-cursed world.

And that empty tomb must be more than a one Sunday a year consideration to those who have been bought by him and promised eternal life through his resurrection. I would suggest to you that the call from the passage we're gonna be looking at today, no, we're not gonna be in Hosea, everybody breathe a sigh of relief.

I am actually not gonna be preaching Hosea this week, we'll be wrapping it up in a couple of weeks. But I am going to suggest to you from the passage that we're looking at that we must Easter every day.

Now, yes, I just made Easter into a verb, and I know that that's something I just did, but if Easter is the word that we choose to give to a day set aside to remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord, then I think Paul would tell us in this passage in Romans 6, in this passage, to Easter every day.

And to Easter in the morning, and to Easter in the middle of the day, Easter in the moment of temptation, Easter in the dark nights when you're pressed and weighed down by the fears and concerns of this world.

And I know most everybody in this room has had a dark night like that. And so let's open our Bibles or your devices to Romans chapter six, verses one through 11. I mention your devices because we're okay with you having your phone out here as long as you're looking at the word of God.

And nobody's monitoring that, so whatever. Romans chapter six, verses one through 11, recast, this is God's holy word, and let's give it our attention here this morning as we contemplate and consider what the death of Christ and his resurrection spells out for us.

A holy word from God here. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we've been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of death might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin.

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, what a awesome, awesome story that we talk about every week here.

It's not something that we just uniquely bring up on Easter Sunday, but your death, burial and resurrection, being the center of our faith, being the only hope that we know, not our effort, not our work, not our church attendance, not our giving, not our giving of our time, our giving of our resources, none of that being sufficient to heal the broken relationship that we have with you from the beginning when we first sinned against you in the garden, but you reaching down in a new covenant to restore, to send forth your son who lived a perfect life, died in our place, a sacrificial death there on the cross, taking the penalty that we deserved, being buried and raising to new life on the third day.

Father, we praise you for this cadence of life that incorporates a day each year to reflect and remember that empty tomb. But Father, I pray that just as Paul would have it here in this passage, that we would reflect on that more and more and more, letting it be the actual air that we breathe, new life in you, that we might walk in newness of life that extends for eternity.

Father, I pray that right now the joy of that salvation, the actual love that we've experienced there in your sacrifice and your resurrection and in your victory, that that would overflow and bubble out of us in a way that we would just be fervent in our worship, enthusiastic and excited in these songs, and that they would be turned from mere exercises of our vocal cords to actual worship and praise to you, that we would see you in the great glory and majesty and splendor that you have given to your Son, raised to new life and now seated at your right hand.

Father, I pray that you would help us to think rightly about these things, even as we sing these songs in praise to you in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen.

Thanks a lot to the band for leading us in worship. You can go ahead and be seated and reopen. Make yourself comfortable. If at any time you wanna get up and get more coffee or donut holes, you can take advantage of that back there.

The Practical Power of the Resurrection in Romans 6

And then reopen to Romans chapter six, verses one through 11. So you have that on your lap. You're able to see and follow along and see that what I'm saying is coming from God's word. It's not me getting up and sharing my opinions and thoughts about Easter this morning.

The fact of the resurrection is found in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So that's where you go to find the events, the history, the actual occurrence. And the significance of the resurrection is found in passages like 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

I commend that to you maybe this afternoon if you wanna see more about the focus there of the significance of the resurrection and how central it is to our faith. But today we're gonna look at the practical power of the resurrection.

We're gonna look at what it means and spells out for us in the day to day. How do we live and how are we supposed to relate to God and the world around us in light of the resurrection and the cross? And so I wanna look at the practical power of the cross and the empty tomb for the people of God, us.

Our outline is brief. It's the first movement in the text is a setup verses one and two. Then united in his death, verses three through seven, and united in his life or united in resurrection, however you wanna, maybe even his resurrection life,.

Verses eight through 10.

Grace, Sin, and the Question of Continuing in Sin

We start with the setup here in verses one and two. And this requires us to grab a bit of the context because whenever we kind of like this one-off kind of message, we're jumping into the middle of a long line of argumentation that Paul has been giving whenever we jump into any passage in the book of Romans.

Romans, the entire book is a letter written by Paul to the Roman Christians and it's basically his argument for the gospel, his argument for how we can be set free in our relationship with God and reconciled to him.

And what's Paul already said when we get to chapter six, obviously there's already been five chapters of his monologue of things that he wanted to communicate about the gospel. Paul has already established that all are sinners.

You can go back and see that in Romans chapter three. All are under God's just judgment because we are ungodly and unrighteous, the text tells us. But Christians have obtained access to God's grace through faith.

That's from chapter five. And we have been justified by the blood of Jesus and saved from the wrath of God again, chapter five. Those are all paraphrases of huge sweeping arguments that Paul has made in the book of Romans.

But at the end of chapter five, he said something that was mildly controversial, that launches us out into this discussion about the ramifications of the cross and the empty tomb for us here today. He mentions that for the believer, God's grace always overwhelms and overcomes the sins that we commit.

For the one who is genuinely in faith, and trusting in God's grace to set you free from the consequences of your sin and from the power of sin in your life, we are indeed set free and his grace abounds to the point of need.

So when you are at your darkest moment as a believer, his grace comes up and rises up to top your sin. Are you getting what I'm saying there? It comes up and it overwhelms it. Just when you think you've sinned too much, and many of us in this room have, you felt like even as a believer, like am I at the edge here?

Am I about to plunge over? Am I about to sin too? Have I sinned too much? His grace proves to increase enough to cover it. And so Romans 5 20 stated it that way, states it directly. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

Where sin increases in the life of a believer, grace abounded all the more. And that creates a controversy that Paul wants to address in chapter six. So the setup in verse one here is a question related to that statement.

If God's grace always increases in proportion to the sins his children commit, then ought we not to just no longer worry about sin, just continue to sin so that God gets the chance to look more gracious?

Shouldn't we just keep sinning so that he looks all the more merciful? Now that might seem like a silly question, and it's reason, but I wanna point out how reasonable of a question it is for anyone who really understands the forgiveness granted in the gospel.

Jesus Christ paid for our sins, past, present, and future.

Amen?

Amen.

And at face value, that can look demotivating, right? The great demotivation, it's all taken care of, free of charge, do what you want. And that's the question. Then why don't we just do what we want?

Why obey? Why walk with Jesus? Why battle temptation at all? And Paul turns to Good Friday and Easter to support his answer. Now his answer is found directly in this setup in verse two. He says, by no means, it's emphatic in the Greek, it's just like a statement of beside yourself, like how in the world could anybody think this way?

By no means, no way, Jose. But he wasn't Spanish, he was Jewish, so he probably said, no way, Hosea. I got Hosea in there, you guys. I got him in here this morning. Two more weeks and we're done with that.

But for now, no way, Hosea. And in the end of verse two, he brings up death, asking how in the world can we who died to sin still live in it? Well, the idea of living in sin just kind of sounds like, well, how can we commit any sins?

How can we do any sins? But living in is a technical phrase here, a preposition that has to do with location. Continuing in sin in verses one and two is a location word where you see in there in those verses.

Since what he's saying is sin is like a realm and we have died to that address. How can we still live in the territory controlled by sin, says Paul. We have been moved into new territory and that's what the message is this morning.

The cross and the empty tomb move you into new territory. That's the focus of the next two sections, united in his death and united in his life. So we're gonna jump into this next section, united in his death.

Death deals with our sins. Life deals with our active worship and obedience. We needed to die to sin that no longer has power over us, but newness of life is our active love and worship and adoration of God and loving one another well because he's told us to in obedience to him.

We have died to sin by being relocated, the passage is telling us. The word baptism highlights that relocation by saying we've been baptized into Christ and into his death. Well, I believe that this passage does speak to the importance of water baptism and there's the notion of it here in the life of a believer.

It's not the main point of this text. Now, you see the word baptism and immediately you go, oh, this is a passage about baptism, but it's all in support of how we ought to live in light of the cross and the resurrection.

If you're a follower of Christ and have never been baptized by water, I think it's a reasonable question to just ask very directly, why not?

Why not?

And that's something I encourage everybody in the room to wrestle with. If you've been baptized, you don't need to wrestle with it at all, you're already there. But if you have not been baptized, it's a substantial next step in your obedience to God.

We're actually gonna have a baptism service here, but I'd encourage you, check out the information about baptism on the Recast Church app. The e-cast comes out with, I think, a link at the bottom that takes you to some documents about baptism.

Contact the office, contact me if God is telling you to take this next step here at our church, and I encourage that. But the way baptism is being used in this text is not stating baptism in water. Now, it's alluding to that, but it doesn't state it.

It does talk about being baptized in something. I don't know if you see it in the text, look at it. Talks about being baptized, baptized into Christ and baptized into his death. Baptism in the Greek language means plunged into.

That's absolutely what the word means. Like, if you had told somebody in that ancient Greek context to baptizo this pen, they would have been like, I don't have a clue why you want me to do that, but they would have put it underwater.

That's what they would have done. And that's what that word means. Our lives are hidden in Christ, our substitutionary sacrifice. We've been plunged into the realm of Christ is the idea. We've been moved from the realm of sin to the realm of Jesus Christ, our Savior.

To be baptized into Christ means surrounded. The one who has faith and trust in Jesus Christ to wash away your sins and to be your Lord and your King, has this baptism already applied to your life? Means surrounded by him, Christ above me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ in me, Christ the foundation upon which I stand.

Have you been there? Is that where you live right now? And likewise, we were baptized into his death, the text tells us.

Well, what does that mean?

Surrounded at every turn by the cross of Christ. Not merely on Good Friday, not merely one day out of the year, but all of life lived in the realm of his death above me, Christ's death before me, Christ's death beside me, Christ's death in me, and Christ's death, the foundation upon which I stand.

That is what is true of you if you belong to him. A life transferred into the realm of Christ and the realm of his death is a life that is intimately connected with his brutal sacrifice for our sins. And verse four highlights that we are united with him in that death.

And also highlights that we're united with him in that resurrection as well. We were buried with him, united with him in his death so that just as he was raised from the dead by the awesome, powerful, vindicating glory of the father, we also might walk in newness of life.

Verse five restates this for emphasis. We've been united with him in a death like his, and we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Our first point of being united in his death is really already starting to give way in Paul's argumentation to the second point of being united in a life like his.

He is getting through the cross and heading toward the empty tomb rapidly in this text. But we ought to finish up with a thought about being united in his death before we take off being united in his life.

Being united with Christ at his death, baptized into Christ and baptized into his death is what it means to be dead to sin. Our addresses, those of you who belong to Jesus Christ by faith, those of you who have asked him to be your Lord and your King, you're not doing it perfectly, you're not walking in perfection, but you're keeping short accounts with him, you're confessing your sin, you want to honor him, he is your Lord, when he calls the shots, you want to obey him.

If that's true of you, then your address has changed from Sin Alley to Christ Boulevard. It's changed, you have a new address. No longer living in Sin Alley, but now living on Christ Boulevard. We were crucified with him there in his cross according to verse six.

And of course we know that's not physical. You weren't physically present there and nailed to that cross with him, but just the fact that it's not physical does not mean it's not actual. It's not physical, but it is actual.

Our old way of life connected with Adam under the curse of sin, corrupted and broken and rightfully under wrath and condemnation, that old self was put to death there. Where, when? We look back to the place just outside of Jerusalem where he was lifted up on a cross and willingly punished in our place.

It was there that our slavery to sin was broken. It was there that sin was rendered powerless in our lives. It was there that we died to the condemning power of sin. And if you've died to sin with Jesus, then you have been set free from sin, according to verse seven.

You can look at it there, and it might be a little confusing to you. For one who has died has been set free from sin. The word translated, if you look at the English Standard Version, it has a note by the phrase set free, and you can look in the margins or down below and it actually translates that, is actually the Greek word for justification.

So that verse seven says, for the one who has died has been justified from sin. Justified from sin, declared innocent, set free from wrath, set free from condemnation, no longer enslaved to sin. Well, verse eight begins our second point from Paul's argument, united in his life or united in his resurrection life.

And verse eight is the third time Paul states the connection between the cross and the empty tomb. Verse four, he said, we were baptized into his death in order that we might be raised to walk in newness of life.

Verse five says, united with him in his death, certainly therefore united with him in his resurrection. And then verse eight, died with Christ, believing that we also will live with him. The parallels here are intentional and repetitive, and they keep stating the same thing over and over again, just like me.

These statements in these three verses form a purpose statement for our unity with Christ in his death. So that, says Paul, so that we might be raised just like Jesus to newness of life. Hear me carefully, church.

God is not here in this text commanding us to get our act together.

Not at all.

He could, but that's not what he says. He is calling us to remember history. He's calling us to remember what has already been done for us, amen? Already done when he declared it is finished, already vindicated and verified when he came out of that grave.

And he is alive today as a testimony at the right hand of the father, perpetually there interceding on our behalf until the day that the father looks at the son and says, today, let's go get him. Let's go get him.

God's not commanding us to get our act together. He wants us to remember this history, to live out what has truly transpired for all who are united with him in his death. We have been raised to walk in newness of life.

This is in the present, set free from the death and destruction that sin brought to us, and instead united to Christ in death to that old way of life and united to him through the glorious power of the father to walk in a new way, a life-giving way, a way of love that's been given to us in our savior and in turn is able to be bounced back to him.

What do we celebrate today? What do we think about today when we come to Easter? Spring and new birth has dawned on all of us who are in Christ. How long has it been since you felt that in your soul, church?

How long has it been since you've been able to be moved by the glorious sacrifice of Jesus Christ and his vindicating victorious power over the grave and that hope that this world is not, how many of you are glad this world is not all that there is?

How many of you, I've lived enough to know, like, I mean, I remember when I was in my younger years, there was always more, I wanna do this, I wanna do that, I wanna do that, and as I get older and the back pain rolls in and there's, anybody know when I'm the only one or a couple of people are like, that's me.

As you get older, you kinda go like, wow, that new heaven and new earth looks pretty amazing, and as we get older, the truth is, and it's serious, it's, I don't wanna be macabre, but the fact is, there's more waiting for us there.

You've lost some people along the way. If you're my age, you've lost some people. Those of you older have lost more, and you just kinda go like, there comes a point where it's like, there's a lot waiting for me on the other side, there's a lot of good there, and I can say that with a smile because I'm glad, I'm glad that this is not all that there is, but we know that there's more.

Let that joy wash over you as you consider what his death and resurrection spell for all of us here this morning. He has made a way to be restored, to be raised, to walk in new life, here and now, here and now, and forevermore.

Here and now, and forevermore. Not just pie in the sky and the sweet by and by, but newness of life now. The ability to face these hurdles and these difficulties and our own sin and other people's sin and brokenness and natural disasters, the ability to face the here and now with newness of life because of what Christ has done for you.

Paul connected our current lives to the resurrection frequently, but one of the most poignant is found in Galatians 2 .20, where the apostle Paul, who knew his measure of suffering, says, I have been crucified with Christ.

It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. He's talking about his present life. But Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Christ lives in me. Christ lives in you if you are his child. And yet we now live by faith. Faith placed where? In our strength, in our ability, in our politics, in things getting better, in technology.

Absolutely not. In the Son of God who loved us and showed it by giving himself for us. The permanence of his resurrection is key. And in verse nine, Paul wants to be sure that we know that this wasn't just some parlor trick or some routine resuscitation.

You know, they didn't have an AED connected to him in there in the tomb, and the shock came and he just came back to life. None of that business. Like, this is not a resuscitation. This is a resurrection.

Not like Lazarus, poor guy, who had to die again. I've always been like, man, that guy got the, he picked the short straw. Like, he gets to do it twice. Not looking forward to it once. But no, the power of death completely broken by Jesus at the resurrection.

And he died once for all time. One death for all time for sin. And let me ask you, when the text tells us that he died once for all time, verse 10, for the death he died, he died to sin. Once for all.

What sin?

What sin, church?

Let me ask you, what sin? The death he died, he died to sin. No, I mean it honestly, what sin?

Ours.

And I really like the word mine. Personalize that, bad boy. Yeah, corporately. Corporately, for sure, yeah, that's a really good answer.

Ours.

But man, mine.

And I know what that's made out of.

Do you know what that's made out of?

Like, you can name those sins. I can't quite name our sins. I kind of assume that sin runs down the same channels for you that it does for me, and I can look at the Old Testament law, and I can look at the rules and the standards of God and go, like, there's so many ways you can break the law, but we can become creative, right?

My sin.

A serious question with a serious answer. Whose sin did he die for?

Not his. Not his.

He died for my sins. But the life he lives now is an eternal, immortal life lived completely forever to God. It's not enough that we died to sin with Christ. We needed resurrection to allow us to walk in this newness of life.

It is not enough to no longer have bad in our account. We need good added to our account. And Jesus didn't just die for us, but he now lives to eternally bank glory to God for us. That's an amazing truth.

We are unified with Jesus in his death to sin, and we are unified with Jesus in his resurrection to a life of love to God. How is this death and resurrection to impact us, church? Is remembering on Good Friday and celebrating resurrection every year on Easter in the spring, is that enough?

Of course not, and you knew I was gonna say of course not. But the passage is saying something more than merely, and I think that we can tend to, like you can kind of tend to know where a pastor's gonna go when he says this.

Remember more, remember more.

Remember his death and resurrection more frequently. Okay, I got it, Don. The call in this passage is highlighting the central role of his death and resurrection in our daily moment by moment lives. This paragraph lands on verse 11 with the first imperative.

We haven't seen any instruction in the text so far, just facts, just declarative statements. But now there is a command, the first command in this passage, 11 verses. And it's only on the 11th that we get a command.

So you also must, here's the command, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. So we all, church, must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in this new place where we live, this new address that he has given to us.

In this kingdom and realm of Jesus Christ, our old address forsaken, our new address embraced, relocated spiritually under new management, old ways and old patterns and old values and old loves put to death on his cross, and new ways and new patterns and new values and new loves in his resurrection to newness of life to God.

Christ is the only place a human can go to be made dead to sin and alive to God. You can play dead all you want, but you can't be made dead on your own. It is, you're either alive to sin or you're dead to sin on the basis of what God has done for you in Christ.

No effort, no works, no other religious expression can get us to this new address. Dead to sin, alive to God is only found through faith in his death, his burial, and his resurrection. His death putting down our old selves, united with him in his resurrection so that we also are raised in him in the power to live for the glory of God.

Church, is your life united with Christ today? Have you died to your old address? Do you now live and move and breathe in the realm of Jesus Christ? I didn't ask you if you're living a perfect life. I didn't ask if you always get it right.

I didn't ask if you understand the nuances of the word propitiation, or if you fully grasp the trinity, or if you can explain in detail the reason that there is evil in the world. Don't complicate your spiritual life, church.

I am encouraging you this morning, here on this Easter morning, declutter the compartment of your spiritual interior. So many of us have a very cluttered spiritual space in our heads and hearts. A lot of things rummaging around in there.

There's something that our grandma told us in there. There's dad's work ethic, or his bad example, or just the general crap type of stuff that dads say, right? That stuff's in there. There's something about end times in there, and fear of hell, and hope for something more than this.

And all that is stored up against a strong sense of guilt in us, of fear of failure, and ongoing pressures of being a parent and an employee and a good son or daughter to aging parents, many of you. And stored in a box somewhere in the middle of this attic of spiritual thoughts is the guilt-inducing, stressful, you just open it up and there it is, WWJD.

And I don't even know what Jesus, I don't even know what he would drive. Hummer, hybrid, pickup truck to help others? I don't know, let alone who he would vote for. What kind of guilt do you place on yourselves?

What kind of complications do you place? What would Jesus do? Man, if you live like that, you will be paralyzed.

Do you know what I'm saying?

I don't know what he would order at Wendy's. I'm standing there at the coffee shop going, I just gotta walk out the door, I can't order because I don't know what Jesus would do. Do we complicate things, church?

Cross an empty tomb, cross an empty tomb. Death to the old me, walking in newness of life. Guilt removed, hope granted, guilt removed, hope granted. Plunged underwater, raised up to newness of life. Simple and profound, church, and often forgotten for more complex thoughts that lead to fears, that lead to discouraged living, that lead to confusion, that lead to just giving up.

Church, listen to this text. Cross an empty tomb. Let these two thoughts form your every breath. Out, death to sin, in, life through him. Out, death to sin, in, life through him. Death yielding to eternal life in Jesus.

This is the message, church.

This is our hope, this is our salvation, and the way we walk in this life to not graduate past the empty tomb and the cross. What we need, church, is a genuine death accomplished and applied to us at the cross, and we need the new life promised us in the resurrection of Jesus.

Major on that, and your life, and your attitude, and even your actions will, maybe slowly, but surely be transformed by the truth. Certainly, I wanna suggest to you going, Don, is that all there is, that's it?

There's more to life than the cross and the empty tomb, but there's nothing more important. There's more to life than the cross and the empty tomb, but there's nothing more important, and we must submit everything in our lives to that cross dying to ourselves, and that empty tomb made alive to serve and to love well.

Three Responses to the Cross and the Empty Tomb

There are three types of people here this morning as we come in for a landing. Three types of people, and this passage will hit each one differently. I encourage you to really wrestle with, which one are you?

Where would you put yourself in this, and some of you are already hoping for a fourth, you're already planning on disagreeing with me, that's okay, at least you're thinking. There are some here who have not been united with Christ and his death and resurrection, just full stop.

You've not been united with Christ and his resurrection, and your application today is to accept the death, his death, to deal with your rebellion against God. If you recognize that you have been running against God and need salvation through Jesus, I encourage you to pray this very morning asking Jesus to rescue you from your sins, and ask Jesus to be the Lord over your life, and he will forgive and put to death that old self and set you free in a new life to live for him and with him for eternity.

Now, some of us have asked Jesus to rescue us, but we keep jumping the wall and heading back to our old address. All of a sudden, we're like, I don't remember putting that in the GPS, but here I am again, back to where I used to live, the old me cropping back up, and I thought he was dead.

And maybe this message today is a wake-up call that you are responding to that old master. And Paul's question to you is, how can we who died to sin keep living there? The call in verse 11 is to consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

Maybe you've been trying to defeat sin without changing your mind, and if you indeed are united with Christ in his death and united with Christ in his resurrection, then keep thinking of your life this way.