The Power of the Resurrection

Christ Reformed Baptist Church

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Our call to worship this morning was absolutely spot -on.

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What I find interesting is when we read these words of the prophet

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Isaiah, so often times we miss some of the truths that are contained here.

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We see the beauty of the overall passage. We see the ultimate work that is done in the lives of believers, but we maybe miss some of the nuances of what occurred and what happened so that we would ultimately experience salvation.

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Last week when we left off, we had just dealt with the staggering reality of justification by faith alone.

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You will likely recall that the first week we unpacked the first set of verses in Romans 3, beginning in verse 9, and we looked at the absolute total inability of humanity to obtain righteousness, the absolute inability of humanity to seek

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God. Last week as we discussed the justification by faith alone that leads to the righteousness of God, we learned and understood that it is only by the work of God in the lives of his people, that it is not revealed or brought about through the law, that it is taught in the law, it is taught through the word of God, but that the law itself reveals only our need of the gospel.

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As we come out of that, as we come out of the understanding that justification is by faith alone, we are left with a question.

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Throughout the years, throughout time since the gospel has been proclaimed, from the moment that it is preached, one of the realities that comes about is that it seems to be too free, too risky, too prone to abuse in the eyes of man.

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The question that gets asked out of that, out of that view that it is so free, that it is so easy, that it is so simple, becomes if salvation is by grace alone, if it is by faith alone, if it is through those things in Christ alone, and then it's not anything of ourselves, then why and what will stop anyone from continuing in sin?

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Paul, under the direction and guidance of the Holy Spirit, anticipates this objection.

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One of the beautiful things about the entire book of Romans is Paul, especially in the early passages as he's dealing with theological issue after theological issue, doctrinal issue after doctrinal issue, is the question and answer method that he does, where he anticipates, again through the

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Holy Spirit, the questions that are asked by the people of God, and then proceeds to answer these questions.

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Today, we are going to take up that answer.

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This morning, we are going to turn in Paul's letter to the church at Rome to the sixth chapter, and we are going to reckon with our death to sin and our life in Christ.

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Now, in this passage, Paul teaches us not only the theological implications of our union with Christ, in other words, what is a result, theologically, of our union with Christ, but he also gives us practical demands or demonstrates the practical demands that flow out of this change.

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This passage not only informs our minds, but it also influences how we live.

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And so this morning, we will look at and see the power, the true power of the resurrection of Christ and how it, one, we see the reality of our death with Christ.

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Secondly, we will see the power of life with Christ.

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And finally, the command that comes to live as those who have been raised.

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And so, if you will, turn in your copy of God's Word to Romans chapter 6.

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We will be reading from verses 1 down through verse 14.

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And if you will stand for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, sufficient, complete, and authoritative word.

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We read in Paul's letter to the church at Rome, What shall we say then?

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Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?

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May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

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Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

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Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the

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Father, so we too might walk in the newness of life.

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For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

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Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.

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For he who has died has been justified from sin.

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Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him.

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Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Death no longer is master over him.

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

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Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts.

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And do not go on presenting your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

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For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

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Let us pray. Almighty God, God of our

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Exodus, great was the joy of Israel's sons when Egypt died upon the shore.

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But far greater the joy when the Redeemer's foe lay crushed in the dust.

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Christ strode forth as the victor, the great conqueror of death, of hell, and of all opposing might.

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He shatters the bands of death, tramples the powers of darkness, and lives, reigning victoriously forever.

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He is our gracious surety, the one apprehended for payment for our debt.

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Comes forth from the prison house of the grave, free and triumphant over sin,

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Satan, and death. Father, show us in your word proof that his substitutionary offering is accepted, that the claims of justice are satisfied, that the devil's scepter is destroyed, and that his wrongful throne has been laid waste.

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Lord, give us assurance that in Christ we died, in him we rise, in his life we live, in his victory we triumph, and in his ascension we too shall ultimately be glorified.

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Precious Redeemer, you who were lifted upon a cross and have now ascended to the highest heaven, you who as man of sorrows was crowned with thorns are now displayed as Lord of life, wreathed in glory.

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Once, no shame more deep than yours, no agony more bitter, no death more cruel.

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Now, no exaltation more high, no life more glorious, no advocate more effective.

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You are victoriously leading your enemies behind you in captivity. Oh Lord, what more could be done than you have done?

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Your death is our life, your resurrection is our peace, your ascension is our hope, and your intercession is our comfort.

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We pray these things, Father, in the name of Christ. Amen. As we approach chapter 6 in the book of Romans, it is necessary for us to take just a brief moment and ensure that we understand what has transpired between where we left off last week in chapter 3 and where we find ourselves now in chapter 6.

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Over the chapters 4 and 5, Paul has labored to not only explain to us righteousness, explain to us justification, but also to leave us at the end of chapter 5 with a great reality, and that is that he expresses in verse 20 and 21 of chapter 5 where he says,

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Now the law came in so that the transgression would increase. But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

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So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Christ Jesus our

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Lord. Now the question that Paul asks here, or the statement that Paul makes here in verse 20 regarding sin increasing and grace abounding to match is a necessary statement that demonstrates to us that in the life of an individual, the more that sin increases, the more grace abounds so that there is no limit to the amount of sin that grace can cover.

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Now the problem with this statement in the eyes of many is that it leads to a question regarding how that means we are to live.

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There are those who have taken this statement to mean that, well, in that case, I can continue to live a life free and do whatever

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I want, and the more I sin, the more grace abounds, and the more grace abounds, the better off I am, so why not just keep going the way

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I've always been going? Paul anticipates these questions.

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In fact, Paul asks these questions versus waiting for them to be asked.

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He does so in an effort to draw out our experience with grace to ensure that we have a proper understanding of what this truly means to us in our life.

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And so he begins Chapter 6, or what we have sectioned out as Chapter 6, with a question.

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The first part of the question being what then, what shall we say then, really is a tying phrase.

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All it's doing is tying what has already passed to what Paul is fixing to talk about so that we don't lose the fact that this is a continual discourse, a continual conversation.

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Paul says, okay, as a result of what has been demonstrated, as a result of the fact that grace abounds where sin increases, what shall we say then?

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So as a result of that, should we say the second question, are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?

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Paul answers that question with a response that is different than what most people would expect.

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Now when we come to this passage, the first thing that many believers do is they have a negative reaction to the question that Paul is asking.

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They're saying, well, duh, we're believers, so sin should never increase in our life. But let's look at the culture around us, even the culture within the church today, where we are proclaiming from the pulpits that God loves us just as we are.

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God does not love you just as you are. If God loved you just as you are, there was no reason for Romans chapter 3, there's no reason for Christ to have died, everything's hunky -dory.

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God does not love you just as you are, but he does love you enough to take you from where you are to where he wants you.

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And so the asking of the question is necessary. The other flip side of that is we say, well,

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I'm not under the law. I'm under grace. If they quickly go down here to verse 14 and go, ha -ha, see, right here,

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Paul says, I'm no longer under the law, I am now under grace. We'll deal with that in a few minutes.

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But it's the same type of question. It's a question that leads us to this antinomian spirit, or this spirit that says we're free from all law, even the moral law of God, to which

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Paul replies in the strongest denial of the

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Greek language. Now, we read it here, may it never be. Now, I'm not a

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KJV onlyist, but I love the way the KJV translates this first statement because it doesn't say may it never be.

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What it says is God forbid, God forbid that we ever live that way.

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We would translate it, may it never be, absolutely not, perish the thought. But all of these things do the same thing.

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They not only point back at the question and say we shouldn't live this way, but they condemn the conclusion that people are reaching.

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And they're doing so because it is the very premise of the gospel that there is a radical change in the life of a believer.

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Grace is not here to encourage sin. Christ did not go to the cross to give us a license to sin.

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Grace exists to cut sin out, to strike at the very root, to remove it.

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Now, it would be very simple here for Paul to say absolutely not,

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God forbid, and then launch into a tirade about how we should in our life absolutely refuse to sin.

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We should white knuckle it. We should barrel through, and we should never commit another sin ever again.

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And we do so on our own strength and our own power, but that is not what Paul does.

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He doesn't even get into a simple discussion to tell us to stop sinning. What he does is he takes us to the foundational reality of who we are now in Christ.

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And it's there at that foundation that we find how we are able now to stop sinning.

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A few weeks ago on one of our other messages, I had a comment that was left.

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People on the Internet are always very nice, by the way. If you've never noticed that, just go out and ask somebody. They'll tell you how nice they are.

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But it's said to us that the reality is that we cannot stop sinning, that we can only do that through a process over a period of time.

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The statement I made was somewhere around the ability that we now have because of the work of the Spirit in our lives to refuse to sin.

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This is a true statement, by the way. Now, that statement doesn't mean just because we have the ability that we perform the function.

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Nobody is saying that. Even Paul is not writing that. Paul is not writing that you never sin again. We flip over a couple of chapters and go through chapter 7.

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Paul deals with that extensively in his own life. In fact, he comes down at the conclusion of chapter 7 just before he moves into chapter 8 and makes this statement in verse 24,

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Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? Now, there are those theologians out there who say,

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Well, Paul's not writing about Paul at the time as a saved Paul. Paul's writing about back before he was saved.

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And so they create this dichotomy. The reality, though, Paul is dealing with himself in the life he now lives as a believer.

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He says, Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this? How do we know this? Because he goes on to say this,

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Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, on the one hand, I myself, with my mind, am serving the law of God.

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Well, you can't serve the law of God with your mind unless you're saved. That doesn't happen. We learned that last week in Romans 3.

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But with my flesh, but on the other hand, with my flesh, a law of sin. Then he goes on in chapter 8, verse 1,

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Therefore there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. We will deal with the reality of sin for the remainder of our life.

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But to begin, it's necessary that we understand who we are in Christ.

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So we ask the question, who are we? In his introduction to the commentary on this particular set of verses,

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John MacArthur records this. In his early teens,

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John Newton ran away from England and joined the crew of a slave ship. Some years later, he himself was given to the black wife of a slave trader in Africa.

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He was cruelly mistreated and lived on leftovers from the woman's meals and on wild yams he dug from the ground at night.

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After escaping, he lived with a group of natives for a while and eventually managed to become a sea captain himself, living the most ungodly and perfidious life imaginable.

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But after his miraculous conversion in 1748, John Newton returned to England and became a selfless and tireless minister of the gospel in London.

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He left for posterity many hymns that are still among the most popular in the world. By far the best known and best loved of those is

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Amazing Grace. John Newton went on to become the pastor of a church in England.

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And to this very day, that church carries an epitaph that Newton himself wrote.

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These are his words. John Newton, clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy.

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This leads to a question. You see, this is one of those great questions of life, especially in the understanding of who we are now in Christ Jesus.

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Because the question in the minds of most people goes like this. How can

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I, with my background, with all of the things that I've done, with all of the sins that I've committed, how can

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I be saved? We think back to a man like Newton.

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We think back to Paul, who, after all of these things, was able to say this in 1

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Timothy 1, 12 through 13, I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has strengthened me because he considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor.

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And yet I was shown mercy. So how is it that even the greatest sinner can be saved?

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It is through the power of the resurrection. It is through what Paul takes us through in the next few verses.

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After Paul replies to his own question in verse 2 with the words, God forbid, or may it never be, he then asks a second question.

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The next question he asks is, how shall we who died to sin still live in it?

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Paul's not asking a rhetorical question. This is not rhetoric. This is not fancy language.

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This is a reality. You see, Paul says, number one, that we have died.

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That's past tense, by the way. What have we died to?

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We have died to sin. It happened at the moment of our union with Christ.

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It is a completed event, the moment that we had faith, the moment that we were justified, the moment the righteousness of Christ was imputed to us so that we experienced right standing before God.

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At that very moment, we died to sin. Now, this death, this is not an emotional death.

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It's not a symbolic death. This is a legal and spiritual death.

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This is a death that we died in the sense that we were separated from the dominion of sin.

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Just as Christ died once for all, never to die again, so too we have died to sin's reign.

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By the way, that statement, once for all, that statement is so often misquoted and misunderstood.

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I've heard it used so many times as referring to all people. That's not what it means.

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The words literally that are being translated here from the Greek speaks of an altogether decisive and unrepeatable event.

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It's not talking about people. It's talking about the death to sin. That was a one -time, for all sin, non -repeatable event.

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It happened. It's done. It's over with. It's complete. Then Paul takes us to this concept of baptism.

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Now, there are some folks who get a little iffy here because baptism is brought into the equation.

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They say, okay, so baptism must be necessary for salvation. That's not what Paul is doing here.

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Paul is teaching that baptism is symbolic to us of this death, that it is not just a ritual that we go through as believers, but that it is actually a sign of that spiritual union.

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Just a few weeks ago, we experienced a baptismal service. We had the ability to come together, discuss the reality that we now experience as believers in Christ and the responsibility, both the new believer and the church, to come together.

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The baptism act itself was a sign, something that signified an inward reality.

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This is one of the primary reasons that we as Baptists believe so heavily in baptism by immersion, and that is because it signifies the death, the burial, and the resurrection of our

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Lord, that we are united to Christ by faith. His death ultimately becomes our death.

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His burial ultimately became our burial. His resurrection ultimately becomes our resurrection so that we may walk in the newness of life.

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Mounce writes this regarding sin. The text does not say that sin dies to the believer.

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That's an important statement. It's an important thing for us to recognize.

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Because if sin died to us, that means that we sin no more.

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That's not what it said. It says that we died to sin.

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It is the believer who has died to sin. He goes on to quote Origen, the most influential theologian of the anti -Nicene period, and he describing death to sin in this way.

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To obey the cravings of sin is to be alive to sin. But to not obey the cravings of sin or to succumb to the will of sin, that is to die to sin.

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Mounce went on to say sin continues in force in its attempt to dominate the life and the conduct of a believer.

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Believe me, Satan does not give up. He continually puts this stuff in your life in an effort to defeat you, in an effort to dominate you, in an effort to drive your conduct.

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What it tells us in the word when we are put to death, when we are put to death to sin, we have been baptized into Christ.

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We have been baptized into his death. His death for sin becomes our death to sin, not meaning that sin is eradicated but that it no longer reigns in our life.

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Prior to Christ, we were slaves to sin. According to Christ's work, we are free from the bondage of sin, from the power of sin, from the dominion of sin.

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Our old man was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with.

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Now we need to understand what this old man refers to. Typically speaking, in church when we talk about the old man or the old person or the old you, however you want to phrase it, what we're talking about merely is the sinful nature, but it's beyond that.

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It goes deeper than that. This refers to our former identity in Adam.

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C .K. Barrett defines it as ourselves in union with Adam. We were corrupted, rebellious, enslaved.

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That man or woman, that person was crucified with Christ.

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His dominion is gone. We are no longer slaves.

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We no longer have to obey like slaves. We now have the ability to refuse to stand on the death of Christ, the death to sin, and say that the body of sin, that is, our whole being under control of sin has been now rendered powerless.

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It's not absent. Don't get confused. This is the whole thing that Paul impacts later regarding our mortal bodies and the corruption that we still experience, the sinful flesh that we still have.

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It's not absent, but it is now omnipotent, or excuse me, it is now impotent.

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It no longer has power. It no longer has ability.

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It no longer holds sway. You no longer must submit to it.

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Now this is a challenging thing to understand if we do not have a good understanding of what it means when we say original sin or what it means when we talk about the sinful nature of humanity or what it means when we talk about the total depravity of an individual or the total inability.

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Our very desires, everything that we are is held captive by sin before life with Christ, before we are dead to sin.

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But when we are made new, verse 8, now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Christ.

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This is not anything new. Notice Paul repeats himself in this passage.

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Paul doesn't arbitrarily repeat himself for no reason. We are told the same thing repeatedly because it takes multiple times for us as hard -headed people to get the picture.

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Look at what he says. Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from dead through the glory of the

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Father so we too might walk in the newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of death certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection knowing that our old man was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.

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For he who has died has been justified from sin, has been set free, has been made just, made right.

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The debt has been paid. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we also live with him.

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That goes back up to also in the likeness of his resurrection that we might walk, verse 4, in the newness of life.

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Again, this is the third time we have been told here that something occurs so that there is a difference in the life that we now live.

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The reality of this death that we have been, our death has been joined with Christ that we are united in death with Christ is that we are also united with him in life.

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Just as surely as we were there in death, we are surely there in his resurrection. Listen, we talk about, this is

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Easter, right? We celebrate the resurrection of our

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Lord and Savior. And we always talk about it in eschatological terms, in other words, in time terms.

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We talk about what's going to happen in the future. And that's important. Don't get me wrong.

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It is of utmost importance that we understand that because of Christ's work, right, that this is not only a present thing, it's a future thing, it's an absolute reality, but it does have bearing on the life you live right here, right now.

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It's not a hypothetical. It is truth. When we live in him, we walk.

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J. Murray writes, the believers walk in the newness of life is not seen as an idle possession but as an engaging activity.

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The Greek word translated behind these verses is a completely new way of life, one that is now active because of the change that has been brought about.

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We talk about the radical change in the life of an individual who has now become a believer. This is that change.

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This is that movement from death to life. How? Verse 9.

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Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again, death no longer is a master over him.

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It was a one -time thing for all. Death had a dominion.

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He even had dominion for a short time voluntarily for the sake of our redemption over Christ.

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But Christ rose. I love the way that Mounce described the death and crucifixion of Christ.

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He said this was Satan's ultimate show of force. Carry that with you.

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Listen, the reason I say carry that with you is I want you to think about it this way. If that was the best that Satan has and Christ has already defeated him, what can he throw at you?

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What can he truly do? If you truly have been put to death with Christ, if you have truly been raised to a newness of life, if you are no longer the old man but you are now the new man, the one who is in a union with Christ, and you have already, through Christ, defeated the best that Satan has to offer, what else could he possibly do?

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Our natural selves say, well, he could kill me. Paul's got an answer for that, too. To be absent with the body and to be present with the

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Lord. I don't know if it's better for me to go or stay, because it would certainly be better for me if I went, but I stay on your behalf so that you, too, can know this same reality, this same truth, this same understanding.

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Because we are united with Christ, death is no longer our master.

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We have a new master. We have a new Lord. The curse that we lived under has been broken.

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

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You, I, both see here a model, not only a model of our sanctification, but the means.

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I get so amazed, that's probably the nicest word

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I can think of to describe this, with people who think that they, in their power, in their ability, are going to do all of these things that we're talking about, that they're going to choose and they're going to live and they're going to do it and they're going to be right, but the problem is what the word of God teaches us over and over and over and over again, is that those who live according to that, you're living under a law.

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You're either living under the law of God or you're living under this own made -up law that you have, but neither one of those will ever lead to righteousness.

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Instead, what we have seen is that righteousness is imputed apart from the law by justification through faith in Christ alone, and that it is that, and it is

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Christ's death to sin, and not in the sense that he ever sinned, but that he bore sin's penalty once for all and broke the legal claim.

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If you go back up to verse 7, For he who has died has been justified from sin, or acquitted.

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In other words, the debt has been paid, the penalty has been paid. The one who has died to sin, now

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I want you to pause here for just a moment, because what happens most of the time is people read this verse, and they don't pay close attention to the verse.

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Now I don't know if you have one of those wonderful Bibles that do everything where we get capital letters when we're talking about Christ and God and things like that, but if you do, you may notice something missing here.

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For he, that's a lowercase h, that's a lowercase h, that means this is not talking about Christ.

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This is talking about the believer.

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Remember, Paul started this whole passage, How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

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Verse 7, For he who has died has been justified from sin.

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The believer has died, the believer has shared in the death of Christ.

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Oh, none of us have physically died at this point, but because of Christ's physical death, because he has paid the penalty for our sin, we have been made alive spiritually.

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The debt that we owed has been paid. We have been justified, acquitted.

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Christ died to sin. He broke the legal claim. Christ lives to God.

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

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His life is fully and perfectly devoted to the will and the glory of the

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Father. The Christian is to live that same life because we live the same life that Christ lives.

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We have been given the power, the ability, the Holy Spirit is indwelling us. We can live rightly.

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And Paul brings this to a conclusion here in verse 11. Now, he doesn't conclude our whole message, but he brings his current thought process to a close.

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What does it mean, all of this compacted into one? Paul says it very simply, even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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Now, that word consider, that's an intellectual word.

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That's a to reckon, to count as true, to understand that this is a reality.

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You remember back in chapter 3, somewhere around verse 11,

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Paul, quoting from the psalmist, writes that there is none who understands, meaning that we don't grasp intellectually the reality of what we now are.

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Paul here says, as someone who has died to sin, this is how you are to understand your condition.

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Your condition is dead to sin, alive to God in Christ.

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Listen, we aren't living to God in order to gain

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God's love and affection. We aren't living to God in order to gain salvation.

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This is not a call to live rightly so that you will inherit the kingdom of God. This is a call that says you have inherited the kingdom of God, now live like it.

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This is a call that says you have been justified, now live like somebody who has been justified. If we want to put it into context, something that maybe modern people can understand a little bit better, if you have been set free as a slave, why would you ever return?

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Why would you go back to the place where you were held down, where you were oppressed, where you were in bondage?

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You have been set free from that, now live that way. It is believe what

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God has said to you in his word, and live it.

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Walk in it. It's not just a mindset change. We see all these things nowadays, oh, you've just got to change your mindset, right?

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You know, as a person of above average healthy weight, you know, we get told all the time, oh, you've just got to have the right mindset to lose weight.

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You've just got to determine that you're going to do it. And guess what? You can determine, and you can do it. I've done it before.

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But at some point, you stop determining. This is not just a mindset change.

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This is a declaration of who you now are. As a child of God, as one who has been put to death to sin and made alive to Christ, that you now live in the newness of this life, you walk in the way that God has given you because you are a different person, that our sanctification begins with understanding who we truly are in Christ, one who has been made alive.

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This is the indication that Paul gives us of our situation. So remember, we were started in chapter three, and Paul gave us an indictment, right, of who we were, those who were lost, those who never sought righteousness, those who were never going to seek righteousness, those who were not righteous, not even one.

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Then he gave us the righteousness of God, and he demonstrated how faith in Christ brings about justification, granting us or declaring for us by God that we are now righteous in his sight.

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We are now made right. Paul indicates here that as a result of that work of righteousness in our lives, this is our new position.

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Out of that comes, however, an imperative. Now, for those of you who are not super fluent in the

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English language, maybe you don't like the English language, maybe you don't like the way certain people say things, this is a command.

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An imperative is a command, and we don't like commands because commands are something that tells us what we ought to be doing, and we just don't like to be told what to do.

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But this is an imperative coming in the word of God, and he says to us in verse 12,

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Now, understand, yes, it is an imperative. Yes, what is following is a command.

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Yes, this is something that we should be obeying. Yes, this is how we should live, but it's being done in light of what has already been done for us.

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You'll note again that I said none of us have been physically dead. I mean, hopefully you know how to check your pulse. If you don't, you probably got one of them smart watches that can check it for you.

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If not, maybe somebody in the room can check it for you. You're alive. You woke up this morning.

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You breathed in and out. Your heart was pumping. None of us are promised the next five minutes, let alone the next hundred years.

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But what we do know is that right now, right here, we have not died a physical death, but we have been set free because of the spiritual death, the death that Christ died, the physical death that he died, produced in us a death to sin.

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And as a result of that, therefore, in light of those things, do not let sin reign in your mortal body.

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And it even goes on to define what it means that sin reigns in our mortal body. What it means when sin reigns in our mortal body is that we obey, look at this, the last part of verse 12, so that you obey its lust.

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That's what it means when sin reigns in the mortal body. When an individual has been saved, when an individual has truly been made right before God, their sin grieves them.

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It upsets them. That doesn't mean that they're perfect from day one and forevermore. What it does mean is when they sin, when they fall, when they falter, when they understand that they have sin, because sometimes we don't even catch it to start with.

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That's why we have brothers and sisters to help us, right? So don't get upset when your brother and sister in Christ points out a sin to you.

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You should take that as a compliment because they love you enough to let you know, hey, you know, this is not how

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God wants you to live. They're not being legalistic. They're being loving.

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And so we correct our behavior so that we don't let sin reign in our mortal body, that we don't present our members to sin as instruments of righteousness.

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What does that mean? That means that we don't present our bodies or any part of our body to sin and say, hey, here you go.

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I gave God everything but this hand. Satan, I'm going to give you this hand. That way you can kind of do what you want, keep you occupied over here.

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He says let no part, don't present any of your part, present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

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Give everything to him. Don't let sin be king.

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Don't submit to its desires. You're no longer a slave. You are free. Don't go back and say, here, put the chains back on me.

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The word here, present, means to offer up, to yield.

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It is used in the sense of a servant reporting to his master for duty.

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So you want to present? You present yourself to God as a servant of the

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Most High, bought with the precious blood of Christ, put to death to sin, made alive in Christ, walking in this new life, living according to this.

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Listen, every single day you walk this earth you face challenges. You face decisions that have to be made.

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The question is, who will you obey? See, here's the great dilemma of us as believers.

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I'm going to try to do this without getting very long -winded. Prior to the fall, when

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Adam and Eve were created, they were given the moral capability of sinning or not sinning.

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They had the ability to fully choose. They were neutral to go either way.

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Once the fall happened, the neutrality went away, and we were handed over to this inability.

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Our desires were corrupted. Our nature was sinful. We would do nothing but follow our nature and our desires.

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Therefore, we would sin. We would go away from God. When we are justified, we are brought back to that place where our desires now should follow and flow towards the

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God that loves us, who has saved us to the uttermost. But you remember that old body of flesh, right?

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It's still hanging around, and it's still tugging, and it's still pulling, and it still wants us to go this way.

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But here's the beauty in all of this. I don't know how many of you grew up with the saying, well, the devil made me do it.

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You all heard that before, right? If you're a child of God, you need to throw that out the window, because that's not a good excuse.

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You did it because you wanted to. But here's the good news. Here's the beautiful part of all of this.

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Look at verse 14. What does verse 14 say?

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For sin shall not be master over you.

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There's a promise here. That word shall, that's a pretty emphatic word.

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Because it doesn't mean might not. Hopefully it won't. It means absolutely in no way.

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In absolutely no way shall sin be master over you. Because you are transformed.

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You are made new. You are under grace. Grace leads to freedom, not to lawlessness.

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Freedom to walk in righteousness. Freedom to obey the commands of God.

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The ability to obey the commands of God. A few weeks ago we talked about Paul writing to the church at Philippi.

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Writing that it is God who is working in you both to will and to do. He doesn't just give you the work.

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He gives you the will to do the work. He gives you the desire to live according to his word.

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Grace teaches us to say no to ungodliness.

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In Titus 2, verses 11 and 12 read this. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us that denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age.

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That's the call that's been placed on the life of all those who believe.

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Verse 11, bringing salvation to all men. Paul is writing to believers. This is bringing salvation to all who believe.

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Instructing us believers that denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we live sensibly, righteously, and godly in the present age.

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Grace gives us the power to live as we should. In light of the approaching celebratory season regarding the resurrection of Christ, spiritual warfare is something of a reality.

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Now, we want to be very careful because it's not as many would seek to portray it.

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We're not going to have a series where we have people falling out front, shaking and jumping around and flipping out because they're demon -possessed.

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What we are dealing with, though, is the reality that wages and the war that wages around us.

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But here's the good news. We're victorious. We don't have to worry about the war.

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It's already been fought. It's already been decided. We've already won in Christ.

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Listen, you are not, first of all, who you were once. Think all the way back to our first message.

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That's who we were. Think back to Ephesians 2, for you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

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That's who you once were. But now, you have been made alive by God.

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It's not who you once were. You're not what your flesh says you are. You are not what the devil, what the world, what anybody else accuses you of being.

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As a believer, you are blood -bought, spirit -indwelt, grace -filled, sin -freed, death -conquering child of resurrection.

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That's who you are. And that is according to the word of God.

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Listen, Christ did not rise so that we could stay in our grave. He rose so that we might rise with Him.

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And that if we have died with Him, we shall also live with Him in newness of life.

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The gospel. The gospel is not just information. The good news is transformative.

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It is not only the means by which we are justified, it is the power by which we are sanctified.

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Remember, Paul, all the way back in Romans, in the first chapter, he says to us, For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for the salvation to everyone who believes.

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It is the power that brings about a change in the life. And so the question is, if you have truly died with Christ and you now truly live with Him, how can you continue to present yourself to sin as though you are still in the grave?

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Believer, are you living as one risen? Are you walking in the newness of life?

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Are you still wearing those grave clothes that Christ has already taken off?

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Just as Paul left you, I leave you. Do not let sin reign.

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Christ reigns. And you, in Him, reign. So rise and live.

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Live to God. Let's pray. Our gracious and sovereign

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Lord, Father, we come before you in the name of our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, our crucified and risen Savior. Father, we thank you for the truths that we find in your word.

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We thank you for the gospel of grace that sanctifies us, that saves us, that secures us eternally.

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Lord, we praise you that having been united with Christ in His death, we are also united with Him in His resurrection.

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Lord, we were once slaves to sin, dead in our trespasses following the course of this world. But Father, you have made us alive together with Christ.

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That because of grace, we now live free from the dominion of sin. We are no longer under the law.

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We are under grace, no longer condemned, justified. We are no longer enslaved, but sons and daughters.

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Father, give us now strength to walk in that newness of life. That sin not reign in our mortal bodies, that our members not be yielded to unrighteousness.

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But Father, that we present ourselves to you as those alive. Father, help us grow in our knowledge.

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Help us grow in our lives, living our lives as holy, set apart, not merely in position,

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Lord, but in practice. Lord, let our hands do the work of righteousness, our lips speak the words of truth, our feet run to obedience, and our hearts love that which you love.

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Lord, we confess before you today our weakness.

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The reality that no longer, that even though we are no longer slaves, we still feel the pull of the flesh.

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Lord, strengthen us by your Spirit, that we would mortify the sin in our life, that we would put to death the deeds of this body.

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That daily we would reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to you in Christ.

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Lord, if there be any among us who have not yet died to sin, who,

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Father, still to this day remain under its rule, we pray for mercy, we pray for grace.

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Father, we pray that they would experience faith, that they would know that it is a work but of you and you alone.

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That they see Christ crucified, who bore the wrath that they deserve, that they are risen from death to life by your sovereign grace alone.

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Father, for those that belong to Christ, let us live as those risen with Christ. Let this church be marked by gospel transformation, by purity, by zeal, by joyful obedience.

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Let our lives be visible testimony to the power of resurrection. We thank you,

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Lord Jesus. We thank you that you died once for all and now live unto

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God so that we too may live unto God. May we fight sin with a holy resolve, walk humbly in grace, and long for the day when we will see you face to face.

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Until then, Lord Jesus, preserve us, purify us, fill us with joy in believing.

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We ask these things in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.