Romans 6:1-14, The Life of Freedom in the Resurrection of Christ, Dr. John Carpenter

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Romans 6:1-14 The Life of Freedom in the Resurrection of Christ

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Romans chapter 6, we read from verses 1 to 14. Hear the word of the
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Lord. What should we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound by no means?
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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?
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We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death and order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life.
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For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
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We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
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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.
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We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him.
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For the death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God.
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So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey its passions.
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Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.
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For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace.
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May the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his holy word. Well, there's no worse slavery than the one who thinks he's free, but isn't.
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Imagine such a slave. Let's call him Bill, a slave on a plantation in the
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South who's been in bondage, been serving and laboring for decades for no pay and with no rights.
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But one day he decides he wants to escape. And so he decides in his mind that he is free.
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He just claims his freedom, a mental trick he plays on himself. He extols glorious freedom.
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He speaks eloquently of the blessings and the sweetness of liberty. He waxes poetic about it, sings about it, smiles with relish when telling others that the chains of bondage are now loosed and he's a free man.
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But when the master shouts, he moves when he bids, he comes when the master snaps his fingers, he jumps, he does his chores.
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He labors in the field when called boy and told to do something. He says, yes, sir. And he does it.
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He is still as much a slave as ever. And his claims of freedom are simply repugnant to those around him.
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More likely ridiculous, more likely they just call him an old fool and shake their heads at him every time with a laugh every time he starts to praise his freedom.
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Is that real freedom? Well, that's Bill. On the other hand, there is Jordan Anderson.
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He's a real historical man. He, too, had been a slave in Tennessee and made to serve his master for 32 years with his wife,
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Mandy, who had worked also for 20 years without pay. Of course, they had two daughters and a son.
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As the United States Army came through his area, he decided to take his family and to flee to freedom.
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But the old master, a colonel in the Confederate Army who had apparently killed a wounded and helpless
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U .S. soldier, saw Mr. Anderson trying to get away, took out his pistol and shot at him twice.
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Thankfully, missing a neighboring man who happened to be there, George Carter took the pistol from him so that he couldn't shoot anymore.
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Jordan Anderson managed to get away, moved to Ohio, where he got a job as a farmhand. And his wife, too, got some employment there.
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After the Civil War was over, the old master apparently realized how valuable a help
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Jordan Anderson had been, how good a worker he was. And so finding out where he out, where Mr.
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Anderson was in Ohio, wrote to him, wrote a letter asking him to return. Can you imagine?
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And this is the first of the facts that I find weird, even kind of funny. I mean, how how out of reality is this master?
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Imagine he kept this man and his wife slaves for decades, shot at him as he's trying to get away and then has the audacity to think that Mr.
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Anderson, his wife, would want to come back. Oh, it gets better, though. Mr. Anderson, who sounds like a very intelligent man and with a ironic sense of humor, doesn't do what
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I would probably do if I was in his position. I would I would feel tempted to write back angrily some just how dare you, you beast, you're a murderer and a tyrant.
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And I want nothing to do with you. As soon as you die and go to hell and better off, the world will be something like that. He doesn't do anything like that.
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He doesn't write back bitterly. But ironically, I think it's just it's just hilarious to read. You can probably you can find it on the
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Internet. It's about a full page, single space letter in which he says he's he's glad to hear, glad to hear that you're still alive.
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His old master is still alive. He reports that he's been well, he says that the master, he expected him to have been hung by the
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Yankees for murder, murdering that Union soldier. He says it would be nice, Mr.
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Anderson says, it would be nice to see the old place again. I mean, after all, he lived there for so long to go for nostalgia's sake, to see the old place.
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It'd be nice to be able to return. But he needs some assurance. And I need some assurance that things will be different because I'm not a slave anymore.
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He says he's getting paid twenty five dollars a month and his wife gets two dollars a week plus perks like clothes and food, which is pretty good wages for that time.
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And his children have a school to go to and they go to church. He writes, quote, The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education and have them form virtuous habits.
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And so he replies to his old master who's inviting him back to Tennessee to work for him. Can you guarantee me the same?
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Of course, you know, I need proof that you've changed. You've got to show me that you've that you're different than you were.
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Start for proof. How about back pay for 32 years of work with no wages for me and 20 years, you know, for my wife,
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Mandy, unpaid work. And then he adds that up. It comes to a subtotal that the master owes him eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars.
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And just to be precise, plus interest. But to be fair, he's fair. He's a reasonable man.
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Minus OK, minus the money that you spent on clothes and three doctor's visits and one to pull.
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Understand you paid that out so you can subtract that. And to cap it off, he concludes, quote, Say howdy to George Carter and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
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That's just hilarious. Those are the two kinds of people that we meet still today.
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In Romans six, Bill, the slave who imagines he's free, but isn't.
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And Jordan Anderson, the free man who will not be enslaved again. Here in Romans chapter six verses one to 14, we see once again three points and three paragraphs, but not for a funeral this time of Christ and our old self, but for a birth of a new life, a new self.
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We see that first, our baptism into Christ and verses one to four. Second, our unity with Christ and verses five to 11.
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And finally, our freedom in Christ in verses 12 to 14. Paul begins by asking a rhetorical question, probably thrown at him many times by by scoffers who couldn't believe that we were indeed saved by grace.
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They said, if that's true, Paul, then why not continue in sin that grace may abound?
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I remember the way into chapter five of the law, increase the trespass, the word trespass, sin, increase, grace, increase even more.
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God increased sin by giving it law. But then people became aware of their sin. They repented.
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There's more grace. They would say, well, that's the way it is. Then just send more to get more grace.
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Now, that's like Bill, you know, why not continue living in slavery while celebrating freedom? Paul explodes against that by no means.
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We were baptized. We were immersed into Christ, seen by God as in Christ when he died and when he rose.
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This isn't like Bill's escapism. You know, just a mental trick that you play on yourself.
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I'm free, but I'm really not fooling himself that he's really free, but he's still enslaved.
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God isn't fooling himself with us and what's written here about us. He isn't fooling himself, not just saying to himself that,
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OK, we died, you died in Christ when in reality you're still alive, still the same old you when it's all a fiction.
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It's not that we just have this illusion that these words, this this doctrine that says we're.
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We're justified, that we're right with God, that we're saved, we're free of sin, and then we still continue the same way we were.
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We're really we're no different. We're still just as much slaves of sin as we were before, that there's absolutely nothing that it's really different about us, except this new doctrine, except now we praise and we sing and we celebrate our resurrection, our quote, our freedom.
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And it's really all just fake. It's just something we believe in our minds is escapism, and it really makes no difference to how we live.
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That's like Bill. It's not really freedom. That kind of gospel is a mockery of the true gospel, this talking about how much
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God has done for us, how much we love him and celebrating the power of the resurrection on Sunday and then going out and living no differently like Bill.
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When our master snaps his fingers and tells us to live for money and things or tells us to hate.
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Tells us to care more about just us than justice, to serve sex or to get drunk or to steal or to lie, to break commitments, to love wealth and luxury more than the
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Lord, to make a fake religion that's really all about our pride. Our master snaps his fingers and we obey.
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We do what sin tells us to do and then we go around after doing that, it's totally our freedom, our newness of life.
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That is an anti evangelism that that puts people off. They look at us like people look at Bill to shake their heads and they don't take us at all.
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Seriously, they think we're ridiculous. They don't take the gospel seriously. They realize that there's no reality behind our talk.
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And that is not what Romans six is about, but something real, real life, real freedom.
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And verse four, we were buried with Christ. Like him, we were being we were baptized that we were immersed into his death baptism portrays that doesn't make it happen, but like in baptism were immersed into his death, into him, that's a past completed actions and objective fact.
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And that happened in order that this is the purpose, the reason, the reason for what Jesus did, just as I was in the same way
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Christ was raised from the dead, that is the very same way that he was raised by the father's glorious power.
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So also now first, the objective fact in the past,
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Christ's death and resurrection because of that fact, there's now the present reality.
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We too might, we might, that is, we have the power to, we have the ability to like Jordan Anderson, we have the freedom to, to walk.
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That is living every day, our thoughts, our desires, our habits, our spending, our eating, our drinking, our watching how we handle our money.
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It's not just rhetoric, it's not just songs and words, it's actual life, our self control, our ability to say no to the old master and say yes to the new one.
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And we show that in what our hands do, what we do with our hands, our sex lives, our eating and drinking, what we put in front of our eyes on the
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TV or the computer. Now we can walk in newness of life.
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Our baptism into Christ brings us up like Christ with the resurrection of Christ.
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We celebrate not only his resurrection, but our new lives right now.
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And the second paragraph from verses five to 11, he restates and then elaborates on this idea.
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He's now explaining what he meant by that unusual, that strange term. Believe it's only down here in Romans six, but our, our baptism into Christ in verse three, it is that we have been notice the past completed tense of the verb.
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We have been in verse five. It's over. We have been united with Christ in his death.
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That's that's done. That means now back in verse four, we can walk in newness of life, a genuinely changed life.
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And we can be certain that we will be future tense. Coming up in the future, that second part of verse five, we will be united with him in a bodily resurrection.
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So he says in verse eight, if we've been united past with Christ and his death in the past, then we will be future tense, united with him in his resurrection.
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So that is the past, the present, the future of our salvation in the past with Christ, our old self died and a new self came alive on that first resurrection day.
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Then in the present, right now, we live in a new way. And in the future, we will have a resurrection body like Christ.
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Again, our spiritual death was taken care of on that original Good Friday and resurrection of Jesus almost 2000 years ago.
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The sin that separated us from God was paid for and we've been given new hearts. And in verse eight, we believe that now what he did in the past and what he will do in the future and that faith, that belief we have, that faith we have now determines how we how we live now.
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When we walk out of here today. OK. So that's not just something we talk and we sing about, but something that we can live, not always perfectly, but we can and we will.
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Be different and in the future. Past our own funerals, we will have a certain promise of a new body like Christ.
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For now, the past fact produces the present act, the past fact produces our present act and verse six, we know.
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This should be said in our minds that the old self was crucified with Christ and the purpose of that, he says, in order that as the purpose that the sin that still dwells in us might be destroyed.
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We were crucified to get to that result, that the sin that dwells in us is destroyed.
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We're not like Bill. We're not like Bill just spouting off about our freedom when we still are being the same old master.
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We're not like him because we have escaped slavery by dying. Thankfully, Jordan Anderson did not have to die, even though his old master tried to kill him, shooting at him.
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But we escaped slavery by dying with Christ.
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Our old selves that were slaves to sin died. And the new self is not a slave.
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The sin still appeals to us. Come back, come back and serve me some more.
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Promises I'll be better to you this time. Don't believe him.
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That's the way back to slavery. If we've been united with Christ, we found our freedom in his death and resurrection.
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Why would we go back to serving the old master of sin? If we do, we go back to serving the old master of sin, if we're continually going back and serving the same sins, then we have to ask whether we're really free at all.
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Or are you just like Bill, just pretending? Now, some today like the ideas of salvation, they like the words and the songs, they like the feeling of glory and life and resurrection and talking all about that stuff, talk about freedom, the ringing of liberty in our songs.
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They have a taste for some of the words, especially on Easter, one of the few days that they might go to church and many other places.
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It's spring. The grass is green. The trees are flowers are budding. It's warmer. It's great to have an
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Easter with bunnies and chocolate and multicolored eggs. And so many people think, oh, why not also go to church?
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Probably one, two days a year. This is one of the times they do sing up from the gravy of rose here, a cheery and hopefully much shorter sermon.
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After all, I'm a Christian. They think it's the way they're thinking, even though, you know, even though I don't go to church, except for maybe
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Christmas and Easter, I'll come to celebrate Christ and worship him every time we celebrate the resurrection, which is every
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Sunday, the Lord's Day. We meet on Sunday, you know, because the Lord Jesus rose on that day.
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The resurrection is so important that we celebrate it 52 times a year. But such people living under the slavery of sin think that they they think they believe they escape in their minds.
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They think they have a relationship with God. They've been given assurance of freedom because they prayed a prayer.
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Maybe they were baptized and they claim that they are free, just like Bill. And just like Bill, every time the old master bids, he obeys.
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He goes back to the hatred, back to the sexual immorality, back to the porn, back to the whiskey or the drugs or whatever intoxicates him, back to the deception, back to his words being worthless, back to serving cold, hard cash.
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Back to the warm, soft bed on Sunday mornings, back to an empty profession of faith that left him proud of himself and not at all humbled by the fact that his sin first must be killed with Jesus on the cross, that his sin required first the death of Jesus to pay the price and then the death of the old self in him, in him, because the old self could not be reformed.
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He had to die and the new self had to rise with Christ, a person who continually goes back to that old master, even to that old lifeless profession of so -called faith.
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That kind of person, it's like Bill, still a slave, just pretending to be free.
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That's not real freedom. What such a person needs is not to be told to just try harder.
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Work more, obey, just keep singing and extolling the praises of the freedom you don't really have.
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What such a person needs is to get the real thing, to like Mr.
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Anderson, be really free. Then you can tell that old master when he bid you to come back, then you can tell him what he owes you.
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You can make fun of him and laugh at him and let him know that there's no way that you're going back to that murdering tyrant.
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How do you get your real freedom? By being united with Christ, you truly believe in him, you identify yourself with him because God has identified you with him.
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And the words of that old gospel song, you were there when they nailed him to the cross. You were there when they laid him in the tomb.
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You were there when he rose up from the grave. So being raised with him like him, you are free from sin for God.
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Notice the verses nine to 10. We were there in Christ.
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Then at that time we were, we were there baptized, united with him. Notice it says Christ being raised from the dead will never die again because death no longer has dominion, that is rulership, authority, the ability to make him die.
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Death no longer has dominion over him. But think about it. Death never really had authority over him in the first place, at least by himself as an individual.
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In verse 10, he died to sin as our head and is acting on our behalf, acting for us as sinners.
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So he died. He died to us, to sin as our head, dying not only to pay the price for our sin, but so that we could be free of it.
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We show we believe that, that he died for our sin, not just in what we say, but in how we walk, living free of it.
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We can live free when we believe that his one sacrifice was sufficient for all time. He doesn't need, he doesn't need to make another sacrifice and we don't need to look for any other sacrifice.
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We don't need to look for any other thing to get real freedom, but look to what Jesus has already done for us.
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He came out of the grave, not just to show that he individually had conquered death, but that like David against Goliath, he was our champion acting for us, triumphant for us.
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Many people misread that story. They think I got to be the David. I got to defeat my enemy. No, you're not
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David. We're not David. We're like the Israelites. In that story, remember the
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Israelites, they're standing back, they're looking at Goliath, like we look at sin, like we look at death and they're thinking we're doomed.
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They were afraid. That's that's us. That's who we are in the story. We don't have to fight.
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We're trembling and scared and oppressed, and we're about to be enslaved by a power that we cannot match.
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But then a champion steps forward, anointed by God, and he goes out and he defeats the enemy for us on our behalf.
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We just kind of come up behind and mop up the victory. That's real freedom.
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The real freedom comes from the life of Christ. At the end of verse 10, the life he, that is, Jesus lives, he lives to God.
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It's an unusual phrase, isn't it? Why to God? It's not the way we usually speak in English. That's the life he lives.
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Present tense lives. He's not a dead hero in history, but right now he is a living champion and he is living to God.
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Not the normal we would say. Normally you expect to say for God. You can live for something or someone without being attached to them.
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But here Jesus lives now to attach to as he's in a relationship toward the father, and because he was raised in the past and now now lives to God, we too now can live to God.
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That's what we that's what we come to do. All 52 resurrection celebrations a year.
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To come to be attached to Christ so that like him, we can live attached to the father.
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So in verse 11, if you've been baptized into Christ, if you've been united with Christ, then see yourself that way.
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See yourself the way God sees you, because that's the true way that is the truth, the way God sees you there.
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It says the verse 11 dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. That's not
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Bill's empty celebration of freedom. His escapism in his mind is a mental trick. Well, he's still really in slavery.
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This is Mr. Anderson's real new life, lived out in real ways, defying that old master.
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Sin, and that's what he talks about, what Paul talks about in that last paragraph, verses 12 to 14, our freedom in Christ.
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If we consider ourselves as truly free of of the authority of sin, we're not under its authority, its dominion, its rulership anymore.
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It's not our master anymore. If that's the case, why would we think of going back into slavery?
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That doesn't make any sense. It's like Jordan Anderson's old master writing to ask him to come back and work for him.
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Why? For over 30 years, you've been you've been oppressed, you've been badly treated as you're leaving.
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The old master shoots at you twice and would have shot more if a bystander hadn't taken the gun away. Who in their right mind would go back to that?
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And that's the Christian who's thinking about going back to sin, going to go back to the old master. That doesn't make any sense.
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And this shows the great lie and the disgrace of those who think that they can be Easter and Christmas Christians, CEOs, they call them
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Christmas and Easter only coming to church only when in those two days they're not really seeking to live to God, not living any differently, but still serving whatever sin has mastered them.
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The resurrection proves that you can live free of sin. Now, maybe not perfectly yet.
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As we see in chapter seven, not perfectly yet, but you no longer have to live perpetually under its mastery.
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And if you really want to live to God, that's your desire, your heart's desire.
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I want to live for God, to God in a way that's pleasing to God. Is that your desire?
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If it is. Well, you can live in the way you want, you can have what you want.
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Because of the resurrection, you can glorify and enjoy God forever. You can love
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God with all your heart and do as you please.
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But if you don't want to live to God, if people are with you, if you're content with being
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Christmas, Easter Christians, I don't think that's any of you here. People who are content with that living at the beck and call of sin.
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Well, they're not like Mr. Anderson, free, they're like Bill. Enslaved.
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The resurrection isn't just a claim about history, it is that something happened in history, but not just that, that we that we believe that Jesus was raised in the past.
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It isn't just a promise for ourselves in the future that we ask people to believe it is that, but it's not just that it's not just a doctrine.
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Kind of abstract and theological and theoretical has no impact on my life, but we ask you to believe it, you say,
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OK, I'll believe it. But then you walk in impractical, it makes no impact. No, it is practical right now to you and how you live today.
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Now, the resurrection tells us that we are now free of sin.
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Now, when these when those passions that used to enslave you.
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When they bid you to come again and do their bidding, do what they want, the hatred, the anger, the lust, the pornography, the immorality, the thirst for intoxication, the out of control words, the lies, the broken promises, the yearning for always more and more money, the expensive things, the prideful heart that wants to bend even the worship of God for ourselves to make ourselves look good.
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When those old masters snap their fingers and bid you to serve them. Now, because of the resurrection.
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You can say no. Because of what happened when
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Christ rose, not only can you dream about freedom like Bill.
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You can have it like Mr. Anderson. Jesus's resurrection and your faith in it and what happened to the resurrection, that's not just a doctrine for your mind, something we put on a piece of paper, ask you to say you believe it.
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It's a it's a power for your body. It determines what you'll do with your hands, whether you'll make a fist and punch or caress the wrong person in the wrong way or whether you'll reach out with your hands, give with open hands, raise them in worship with them.
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The resurrection determines what you'll do with your eyes, with your mouth, with your stomach, where your feet will go and where you lie yourself down.
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The resurrection makes it possible for you not only to give your mind to think about it, think about the doctrine of the dead being raised.
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But also to make it possible that you give your body to serve
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God, to live now as God sees you in Christ as righteous.
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You're not under law, you're not in a rule keeping. You just keep these rules, do these things with that all depends on your flesh.
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That depends on you performing it, which just your flesh just obeys sin because of what happened when
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Christ rose, sin cannot lord over you anymore. It cannot be your master.
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It can't be your boss when it snaps his fingers, you say it lost.
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You don't have to obey it, but you can now obey. God, instead, the resurrection is the most practical doctrine for the
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Christian. Because it makes your whole life possible, as the resurrection done that for you, has it been a new life for you?
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Not just not just a doctrine, a holiday and a nice religion to remember on a nice spring day. Were you there when they crucified your
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Lord really there, baptized into him, united with him? Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
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Did you did your old self die with him and then were you there when he rose from the dead?
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Are you there with him now alive to God is the resurrection, not just a doctrine you hear about once a year, but is it the very fountain of your life as you're living to God?
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Are you free because of it? Not like Bill's fake freedom, his mental trick that he claimed to have, but didn't really have, but Mr.
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Anderson's real freedom to let him walk away from the old enslaver.
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Do you have real freedom because of the resurrection?