The Truth Will Set You Free Romans 6:1-14

In 1945, President Harry Truman ordered that bombs be dropped on the important military cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. Once these bombs dropped, the Japanese knew that the war was over because of the destruction that they caused.

On August 15, 1945, the Japanese made plans to surrender. During the war, there were Japanese soldiers who fought against their enemies on certain islands in the Pacific. One of their enemies was the Philippines, who were allied with the big four countries of the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.

If you know anything about Japanese history, their soldiers were told never to surrender and be taken as a prisoner of war. This was considered disgraceful. When the war ended in August of 1945, messages were sent out to the Japanese soldiers in the Philippines.

And the message was that Japan had surrendered and the war was over, so they were to return home. There were several Japanese soldiers who thought this was a false report sent out by the Allies in order to trick them, to lure them out.

So instead of surrendering, a handful of Japanese forces continued to hold their arms and prepare to fight in the Philippines. As they did this, they got into skirmishes with the people in that region.

Every message they received, they thought, was a lie. As the decades passed, several of these men died until only one man was left. In 1974, a Japanese soldier by the name of Hiroo Onoda refused to surrender unless a commanding officer officially relieved him of his duties.

In the year 1974, 29 years after the war had ended, Onoda's commanding officer, who was retired by this time, they're following protocol here, went out to meet him and officially relieved him of his duties.

This is a true story. The war was long over, but Onoda kept fighting. This is how it is for the believer in the Christian life. When you are born into this world, you are in a war. But before you come to saving faith in Christ, you are held under the power of the devil and your own sinful nature.

But once you become a follower of Christ, the war has ended. Satan and sin were defeated at the cross of Christ and through his victorious resurrection. Satan no longer has power over you, and your sinful nature no longer holds you under its power.

You are free. But the battle continues on, just like it did in the war with Hiroo Onoda. Just as he kept fighting after his nation was defeated, so you fight enemies that are defeated but won't give up.

They continue to fight even though you have won in Christ. This sermon today is about the battle you face as a believer. What you will see is that sin no longer has dominion over you. And so with this understanding, you need to put to death this defeated foe and live with the freedom that you have in Christ.

This sermon fits with our sermon series in Genesis because we have seen believers in Genesis sin. We have seen Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and Lot all commit ugly sins. And they are still considered righteous in Scripture.

They did not have to commit these sins, but they had the freedom to go down the holy path. We are going to dig into the believer's relationship with sin as we look at Romans 6, verses 1 -14. Because the Apostle Paul explains this relationship that the believers have with sin once they come to faith in Christ, once they are believers.

If you are using a red Bible, it is on pages 1120 and 1121. This sermon is titled, The Truth Has Set You Free. And our big idea, our proposition, what this sermon today is calling you to do is to pursue the path of freedom in Christ.

Understanding the Grace of God Correctly

To pursue the path of freedom in Christ. And there are three ways how. The first way how is by understanding the grace of God correctly. By understanding the grace of God correctly. We will see this in verses 1 -4.

Once we come into a saving relationship with Christ, it is so important that we know the next steps of the journey of faith. What does the journey of walking with Christ look like? This is what we are going to look at in Romans.

It is my belief that one of the failures of the Christian church over the last 100 years is a lack of discipleship. A lack of what do we do once we come to faith in Christ? Do I just live my life and just wait to go to heaven?

Or is there actually something that the Lord wants me to pursue during this time? And the answer is yes. He does want you to pursue. He wants you to be discipled. He wants you to grow in this process of holiness known as sanctification.

And the question is what is discipleship? This is when you take someone along and teach them everything you know about God and the life of faith. In 2 Timothy 2 -2, the Apostle Paul told the man he was mentoring, Timothy, So we need to be teaching one another what it means to follow Christ.

What the Apostle does in Romans 6 is explain what the Christian life is supposed to look like. So let's look at this passage in Holy Scripture. I'm going to begin by reading the first two verses of this chapter and then explain what Paul is getting at.

And at each point of this passage, I'm going to unfold the application of this to you. So verses 1 and 2 of chapter 6. By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? In order to understand these verses in chapter 6, we need to look at where he came from in chapter 5.

In chapter 5, Paul explained that all who come into this world are dead in Adam. We're all sinners by nature. And in chapter 5, he says all who put their trust in Jesus are alive. So you're dead in Adam or you're alive in Christ.

That's the position of everybody on planet Earth right now. Of course, the death and life that Paul is describing in Romans 5, 12 -21 is spiritual. To be spiritually dead is to be still in your sins and cut off from fellowship with God.

To be spiritually alive is to be set free from your sins and to have fellowship with God. In verses 1 and 2, Paul is addressing the objection that would come from his Jewish opponents to the gospel. And frankly, anyone who first ponders the grace of God and salvation.

And that objection is, if we are saved by grace and not by works, then does this mean I can sin as much as I want? Am I okay to do that? Paul knew this was a question that people asked and he needed to address it.

Paul asked the rhetorical question, are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Then he gives the strongest response possible, by no means. By no means. So if you understand the grace of God this way, that it's a license to keep sinning, then you misunderstand it.

The free grace of God is not meant to promote sin in our lives. That we can sin as much as we want and then it'll just all be forgiven. Then Paul explains why it is such an awful idea to ponder going back to your sin once you come to faith in Christ.

In verse 2, when he says, how can we who died to sin still live in it? The answer is obvious. You can't. First, a true believer should not want to stay in sin without feeling any sorrow for it. Your desire will not be to stay in it.

Second, can a true believer in Christ be a slave to sin once again? The answer is no. Jesus answers this question in John 8, 36. He said, if the Son sets you free. So if He sets you free, you will be free indeed.

So believing in Christ, who is the truth, and believing His word, which is truth, sets you free from the power of sin. Now it does not completely free you from the fight against sin. But Jesus does free you from its power.

We'll talk about the fight in a little bit. In the following two verses, verses 3 and 4, Paul continues to explain this freedom that a believer has. And he explains that this is what water baptism symbolizes.

I know it's baptism in the introduction. But this is what water baptism symbolizes in verses 3 and 4. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. So this is what water baptism symbolizes.

Many of you in this room have been baptized. Baptism symbolizes what has happened to you spiritually. You have died to your old self. So imagine this, as you're going into the water, you have died to your old self as your sins and sin's power were nailed to the cross.

You were buried with Christ, showing that you truly died. And then you are raised, when you come out of the water, you are raised to new life in Christ once you come to faith in Him. So the act of baptism does not save you.

It's not as if you come to faith in Christ, you're in the car, going to get baptized, you get in a car accident, you die, too bad. That's not the case. No, the new birth is what saves you. When you believe in Christ, the Holy Spirit is given to you.

That's what saves you. But baptism is a step of obedience. So it does not save you. You are already saved. But baptism is an outward expression of an inward reality. That's how I've heard it described, an outward expression of an inward reality.

It symbolizes what has already happened to you spiritually. Our new spiritual life in Christ is symbolic of Christ's physical resurrection to life. Just as He was raised from the dead to life, so you are raised to spiritual life.

You who were once dead are now alive spiritually. This is the first way how you must pursue the path of freedom in Christ by understanding the grace of God correctly. You have been set free from sin's power, and you should not desire to go back to it.

Believing in the Power You Now Possess

And the reality is it never will have the hold on you it once had. You actually can say, I don't have to sin, which is remarkable. The second way how you must pursue the path of freedom in Christ is by believing in the power that you now possess.

By believing in the power that you now possess. We'll see this in verses 5 through 11. We just saw the position that you have in Christ. You are free. Now we are going to look at the resources you have at your disposal to fight sin in your life.

In verse 5, Paul explains the power of God that comes through this union with Christ. So verse 5, 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.

Throughout Paul's letters, you will notice that he says the words in Christ a lot. He says it hundreds of times, in Christ, you are in Christ. When he says that, he is referring to the union that a believer has in Jesus.

You have died with him, delivering you from sin, and you are raised with him spiritually. And one day, you'll be raised with him physically as well. What the Apostle Paul is getting after here is spiritual life.

The freedom that you have from sin and the joy of looking like Christ in your life. Paul answers the question of why we have this new resurrected life in Christ in verse 6. He says, 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. Paul stresses that our old self was crucified with him. And what he means by old self is who we were in Adam. You are dead in Adam. You are spiritually dead in Adam.

When you were in Adam, you were ruled by sin's power. Never able to escape its rule. As Paul says, we were enslaved by it. And what Paul means by the body of sin in verse 6 is that as we are born physically in this world, our bodies are given over to sin as our minds tell our bodies what to do.

So your body is like a vehicle, right? You sin because you tell your body what to do. Paul is saying this body of sin controlled by the sinful soul has been brought to nothing and set free. The body controlled by a spiritually alive soul that's in Christ is much different.

It's no longer given over to sin all the time. This is remarkable. If you've experienced this in your life, you can see the transformation that's taking place in your life. And Paul is saying this body of sin controlled by the sinful soul has been brought to nothing and set free.

Then Paul explains in verse 7 what we already heard Jesus explain in John 8. That one who believes in Christ is set free from sin. This is verse 7 says, for one who has died has been set free from sin.

What this means once again is sin's power. The complete control it once had over you is now gone. All of us know that sin has power to it because all of us have sinned. We know the pull it has on us. The person you once were is now dead.

Now if you are dead from the power of sin, this means that you are alive to the power of Christ. That's what I'm stressing here in point 2, the power that you now possess. And Paul explains this in verses 8 through 10.

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

But the life he lives, he lives to God. We'll stop right there. As Jesus was on the cross, he took our sins upon him. The Apostle Paul says earlier in this letter in Romans 5 .8 that he died for us as our sins were upon him.

As he took our sins upon him, sin's power was also on him. So verse 10 says that he died to sin. And this is where we have to look at this text very closely. You notice how he doesn't say he died for sin?

He already said that in a different place. Christ died for our sins. But he is concentrating here on something else. He's focusing on sin's power. Not only were our sins upon Christ, but so was sin's power.

This power of sin that we all have experienced in our lives was over Jesus and he died. As sin was upon him, the power was on him. In the 90s, I was a big sports fan as a child. And one of the best teams at that time was the Chicago Bulls.

Some of you probably remember the Bulls of those days with Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen and the rest of the guys. And it's interesting that they played in six NBA championships and they won every one of them.

And the teams that they faced were worthy foes. They faced the Lakers with Magic Johnson. They faced the Phoenix Suns with Charles Barkley. They faced the Utah Jazz with Carl Malone and John Stockton.

These were some good opponents they faced. And it was a battle. But every single time, the Bulls won a championship. And we think about the cross of Jesus Christ. The power of sin was so strong over Jesus that he died.

If Jesus were to have stayed dead, then sin would have won. And the devil would have won. And we would all be under sin's power forever. But praise be to God that this is not what happened. Because let me read verse 9.

This is what happened. Verse 9 says it. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. Death no longer has power over him. When Jesus rose from the dead, he forever defeated the power of sin and death.

When Christ was on the cross, sin's power came over him. And it was so powerful that it actually led him to die. But once he was raised from the dead, it was defeated forever. This is where the incredible news for you comes in.

Since you have died with Christ, sin's power no longer has dominion over you. It used to be that you had to sin before you came to saving faith in Christ. You can look at your old life before you came to Christ and you can say, that's what I did.

I just sinned all the time. And I couldn't do anything about it because I was under sin's power. But now that I know Jesus Christ, I don't do that anymore. It's remarkable. And the reason this is, is because you have a new master.

Your new master is Jesus Christ. It's not sin any longer. And as a Christian, you now have the resources to defeat sin and grow in holiness. It is a foe. It still is a foe as you fight with it. But it is a defeated foe.

In Jerry Bridge's book, The Pursuit of Holiness, Gordy and I read through this over the last year. Bridges compares the continued fight that believers face against sin after conversion as guerrilla warfare.

This continues the theme of fighting a defeated foe that I explained in the World War II illustration in the beginning. This is what Bridges says about the fight against sin as he describes it as guerrilla warfare.

He says, In a particular nation, two competing factions were fighting for control of the country. Eventually, with the help of an outside army, one faction won the war and assumed control of the nation's government.

But the losing side did not stop fighting. They simply changed their tactics to guerrilla warfare and continued to fight. In fact, they were so successful that the country supplying the outside help could not withdraw its troops.

So it is with the Christian. Satan has been defeated and the reign of sin overthrown. But our sinful natures resort to a sort of guerrilla warfare to lead us into sin. This results in the struggle between the Spirit and our sinful natures.

So this is your experience as a Christian. You have this constant struggle between who you once were, the old sinful nature that you had, and who you are in Christ with the Spirit. Because when the Spirit is given to you, you have a new resident in your life who is able to fight that sin.

The fight against sin is real, but you can win the battles against it because the war has already been won. You are free. Now the goal of being freed from sin's power is to be set on a new path. That is why Paul is saying in verse 1, Why would you want to go back to the darkness you were once in?

You were delivered from this. When you are set free, God sends you on a much better path, the path of holiness, which is always the joyful path. Once you come to faith in Christ, the Lord's plan is for you to live a life with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit is not explicitly mentioned in this chapter, in these 14 verses, but He is certainly implied. Later on in this letter in Romans 8 -4, we are told to walk according to the Spirit. So we are to live with Christ as the Spirit goes with us as our companion through our faith journey.

In the call to worship today, I quoted Romans 8 -13, Everest says,. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. That's the position you're in as a believer. With the Spirit's help, you can do it.

So how does this work in our lives? How do we put to death our sin and walk in holiness? The Spirit is much more powerful than your sinful flesh. So you have a resident with you who is stronger, that can help you through the life of faith.

What the Spirit does as we go through the life of faith is He brings to our minds what we know from this book, the 66 books of the Bible, Holy Scripture. And what He does is He says, Do this, don't do that.

It happens all the time. It's amazing how many verses pop into my head as I go through my day. I'm thinking, okay, the Spirit just gave me that because I needed it at this moment. If you are tempted to steal, He says, don't do that.

Do honest work. Ephesians 4 -28. If you are tempted to lust after a man or a woman who is not your spouse, what He says is don't do that. Be faithful to the spouse of your youth. The spouse you made a covenant with between you, that spouse, and me, the Lord, till death.

Malachi 2 .15 -16. If you are tempted to enrich yourself out of greed, He says, be content with what you have. For you came into the world with nothing and you're going to leave with nothing. 1 Timothy 6 .6 -10.

And the list goes on and on with all the sin struggles that we face. There was a Catholic priest in the Middle Ages who came up with the seven deadly sins. These are the sins that seem to be the sins that most people struggle with.

My pastor back home calls it the seven daily sins. Because it truly is a fight on a daily basis with sin. God has given us everything we need for the life of faith. He has given us everything we need for defeating sin and walking down the path of holiness.

That's what 2 Peter 1 .3 says. We can never say, I couldn't do it. I had to give in to sin. Because if you know Christ, you have the resources to defeat it. Because He's given us the Spirit and He's given us the Word of God.

And this shows you how important it is to know the Bible. I think I say this probably every two or three weeks in a sermon. How important it is to know the Bible. Paul writes later on in Romans 12 .2 that we are transformed by the renewing of your mind.

So as we meditate on God's clear instructions in Scripture, we let them sink in and the Spirit uses them to conform us to God's character. So that's why it's important to know the Bible. One thing, when I came here as your pastor, one of my goals was to start a Bible reading movement where we're reading the Bible together.

Obviously on Sunday mornings we're reading the Bible together. We're going through Genesis together. That's reading the Bible. But more than that, we should be reading the Bible outside of Sunday as well.

It's for your good that you do that. You're going to be able to fight sin so much better as you know the Bible. The Spirit's going to be able to work so much better in your life as you know the Bible.

So are you in the Word? Psalm 119 .11, the psalmist says, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. It's like a reservoir that you're storing up to fight the fight against sin.

The Spirit strengthens us by guiding us on the better path. He leads us on the path of joy because the path of holiness is the path of joy. Sin leads only to pain. We know that. We know that from our own experience.

We know that from the world we live in. It leads only to pain. But the path of holiness is the path of joy. The reason we exist is to know God. One thing that Matthew chapter 5 says, Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.

Think about that. The one you were created for. You come into this deep intimacy with him if you're pure in heart. How important it is that we pursue that purity. So now getting back to our text. Paul says in verse 11 that we need to be thinking about our freedom in Christ.

This is what he says. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. So Paul is stressing we need to be thinking this way. We need to realize we are no longer dead to sin.

We are no longer under its power. We no longer have to be a slave to sin like we once were. We need to preach the gospel to ourselves daily. It can be easy to forget that we are not a slave to sin any longer.

Our sin deceives us and Satan deceives us into thinking that we cannot get out of this rut of sin. Satan is a mastered liar and he will tell you that. We need to realize that if by the Spirit's help we can do it.

Galatians 5 .16 says walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. It is a wonderful reality knowing that we no longer have to go back to our old patterns of sin that only made us miserable.

As I look at my life, like my high school years, I just sinned a lot. Early college I feel like I sinned a lot. That's like the dark chapter of my life. At the time I thought I enjoyed it. And now that I look back I'm thinking I didn't enjoy that.

And I look at where the path of the Lord has sent me and I'm like so much better. Such a better path. So this is the second way how you must pursue the path of freedom in Christ. By believing in the power that you now possess.

Performing the Role God Has Given You

The third and final way how you must pursue the path of freedom in Christ is by performing the role that God has given you. So once we know the power we have, now we need to do something about it. Verses 12 -14.

And Paul drives us home in these verses. I'll start with verse 12. He says let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. There's a popular view floating around in the evangelical world that says live and let God.

This means you don't need to put the effort in in your walk with the Lord because God will do it for you. But that goes against what the Bible states clearly. Paul is putting the responsibility on us.

But the important emphasis to make is that we are not doing this on our own. This is a team effort between you and the Holy Spirit. You are able to have victory over sin long term because the power of the Spirit in you is much greater than the power of your sinful flesh.

As I already mentioned, God has given you all the resources you need to defeat sin. The Spirit and His Word. And now you need to act it out. There was a conference a while back, actually probably about five years ago, put on by Desiring God, which is a ministry of John Piper.

And the title of the conference was Act the Miracle. It was a conference about sanctification, which means growing in holiness. We need to act this out. We need to do it with the Spirit's help. And Paul closes this section in verses 13 to 14 with final instruction on your responsibility in this fight against sin.

And this is what he says with this. And what he says here is instruction and then final encouragement. 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. So this is the instruction in verse 13. Members here is referring to the body. As I mentioned earlier, the body is a vehicle driven by the soul.

And what he is telling us is do not give yourself to anything sinful, but present yourselves to God, to those things that are holy and pleasing to Him. And he says you can do this because you are not spiritually dead anymore, but you have spiritual life.

Some sins are obvious. We shouldn't murder. We shouldn't steal. We shouldn't lust. We shouldn't be full of pride. We shouldn't gossip. But other sins are not so obvious. And here are a few examples. What TV shows do you watch?

What music do you listen to? Do you spend your time well or do you give in to laziness? Do you depend on food for comfort instead of God? This doesn't mean that all TV is bad or all movies are bad. There are some good resources out there that aren't even Christian that I think are good to watch.

But the problem is we know that there is a lot of bad stuff out there. And sometimes we can compromise by watching those things. Recently in my own life, I have been convicted about CDs that I once had.

And this is music I used to listen to because I liked the sound of it. But now that I listen to it, I'm like this is trash. This is garbage. The lyrics were awful. And so what I did is I took them to the dumpster and just dumped them in.

I don't want these anymore. And I wouldn't want to pass these on to anyone else either. So we should look over our life and say, What do I do right now that's dishonoring to the Lord, that's hurting this growth in holiness?

And then we need to part ways with those things. First Corinthians 1031 says that we need to do everything to the glory of God, whether we eat or drink or whatever we do. So even the small things in life are important.

And some people might say, well, this sounds like legalism. Well, this isn't legalism. This is the path of holiness. And the thing is, there is a such thing as legalism that we need to avoid. We can make rules that aren't even in the Bible.

And that happens in churches. We don't want to do that. But at the same time, we do need to take steps toward holiness. Now Paul closes the section with an encouraging word in the last verse of our passage.

In verse 14, he says, For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. And this is what we have been getting at the whole time. Sin has no dominion over you. The power it once had over you is history.

And now you can live a holy life since you are alive in Christ. The last clause says, This power of sin is not over you because you are not under law, but under grace. Salvation has always been the same.

We've seen this in Genesis. Genesis 15 -6. Abraham believed in God and it was counted to him as righteousness. You are saved the same way as Abraham was. Or anyone in the Old Testament was. You are saved by grace, through faith, alone.

But the Lord sent the law for his good purposes to the nation of Israel through Moses. And it was sent as a guardian to restrain sin. Galatians 3 .24. Secondly, what the law did was it told people what sins they were committing.

So that was another reason the Lord gave it. But even though the Jews had the law, unbelieving Jews who tried to keep the law, what they found is that the law didn't help them in their fight against sin because they couldn't keep it.

And so they would keep on sinning. Sin still had power over them. But by grace, which is shown most clearly in Christ, you can live a holy life by the grace of God with the Spirit's help, just as Abraham could and the other believers we have seen in Genesis.

So they sinned, but remember, they had freedom to obey. It's there if you want it. So this is the third way how you must pursue the path of freedom in Christ. By performing the role that God has given you.

So to quickly summarize here. Pursue the path of freedom in Christ. That's what this sermon today is calling you to do. And there's three ways how. The first way how is by understanding the grace of God correctly.

The grace of God is not meant as a license to sin. The second way how is by believing in the power that you now possess. You need to understand that the Spirit is with you. You have the Word of God. You're not under sin's power anymore.

You can do this. And the third way how is by performing the role that God has given you. So you need, with what you know, with the power you possess, you need to act it out now. You have the resources at your disposal.

Growing in Christ Together

So Eureka Baptist, this is a fight that we are in together. Our mission statement as a church is to grow in Christ together. Our aim is to reach people for Christ in this community and to have them join us on this journey.

So in that way we want to grow together. But a big emphasis also is that everyone who belongs to this church would grow in Christ and start to look more and more like him and less like your old sinful self.

So when you come to church on Sundays and you're a part of this church, you're a part of something big. It saddens me when I see people just go to church just because that's what they're supposed to do.

That's what good people do, right? Good people go to church. That's not why you go to church. You come here because it's an opportunity to grow. It's an opportunity to know Jesus more. It's an opportunity to look more like him.

And as that happens, people are going to see a big difference in you, and you're going to shine bright for him. So let's close in prayer. Father in heaven, I thank you, Lord, for the freedom that we have in Christ, that sin no longer has dominion over us.

And I even want to pray, Lord, if anyone here does not have that freedom yet, does not have a relationship with Jesus, I pray that they would and that they would no longer be a slave to sin, but set free in Christ.

Oh, Lord, how wonderful it is, this freedom we have in you. I pray that everyone here would understand this and that they would live this out in their life and that they would see this transformation take place in their life as the Spirit works in them and as they act this miracle.

In Jesus' name, amen.