Romans 6 - Part 1 — Zac Poonen

Sin No Longer Mastering the Believer

So, let's turn to Romans chapter 6. For me this has been a very central chapter of scripture that set me on a new direction in my life 36 years ago. Because the one verse in the middle of this chapter, Romans 6, 14, Sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

For many years after I was born again, my sins were forgiven, but sin was master over me. It was quite amazing to discover. It was a promise that sin would not be master over me, and that that would be the proof that I really moved over from law to grace.

A lot of Christians move over partially, but partly under law, partly under grace. It's like having your foot in two boats, going in different directions. You never get anywhere. So I saw there, when a person comes fully under grace, sin doesn't have mastery over him.

I'll come to that in a moment, but I just want to share another verse with you before we get into Romans 6. We know that among Christians, there are so many different interpretations of doctrines, different understandings of what a church should be, different understandings of even forgiveness of sins.

Are you once saved, always saved? When you're until the end? Is there such a thing as overcoming sin? And this verse really tells us why there is so much of difference of opinion. John chapter 7, verse 17.

Here Jesus said, If anyone is willing to do his will, he shall know the teaching or the doctrine of the use of God, whether I speak for myself, whether this teaching is from God or not, or from man, how to know?

Jesus said, If deep down in your heart, God sees that you really want to do all of His will, you will know. It's not like other books in the world. To understand math or chemistry or physics or any other subject in the world, you don't have to have a passionate desire to do God's will.

You can be a thoroughly immoral person without a good brain. You can study any subject in the world and understand it. And Bible scholars who go to Bible school try to understand the Bible in the same way.

So those who have a very clever mind study the scripture like they study chemistry, physics, literature. And you can come to certain understandings. And it could be 100 wrong. You won't be 100 wrong in chemistry or physics because there you only need to use your brain.

But when it comes to scripture, there's a part of us that's deeper than our brain. Our brain is a part of our soul. There's a part of us that's deeper than our soul called the spirit. And it's there that we understand the truths of God.

Or what the Bible often calls the heart. Not the mind. And that's why great scholars in Jesus' time thought He was the devil. They had studied the scriptures. They were not people who worshipped Greek gods or Roman gods who called Jesus the devil.

In fact, a Roman centurion said on the cross, Hey, this is the Son of God. But the scholars who studied the Bible in the synagogues every week were not recognizing it. So why did all their Bible study need them?

Exactly the opposite direction. What is the reason? Here's the reason. They did not want to do God's work. Now, we're not here to judge other people. I don't want to go and tell everyone who disagrees with me in doctrine, Hey, you don't want to do God's work.

That's why you don't understand. That would be quite arrogant of me. It's not my business. God judges all people. I take this verse to apply to myself. Not to judge other people. If somebody defers from me in doctrine, I say, OK, God bless you.

But I know for myself that I will never, never understand the truth accurately if there's any area in my life where I don't want to do God's will. And for me, after 52 years of studying the Bible, I'm convinced that there's only one book in the whole world that reveals God's will fully.

And that's the Scriptures. And the New Testament amplifies what is written in the Old Testament. So, if there's anything in this, particularly in the verse that Jesus spoke, or in the New Testament, which I have a problem with.

The reason is, it's not in my mind, it's deep down in my heart. I don't want to do all the will of God, because the will of God goes against the grain of my will. You know, the great conflict in the universe, in the world today, is between man's will and God's will.

And the devil is always strengthening us to do our will. And the Holy Spirit comes to do God's will. My will is what the New Testament calls the flesh. They read the word flesh in the New Testament. Sometimes it refers to our body.

But very often it refers to our will, our strong self-will, which we are all born with. You see that in a little child as he grows up, how strong his self-will is. That is one proof that he is a real child of Adam, without any doubt.

A strong, stubborn self-will that wants its own way, that defies its father and mother. We are all born with that. Our religion or our background doesn't make a difference. And if that will is not brought in subjection to God's will, we'll never be spiritual.

No matter how many meetings we go to, or how many hours of church we attend, or how much of the Bible we think we know. Here is the thing. If a man wants to do the whole will of God, not to understand it.

A lot of people want to understand scripture. They listen to messages to understand scripture. Some people want to listen to messages to preach somewhere else and get some honor. But if a man wants to read God's word to do, if anyone is willing to do God's will, he will know.

He will understand the truth. I want to share that with all of you. Whichever doctrine of scripture it is, a small doctrine or a big one, what appears very trivial, or what's fundamentally important. The answer is, if you really want to do what God wants you to do and allow God to break your stubborn self-will, you will know the truth clearly.

It will be as clear as black and white. I mean, so many truths in scripture have become to me as clear as black and white. There's no gray area in the important doctrines anyway. So, when I find people disagreeing with me or not holding the same view, I say, Lord, I don't want to judge them.

I just want to make sure that I'm seeking to do all of your will. I don't want to live on earth ignorant of what God's will is for me. Jesus came to earth. He said, I have come from heaven only for one purpose.

Jesus’ Submission to the Father’s Will

You know that verse, it's in the previous chapter, John chapter 6. He said in John chapter 6, in verse 38, I have come from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who saved me. I call this the one-line autobiography of Jesus.

Jesus is describing His life on earth. He's 33 and a half years on earth in one sentence.

I have come to deny my own will.

Through the Father's will. He said, what's all this got to do with Romans chapter 6? Because when it says, sin will not master you, what is sin? Here it is, doing my own will. And He says here, I could read it like this, I have come from heaven never to sin.

I could read it like that, John 6, 38. I have come from heaven never to sin. That means never to do my own will. Never to speak the way I want to speak to people. Never to answer back someone the way he spoke to me.

That's my own will. And it's in provocative situations like that that we discover that the will of ours has never been broken. We like to be holy enough to get a good testimony before others. The world wants to appear nice and good.

Quite another thing to want never to do my own will in private, in secret. Never to think my own thoughts. The thoughts which give me pleasure. Say no, look at what I like to look at. No. I want to do God's will.

So doing my own will is the definition of sin. What is the definition of holiness? Do the will of the Father. That's holiness. So when Jesus, what He was saying in this verse is, I have come from heaven never to sin, but to be perfectly holy.

That's a perfectly accurate paraphrase of this verse. So if that is your will, if anyone wants to do his will, you will understand Romans 6 clearly. You will understand every doctrine in the New Testament clearly.

Whether it's what you think is small and unimportant, there's nothing small and unimportant if it's God's will. There may be areas of God's will which we think are not so important. I always say the question is not how big a matter you think it is.

The question is who said it. If the person who said it is a very important person, then that is an important commandment. So everything is important if God said it. If God didn't say it, well, then you can have your opinion, and I can have my opinion too.

But when God has said something, then there are no opinions on it. And I feel also there's a great need for honesty here. I feel that a lot of Christians are dishonest. I'll tell you how. They say the Bible is God's Word.

They don't really believe it. And why do I say they don't believe it? They don't study it more than any other book proves they don't believe it. If I believe that the most important relationship for me on earth is my relationship with God, more important than my marriage, more important than my relationship with my boss at work, the most important relationship a human being has on earth is a relationship with God.

If I believe it, I would want to know everything about how that relationship can be perfect. You know, when marriage is not working properly, we try to help people to have a better marriage. We like to keep our relationship with our bosses at work okay because otherwise we lose our jobs.

But when it comes to our relationship with God, I find a lot of Christians are very casual. They don't make effort to find out, what is it that will please God? And if they had that attitude, I would say they would really study the Scriptures because I believe with all my heart, among all the millions of books in the world, there is only one written by God through human beings.

He wrote it through 40 different human beings. But it was inspired by God. And when people ask me, you know, there are various proofs people use to prove that the Bible is God's Word. I myself have used such proofs in my younger days about the variety of people who are all united, there is no contradiction, and archaeological discoveries and all this.

But today I have one proof that it's God's Word. It's changed my life for 50 years. I mean, that's mind-blowing. So, I've read other books too, that it's not in the same category. So, if you really believe that the Bible is God's Word, you would study it a lot more than we do.

We'd read it a lot more. Not at the neglect of our earthly duties or responsibilities, but we would find time for it. I remember a brother in our church back home in Bangalore, in India, he said, Brother Zak, I'm so busy, I don't have time to read the Bible.

I said, you'll never find time, you've got to make time for it. And I said, I can prove it to you. Maybe you're very busy at your work. Supposing your little child is sick in the hospital, seriously sick, would you find time to visit her?

Visit your child? How do you suddenly find time? For something that did not exist, I mean, a problem that didn't exist until your child got sick, you need to now travel all the way to the hospital every day.

How do you find that extra two hours in a day? Because that was a priority. So why is it you don't find time to read the scriptures, even 20 minutes? It's not a priority. Just be honest about it. It is not a priority.

I can live my life without it. Even though Jesus said man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from God's mouth. That's the only way we can really live. What you call life, without knowing God's word, is existence, not living.

Most human beings exist. You can write on their tombstones, he existed. He didn't really live. Because how to live? Jesus said man shall live by every word that proceeds from God's mouth. That's the only thing you can call life.

The rest is just mere existence, like the animals exist. So, human beings exist. He existed for 90 years. He didn't live. If you want to say a person lived, it's from the time he began to take God's word seriously.

I believe that. Man shall live by every word that proceeds from God's mouth. So, with that sort of introduction, let's go to Romans 6. See, right after Romans chapter 5, he's dealing with our fast. The problem of guilt, which any sincere human being will acknowledge.

Romans 1–3 and the Universal Problem of Sin

A conscience, even if I've killed that conscience from childhood in so many ways, like all of us have done. A child's conscience is very sensitive. A three-year-old can never tell you a lie with a straight face.

It's impossible. His face itself betrays, mummy, I'm telling a lie. But by the time the child is 18 or 19 years old, he can tell you a lie with a straight face. In such a convincing way that you believe it.

We've killed this conscience so much and we've all done it. We've killed our conscience by sinning in so many ways that sin doesn't seem to cause us pain. You know, like I compare it to the hardening of the soles of our feet.

If you touch a little baby's feet with a little pin, it reacts immediately. But if you touch the soles of our feet with a pin, it doesn't bother us so much. It doesn't become hard. And our conscience is something like that.

What troubled us once doesn't trouble us now. But even in spite of that, every person has a still little flicker of that flame called conscience. Even after many years of trying to pour water on it and quenching it, he knows that he's guilty.

When I witness to a non-Christian in India, I only start, not from the point of religion, I say, with God there's no religion. Look at a baby, I said, look at a baby born in a hospital. Can you tell me which one is a Hindu and which one is a Muslim, which one is an atheist?

No, they're all the same. So that's how I start witnessing. I say, you and I are the same. I mean, as we grew up, our parents gave us different religious beliefs, but we're the same. We grow up committing sin.

And God doesn't look at us as Hindus and Muslims and Christians. He looks at us as sinners. We're all the same. And our greatest need is to be saved from this sin. And religion doesn't help us. That's how I lead him on to Christ.

So the first five chapters of Romans are really laying that foundation, starting off by proving that there are worldly sinners, Romans chapter one, religious sinners, Romans chapter two, and then he says in chapter three there's no difference.

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. So just turning back to Romans 3 .23 for a moment. Romans 3 .23 is to me the clearest definition of sin in the whole Bible. There are many, many verses that talk about sin, but Romans 3 .23 is to me the clearest and most complete definition of sin in the whole Bible.

What is sin? Sin is coming short of the glory of God. Man was created to live at the level of God's glory. And anything in your life that's less than that standard is sin. We can have different definitions of sin.

You go to a gang of murderers and they don't even think murder is sin. Immoral men don't think adultery is sin. Maybe we're a little better than them. There are certain things we don't consider sin either.

I believe that such a God standard says anything that comes short of the glory of God. John 1 .14 says the glory of God was seen in Jesus Christ. So that's the standard. Anything that I cannot do in fellowship with Christ is sin.

Anything. If I can speak to a person in a way I would not speak if Jesus Christ were standing here. But my way of speaking is simple. However much I may justify it. If I speak to my wife at home in a way in which I would not speak if Christ were standing right there between us.

However much I may justify my speech to my wife, it is sinful. See, when I see sin like this, then I see what a terrible thing it is. And how we could be sinning so many times a day without even calling it sin.

And I say it's like getting thorns in your feet without even knowing that thorns of God are in your feet. People have got leprosy by the way. I don't know whether you know that. When people have leprosy, they get leprosy in the soles of their feet.

They have no sensation. They can have ten thorns in their feet as they walk around barefoot during the day. And they don't even know it. You and I thankfully one thorn gets and we know it immediately.

You pull it out. But that poor leper can have ten thorns in his feet. That's why people deal with leprosy. Patients teach them. Before you go to bed, examine your feet, the soles of your feet to see if there is anything stuck there.

A nail brush. And you and I don't need that. You don't need to check the soles of your feet every day. It could be God's sensation. So anything that comes short of Christ-likeness is sin. And if I don't accept that standard, I'm never going to know what it means when it says sin will not master you.

Maybe you're a slave to anger and one day you get victory over anger. And you don't get angry anymore. And you say, boy, I made it. No, you haven't made it. You made it. Maybe you got victory in one area.

Anything that comes short of the glory of God is sin. Anything that I cannot do in fellowship with Christ is sin. Any thought that I can think, which I cannot think if Jesus is examining my thought right now, that's sin.

If I can sit at a computer and watch or read something, which I couldn't do if Jesus was sitting in a chair beside me, that's sin. The way I behave or the way I handle money, if I wouldn't handle it that way when Jesus is around, it's sin.

Grace, Forgiveness, and the Question of Continuing in Sin

So Romans 3 .23 is the clearest definition of sin in Scripture. Now we come to Romans 6 .1. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin? That grace might increase? Because He's previously said in Romans 5 .21 that when sin, as sin reigns bringing death, grace will reign bringing righteousness.

Because where sin increased, verse Romans 5 .20, grace increased more. That means there is no sin that cannot be forgiven by the blood of Christ, by the grace of God. No sin. Every sin can be forgiven by the grace of God.

When Jesus spoke about the unforgivable sin, about sin against the Holy Spirit, that's referring to resisting the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Now if you resist the conviction of the Holy Spirit, how can you forgive your sin?

But other than that, every sin can be forgiven. Whatever it is. And so we can say about all the other sins, the only sin that won't be forgiven is the one you don't confess. If you confess our sins, He's faithful and just to forgive us.

Or, if you put the blame on somebody else for your sin, that sin won't be forgiven. That's why I always tell people, if there is the slightest doubt, take the blame yourself. Because that can be forgiven.

But if you blame, like Adam blamed his wife, you blame your wife for something, that sin won't be forgiven even. But if I say, Lord, that's my fault, forgive me. It can be forgiven. It's so crazy to blame other people and to live with sin unforgiven in my life.

I might as well say, Lord, it was my fault, forgive me. Even if there was 99 fault in the other person, there was 1 fault with me. In every broken human relationship, remember, never is the blame 100 on one side.

The only relationship where the fault was 100 on one side was in the relationship between God and man. There the fault was entirely man. Zero with God. But in all other human relationships, wherever there is a problem, wherever there is sin, even if 99 of the fault is with the other person, there is at least a 1 fault with me.

Let me acknowledge that. I can be forgiven. So, when sin is forgiven so easily, all I have to do is confess. Because Christ paid for all my sins on the cross, past, present and future. It's all covered on the cross.

What shall I say then? Hey, this forgiveness is so easy. It wasn't like that under the law. If you go back to the book of Leviticus and read about what they had to do when they committed sin, they had to bring a goat, sacrifice it.

Now, how much does a goat cost? Let's say $100. If you had to pay $100 every time you committed a sin to get rid of it, stop sinning very quickly. Imagine if you had to pay $100 to get rid of your sin every time you did it.

I tell you, we take sin very seriously. But, I mean, that's why in the Old Testament, even a command like, You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in the name. One of the ten commandments. The name of the Lord was Jehovah.

Do you know that till today, nobody knows the correct pronunciation of that? Because in the Hebrew language it's Y-H-W-H. They don't have any vowels in between those consonants. Y-H-W-H. People have assumed it's Jehovah.

It could be Yahweh. Nobody knows. You know why? Because people dared not speak that name. The Jews would never use that name. They were afraid perhaps I might take it in vain. They were pretty serious about obeying that commandment.

Far more serious than a lot of Christians are about obeying other commandments in the New Testament. I find that the average Jewish person has far more God-fearing than the average Christian. That's why you can't imagine a Jewish leader falling into adultery like Christian pastors fall into.

Yeah, a lot of fear of God. But Christians don't have it. That's the reason why the sin is so rampant even among Christian leaders. They were very particular about paying their tithes. And Christians, our commandment is not to pay our tithe.

Our commandment is to be free from the love of money. Their commandment was to pay 10%. Our commandment is to be free from the love of money. But I don't find Christians so eager to be free from the love of money as those Jewish people who were paying their tithes.

I'm just giving you a couple of examples of how our attitude to sin has become very casual because forgiveness is so cheap. It's cheap for us, but it wasn't cheap for Christ to hang on the cross. When talking to little children about forgiveness of sins, I often explain it like this.

I said, if all the people in the world were good and you were the only little bad boy or girl in the whole world, you did wrong, you would still come from heaven and die for me. One sin committed by one person, the only person who was a sinner in the whole world, life would still lead to hell.

So I see that Christ's death wasn't cheap for him. For us it's cheap in the sense that, not cheap, but I'd say it's easy to confess and say, Lord, I believe. And when we have that attitude, we come to verse 1 in Romans 6.

So what shall we say? We can continue to sin, right? Because forgiveness is so cheap. Grace is going to increase. We want grace to increase. But he says, how can you ever do that? God forbid, may it never be.

He says, how can you die to sin and live in it again? And this is the truth which many Christians have not understood. That Christ, when he died on the cross, not only forgave our sin, but we died with him.

Chosen in Christ for Holiness

Now this is a little difficult for our minds to understand, but let me begin by showing you a verse in Ephesians 1. Ephesians 1 and verse 4, it says, God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him.

God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, not to take us to heaven. It's a completely wrong understanding Christians have that God chose us to go to heaven. There's not a single verse in the Bible that says God chose us to go to heaven.

I'm going to tell you honestly, heaven is not the goal of my life. It used to be in my younger days when I didn't know the Bible. But as I come to know scripture, my goal in life is not heaven. My goal in life is to do the will of God before I leave this earth.

And my goal in life when I leave this earth is to be with Jesus wherever he is. That's heaven. But not the pearly gates and the golden streets. See, I know you're just like that. He chose us not to go to heaven.

He chose us to be holy. He chose us to be blameless. When I see, oh Lord, this is what he chose me for. It's like, you know, if you take a new job and go to work in an office. First day. Or you go to the boss and say, what am I supposed to do?

You don't just go there and do whatever you like. They didn't employ you to do whatever you like. They employed you to do a particular task in that office. So I'm chosen by God and say, Lord, what did you choose me for?

He said, I'll tell you. I chose you to be holy. I chose you to live a blameless life on this earth. Have you understood that? I mean, you may do so many other things in that office, but if you don't do the main task for which you're given, you'll be sad.

So what is my main task on earth? To be holy and blameless. That's what he chose me for. That's what I'm employed in this office for. And he did that before the foundation of the world, he chose me. Because with God, there's no such thing as time.

He doesn't discover something one day, which he did not know yesterday. I mean, you and I are like that. We learned something today which we didn't know yesterday. We may have learned something today from scripture, which we didn't know this morning.

But with God, there's nothing he doesn't know. He knows the end from the beginning. Everything that's going to happen right up to the end of time, God already knew that before he created Adam. So that's why it says before the foundation of the world, before Genesis 1 verse 1, Ephesians 1 verse 4, it comes before Genesis 1 verse 1.

That means I was in God's mind before Genesis 1 verse 1. That's all it means. And he chose me in Christ. So I was in Christ, in God's mind, before the worlds were created. So let me use an illustration.

This is me, and this is Christ. I was in Christ. This paper, inside the Bible. In Christ, before the foundation of the world. The earth is still to be created, Genesis 1. We haven't come to Genesis 1 yet.

This is before Genesis 1. Here's me, Zach Poonen, inside Christ. Before there were any angels, before there were any heaven and earth, I tell you, to know that brings such security into my own life. I'm not just a digit or a number floating around in this world.

I'm a very important person. Because I was chosen by God before the foundation of the world. It gives me a sense of worth. And, finally, we read that Jesus came to earth in the, I mean, many thousands of years after Adam.

And here, I was in Christ, don't forget. And when Christ died on the cross, who was there? Me. I was there in Him. He died, I died. I wasn't even born. But I was in God's mind. Before the world took place.

So in Christ, I died. When He was buried, there's me there. In Christ, buried. When He rose from the dead, there's me there, rose from the dead. When He ascended up to heaven, there's me there. That's why it goes on to say in Ephesians 2, He has seated us, Ephesians 2, 6, with Him, in the heavenly places, after raising us up with Him.

Baptism as Union with Christ’s Death and Resurrection

So that is the truth in Romans 6. How did I die to sin? Because I was in Christ. And Christ was crucified for my sin on the cross. Not only my sins were placed on Him, He took the punishment, but me, I was with Him.

I was in Him. You say, I can't understand it. I'll tell you. If you want to do His will, you'll understand it. If you really want to do His will, I've seen people in India who are, who can't even read and write English, who understand it.

You don't need to be educated. But you must have the desire to do His will. If you don't have the desire to do His will, any amount of my explanation will not make it clear to you. You'll remain blind and ignorant.

But if you desire to do His will, you'll understand it clearly. We who died to sin, something happened on that cross that God put me into Christ and finished with sin. And then He explains in Romans 6, verse 3 onwards.

Don't you know this is what baptism is all about? I was baptized as a little baby. By my parents, in what's called the Syrian Orthodox Church in India. Very similar to the Roman Catholic Church. They called it baptism.

It wasn't baptism at all. Baptism in the Greek means immersion. I wasn't immersed. First of all, baptism is something a person has to choose himself. You can't force a person to be baptized. So, when I was finally born again, when I was 19 and a half, I had a struggle with this.

I said, I was already baptized as a baby. Why do I need to be baptized again? Till I read scripture and discovered that wasn't baptism at all. That's what some priests called baptism. It wasn't according to scripture.

And I studied this and I said, hey, baptism is a testimony that I died with Christ and I was buried. You know how we bury people, we put them under the ground. That's why we have to go under the water.

And coming out of the water, I'm testifying, I was raised up with Christ too. Not just buried. So, he says here, verse 3, Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?

What were you testifying to when you went into the waters of baptism and came out? Maybe you didn't understand it. It doesn't matter. But you understand it now. The 3 ,000 people who were baptized on the day of Pentecost, Romans 6 was not written that time.

But they obeyed. So, baptism is a step of obedience. I mean, even if you don't understand it, if you have obeyed, that's fine. Now you can understand it. It is testifying that I have died and I have been buried with Christ.

To what? To sin. And to the world. And now I have risen with Christ to live for the things he lived for. So, this old man, I'm testifying to his burial in baptism. Therefore, we have been buried, verse 4, with him through baptism into death.

That is, Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we might walk in newness of life. So, the testimony I have when I come out of the waters of baptism is, now I'm a new person.

And it's a very interesting phrase that you read here in verse 4, Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, or God raised Christ from the dead. Do you know there's not a single verse in the New Testament that says that Jesus Christ raised himself from the dead.

He had the power to do it. He said that clearly in John chapter 10. John chapter 10, verse 18.

Jesus says, verse 17, For this reason the Father loves me, because I laid down my life,.

That I may take it again. No one has taken it away from me. I lay down it on my own initiative. He said, nobody can force me to be killed. Not even the Roman soldiers. He said to Peter, I can call 72 ,000 angels from heaven right now to fight for me.