Sunday Sermon: Baptized Into Christ (Romans 6:1-4)

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Romans 6:1-4 and the Charge of Antinomianism

Well good morning. Let us come back to our study in the book of Romans. We are in chapter six. If you would open your Bible please to chapter six. We start off this chapter today. I was reminded earlier of a quote from John Durant.

He was the 17th century Puritan in England who said the following, the whip or a blow may stir the horse into action, but it does not strengthen it. A conviction of need or a fear of hell may stir us to go to Christ, but it does not enable or enliven us.

Beloved, faith is the grace that strengthens. The just shall live by faith. We hear a call to obedience today in the passage that we are going to read, but let us understand that this call to obedience is not left to us to accomplish by our own power, but it is by the power of Christ that lives within us, that we live in righteousness and desire to obey our Lord who saves.

This is Romans chapter six verses one through four. In honor of the word of the King would you please stand. The Apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome, hear the word of the Lord. What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?

We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. You may be seated as we pray.

Heavenly Father, as we come to this text today, we are reminded of the call that you have given to us to be holy as you are holy. As Peter said in first Peter chapter one and repeating that command that was given to Israel in the Old Testament, you are to be holy as I am holy.

Lord, what does that mean that we be set apart? That we live our lives in a way that you have called us to, that we live not as the world lives but even as said in 1 John 2 .6, walking as Jesus walked, following after our Savior who gave Himself for us and rose from the dead.

And so we see here in this passage, as Christ died and rose from the dead, so we must also consider ourselves dead to sin and alive in Christ, walking in newness of life. Teach us these things and stir in our hearts that desire for that which is righteous, which you have called right and good, that we may live and walk according to these things.

Not going back to that which we were called out of, but now having been washed, we walk as new, as new as you have made us. May your Spirit convict us of these truths and guide us in these things, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.

So as our brother Alan had read to us this morning in our scriptural reading, he told us the story of Naaman as we read it in 2 Kings 5. Now this man who was a pagan general was afflicted with leprosy and it was an Israelite girl who worked in his home that said, well there's a way that you can be cleansed, a man of God that can heal you of this disease that you have.

And he goes into Israel to go talk to this man of God, Elisha, as we know him to be, and Elisha does not come to Naaman and meet with him face to face, Naaman's insulted by that. Who is this guy? He summons me to come here but he won't meet with me face to face, instead Elisha sends somebody out to Naaman to tell him, go in the Jordan, wash yourself seven times.

Now I love Naaman's response to that, come on now, the Jordan, I've got better rivers in my land, I could have just washed myself in my river and why not just do that instead, but it's his servants that say to him, look we've made this journey, we've come all this way, the man of God says do this, try it, see what happens.

And so Naaman goes down and dips himself seven times in the Jordan according to the word of the man of God and his flesh was restored like the flesh of a little child and he was clean. Now as we open with that this morning, you know, and by the way, as we come into this passage in Romans chapter 6, a lot of Baptist preachers want to use this passage and we're going to lay out our treatise of baptism here.

Here's why we're Baptists. I don't need to do that, you already know why we're Baptists. Here's my treatise, be baptized. And those who make a confession of faith, you must be baptized and profess your faith.

In that way.

There you go, there is my treatise on be baptized and when you are baptized, go all the way.

Under.

There we go, thank you, thank you Josh, appreciate the amen, that's what I was looking for. That's not necessarily the point of this passage though. This isn't given to us to lay out a treatise of our doctrine of baptism, but understanding rather as Paul uses the example of baptism, that we have been baptized in Christ and so therefore we have been washed clean.

There are people in this world who believe that they can be clean under their own power and they're trying to wash themselves in their own rivers, aren't they? It wasn't long ago I encountered a man, a skeptic, who at one point called himself a Christian but was no longer.

And he was criticizing the fruit of the Spirit, the thing that we had even confessed ourselves in our congregational reading this morning. And he's looking at the fruit of the Spirit and he's seeing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.

And he's going, fruit of the Spirit, I can do that just fine on my own. Anybody can love or have joy or be at peace or be kind. Why do I need the Spirit of God in order to do that? Again, washing himself in his own rivers.

And we've seen what the world thinks even of love and how it redefines this word. The world will say love means love.

Love is love.

And yeah, it's ridiculous. Water is water. Good for you and whatever. But we know by that saying, when they try to define love that way, what they really mean is perversity and all manner of lust and ungodliness that they attach to their definition of love.

What does God mean by these things? What do we do that is pleasing unto the Lord? How has He defined right from wrong and that which is spiritual from that which is of the.

Flesh?

We cannot wash ourselves in our own rivers and expect to be clean. We must be cleansed by Christ. And then being cleansed by Christ, what does that look like in the life of a believer? When we look at our text today in Romans 6, verses 1 -4, Paul begins with a rhetorical question and even answers that with another rhetorical question.

We have that in verses 1 and 2. After that, he makes this proclamation of being dead to sin. We have that in verse 3. And then finally in verse 4, the call to walk in newness of life. So that's our outline for the passage today.

The rhetorical question and the answer that we get in verses 1 and 2. The call to be dead to sin in verse 3. And to then walk in newness of life in Christ that we have in verse 4. So coming back again to verse 1 where it is said, what shall we say then?

We're starting a new chapter here. We're in chapter 6 where Paul is going to call us to walk not in unrighteousness, but in righteousness. Submitting our members, the members of our body as instruments of righteousness.

In fact, if there's going to be a thesis statement to this entire chapter, to all of chapter 6, it would be in verse 13. 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.

We don't get to that verse this week, but that's the verse that all of chapter 6 revolves around. That we are to live not in unrighteousness, but having been cleansed by Christ, we are to be righteous.

And that's not just in some spiritual or esoteric manner, but that in these bodies in which we live, we commit ourselves to doing that which is right in the eyes of God. Paul has shared a robust gospel up to this point in chapter 5.

A deeper, more spiritual gospel than you and I ever could have conjured up on our own. Of course, he's being led by the Holy Spirit in these things in which he has written. But he has said, going back to chapter 5 verse 1, we have been justified by faith.

And being justified by faith, we have peace with God. What was the difference at this point in time, if you think back in not just the point in time in church history, but in redemptive history, what was the difference between a Jew and a Gentile?

The difference was the law. The Jews had the law. The Gentiles were a law unto themselves, as we've seen previously in Romans. And yet Paul is saying here that our salvation is not the law. And we'll even have that expounded for us later.

The law had no power to save us. The law brings death. So how is it that we can be saved if we're not saved by the law? And the answer is Christ. Jesus, who fulfilled the law perfectly when we could not, died as an atoning sacrifice for sins, rises again from the dead, so that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life.

That was the message of the gospel that Christ proclaimed. It is the message as Paul proclaims it here as well. We are justified, made innocent before God, not by our keeping of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

But having preached that now, Paul anticipates an argument. Oh yeah? We're just justified by faith? It's by the grace of God, you say? Well then why don't we just sin? Why don't we just go on sinning, because then if we just sin, then the grace of God will just abound toward us, if that's what you're all about in your preaching.

We heard about the grace of God last week as we came to the close of chapter 5. The law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, remember this from verse 20? Grace what? Abounded all the more.

Where sin increased because of the law, grace abounded, the grace of God toward us. You cannot out-sin God's grace, as I said to you last week. We cannot sin so deeply and so greatly that God's going, well that's beyond what I can do for you.

God's grace covers a multitude of sin, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, if through the disobedience of the law, grace just abounded all the more, then why don't we just go on sinning that grace may abound?

That is the argument that Paul is anticipating as we jump into chapter 6. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Because those who are the Judaizers, those who affix themselves to the law, and not just to the law of God, but even all the extra laws that they've made up in addition to that, they're going to say, well then the law is of no value.

That's what you're preaching because of this gospel. So we can just go on sinning. We can just do all the wickedness we want, so that the grace of God may abound. And if that's the argument that the person is going to make, then they're not paying attention.

Hence why Paul says in verse 2, in the Greek, my gnoita. Translated in English, it comes out more like, no, no, a thousand times no. We just summarize it in these three words. By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

So is Paul just an antinomian here? Is he just preaching this gospel of greasy grace? That we can just sin all the way that we want to sin, and God's grace will just abound to us, and no sin that we do ever causes us to be out of the favor of God.

His grace just abounds all the more. Is that the message that Paul is preaching?

No.

But I also agree with Martin Lloyd-Jones that we need to preach a gospel that is so full of the grace of God that we would be accused of being antinomian just as Paul was accused of that. Antinomian, by the way, is a term that means no law.

We don't have to follow a law anymore, because we just have the grace of God, and that's not what Paul is saying. And we saw back in chapter 3, him say, do we overthrow the law by this faith? By no means.

On the contrary, we uphold the law. So he's made that statement already. But anticipating that somebody is going to come along, and they hear this gospel of grace being proclaimed. You just have to believe in Jesus, and you're saved?

Are you kidding me? Well then why do we even need the law at all? And Paul, anticipating that argument, says that we have died to sin, so we can no longer live in it. The grace of God certainly abounds to us, but it is by that grace that we no longer live in sin, but we live in the righteousness of God that we've been clothed in in Christ Jesus.

And now this is not an argument that Paul has thrown at him just in this particular time and place. And so, yeah, that was 2 ,000 years ago, but we're done with all the Judaizing, so we don't really have to worry about that now, do we?

My friends, I hear it all the time, at least on a weekly basis. Somebody say to me, this gospel that you proclaim of by grace alone through faith alone, so we don't have to do any works, is what you're saying.

You're saying that we can just sin, and sin may abound, or sin may abound so that the grace of God may abound. It's the same argument. It comes from Roman Catholics. It comes from the Eastern Orthodox.

It comes from even people who are self-righteous. Maybe they don't even have a particular religion or moral code that they affix themselves to except being a law unto themselves. And even they will say, well, you have to do good things.

You can't just believe in something and then expect to be a better person. You actually have to be a good person. It is as if it is within our human nature to incline ourselves to doing good things in order to make ourselves righteous.

Isn't it?

I can be righteous on my own. I can be good myself. I can even have my religion and my ability to keep it and follow it is going to be the thing that saves me. That doesn't save. It is only by grace through faith that we are saved.

Only by faith in Jesus Christ that our sins are forgiven and we are justified before God. Paul has laid out that argument plainly through these first five chapters here of Romans. And so then there's that accusation that is sure to come of antinomianism.

Well, you're just saying, no law. We don't have to follow anything at all. So let's just continue in sin that grace may abound. And Paul says, by no means, because. And this rhetorical question that he then answers with should be another statement that he makes here in Romans that blows your hair back.

We've had a lot of those statements in Romans. Here's another one. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Whoa.

So if I've been made alive in Christ, then I'm dead to sin and I'm alive in Christ. That's a great point, Paul. If I'm dead to sin, I can't go living in it anymore, can I? And so Paul starts the chapter where he's going to instruct us toward living in our members for righteousness.

He opens with that rhetorical question that he anticipates from his critics. You're just saying, we don't need to live by any law. No, that is not what I'm saying. We've died to sin, so how can we go on living in it?

Grace is not less than the law, which is what a person wants to say when they say, well, then we don't need law anymore. We can just live however we want it. My grace may be abound. We're not saying that grace is less than the law.

Grace still comes with commands. It still comes with instructions. But by the grace of God, we are able to keep those commands and those instructions that He gives. By His grace, we are forgiven our sins.

By His grace, He even shows us the way in which we are to live in righteousness. By His grace, we are able to keep that way in which we live. But it is by God's grace first and foremost that our sins are forgiven.

Not by anything we have done, but by what God has done for us. So that's the opener to chapter 6. That rhetorical question and even the rhetorical answer. How can we who died to sin still live in it? The next portion we have in verse 3 is where Paul makes the expression or gives us an understanding of being dead to sin.

He expounds on this further in verse 3 by saying, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ were baptized into His death? Now any time that Paul asks a question that begins with, Do you not know?

This is synonymous with saying, Come on, you know better. How many parents have said this to your kids? You know better than that. Some of that, sometimes even my response to that, even that response to my children can be a little absurd because I'll tell my two-year-old, You know better than that.

No, he's two.

He probably doesn't know better than that. He's three now, I know, but I'm saying, like I was still telling,.

Zeke said that, all right.

I was still telling him that when he was two, is my point. I said it to you too, buddy, when you were two.

No, he was two.

He probably didn't know better than that. But this is Paul speaking to a people that certainly should know better. So if you're going to be on the side of the Judaizers who are raising this argument to say that, Well, then we don't even need the law if grace will just abound.

Paul says, Do you not know? You know better than that. All of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into His death. Now again, this is not a treatise on baptism. But he's using baptism, our baptism that we've all been through.

Amen?

All of us have been baptized.

I'm hoping as I speak that to those who have been baptized, nodding heads. Yes, I've been immersed. I have come back up. And it is that very act that symbolizes that we've been buried with Christ. And we've been risen again to new life.

And the water itself not just being a symbol of ground in which we've been buried and then raised again, but the water itself being a symbol of being cleansed. By His Spirit, we have been cleansed. The Apostle Paul is saying to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 6, verses 9 and 10,.

Do not be deceived. The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God. Not the sexually immoral, not the adulterers, not homosexuals, not the effeminate, not the drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers.

These will not inherit the kingdom of God. But then in verse 11 he says, Such were some of you. You once were among them. But you were what? Washed. You were sanctified. You were justified in the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

We once were these things. We once walked in this. But in Christ we've been cleansed that we would be declared justified, innocent of those transgressions. But being cleansed means we don't continue in that any longer.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ, you went through this act in obedience to God. He said be baptized. You were baptized. You heard the call of the apostolic message when they gave to you the gospel.

What must I do to be saved? Repent and be baptized and you will receive the Holy Spirit as Peter said to them at Pentecost. So being baptized, symbolizing that we've been buried with Christ. As we Baptists are so often to say, it is that outward symbol of that inward change.

We were regenerated by the Holy Spirit. We were cleansed of our uncleannesses and now having come out of the water as Naaman came out of the Jordan, cleansed. So we are to not go back to all that sickness and disease of sin again.

But we are to walk in the newness that we have been given. We've all been baptized into Christ. We were baptized into His death. And what is understood by His death? That Paul has already talked about here in Romans.

Romans chapter 3. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And you are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith.

So what's being talked about there regarding the death of Christ? He was given as a sacrifice on our behalf. As a propitiation, meaning that sacrifice satisfied the wrath of God that was upon all of us because of our sin.

And by His death, our sins are atoned for. They are forgiven. The slate is wiped clean. And so we've been baptized into Christ Jesus, into His death. That our sins would be wiped away and we would walk in them no more.

As Paul says in Colossians chapter 1, our record of debt was nailed to the cross. And that declaration that Jesus makes from the cross in the Gospel of John, Tetelestai, it is finished. Meaning paid in full.

The debt is paid. It is not held against us any longer. If the debt's paid, are you then going to go and accumulate more debts? That would be foolish, wouldn't it? And would your debt have actually been forgiven if you're just going to go right back into the debt that you were asking God to forgive you for in the first place?

You're just continuing to walk in debt. Then you're not walking in the death of Christ in which we were all baptized. Make sense? So if you have had your sins forgiven, then what? And that's what we have next in verse 4.

Paul expounds on this. He explains it. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death. Now the baptism that Paul speaks about here, in this sense in verse 4, is the spiritual baptism. It was not by our water baptism that we were cleansed.

You were cleansed by the Holy Spirit. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism in the Holy Spirit into His death. That can only be a spiritual statement. That can't be a literal physical statement.

Did you die with Christ? Not literally you didn't, no. You didn't go nail yourself to a cross and hang there next to Him. Or even hang there with Him, however that would pan out. I don't know if you've seen this group in the Philippines that comes about every single Easter.

They all carry crosses and they go to a place and they are crucified on those crosses and they're raised up and they shout from crosses and it's supposed to be that they're being crucified with Christ.

They're literally trying to follow that. With Paul saying, I've been crucified with Christ and it's no longer I who live but Christ who lives within me. And you have this group, kind of cultic in the Philippines, decides to crucify themselves every Easter.

Does that sanctify them in any way at all?

No.

You were not physically crucified with Christ and praise God, none of us have to do that. I don't even know what hill we're supposed to go to. Up here? There's a cross over there on that mountain by the way.

Two of them up there. Anybody want to join me? I'm just kidding. This is only a spiritual statement. We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death. Jesus actually died. And He actually paid the price for our sins.

We therefore spiritually with Christ are baptized into His death. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. He was actually crucified. He was actually raised. And so we too spiritually might be raised and we will walk in newness of life.

And so again, reading the whole statement together. 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.

Now, do we receive resurrection after the dead? Because of Christ's resurrection? Will we rise again after we die? Amen, we will. Is that the point that Paul makes here? No, it's not. That will come later.

But this also is not an argument for we get resurrection because Christ got resurrection. That's true, but that's not the argument that Paul lays out here. So here we're just giving spiritual application to this.

Jesus actually died. He actually rose from the dead. What does that mean for you? You spiritually die with Christ. And you spiritually are raised from the dead with Him to the glory of the Father that you will walk in newness of life.

So now you have been raised. Are we going to receive a resurrection from the dead later on? Yes, we will. But what does that mean for you in the practical sense right now? That you would not be in your sin any longer.

And that instead you would walk in newness of life. New life that we've been given in Christ. By the way, this is an essential doctrine of our Christian faith. And what do I mean by an essential doctrine?

You have to believe this. If you want to say, Jesus died for me, and now I can just go on sinning and living the life that I want to live however I want to live it. That's heresy. You're actually denying an essential doctrine of the faith.

That you can't go on living in that sin that you were living in before. You must walk in newness of life. There must be a transformation. Some of you have probably heard this metaphor before from Paul Washer.

But say all of us are sitting around in a Bible study, and somebody comes in late.

And they go,.

I'm sorry I'm late. I wasn't able to make it on time. I got hit by a Mack truck on the way here. And you're looking at the guy just walking in perfectly fine. Like, you got hit by a Mack truck on the way here.

Yes. It was devastating. It was horrible. Car parts all over the place. Part of me was lying over here. Part of me was lying over there. It was nasty. That's why I'm late tonight. We're all looking at this guy going,.

I don't believe you.

If you were hit by a Mack truck, then you should have in reverse on your forehead,.

Mack.

Printed right there on your head where you got hit by this truck. If somebody is going to make that kind of claim of being impacted by a Mack truck, there should be evidence that they were hit by a Mack truck.

And if we don't see the evidence, then I don't believe your claim. And there are many people today who will claim to be Christians. I've been impacted by the greatest power in the universe. The Creator Himself.

That I've been convicted over my sin, and I've come to faith in Jesus Christ, and now, believing in Jesus, I'm saved. And then they go on living as if none of that had ever happened. And they live as the world lives, and they chase after the same passions of their flesh that they had before, and there's no transformation seen in their lives whatsoever.

What do we see in that person? But a denial. By their lives, there is a denial of that essential doctrine of the faith that we must walk in newness of life. There has to be a change. I remember Jonathan's testimony when he was being welcomed as a new member of the church, and he talked about, when I got saved, here was the immediate changes that happened.

Was he perfectly sanctified on that day? No! But there was already change that was happening in his life by the Holy Spirit. The change doesn't save you, my friends. I repeat that again and again. The works don't save.

The good things you do are not your salvation, but they are the evidence that you have been saved in Christ. They are the evidence that you have been raised from death to life. If we have life in Christ, are we going to live like corpses?

We don't go back to doing the dead, dirty deeds with our hands that we were doing before. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.

Who was that? ACDC?

We don't go back to living that life. We don't go back to doing those things. We desire to do what is right in the eyes of God, and what is a reflection of the Savior who saved us. As I quoted in the prayer this morning, 1 John 2 .6, if we are in Christ Jesus, let us walk as Jesus walked, and we will show in our lives that we have been brought from death to life, doing that which God has said is good, and doing it in the righteousness of Christ that we have been given, not by our own power, not by our own ability, but by the power of God who dwells within us.

So we have in this section in Romans 6 verse 1 and 2, we have that rhetorical question which Paul answers. Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

After that, he makes the statement of being dead to sin. In verse 3, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death, that we would be dead to sin, and no longer living in it?

Verse 4, 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, that we would have new life in Christ.

And my friends, that new life we have in Christ, we live to the glory of the Father. That our lives would be an act of worship. Paul will get to that later in Romans 12 .1. In view of God's mercies, present yourselves as living sacrifices unto the Lord.

Your bodies as living sacrifices. Holy and acceptable to Him. And this is your spiritual act of worship. So that brings me to three applications. We've looked at this passage. We've drawn three points from these four verses.

Let's consider three applications here, and they are these. Number one, be holy. It's a common drum I beat. You hear me say that over and over again. Be holy. It's kind of like the universal application I'm going to give to every passage that we do.

Be holy. Number two, be spiritual. And number three, be renewed. So let's come back to be holy. Defining this again, what does it mean to be holy? That word literally means to be set apart. When God directs us to be holy as He is holy, there is no one who is more set apart than God.

There is no one who possesses that kind of otherness that God has. He is good. He is righteous. He is pure. He is holy. To a degree that we're never really going to understand or fathom this side of heaven.

1 John 3 says that a day is coming in which we will see Him as He is because we will be made to be like Him. But for right now, we have only glimpses of the degree of His righteousness and His holiness.

As I've made the comparison before regarding His righteousness to the Son, God is so incredibly holy we could never step into His presence. It would burn us up with how unholy we are. An example of this, you just look at the sun.

You look at the sun for just a few minutes and you'll burn your eyes right out of your head. It's 90-something million miles away. You can't get anywhere near the sun. You will be incinerated. But you think that you can just walk into the presence of God's glory and be alright?

His holiness is so great that we could not even stand in it. This is why we are undergoing this process of sanctification and why Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, we'll be transformed and made new into something else when we enter into that kingdom than what we are now because the perishable cannot inherit the imperishable.

And so that's our understanding of holiness. It's otherness. It's being set apart. He's separate. He's different than us. He is pure and good and holy to a degree that we cannot be. And yet He calls us to holiness.

Jesus even saying in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. How can we achieve that? And again, that's only by the grace of God. He's called us to holiness and so we must be holy.

And we're going to pursue this holiness in such a way, as the Apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 4, that the people of the world who are still in their worldliness and unrighteousness, they're going to malign us for it.

Like you desire godliness and they're going to look at you and they're going to mock you because you desire godliness. The Apostle Paul said to Timothy that those who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

You don't have to go downtown and stand on a soapbox and say, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand for people to hate you. You just desire to do the right thing that God calls right and people will hate you for that.