The Death of Sin in the Death of Christ, Romans 6:1-14, Dr. John Carpenter

Romans 6:1-14 and the Death of Sin in Christ

Romans chapter six, verses one to fourteen, hear the word of the Lord. What then should we say? 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.

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. 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.

For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 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. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

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.

For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law, but under grace. The Lord had his blessings to the reading of his holy word. But what's the meaning of a death? That's what we're here for tonight, right?

What's the meaning of a death? Just a little over 10 years ago, we had a dead 13-year-old boy lying right here. Damien Farmer, who had been one of our Jim Jr. kids, lay in a coffin right where this table is now.

His funeral was here. Funeral is a great opportunity to present the gospel. I remember when they asked, he wanted, the mother anyway, wanted him to want to have his funeral here. The only stipulation I had was I get to preach in the funeral.

This is a great opportunity to present the gospel because we have before us at a funeral, in a box, a great hideous example of what our sins have done. The bad news is just streaming at a funeral. Now then, don't you want to hear the good news?

We sometimes squander, though, this great opportunity. You know, many sermons at funerals try to make us feel good, try to avoid the reality of death, make us feel that death isn't so bad, just whistling in a graveyard.

The cynic like me comments on how often at funerals almost everyone gets preached into heaven. You know, no matter how badly they lived, they'll just talk about them as though they're a great saint when it comes to the funeral.

Even if someone was a rascal, their funerals will often be full of eulogies, talking about all their good deeds, almost as if they were heroes who died in service to others, like the soldier who threw himself on a grenade to save his friends.

I mean, there are heroes who you celebrate in death, but sometimes funerals are for people that don't deserve all that, and yet they're kind of, as they say, preached into heaven. And that's because, of course, that's for ourself.

We don't want to to think about the horrors of death for them. So here we are with the evidence of the tyranny of death at a funeral right in front of us. And we pretend that sin is no big deal. Our sin brings death.

And at a funeral, we have proof right in front of us. And yet we hate it. We hate it so much. We have the evidence lying in front of us, cold and stark, but we hate it still much. We so much. We still try to avoid the reality of it.

Good Friday as the Funeral of Christ and the Death of Sin

Now, I suppose that a Good Friday service is like a funeral. That's why some people don't want to attend one. We come to remember the death of someone at a Good Friday, a hero, like a hero. He is one of those rare people whose death didn't just end his good works, but was among the greatest of those good works.

His death has meaning. Not a great good deed in his death, but of all the heroes, he is the only one whose death ended not just his life, but the very thing that brought us death. Now, some heroes on the battlefield who die, maybe they died to end the threat to their friends, end the threat to their country, and they get a medal of honor presented to their maybe their parents or to their wife for what they did.

And that's great. That's that's even a that's a picture, kind of a small picture of what Jesus did. But Jesus went far beyond that. He gave his life to end what ends our lives. In the death of Christ, our sin died.

And we see that here in the first half of Romans six, we see it in three parts and in three paragraphs. First, in verses one to four, you see our baptism into Christ. And second, from verses five to 11, our unity with Christ.

And third, from verses 12 to 14, our freedom in Christ. What's the meaning of a death? Well, first, for us who have been have experienced the baptism into into Christ, his death means that we we have died to sin.

Paul is continuing the flow of his is laying out the gospel from chapter five. And when he said that, remember, that God's law made sin increase. Seems like a strange thing to say. Why did God give his law if it makes sin increase?

You would think, well, he wants people to behave better. Really? Is that what we need just to be told to behave better? He gave his law and yet sin increase. And because being sinful, we were provoked by the law to disobey it.

But God used the increase of sin to show that like Adam, our father in our head, we were trespassers to show us that we were indeed like him. We're already guilty because of him. But when we deserve the penalty he got, we deserve death.

And that knowledge then of our sins, which is why God gave his law. So we would know we have our sins. We are sinful. That brings us to recognize our sins, to repent and to receive grace. So sin increased.

But God used that to increase grace. Now, the main point of God giving us his law was not that we would obey it and simply obey, obey, obey. And then he's kind of surprised when we don't. In fact, he gets the reverse.

No, it's so that we would see our need for Christ obedience to be credited to us. Understand, again, the main point of God giving his law was not so that we would obey it, but so that we would see that our need, we have a need for Christ obedience to be credited to us.

Now, once that happens, yes, then we should obey his law. Well, the skeptical hearing that scoffs back, well, if sin increasing makes grace increase even more. Well, well, then why shouldn't I send even more so that I can even get more grace?

Right. Makes sense. I get the sin and grace. It's a win win for me, the center of things. And Paul responds to that with it within an explosion in verse two. By no means. Translators in English debate how to translate this phrase is made in a toy in Greek, but by no means King James Version.

God forbid. There's no way. Absolutely not. This is an explosion. No, that's strictly forbidden. The truly saved person doesn't think I got grace, I got grace after sinning, and so I'll send some more to get more grace.

You know, well, why did the truly saved person think that the true believer, because of what Jesus's death means in verse three, he states really what is the conclusion of the first half of Romans six.

He states it first dates, the conclusion first, and then he proves it. Verse three, it is all of us who have been baptized into Christ. Jesus were baptized into his death. All of those words are important there.

That's the conclusion of the first half versus one to 14 of Romans six. What does the death mean? Well, that depends on who died for Christ. His death means that those who were, have been baptized into him were baptized into his death.

Well, what does that mean? Well, some people think that this tells us that baptism saves that by baptism, we, we are put in Christ. And then we, by baptism, by being baptized, we received the benefits of his death.

So for such people, Christ's death bought benefits, bought blessings, freedom from sin and his consequences, you know, heaven or all that. He bought them, but for us to obtain them, we have to be baptized.

That's the way some people interpret this baptism. Then they think it's like withdrawing money from the bank. Christ has deposited the money. Now you withdraw it by getting baptized, but notice two things about that.

First, Paul is continuing this discussion here in Romans and which earlier he's already proven particularly all through chapter four, that justification that is being declared right with God. You're in a right relationship.

You're good with him. You're in a good relationship with him. That justification is by faith and not by religious rituals, like particularly for his day in his context, like circumcision or we could say baptism.

So after chapter four, it wouldn't make any sense that Paul is suddenly starts saying, now you have to do this ritual baptism to be saved. Second, look carefully at what exactly he does say. He says, all of us who have been baptized into water.

No, he doesn't even say all of us have been baptized. All of us who have been baptized into. He doesn't say what some people imagine being baptized in water puts you in Christ. That's the way some people interpret it, but that's not really what he's saying.

He says, believers are baptized into crisis. And the word baptized means to be dipped into immersed into put into fully completely. That's what it means to baptize. Really? They haven't translated the word here because the Greek, the word is baptized and it means immerse.

That is when we truly believe we are, we, when we have the faith that God gives us to trust him and God sees that he counts it to us as, as righteousness. And so he counts us right with him. We're in the right relationship with the father.

And so when that happens, we are then baptized or immersed, soaked in, dipped in. That's what the word baptism again means in Christ. We are seen by God. God sees us as in Christ. We are treated by the father as if we were in Christ, as if we were attached to him, we were part of him.

We have his good life covering us being in Christ means having him as our head. And so he lives and dies for us because we are now by faith in Christ. We were also in his death. We were put in Christ.

And so when he died as our head, we died with him. That's what his death means to us. And that happens. We become in Christ when we believe not when we're, when we're baptized, our baptism is a, is a picture of that.

It's a, it's a portrayal of it. It is not what makes it happen. We show that just as Jesus went into death. So we go into the water just as he came up. So we come up in baptism. We show the meaning of a death.

What's the meaning of a death? Sin brings us death. First spiritual death, a separation from God, our sins alienate us from a Holy God. We cannot be right with God unless our sins are completely paid for.

So when he died, we were in him and we died with him. He acted for us as our head. The price for our sins was paid. His death means that we've been united with Christ. So to be baptized into Christ means to be united with him.

Starting in verse five, to be baptized into his death means to be united with him in a death like his. Now that means that in the sight of God, when Christ was beaten and lashed and nailed to a cross and hoisted up to be mocked and left to die, what is described for us, but even before it happened in Psalm 22, which we read, we were right there with him.

We were receiving the same punishment. We read that Psalm. That's us. When we truly believe in him, we were seen to be with him. And so we should identify ourselves with Christ. So, so this, what we're doing now, isn't just his funeral, but ours.

We are now attending our own funeral as the funeral of what Paul calls in verse six, the old man, the old self, who we, who we were died with Christ or the cross. Now notice there, the old self was crucified.

It's a path completed action. You don't need to keep doing it again and again, again, it's done. The old you was killed on the cross. It was dead and buried. Now the reason, because we are united with Christ.

So I'll baptize into Christ. You're immersed in him. You are in him. And when he died, you died. Our old self died with him. So that notice that the, so this is the purpose of that baptism into Christ, that our union with him, the body of sin might be brought to nothing.

In other words, it's powerless. It's void. It's empty. The old self was crucified with Christ so that we now can destroy the body, the impulse, the things within us that move us to sin. We can do that.

Not as not as weak people trying to overcome some awful habit just by sheer willpower, our grim determination. I got to obey the laws. No, the old you who was enslaved to sin is now dead. If you're a slave, you can't escape.

They made it so it's impossible to escape. Well, death is the only way out of that kind of slavery. Once a slave dies, then he's free. And that's our way out. We were serving our master sin when sin snapped his fingers, told us to, to lust or to hate or to be greedy.

We did what we were told. We were serving that master sin, but now for believers, notice that if you were in Christ, if you are not for everyone, for believers, we were serving that master sin, but now we've been counted as united with Christ.

And so now we're free in verse 10, the death, he died, he died to sin. He got to the root of the problem. The problem was our old self who we were, and that had to die. And so he died for us, not only the death of death, but the death of the force that caused our death, our sin.

He died to sin. Think about that phrase though. He died to sin. Wait, you're talking about Christ. How could Christ die to sin? And someone could ask, how can he, how could he die to sin? I mean, he never had sin.

He never committed sin. Never, never was under, under it. Never suffered his penalty. Now the individualist can't understand us. Individualists has no way to understand this. If individualist states Christ can only earn his own righteousness and I should only suffer from my own sin.

So they would object to this whole thing about having Adam sin imputed to this. If Christ can only earn his own righteousness and we can only suffer for our own sin, then why did Christ die? But God is not an individualist.

He sees people as united with Adam in his sin. And he sees all believers. Those who have been baptized with him in Christ as united with Christ in his death. So this is our funeral too. For the death, he, he died in verse 10.

He died to sin. So how does the Lord Jesus who has no sin died to sin for the death? He died. He died to sin. I mean, we talk about us. If I, if I talk about, I, I died to that sin, we mean that, that some sin used to have power over me.

I maybe felt compelled to hate or throw temper tantrums or get drunk or high or have sex out of marriage or to lie and break my word or to be greedy and live for wealth. Those are sins I struggled against.

And then I, I finally died to that sin. What I mean is, well, that sin no longer has power over me. I've overcome it. I'm free of it. And that's good for us. And that's exactly what Paul is saying, that the unity that we have with Christ does for us.

We have died to our sin, but here he says the death, he died, Christ died. He died to sin in verse 10. How? Because he was our head. He was our representative. He acted on our behalf. He died to our sin.

You could read it that way. The death, he died, he died to our sin. He did this once. He did this once for all in the middle of verse 10. That's once for all time. It's finally complete. He doesn't not have to die again.

He isn't dying every good Friday. And so to be raised again, every Easter, he isn't being sacrificed again in the Lord's supper. He is being remembered and hopefully experienced for the once for all death he has already experienced.

He died so that we could die to sin. And we're told in verse 11, the first command in Romans, consider yourselves. This is the first command in all the book of Romans, six chapters into this. What are the first thing we're commanded to do in Romans?

After all this theology, first thing consider, let's think about meditate on, consider yourselves now dead. That's the command. Take time to think about yourself, your old self anyway, is dead right now at this funeral for the old man or woman.

Think about what your life was like outside Christ. Think about it is crucified with him. So identify yourself with him because God does that you, that you see his death is yours. Then at your funeral, let it be said that you lived not a dead life for yourself, but to God.

Now, some people in church history have so focused, so meditated, so considered themselves crucified with Christ, meditated on the crucifixion of Christ that they've actually begun to develop some of the wounds of Christ in their body.

Some of the, some of the holes in their palms and a wound in their side, just like Christ. It's apparently psychosomatic, his mind over matter, their, their constant focus of their mind on something causes it to come about in their body.

And those marks are called the stigmata, the signs of the cross. And yes, it's unhealthy. I'm not suggesting you do that as well. As we see, as we'll see on Sunday, we're supposed to see every Sunday.

He didn't just die. And we don't just consider ourselves dead to sin, but he came out of death alive. It's a funeral. That's not the end. Imagine a funeral on a Friday when, you know, there's going to be a resurrection on Sunday.

But if, if they, if these people with the stigmata, the wounds, they focus too much on the cross today, we think too little about it. We are after all to consider that first command, consider ourselves dead.

What's the meaning of a death? Consider it. Think about it. Think about what it means to you, how you live Christ. Death means everything to us. If we've been baptized into Christ, united with Christ, it means our freedom in Christ.

Freedom from Sin and Life Under Grace

After 11 verses in this chapter of telling us what was done in the death of Christ by his resurrection, as we'll see the Sunday, he then tells us what we are to do because of it for 11 verses, we're told the meaning of Christ's death.

That is objectively really in God's eyes, because what God sees is the truth. It is the reality. Then we're told in verses 12 to 14, that that death, what that death is to mean to us, what's the meaning of a death.

If it's the death of Christ and we're baptized into Christ, we're united with Christ. Then it is the death of our old self. And Good Friday is our funeral. And one very good thing is that that old self that would have dragged us down into hell is dead and good riddance.

We're not preaching that old self into heaven. We're not going to pretend that that old self was fine. We have eulogies and talk about all the good things that old self did. No. Imagine a funeral where a speaker gets up and says, we're sure glad that rascal is dead.

He got what he deserved. Well, here it is. This is our funeral for our old selves and praise the Lord. He or she is dead. We got what we deserved in our, the old self in his death. We were bad. We couldn't be reformed.

No amount of self-improvement of motivational speakers of counselors, life coaches, developing seven habits to be highly effective, discipline, good attitudes, obedience, education, training, whatever it is.

None of that could have salvaged the old self. None of that could have saved the old self. Our old self doesn't need to be told to obey, to do, to get better. He or she needs to die and thank God on Good Friday.

If we believe we're in Christ, he or she did die with Christ. Good Friday is very good for us. It means we are no longer enslaved to sin. In verse 12, since we're free, let's not live under it's slavery anymore.

We didn't get forgiven for whatever, for our drunkenness or sexual morality so that we could just keep on doing those things. We had been slaves of whatever it is, of pride, of hatred, of anger, of lust, of greed, materialism, self-righteousness.

The old self loves those things. The old self loves self more than anything else and couldn't be satisfied with the Lord. But on Good Friday, that old self died. So why now, having died in those old sins, why would we go back to them?

What's the meaning of a death? Well, for, for people living for self, whether religious or not, moral or not, their funeral is the end. Oh, their, their existence will go on, but their ability to continue to live for that self that they've been living for.

That's over. They live to glorify and enjoy themselves. And now forever they cannot. But for those whose old self has died with Christ on the cross, the death of Christ is the death of sin, the death of everything that keeps them from the God they can now glorify and now enjoy forever.

What's the meaning of a death in Jesus's case? There's an eternity, an infinite meaning. That's why he told us that, that now in between the, the end of our spiritual death, which has passed already, which we remembered in baptism and the end of our physical death, which we look forward to in the future, in the resurrection, the Lord Jesus told us where we are now in between those two ends of death.

He told us how to remember his death on the night that Jesus was betrayed. He took the bread and the wine of the Passover and he transformed it into the Lord's supper, telling us to do this in remembrance of him, especially remembering his death.

The bread symbolizes his flesh that was broken and the juice, his blood that was spilled. This is like a funeral having the coffin before us. We look at this, we see it, we handle it, we taste it, and we are to remember his death, the brutal death on the cross.

But our message doesn't end there. We say with this that his death wasn't just an end like it is for most people, but like a hero, his death was one of his most important works. His death wasn't just a tragedy or a crime in which he was the victim.

It was his accomplishment, his goal in the death of Christ, that horrible monster that killed and doomed us, that enslaved now and would have tormented us forever, that died in his death, our sin.