Can a Christian Live in Sin?

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I want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn with me to the book of Romans.
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And we are going to be in Romans chapter 6.
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Last week, for those of you who were not here, I addressed a very foundational issue in regard to the Christian faith.
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The question was simple.
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Can I know that I am saved? And I made the point that all believers can and should enjoy the assurance of their salvation.
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And that the assurance of salvation comes not from within ourselves, but from a proper understanding of the fact that salvation comes from God.
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We are not the cause of our own salvation.
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We are the recipients of God's unmerited favor.
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We are the recipients of His amazing grace.
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And when we realize that salvation is all of God and that it rests completely in the work of Jesus Christ, then we will be able to rest in the blessed assurance of salvation.
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However, there is great concern, which many people have, with this doctrine, the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ alone.
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There are those who believe that if you teach people that salvation is of God and that we contribute nothing to it, that believers will then become complacent.
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Or worse, that they will use that truth as a license for sin.
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This was one of the things that happened to Martin Luther when he was teaching back during the time preceding the Reformation.
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Martin Luther was teaching these truths.
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Justification is by faith alone.
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And the church's answer, the Catholic Church would respond and say, but Luther, if you leave man to live by faith alone, he will inevitably live a life of sin.
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He will inevitably use that as a license to sin.
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Well, this morning, as a follow up to last week's message, because last week's message again was, we are saved by grace through faith, that Luther was right.
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And that is what the Bible teaches.
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So as a follow up to that, I want to address this question directly.
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And I do so knowing I'm following the pattern of the Apostle Paul, because this is what he does in the book of Romans.
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In the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul spends the first three chapters explaining that we are all sinners, whether we are Greek or Jew, no matter what our parentage, we are all under sin.
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Then he spends the last part of chapter three, chapter four and chapter five explaining to us that though we are all sinners, salvation comes from Christ and that salvation is by grace through faith alone.
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He uses Abraham as his example in chapter four, saying Abraham was justified by faith.
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So too are we justified by faith.
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But then he comes to chapter six and in chapter six, he begins to address the question, but if we are justified by grace through faith, does that mean we have a license to sin? That's where he goes in chapter six.
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I'm following the pattern of the Apostle Paul who asks this very question, if I am saved by grace, then can I live and sin? That is the question of the morning.
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And we will begin in Romans chapter six, verses one and two, as we always do to give glory to God's word, we stand when it's read.
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So let us stand for the reading of God's word.
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And it says in Romans chapter six, verse one, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means.
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How can we who died to sin still live in it? Our father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity to again study your word.
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We thank you for this opportunity to draw closer to you through this study.
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And a better understanding of who you are and what you expect from us.
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We do pray, oh, Lord, first and foremost, that you would keep me from error.
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Keep me in the truth, protect my mouth from speaking untruths and Lord, God, open the hearts of the people to the truth and protect their hearts from error.
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And Lord God, we thank you for your word.
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We thank you that it is perfect, that the only perfect word spoken during this message will be what is spoken from your word.
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We praise you for that and we give you glory for it.
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In Jesus name, amen.
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If I had to make an estimation about what is one of the most perplexing subjects in the Bible, I would say one of the most perplexing subjects in the Bible is the subject of sin.
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There are many questions about its nature, how it affects us mentally, what it does to us physically in our own bodies and on and on.
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That cause, there is no end of theological debate.
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Even more perplexing is the apparent tension that the Bible seems to have on the subject of sin.
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On one hand, the Bible does declare that all sin is equally heinous in God's sight.
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Think about the book of James, where he says, for whoever keeps the law, the whole law, yet stumbles at one point is guilty of breaking the whole law.
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You know, we've heard that.
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We understand that.
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There's a sense in which all sin is law breaking and all sin is equally heinous in God's sight.
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Yet at the same time, on the other hand, the Bible teaches that some have incurred a higher degree of sin and guilt than others.
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Remember Jesus speaking to Pontius Pilate.
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He said you would have no authority over me unless it had been given to you from above.
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Therefore, he who delivered me to you has the greater sin.
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Interesting that Jesus would use the phrase greater sin when he's talking to Pilate and the Jews who delivered him over to Pilate.
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A similar tension exists when we discuss sin in the life of the believer.
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On one hand, the Bible seems to declare that the believer does not and will not sin.
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First John, chapter five and verse 18, we know that the one who is born of God sins not.
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Interesting text, isn't it? Because I know all of you are thinking, oh, yet at the same time in that same book, the very first chapter.
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I'm sorry, in the second chapter, first verse, it says, my little children, I'm writing these things so that you may not sin.
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And if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
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So this whole book is written to believers so that we won't sin.
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But if we do know that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
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Interesting.
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Later in the book, when he's talking about us not sinning, he's talking about making a lifestyle of sin.
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We're going to see that later.
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But it is interesting that the book, he says we will sin not.
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But it's referring to a lifestyle of sin.
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As I said, when we look at sin as a whole, when we look at the subject as a whole, it seems like there's tension throughout the text of the Bible.
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But I ask this question, is the Bible sending us a mixed signal? Is the Bible sending us a contradiction in one sense, saying one thing and in another breath saying something else? Well, of course, the answer is no.
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The Bible is not attempting to speak and double talk on the subject of sin, nor is it contradicting itself on the subject of sin.
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It does, however, present us with a multifaceted view of the subject of sin.
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It's many layers and much that we have to focus on.
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It's not simple.
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It is very complex.
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And we need to study all aspects of the issue if we are to understand the various passages regarding sin.
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That's especially true of Romans chapter six.
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Which deals with sin in the life of the believer, an important concept which we all need to understand as we're going into Romans chapter six is the concept, the theological concept known as sanctification.
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Now, some of you are probably very familiar with the word sanctification, especially if you've been a part of our Wednesday Bible studies, you come on Wednesday night and we do very in-depth Bible studies.
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You might have heard that word before, but if you've never heard the word before, if you don't know what the word sanctification means, let me give you a very quick lesson breaking that word down.
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The word sanctification comes from the Greek word hagiathmos.
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It simply means consecration or purification.
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That's what sanctification means in its basic form.
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Sometimes it is translated as holiness.
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The word sanctification and holiness are both from the same Greek root.
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It is the process of God's grace by which the believer is separated from sin and becomes declared righteous before God.
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In the Old Testament, we read about things which were made holy to the Lord.
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You know, the temple was made holy to the Lord.
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The tabernacle was made holy to the Lord.
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All of the elements inside the tabernacle.
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Those were all made holy to the Lord or they were sanctified.
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That's where we use that term.
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The high priest would wear his garments and his turban had a piece of gold and on that gold it said sanctified or holy to the Lord.
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This indicated that his role was a sanctified role.
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And we use the word sanctified even outside of the church.
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Today, we use the word sanctified all the time.
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In fact, how many of you have ever heard anyone argue about the sanctity of marriage? It's not always in the church, is it? We hear that outside of the church.
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Just this last week, we have decided as a nation at the highest court in the nation that it's not sanctified anymore.
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And for that, we should pause and be sad.
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So we see sanctity.
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We understand it.
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Sanctity of human life.
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We understand what it means.
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It means it's special.
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It's set apart.
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It's different.
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It's other.
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That's the word I've always liked for the word holy.
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Other.
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It's different.
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It's set apart.
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Well, this idea of sanctity is used of us.
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We are to be sanctified when a person is called sanctified.
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What does that mean? What does the Bible mean when it says we are sanctified? What does the Bible mean when it says that we are supposed to be sanctified? In fact, in Romans 6.22, we read it as our opening text for the worship service this morning.
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It says, now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification.
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There's the word.
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It leads to sanctification and it's in eternal life.
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But how does the Bible speak of the sanctity of the believer? How does the Bible speak of sanctification for the believer? Well, the Bible actually speaks of sanctification in three ways.
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If you want to write these down, they're kind of important to remember.
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It's very good to kind of keep these in your heart and in your mind, because the Bible speaks of the sanctification of the believer in three ways.
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Number one, it speaks of our positional sanctification.
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Positional sanctification is simply this.
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Before we were regenerate, before we were born again, before we were saved, however you want to say it, we were in sin.
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We were lost.
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We were dead in sin.
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God reached down into the muck and the mire of our sin.
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He lifted us up out of the muck and the mire of our sin.
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He cleaned us off and he seated us in heavenly places with Christ.
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Ephesians chapter two.
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And you were dead in your trespasses and sin in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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That's where we were.
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We were children of wrath.
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But God, verse four, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
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By grace, you've been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
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That's positional sanctification.
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We who were once in this position of death have been given life and seated with Christ.
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That's positional sanctification.
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That happens immediately upon regeneration.
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We express faith in Christ from our heart, which proceeds from a heart that's been reborn, and we say, save us, Lord, and God saves us.
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He cleans us and he sets us apart.
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That's positional sanctification.
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We all understand that.
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Well, the second type of sanctification is perfect sanctification.
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They all start with P.
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Make that try to make it easy.
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You have positional sanctification.
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The perfect sanctification is what we will receive in glory.
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In glory, we will be set apart from the sinful flesh.
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The sinful flesh will be put away.
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We will be given a new body and a new earth.
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And in that perfect sanctification, there will be no more dealing with sin.
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You won't have a frail body.
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You won't have a body that's aging or that's deteriorating or that, like me, is getting gray all over.
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I had to get my hair cut this week and I was noticing I am growing.
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You guys are bringing it in one hair at a time.
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And that's happening.
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This body is deteriorating.
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This body is going away.
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But at some point, we will have a new body.
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So right there is what we call perfect sanctification.
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Totally set apart from sin.
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Perfect holiness.
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We will live with God forever, being able to enjoy his presence forever.
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Perfectly.
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Now, between those two is the third type, the third level of sanctification, the third understanding of sanctification, because first, we are perfectly set apart.
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That's what we call a positional sanctification, rather positionally set apart.
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We are looking forward to the day which we are with Christ, which will be perfect sanctification.
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In between, we live as holy beings inside of sinful flesh and we go through a progressive sanctification.
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We go through a progressive sanctification, that's the third sanctification.
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This is the daily progress which we make towards being conformed to the image of Christ.
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Most of you guys here, we're reformed, so we've studied Romans 8 quite a bit.
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But everybody knows Romans 8, 28.
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God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose, for whom he foreknew he also predestined to be what? Conformed to the image of his son.
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We must never forget that.
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Because people all the time, they ask about those difficult subjects, you know, like election and things like that.
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And they get really confused about those subjects because they say, oh, man, that's a hard subject.
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Are you saying that, you know, a person, God just chooses a person and that's it? There's no change.
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No, what we're saying is when God chooses a person, when God opens up a heart, when God brings faith into our lives and we respond in faith to him, it changes us because that's what he called us to.
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He begins to conform us to the image of his son.
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That's the goal.
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But it's not something that happens immediately.
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I think people get real disappointed when they become Christians and they realize they're still fighting a battle with the flesh because they've heard people say, you know, like, well, in the Bible say, you know, in Christ, everything is made new.
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But you know what? I still have these temptations.
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Everything is made new, but I'm still fighting a battle.
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Well, yeah.
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That's what it is, living in the flesh.
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We have this battle that goes on within us.
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Paul explains and talks about the battle of the flesh in the book of Galatians.
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We have this battle that goes on within us.
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That's how we know if we're a believer or not, because guess what? Unbelievers don't fight the battle.
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They don't share.
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I've often compared it to dead fish in a stream.
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When you're a dead fish in a stream, where do you go? Wherever the stream takes you.
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All dead fish float against the stream or float with the stream.
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But what happens if one of those fish were miraculously brought to life? Well, he might try to go upstream.
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What's going to happen, though? It's going to be a battle.
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Even though he's been brought to life, even though he's been regenerated, even though all the other fish are smacking him in the face as he goes by.
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It's a battle because now it's a fight.
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There's no fight in laying in the stream and everybody's been to itch tutney.
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There's no battle if you start at the front and let it take you to the end.
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But if you start at the end of itch tutney and try to go back, it's going to be a workout.
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And that's sanctification.
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We live in a sinful flesh, but we have been made holy by Christ and our hearts have been changed and now we want to do good.
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And so we battle.
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We battle with a weak flesh, we battle with a world that wants sin, and we battle with Satan, who is in charge of all of it, whose desire it is to see it all go to hell with him.
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That's why the Bible says we have three enemies, the flesh, the world and the devil.
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And that's what we do.
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We battle for progress.
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And we do progress, we grow, we increase in our sanctification.
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That's why this text, going back to Romans 6.2, it says, but now that you've been set free from sin.
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And we'll see what that means in a minute, but it says you've been set free from sin and have become slaves of God.
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The fruit you get leads to sanctification and it's in eternal life.
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The leading to sanctification, it's something we're going towards, we're growing in it.
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Now, we're not growing in our positional sanctification because that happened immediately.
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We were immediately cleansed and set over with Christ.
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But our daily progress is ongoing.
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Let me give you an illustration from the words of Jesus Christ.
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How many of you remember when Jesus Christ was washing his disciples feet? Remember that? When he came up to Peter, what did he say? Peter said, no, you shall not wash my feet, because Peter didn't understand what Jesus was doing.
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You shall never wash my feet.
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And what was Jesus's response? If I don't wash your feet, then you have no part of me.
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What was Peter's response? Oh, Lord, then wash not only my feet, but my hands and my head as well.
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Wash me all over.
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What was Jesus's response? This is such, this is one of those things, people miss it.
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This, this, he taught so much theology in this one short phrase.
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He said, you have bathed in one who has already bathed, needs not cleanse his whole body.
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He needs only to cleanse his feet.
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You might say, well, what in the world does that mean? Well, you remember back in the times that Jesus lived, everyone who walked from point A to point B, they didn't have cars or anything.
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So everyone walked wherever they were going and they walked with these sandals on their feet.
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Wherever they went, their feet were constantly getting dirty.
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So they had to have this, this basin in which to wash their feet whenever they would go to a new location.
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That was called being a good host, is you would offer water for your person to wash his feet.
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This is why when Jesus was at the house of the Pharisee and the lady was washing his feet and Jesus got onto him, he said, because they said, oh, this woman's a sinner.
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And Jesus said, yes, but she's washing my feet.
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You didn't give me any water to wash my feet.
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That was a hit against their hospitality.
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They didn't give Jesus any water to wash his feet because washing his feet was a big deal.
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Because everywhere you went, you picked up dirt on your feet.
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And Jesus said to them, Jesus said to Peter, he said, if you've washed your body, it doesn't need to be washed again, but you do have to wash your feet.
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How does that apply to sanctification? Very simple.
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When we have come to Christ, we've been washed, we've been cleansed.
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That does not have to happen again.
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The whole idea that you got to be baptized five, ten, fifteen times your life, that's ridiculous.
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Baptism doesn't save you.
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The water doesn't wash you clean of sin, but coming to Christ does.
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And when coming to Christ is washed, the water of baptism is a picture of what has happened in your heart.
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And that is not something that needs repetition.
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We do that one time.
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But then after that, we constantly take communion.
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Some people do it monthly, some people do it quarterly.
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We do it every Sunday.
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But we do communion as a way to do what? To remember the need of sanctification, to remember the need of remembering the gospel and cleansing all the time.
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That was Jesus's point.
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Once you've washed your body, you need to wash it again.
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But your feet constantly need to be washed.
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It was a picture of sanctification.
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Yeah, we don't need to be saved a thousand times in our lifetime, but we do need to go through a daily process of drawing closer to Christ.
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We need to go through the daily process of washing away these things that we allow to accumulate in our lives, that we pick up.
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And we all do.
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We all deal with this battle with sin.
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And we have a responsibility as believers to ask God to show us clearly what is in our life that shouldn't be there and get rid of it.
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Now, I've said all that to lead up to the text.
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Aren't you excited? We're just getting to the text.
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I've said all that to build the foundation because I want you to understand what sanctification is, because in Romans chapter six in verse one, he's talking about sanctification here.
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This is the text he's focusing on sanctification.
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What does he say in verse one? He says, what shall we say then? Well, remember, this is any time you read something like this, just because it starts a new chapter in the English Bible doesn't mean it started a new chapter in the mind of Paul.
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Paul didn't write in chapters and verses, Paul wrote a book.
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And what came before it has bearing on what is said.
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Romans chapter five, verse 20 and 21, which leads up to this, says this.
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It says, Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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So that text, Romans 5, 20 and 21, somebody could easily read that and say, well, Paul is saying this.
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If we sin more, grace abounds more.
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So I should sin more so that grace will abound more.
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Now, you all may think, well, that's ridiculous, but you've got to know there are people out there like that.
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You've got to know there are people out there who believe that grace is a license for sin.
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I knew of a man once.
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I have a dear friend who lives out in Fernandina and he, before getting married, he was living, he had a roommate, another guy.
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They lived together in a small house out in Orange Park.
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And his roommate was a big TBN fan.
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I am not, not that that matters, but he really liked these TBN preachers, the health and wealth preachers, false gospel preachers.
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And he sat there and he would watch this TBN stuff, but then he would go on to the Internet and he would go on to Craigslist and he would find people who were willing to do things with him that were very unseemly.
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And what he would say when he left the house to go meet for these rendezvous.
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Here I go out to sin so that grace can abound.
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That was his words, that was his exact words.
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I'm headed out to sin so that grace can increase.
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So don't tell me people don't live this.
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I've seen it.
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There are people who take the idea of grace and they use it as a license to sin.
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So the Apostle Paul, in his attempt to squelch this idea, he gives us Romans 6.
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He asked the question, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? Some of your texts say so that grace might increase.
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Same idea.
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If I sin more, grace will increase.
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So, hey, I'm just going to wear God out in His giving of grace.
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And again, to some, this is a legitimate question.
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This was the issue of the Reformation.
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This is the issue that the Catholic Church came against Martin Luther about.
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This is what people are going to believe.
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If you teach this, that salvation is not of works, but is of grace.
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People will believe this and they will live this way.
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So the Apostle Paul answers the question.
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Should we continue to live in sin so that grace can abound? Meganoito, by no means.
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Meganoito is the Greek.
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Some translations translate it, God forbid.
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That's not a good translation.
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The theos is not in there.
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God forbid is not in the text.
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The better translation, even better than the ESV, which we're using, comes from the NASB, which says, may it never be.
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Because the actual Meganoito, Meganoito means existence.
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May is not.
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So the idea of Meganoito is let it not even exist in your mind.
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Let this not even come into your mind.
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Let it not even exist.
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This should not even be thought of.
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To understand Paul's teaching is to understand a simple truth.
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The teaching of salvation by grace alone through faith alone does not mean that is devoid of works.
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That's simple, but profound, because that is what is often challenged against the reformed teaching of the salvation.
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So la fide, salvation is by grace through faith alone.
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People say, well, that means there's no works involved.
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No, it doesn't.
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It doesn't mean there's no works involved.
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What it means is simply that our salvation can never be earned by our works, that our salvation can never be added to by our works.
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But that does not mean that we do not work because we work as a result of having been changed by grace.
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Yes, salvation is not dependent upon works.
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Salvation is by grace alone.
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But the truly saved heart will yearn to do the things of God.
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The truly saved soul will desire to please Christ.
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A heart that does not yearn for God is a heart that has never been converted to Christ.
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Simple, but important.
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Shall we continue to sin so that grace can increase? May it never be.
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And then the Apostle Paul asks an important question.
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How can we who died to sin still live in it? This is an important question because it helps us understand the relationship to a believer in sin.
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As I said already, the believer fights a battle with sin.
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Every believer does.
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You know, the most sanctified men that I've ever met, John MacArthur, R.C.
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Sproul, some of the men that I just mentors in the faith.
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Godly men who I've had the blessing of learning from so many things.
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These men still sin.
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They still fight a battle daily.
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Neither one of them would tell you any different.
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Paul Washer, one of the greatest preachers I know, would still tell you he fights a battle with sin.
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Sin is everywhere in our culture.
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The opportunities for indulgence are so frequent that it is frightening.
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And believers do fight a battle because we have not yet reached perfected glory.
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We have a corrupted body which desires sin.
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But there is a difference, as I've already said, between fighting a battle with sin and living in sin.
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And this is what this text says.
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How can we who died to sin live in sin? And the answer, the obvious answer is we can't.
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We cannot live in habitual, unbroken, unrepentant patterns of sin.
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This text, when it says, how can we who died to sin still live in it? Another way of saying it would be, how can we who died to sin make our home in it? That is such an important, because we used to actually talk about living in sin.
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You know, it used to be part of the vernacular.
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It was a bad thing.
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If you lived in sin, it was a bad thing.
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And everybody kind of knew what it meant.
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It meant a person was living with habitual, unrepentant sin.
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Most of the time we use that to describe two people who are living out of wedlock.
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But it wasn't always that.
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If a person was living in constant drunkenness, that was living in sin.
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If somebody was living in a lifestyle where they were abusive or ugly or hurtful, this was a person who was living in sin.
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This is a person who's made their home in sin.
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And what is the response to that is this is not Christian behavior.
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This is not a Christian lifestyle.
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This does not go together with a person who says Jesus is Lord.
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This is what church discipline is for.
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Matthew 18.
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The only reason why anyone would ever undergo church discipline is very simple.
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They have chosen to make their home in sin and they refused to repent.
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There is no sin that is unforgivable.
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But when a person refuses to repent, when a person refuses to quit living in it, when a person makes their home there.
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They're showing that their heart is not aligned with Christ.
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The church has always been in danger of contamination by false believers who wickedly use the freedom of the gospel as justification for sin.
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I want to show you one last thing as we start to draw to a close.
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Turn to Jude.
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Yeah, the little book close to the back, Jude doesn't have any chapters, it's one chapter.
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I want you to go to verse four, Jude, Jude, verse four says this.
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He's talking about people who have come into the church and they brought wickedness with them.
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And look how he describes them.
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This is what I want to show you.
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Jude, verse four, for certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turned the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.
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What does Jude say that the wicked do when they come in? They turn grace into a license for sin.
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It is one thing to teach that all sin can be forgiven and that no person is so much a sinner that he cannot be reached by God's grace.
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But it is quite another thing to say that we, because we are saved by grace, have a license to sin.
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This is something the Bible clearly teaches against.
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Just because we have a savior in Christ does not mean we have a license to sin.
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And anyone who would teach such a hellish doctrine is clearly in violation of both the scripture and our conscience, which knows better.
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Beloved, we all fight a daily battle, as I've said, and the reason why I keep saying that, why does he keep saying those words? Because I don't want anyone here to leave today and say, I fight a battle with sin.
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That means I can't be saved.
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No, no, no.
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If you're fighting, you're on the right track.
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Now, if you've chosen to live in it, if you've chosen to revel in it, if you've chosen to make it your home, yeah, you're on the wrong track.
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You need to repent.
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You need to come to Christ.
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You need to see what true repentance is.
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But don't leave this place thinking because you battle with sin that that means you're not a believer.
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Beloved, if you battle with sin, that's you are a believer because the unbeliever doesn't battle.
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The unbeliever has no battle with sin because he's made his home in it.
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He lives in it.
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He's happy with it because it pleases.
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We are in the process of sanctification, but we are not yet fully conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
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This is why it says we are being conformed.
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That's where to live each day in true repentance, seeking to be like Christ and recognizing that we do not have the right to live in sin.
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Instead, we have the responsibility to discipline ourselves, knowing that God is at work within us both to will and to do his good pleasure.
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In the end, it is certain that we are not saved by good works, but neither have we been saved to live in sin.
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Instead, the Bible says that we have been predestined to be conformed to the image of Christ.
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And if we are believers, we should long for his image to be reflected in us.
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Our father and our God, we thank you for this opportunity again to have heard your word.
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I pray, oh, Lord, that it has been preached properly and Lord God, that it will be applied to the hearts of your people.
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I do pray, Lord, if there's anyone here that is making their home in sin, there's anyone here who is living outside of your will and Lord God, outside of your grace and mercy, that you would draw them to yourself today, that you would use the preaching of the gospel to convict and convert hearts.
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And Lord, we do pray for the believers in the room.
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We pray that they would be encouraged by the preaching of the word.
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They would be moved towards a closer walk with you.
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And Lord God, to repentance from anything in their life that is unpleasing to you.
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We praise you and thank you in Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.