Sunday Sermon: Death in sin, Life in Christ (Romans 6:5-11)

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.

Dead to Sin and Alive to God in Romans 6

Open in your Bible with me to the book of Romans as we continue our series in the book of Romans this morning. We are in Romans chapter six and this is really kind of a part two of what we had looked at last week.

Remember that we had read about being dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. And we continue with that theme in verses five through 11 today. And so in verse 11 we read, you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

And if you remember, I said that was really the theme verse to chapter six, that all of the chapter revolves around. And we get to that verse today in our reading as we're looking today at verses five through 11.

So in honor of the word of the king, would you please stand? This is Romans chapter six and the section we're reading today, verses five through 11, the apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome, hear the word of the Lord.

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. You may be seated as we pray.

Heavenly Father, as we come before you this morning, I pray that our heart's desire would be to be made holy. That we may be like God, growing in godliness. Growing in holiness by the righteousness of Christ that we have been clothed in.

Whatever sins may remain in our lives, may we desire to put them to death so that we can live, live before you a life that is pleasing unto the Lord. That is even growing in sanctification as we long for and anticipate that day that we will be with you forever in glory.

As Paul says in Colossians 3, you have died and your life is hidden with Christ and God. So what does that mean for us even in our present state? That we may die to sin and live to Christ as we have been raised with him.

So we also walk in newness of life. Teach us these things, may they be convictions on our hearts, however spiritually these things may be applied or literally to the very lives in which we live. May we desire to live upright and godly lives in the present day.

It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. It is in the book of John chapter 13 that we read that famous account of Jesus washing his disciples' feet. This is when he is eating the last supper with them and they have actually finished eating and he washes their feet after supper has been completed.

He gets up from the table. He wraps a towel around his waist and he begins to serve his disciples by pouring water into a basin and washing their feet, wiping them with the towel that he has wrapped around.

Him.

Now the disciples, as you know, were surely puzzled by this. He came to Simon Peter who said to him, Lord, do you wash my feet? And we're used to Peter having these Sunday school teacher's pet responses.

Like he thinks that he's going to be the first one to, ooh, ooh, ooh, raise his hand. You are the Christ, the son of the living God. I'm going to beat all the rest of the disciples to this, which is funny when you're reading the gospel of John and you read about their running to the tomb and John says, John outran Peter to the tomb.

All of these times, Peter wanted to be first and John finally got his day to write. I was the first one to the tomb. But anyway, this is the attitude that we've gotten used to from Peter. So he's making this response to Jesus, you're going to wash my feet?

And Jesus said to him, what I am doing, you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand. And Peter said to him, you shall never wash my feet. And Peter thinks he's being pious. Like you're the master, I should be washing your feet.

It's essentially what's in Peter's mind. But Jesus answered him, if I do not wash you, you have no share with me. Well, Peter changed his tune real quick. Lord, then not just my feet, but my hands and my head.

Let's just do the whole thing.

Come on.

I'm a Baptist right now. Jesus, let's do this. And Jesus said to him, the one who has bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, Jesus said to them, but not every one of you.

For as said in verse 11, for he knew who was to betray him. That was why he said, not all of you are clean. But consider the words that Jesus said to his disciples. The one who is bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean.

And this is why in our own practice of the ordinance of baptism, we only need to be baptized.

Once.

As I said last week of baptism, it is that outward confession of an inward change. We've been cleansed by the Holy Spirit of God on the inside. When we were resurrected, brought from death to life, when the regeneration happened of our souls, when we have now gone from dead, dirty deeds into living works that are pleasing.

Unto God.

All of this has happened by the power and the work of God in our lives. And anything that happens on the outside now is just the evidence of that change that happened on the inside, which is why we are baptized to show of that thing that has happened spiritually inside of us.

We've been cleansed. We've been washed. We don't need to do that more than once, as the Spirit doesn't need to do that to us.

More than once.

But then there's still some dirtiness that needs to be washed away. As Jesus even shows here with his disciples, you don't need to wash again except for your.

Feet.

For as we are walking around in this earth, we are kicking up dust. And we are still occasionally falling into selfish desires and rebellion and going after things that our flesh wants and then coming to the conviction of the Spirit, realizing we have done wrong.

We come back to God to ask for his forgiveness again. As said in 1 John 2, 1, that if anyone says he is without sin, he is a liar and the truth is not in him. If we have sinned, we have an advocate before the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

And so when we sin, we ask that God would forgive us those sins, and Jesus is there advocating for us before the Father that we might be forgiven and we would be cleansed.

Our feet.

We don't need to be washed again, but those places where we've kicked up dust and made ourselves dirty because of sin we may have gone after is where God graciously cleanses us once again and sets us back on the path that we should walk.

And so as we've been reading here in Romans 6, we've been reading about being dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. And anytime we've sinned, we've not lost our salvation. We don't need to go and get cleansed again.

The Holy Spirit doesn't need to go, well, I washed you once and now I gotta wash you.

Again.

We have already received that from the Spirit of God. We're not made completely perfect. We're growing in sanctification as God is doing that work in us, desiring to be made more like Christ. But as we are in that process, may we continue to come back to the Savior to have our feet washed.

As the Apostle Paul says here in Romans 6, verse 5, if we've been united with Him in a death like His, we will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. And so, as said in verse 11, we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

That's the title of this sermon, that we would be dead to sin and alive in Christ. As we look at this section today, we're going to break this up into three parts. Verse 5, we read of being resurrected in Christ, and this by the power of God.

In verses 6 and 7, we read of our being released from sin. We've been released from the power of sin that we may live in the power of God. And then thirdly, we are raised to new life, as we had read last week, even in verse 4.

So we continue in this section. And it's in that third point, too, that we also want to consider some applications. What does it mean to be raised to new life? And how do we walk in this new life that God has called us to in Christ Jesus?

So coming back to verse 5 once again, and I remind you again of verse 4, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. So we're not walking in the sins that we were enslaved to before.

We're walking in new life that we've been given in Christ. And if we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. So we read here of being resurrected with Christ.

We've been united with Him in a death like His. We shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. Now, I said to you last week, going back to verse 3, Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into.

His death?

I said to you that this was spiritual. Your water baptism does not unite you with the baptism of Christ Jesus. Again, that's outwardly showing what has already happened on the inside by that washing of the Holy Spirit we read about.

Jesus talked about this with Nicodemus in John 3. Or being washed by the power of the Word, as said in Ephesians 5. Or last year when we were in Titus 3, the washing of regeneration by the Holy Spirit that we read about in Titus.

So those things that have happened by the power of God, we show through our outward baptism. But that inward baptism comes first. And so we're talking about something spiritual here. We've been baptized into Christ Jesus spiritually.

And we were baptized, therefore, into His death. So this statement in verse 5 also is spiritual. If we have been united with Him in a death like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.

Now, the resurrection has a couple of different applications to it. Yes, of course, as Paul talks about Christ being resurrected, we too will be resurrected. Like, really, we will be resurrected. We will die, but we will live again forever with God.

Our souls will go to be with the Lord, as said in the book of Ecclesiastes. The body goes back to the dust from which it was made. The spirit goes back to the Lord who gave it. So when we die, we go into the presence of God.

But even there, we await the resurrection of our bodies.

Excuse me.

Again, we await the resurrection of our bodies. For as said in Philippians chapter 3, Christ is going to transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him to subject all things to Himself.

So, bad news, you still get this body. But good news, it's going to be a completely different body. Transformed by His power into something that is imperishable, won't suffer by the limitations and the feelings of the curse upon creation that we have to go through now.

It is a different kind of existence, but this new body will be given to us at the resurrection of the dead. So, we have that resurrection to look forward to. But in the here and now, as Paul is giving this application, he's talking about a resurrection unto new life.

Just as we read in verse 4. Still continuing that thought. We will be united with Him in a resurrection like His. Now, there are different preachers who will talk about different challenges regarding an understanding of the book of Romans.

And you may hear from a different preacher which chapter is the most challenging. Some will say chapter 5 was pretty challenging. Understanding that we are dead in Adam, but we're made alive in Christ.

And how does that all work? All of us under the headship of Adam, but now we're under the headship of Christ. Chapter 7 is pretty challenging. And there's different views regarding how you should interpret chapter 7.

We'll talk about that when we get there. You have chapter 9, which of course is where we get a lot of doctrine regarding predestination. And you have chapter 11 that talks about the cultivated olive tree.

How are we supposed to understand that? There's all different kinds of challenges regarding different theological passages that we will come across as we go through Romans. Chapter 6 is not easy. Because we have a lot of spiritual application here that's difficult for us in our physical limitations to grasp.

And we need the help of the Holy Spirit in order to understand these things. I had a challenge from somebody earlier this week that was saying, there's nothing in the Bible that says that you can't understand the Bible unless you have the Spirit of God.

I said, actually, that's exactly what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2. We can't understand spiritual things without the Spirit of God. And we're reading here about spiritual things that's difficult for us to grasp if not for the Spirit of God to illuminate these things to us.

The very fact that you have been regenerated and you have been brought to new life by the Holy Spirit of God. It's a spiritual concept you cannot observe with human limited physical senses. Now, as I said last week, is there going to be evidence of that regeneration?

Yes, certainly there will be. But you can't scientifically test regeneration. How does that happen? At what point in your life did that happen? When Jesus was speaking with Nicodemus in John 3 and says to him that you must be born again.

You must be born of water and the Spirit. Like Nicodemus didn't even comprehend this. I have to go back into my mother's womb and be born again? What are you talking about? And Jesus says you must be born of water and the Spirit.

The Spirit comes to and fro and does as he wills. Just as the wind blows to and fro. You don't know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with the Spirit. So at what point did this work of the Spirit happen in your life?

Where before this moment in time, I was dead. I was dead in my transgressions and sins. Spiritually dead. You were born physically alive, but spiritually dead in Adam. But now by the Spirit bringing me from death to life, now I'm alive.

Where did that happen? Where exactly in your life did you go from dead to alive? Those things are impossible for us, at least on this side of heaven, to pinpoint exact moments when the Spirit works. I once was this, but now I'm this.

I can say that and I know that's true. I once was dead and now I'm alive. But I can't tell you what that felt like, where it was at the exact moment. Here's the time that I knew. It is the Spirit who works by His power to raise us from death to life.

I don't know if some of y 'all are aware of this, but this past week on Joe Rogan's podcast. By the way, anytime I mention a piece of pop culture, that's not an endorsement of that piece of pop culture.

But I'm just saying, I see the clips, so they come about online. There was a fellow on Joe Rogan's podcast that shared with him the gospel on Rogan's podcast. And straight, it gave him like a robust, reformed understanding of regeneration of the Holy Spirit on Joe Rogan's podcast, the most listened to podcast on the planet.

And says to him, you can't decide yourself that you're going to have faith in God today. But it is actually a work of the Spirit in your heart to bring you to a knowledge and an understanding of God. This is on Joe Rogan's podcast.

That he's talking about this. The Spirit of God that brings us from death to life. When you were dead, you wanted to do dead things. You did not want to honor God. This comes up later in Romans 8. Those who are not in Christ cannot please God.

You're incapable of it. And it's by God in His mercy and grace that His Spirit changes us from dead to alive. You can't say to a dead person, get up. Let's go over to the hospital and get you some help.

And even if that dead person could, by his will, get up and go into the hospital and get some help, even the hospital doesn't have an ability to bring a dead person back to life. I remember one time listening to a preacher who had experience working in a morgue.

He went from being a guy working in a morgue to being a preacher. But he talked about working in a morgue at one point had brought him to a startling awareness of death in a way that he had never really thought about it before.

He said, you've got a corpse there on the slab that has all of the chemical properties of a living person. Everything that a person needs to be alive is right there in that body. But there is absolutely nothing you can do to bring it back to life.

And before we come to Christ, we're that dead. There is nothing even in our human fallen wills that desires God, if it were not for God's intervention in our lives to bring us from death to life. And this is all by his power.

We are reading of things here that are certainly spiritual, but it is no less miraculous than if you were to actually see a corpse get up off of the slab and be alive again. This is by God's power that even spiritually we've been brought from death to life.

You don't will yourself to life. It is by the grace and mercy of God. We've been united with him in his death, and we shall certainly be united with him in his resurrection. And again, we're talking about a spiritual resurrection here in this context of no longer being dead in our sin, but being alive in Christ, that we may be a completely different person than we were before, and all by the power of God.

And we will live by that power as well. I'll come back to that concept here in a moment. So then going on from here to verse six, verses six and seven, we read about being released from sin. Here is our resurrection with Christ, and now being resurrected with Christ, we are released from sin.

Verse six, 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 our sin. As Jesus said in the gospel of John, that whoever practices sin is enslaved to it.

But being set free in Christ, we're no longer enslaved to our sin that we would obey its passions and its desires, but set free from it that we might be something else or do something else having been released from sin.

Our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. So as we read in Galatians 2 .20, for I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.

And the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. So our old self crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. So we're not obeying that sinful body and its sinful passions anymore.

So that we would no longer be enslaved to it. Now consider this in verse seven, which goes right along with that. For one who has died has been set free. In 1 Peter 4 .1, we read, since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.

So as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh, no longer for human passions, but for the will of God. Now, part of this, I had quoted to you last week too from 1 Peter 4, as Peter goes on from here to say in verse three, for the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, or doing what the pagans want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.

With respect to this, they're surprised when you don't join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you. But they will give an account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.

When I was younger, when I was in high school, when I was in college, I hung out with a lot of friends who were not Christians. It wasn't good for me to do. And by God's grace, I was protected from being drawn away into their sin, though occasionally, because this was the company that I kept, sometimes I would give in to that temptation.

But nonetheless, my friends still recognized there was a limit to what Gabe would do. And there were lines that I would not cross. And they would make fun of me for it. Because I was a virgin, because I didn't smoke or drink or any of these other things, I would get made fun of.

And I had a very elementary understanding of things like Christ saying that, you know, when they hate you, they hated me first. Or the world's going to hate you just because you desire godliness. But I knew the reason why I was being made fun of, even by my friends, is because the very fact that I did not want to run with them in their flood of debauchery,.

Convicted them.

It exposed them of the fact that I am doing something wrong. And so they're trying to draw me into that sin so they can feel a little bit better, a little bit comfortable about themselves and not feel so convicted over the things that they wanted to do.

There was one night where I was at work and I worked at a radio station and in the booths that the station had, like if either I was recording or I was on air live, either one, but the booths, the phones did not ring.

In those booths.

I had to be looking at the phone and see the light flashing to know that somebody was calling. And this just happened to be a night when I happened to look down and see that the phone was ringing. And I answered it and it was my friend Clint.

This was on a Friday or Saturday night. And Clint was drunk. And he was also weeping, I could tell. And he, when I figured out it was him, because I didn't know right away, I said, Clint, what can I do for you?

And he just kept talking about how life was meaningless. What is the point of all of this? Where is any of this going? So he gets drunk and he's having this existential crisis. And he said to me, I've seen bad stuff happen to you.

And I've seen people make fun of you because of your morals and your convictions. Yet you always seem to be a happy guy.

Why?

And I shared the Gospel with him. And I said, Clint, I'm just as much a sinner as you are. But I know that I've been brought from death to life by faith in Jesus Christ. And there's a promise for me of everlasting life.

My body is going to die. I'm going to live forever with Him in glory. And he said to me, even in his drunken state, I wish that I could believe that as well as you believe it. The following Monday, I got back to school and I stopped him.

And I said, hey, Clint, I wanted to talk with you more about the conversation we had the other night. And his response to me was, what conversation? He didn't even remember having it. And any time I tried to share with him beyond that, he wouldn't listen to it.

I lost touch with him over the years. I don't know what had happened to him after that. But people who are still living in that deadness, they hate righteousness. They hate light. Jesus talked about that in John chapter 3.

They run from the light. They scatter from it. Like you open a drawer.

Full of cockroaches.

And they all go scattering and running. And when we're in that sinful state, when we're in that dead state, we want the darkness because dead loves the dark.

A corpse festers.

And maggots grow in it in cold, damp, dark places. And that's where our dead selves want to go. But one who has died, again, verse 7, has been set free from sin. We've been brought from darkness to light as Scripture talks about.

We've been raised from death to life. We don't go back to living in those dead places. If you had been a corpse laying in a graveyard and you had been brought from death to life, would you go try to make your bed again with the corpses in the graveyard?

But instead, we live these things behind and we desire to live as Christ with whom we have been raised. We have been released from sin. Do not continue to submit yourselves to sin to obey its passions.

You know, David was so committed to this in the Psalms. In Psalm 139, he even says, Lord, search me for hidden faults. Like what other sins of mine do I have that I'm not even aware of show me those things that I can bring them out and be cleansed of those things that I may live holy and upright before you.

Do you find yourself Christian? Even you brought from dead to life, brothers and sisters in the Lord, do you find yourself holding on to things? Can I just have a little bit of this and still entertain these passions of my flesh?

And not wanting to give it up to God. I have certainly hit those moments where I've been tempted by sin. And I know if I were to pray right now, God, by his power, would squash this desire and I wouldn't want to go after it.

But man, there is such a wrestling that is going on in my spirit that still kind of wants that temptation. And I don't want to pray right now because I kind of like the feeling that I'm having and what my brain is dwelling on.

And it's like that sinful desire,.

That temptation.

You're not even in your body going to go after it, but you just like the thought. And it's like a tic-tac that you've got under your tongue and you're just sucking on it for a little while. Am I alone in this?

Or you've been there too. It's that struggle we continue to have in these bodies. But God, give me the will. Give me the will of your spirit that when that temptation hits, I don't want to dwell on it.

I don't want to party with the dead guy anymore. I want to give it up to God that that may be done away with. And I don't go after those things for which my Savior died. That put my Savior to death on a cross.

But I want to live instead in His resurrection and walk in the newness of life that I've been given in Christ. If we have died, we've been set free from sin. So stop going back to it. In verses 8 through 11, we read again of being raised to new life just as we read of walking in newness of life in verse 4.

Verse 8, now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. And again, spiritual application, eternal application, an already and a not yet. We are raised with Him that we may live with Him.

Now.

You're alive with Christ now. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. We lost John MacArthur just recently. One of those quotes from MacArthur that I have loved so much is that death, the worst thing that death can do to us is deliver us to God.

So death no longer has dominion over Christ. Jesus doesn't die again. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God. Death has no dominion over Him. He will not die again.

My friends, this is a mass killer. You understand what I mean by that? The Roman Catholic mass where it's a continuing offering up of the body of Christ, a continued sacrifice over and over and over again, billions of times all over the world and however many times that the mass is done and is taken, Jesus doesn't need to be sacrificed again.

He is sacrificed once for all. Death no longer has dominion over Him. So if death no longer has dominion over Christ and we have been raised with Christ, then do you see and do you understand how sin no longer has any dominion over you?

So by the power of God that has raised us from death to life, you have the power of the Holy Spirit within you to resist sin. Now before we come to life in Christ, we don't have that power to resist sin.

Sin has power over us. There may be certain sins that you're able to resist. You didn't go out and kill your neighbor. We didn't do worse sins than we ended up doing. But sin itself, you didn't have power over.

You didn't have dominion over it. It had dominion over you because we were in dead bodies. We were in bodies that were on their way to death and they were occupied by souls that were dead. Because again, as we read in chapter 5, all who are born in Adam are dead.

Physically alive, but spiritually dead. Until we are born again and raised to new life by the Spirit of God. But now in Christ Jesus, we have that power to resist temptation. We have power over sin that it doesn't have dominion over us.

And in Christ Jesus, we also have been given the power to obey God in a way that is pleasing to God. Whereas previously, as said in Romans 8, we did not have the ability to obey God in a way that was pleasing to God.

Any obedience.

That we may have demonstrated.

Just looked like,.

It looked like obedience on the outside, but it was really just self-righteousness. I can be good on my own. But now with the power of God and being raised from the dead, we have the power to live our lives in such a way that are pleasing to God and righteous before Him.

The death He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life He lives, He lives to God. And so, so must we. We have lives that we therefore live unto God. As we read in Hebrews 7, 27, that Jesus has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for His own sins and then those for the sins of the people, since He did this once for all when He offered up Himself.

For the law appoints men in their weakness as high priests, but the word of the oath, which came later than the law, appoints a son who has been made perfect forever. And so in Christ Jesus, we likewise would be raised from death to life.

And so look at verse 11 that closes us out here, closes this section here. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Again, all of chapter six revolves around this passage.

You must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. Now, this is a bookend, and this is why I say that this sermon today is part two of last week, because this is Paul calling back an answer that he gave in verse two.

Remember what we read in verse two. How can we who died to sin still live in it? So we asked that question. He responds to it, laying out this theology of being dead to sin and raised to life in Christ, and then hammers the point home in verse 11.

You must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. And again, we do this and we understand this by faith because we're talking about spiritual things that we, by our human senses, can't perceive, which is why Paul says you must consider yourselves.

You must understand this in the way that.

This has been made for you by the power of God, by His grace, by His Holy Spirit.

You're dead to sin,.

So don't live in your sin anymore. You're dead to that, and you are alive to God in Christ Jesus. So may we live lives of holiness unto God, not going back to our sin, but continuing to do those things that are pleasing to the Lord.

And if we were listening to this letter, if we were sitting in Rome in that church in the first century and listening to this letter being read for the first time, then you would have heard about all the sins that you were previously walking in, right?

Remember the list that we heard in chapter one. Since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. And they were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice.

They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.