Romans 6:5-14 "United with Christ"

0:59So he scrubbed and he scrubbed until he scrubbed the skin right off. Plenty of people have experienced that in their life. It's called compulsive hand washing. It's common among those who are diagnosed with OCD. It broke my heart to hear my friend talk about it. And it made me think about the way that many Christians view themselves. According to Scripture, when we believe in the sinless life and And death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are washed completely clean by his blood.

1:38And because we've been washed clean through faith in Jesus Christ, God looks at us as holy people who are set apart for his special use. So whether figuratively or literally, we do not have to scrub our hands until they bleed. Jesus died and rose again. His blood washes us from all of our sins so that we are clean and can offer ourselves in service to him. But sadly, many Christians don't really believe this. They don't really believe that they're actually clean in God's eyes as the Bible teaches us. They feel dirty.

2:20They feel unable to be used by God. And maybe that's where you are today. Maybe you yourself feel dirty, unable to be used by God. That you have to keep trying and trying to scrub yourself clean. And if you find yourself in that place, or if you know someone, a friend, a family member who is in that place, this sermon is for you. Last week in Romans 6:1 through 4, we encountered two truths and a lie. The lie was that believers can continue to live in sin, but the text is a living. Truths are that we have died to sin and we've been raised to walk in new life.

3:06Paul taught that those two truths are symbolized in baptism. Believers are submerged completely underwater to represent their death and burial with Christ through faith. And then believers emerge out of that water to represent the new life that we have been given and that we walk in through faith. Baptism does not save us. God saves us by grace and through faith. But we're commanded to be baptized as a physical sign of the work that God has done in our hearts. And so if you are still thinking about baptism, we've got a book right by the front doors when you leave called Why Should I Be Baptized? I would love for you to pick up one of those books.

3:52I'd love for you to register for our upcoming Explore Baptism class next month. If you're still thinking about that, take a step today. Friends, this morning in verses 5 through 14 of Romans 6, Paul's going to build on that foundation that he laid last week in the first four verses. He explains that through faith, symbolized in our baptism, we are united to Jesus Christ. We have unity with him. We become one with him through faith in his death and resurrection. We have unity with Christ. And because we have unity with Christ, Paul says we have to think differently and we have to live differently.

4:36So this morning, what we're going to learn in Romans 6, 5 through 14 is this on the screen. Because we're united to Christ, we must consider ourselves dead to sin and present ourselves to God as instruments of righteousness. So let's pick up here in verse 5, where we're going to see that because we're united to Christ, we must consider ourselves dead to sin. Verse 5. 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.

5:18So here, Paul states the logical conclusion of what he taught in verses 1 through 4. If we are united with Christ in death, then we're also going to be united with him in resurrection. If we have died with Christ through faith, we will be raised with Christ also through faith. If Jesus does not return, then we are going to experience physical death. We will die, but we will also experience resurrection. We've already experienced spiritual death and resurrection through faith. We may experience physical death and resurrection as well.

5:59But, friends, What Paul is saying here is that everything that is true of Jesus Christ is true of you and me. We are united to him through faith. And that is an amazing reality. That you and I are in union with Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It's almost too much for our minds to understand. It's almost too much for our hearts to believe that we are united to Jesus Christ. And God knows this. He knows that this is a difficult concept to understand. So he gave us a picture in human marriage.

6:41He calls it in Scripture the mystery of marriage. And it is a mystery, is it not? In Genesis 2, God tells us that a man shall leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And in Ephesians 5, Paul explains that marriage is a profound mystery that refers to Christ and the church. That just as a husband and wife become one through marriage, that illustrates the truth that we, through faith, become one with Christ. We have union with him. His death becomes our death. His resurrection becomes our resurrection.

7:26What an amazing reality. You and I, through faith, are union. United to the very Son of God. And so what does that mean? Look at verse 6. 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. Before we believed in Jesus, For those of us who are Christians, we were not people who sinned on occasion. We were enslaved to sin.

8:08We were not free men, not free women, not free children. We were slaves, and sin was our master. And you see, in the ancient world, you could only get out of slavery one of two ways: you died, or you purchased your freedom, or had somebody purchase it for you. But death and payment were the only two ways out of slavery in the ancient world. Now, of course, almost no slave could afford to buy his or her own freedom, and almost nobody was willing to pay for a slave to become free.

8:44And what that meant was that most people who were slaves were slaves until they died. But praise God, that is not the case with us. Jesus purchased our freedom. He paid the price. Price of our redemption, and he paid that price with his own blood. Take a look on the screen at Mark chapter 10. Jesus says, For even the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

9:21Look at 1 Timothy 2. Paul says, For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. Brothers and sisters, we were slaves to sin, and there is no such thing as a part-time slave. If you are a slave, you are a slave 24-7. It's not just your job, it is your life. But the good news is, if you are free, you are free, 24-7.

10:11What a reality. Jesus died to set us free from our slavery once and for all. He ransomed us, he redeemed us, he paid the full price to set you and I free. But that's not all. When we believed, Paul says we died with him. Look again at verse 6. Says that we were crucified with him. So it's not just that Jesus died for us. That is true. It's that we also, through faith, died with him. And why is that? Look at the text.

10:43So that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. You see, Christ's death and our death had the same goal, which is our death to sin. Verse 7: for one who has died has been set free from sin. Notice again, Paul does not say, one who has died has been set free to sin. He says you've been set free from sin. You know, some people seem to think that Christians are missing out on the good life.

11:23That we are missing out on a life of freedom and joy that we give up when we give up the sinful practices of the world. Maybe you've had those thoughts yourself before. The Christians are giving up a life of freedom and joy by following Jesus. But Christians are not missing out. Because sin does not lead to freedom and joy. Sin leads to bondage. Sin leads to death. Sin does not give you the good life. Sin prevents you from having the good life that God created. You to enjoy the abundant life that Jesus came to give us. And you already know that. If, like Solomon, you have tried all manner of sin, looking for freedom and joy, looking for the things that you're hoping were going to satisfy you, give your life meaning and purpose, you already know all of that, that you are not missing out.

12:24So, friends, through faith we have been crucified with Christ. We have died to sin, we've died with him so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. We've been set free from sin, not to sin. But we know that death is not the end of the story. Life is the end of the story, and that's what Paul says in verse 8. Look there. 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.

13:15Verse 8 begins with this phrase: if we have died with Christ. Now, some of you students may be taking geometry. You may have already taken geometry. For those of us who it's been a long time, you might remember. Those IFF statements, those if and only if statements. You remember those? I know you guys remember those, those of you who are in geometry. They communicate that something is true if and only if certain conditions are met. Well, we have similar statements in Scripture. And we might restate verse 8 like this: We will live with Christ if and only if we have died with him.

14:04We will live with Christ if and only if we have died with him. Friends, there is one way to eternal life. There is one way to live with Christ, and that is to die with him. Jesus himself said the same thing. Take a look on the screen at Mark chapter 8. And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, Jesus said to them, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospels will save it.

14:48Jesus is calling his potential followers to come and die. In the first century, people who carried crosses were walking to their own execution. Jesus did not say that some people had to deny themselves, that some people had to take up their cross and follow him. But everybody else, that was an optional decision for you. No, he said, if anybody would come after me, if anybody wants to follow him, you have to be willing to die. You have to say, Lord, I am willing to die to my old way of life. I am willing to die to my sin. I'm willing to follow you even to physical death.

15:29So, friends, have you died with Christ? Have you died to yourself and your old way of life? Have you died? Have you been baptized, symbolizing your death and resurrection physically? The scripture says the only people who will live with Christ are those who have died with him, not those who merely know some facts about him, not those who think some good thoughts about Jesus, not those who do good things in his name from time to time. He says the only people who will live with him are those who have died with him. Have you died with Christ through repentance and faith? There's no more important question that you could answer.

16:20If so, if you have died with Christ, Paul says death no longer has any dominion over you because we've died with Christ. Death doesn't have dominion over us because death no longer has dominion over Jesus. He rose from the dead, and we are united to him through faith. Jesus died because he took our sin upon himself, but he rose and defeated death once for all because he himself was sinless. Jesus lives never to taste death again.

16:59And if Christ does not return, then we will also taste death, those of us who believe in Christ, but we will only taste death once. There is only one death for the believer in Jesus. After that, we are going to be raised to eternal life, and we will never taste death again. What great news. Especially for a young church who is just now starting to have people after 16 years who are beginning to look death in the eye. What an important thing to realize and to believe that death does not have dominion over you. If you go visit Miss Becky, you will see a woman who is looking death in the face and who will say to you, I am ready to depart and be with Christ. This is a woman who knows that death has no dominion over her.

17:57This is a woman who, yes, feels fear. Of dying, but she has no fear of death. And we don't have to fear death either, church, because Jesus conquered it. Now, consider all that Paul has taught in this section here. We are united with Christ in death. We've been crucified with him, and that means we've been set free from sin. We are no longer enslaved to sin. Through faith, we've been set free to live new lives because we've been raised in Christ and with Christ. And so here is the conclusion. Look at verse 11.

18:39So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Look at that phrase again. You also must consider yourselves dead to sin. Friends, Paul is not asking us to feel something. He is not saying, I want you to feel like you're dead in sin. You will not always feel like you are dead in sin. Not when you are being tempted. Certainly not when you give into temptation. You will not always feel like you are dead to sin. So Paul is not asking you to feel something.

19:27Paul is commanding you to believe. Something and to act in accordance with that belief. He says, Christian, you are dead to sin. That is a fact. You have died with Christ. You are no longer enslaved to sin. You are free from it. Now, act in accordance with that belief. That is what Paul is saying to us. So because we are united with Christ, we must consider ourselves dead to sin. What does that mean? What does it mean that you and I are to live life considering ourselves dead to sin?

20:14It means that we do not view ourselves or any other believers as hopeless. You are not hopeless. Your roommate, your spouse, your friend, they are not hopeless if they are in Christ. It means that we don't view any temptation as insurmountable or any sin as inevitable. It means that there is no day between Sunday and Saturday that we wake up expecting to sin. We do not get up in the morning and say, it is inevitable that I will sin today. Just like yesterday, no.

21:05And it means that we do not make any provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. That's what Paul's going to say at the end of Romans 13. Make no provision for the flesh to satisfy its desires. Those are the kinds of things that it means when we say that we are to consider ourselves dead to sin. It means that when we approach every day, we choose to believe God's word and not our feelings. And we say, along with Paul, look at 1 Corinthians 10, 13, no temptation has seized me except what is common to everybody. But God is faithful. He will not allow me to be tempted beyond my ability. But when I am tempted, he will provide me a way out so that I can endure it. Those words are either in the Bible or they're not. They are either true or they are false. They are certainly in the Bible. And I believe that because they are in the Bible, they are true. And if they are true, that means that no temptation, yes, that one that you face every single day and have given in to so many times, no temptation has seized you except what is common across the board to all people in some respect. And God has given you everything that you need in His Holy Spirit. Indwelling your heart and filling you to resist that sin and to walk in freedom and joy and victory.

22:39Christians, we are united to Christ, so we must consider ourselves dead to sin. We've been set free from sin's dominating power in our life, and we must act in accordance with that belief. Now, we'll take a look at verses 12 through 14, where Paul is going to teach that because we are united to Christ, we must present ourselves to God as instruments of righteousness. Let's look at verse 12. Paul says, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

23:28Well, this verse flows very naturally from the last section, doesn't it? If we have died with Christ and through faith we have, we must consider ourselves dead to sin. And if we view ourselves as dead to sin, then of course we're not going to allow sin to reign in our mortal bodies. That word reign can also be translated rule or exercise dominion over. So faith. Think about those words. Who reigns? Who rules? Who exercises dominion over us?

24:13The Lord God Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth. Therefore, if we allow someone or someone else, something or someone else to rule or reign or exercise dominion over us, we are committing treason against God, our rightful king. That's why Paul writes, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Because to allow sin to rule or reign or exercise dominion over us to make us obey its passions is to commit treason against God, our true king.

24:56So, friends, those who profess to worship God, to serve God, who claim God as their king, must not allow sin to reign over us. And I trust that by God's grace, many of us, perhaps even most of us in the room, are not allowing sin to reign in our lives. By God's grace, we are obeying Paul's commands in Ephesians 6. We are waking up and we are putting on the belt of truth. And the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of salvation. We are taking up the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and we are going to battle against sin and Satan. I trust that by God's grace, that is true for most of us in the room.

25:52But for many other professing Christians, and maybe this is true of you, you have not done that. You are not putting on the armor of God and going to battle against sin and Satan. You are allowing sin to reign or rule or exercise dominion over you in some way. So, if you are a Christian, what must you do if you realize this morning that you have allowed sin to reign or rule or exercise dominion over you? And I say, if you are a Christian, because you're only going to care about this if you're a Christian. If you are not a Christian, you will not care that sin is ruling and reigning and exercising dominion over you. You won't. That is a flashing red warning light. That is a red flag in your life. If you do not care about sin, that is a major concern because we've died to sin. Of us who believe in Christ. We've turned from it. We are seeking to rid our lives of it. And so, if you are a Christian, what must you do if you realize today that you've allowed sin to reign in your mortal body?

27:17Brothers and sisters, you've got to declare war on sin. That is the only answer. You've got to hunt it down and kill it. You are not negotiating. You are not taking prisoners who may escape later on and rejoin the enemy forces. You are hunting down sin to execute it. And you might say, Pastor Allen, that sounds pretty intense. I don't know about all this battle language, hunting, killing, armor, swords. I don't know about all that stuff. You're not usually this worked up on Sunday mornings.

28:01Maybe this is just me. Maybe I'm just hyperbolic, but no. Look at what Paul writes in the scripture, Colossians 3. Paul ties these very things together, our death and resurrection and the need to kill sin. Look what he says. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is died. Is hidden with Christ in God. Does that sound familiar? When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Now look at this.

28:42Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you. Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. In Colossians 3, Paul repeats the same truths that we've encountered here in Romans 6. Through faith we've died and our lives are hidden with Christ in God. We've been raised with Jesus, so what do we need to do? We've got to put to death everything that is earthly within us. Everything. No mercy, no quarter. Put sin to death.

29:31And I think for a lot of us, we've made peace with our sin. I may have shared this story before. There was a young man that I was ministering to a number of years ago who is enslaved to sexual sin. He was looking at illicit material, and this was back in the day before the interwebs and all those things. And so he's looking at this illicit material. And he comes to me after I preached one day and he says, Pastor Alan, I want to be free from this sin. I said, that's great. I said, here's what you need to do. You need to walk in repentance. You need to get rid of that stuff. He comes to me the very next week and he says, Pastor Allen, I've done it. I said, You've done what? He said, I got rid of all that stuff. I was like, Oh, awesome. What did you do with it? He said, I took it all, I put it in a box, and I put it in the attic.

30:19I said, Why did you do that? He said, Well, you told me to get rid of it. I said, You didn't get rid of it, you put it away so you could get it out later if you wanted it. I said, I have an idea. I have a can of gasoline and a lighter. And let's go set that stuff on fire. He said, I'm not sure I'm ready for that yet. How sobering is that? I don't think that's where a lot of us are. I think we want to put our sin to death. I don't think we want to make peace with it. But here's the problem: I think for a lot of us, when we attempt to kill sin, we attempt to remove it off the throne of our hearts. We might even succeed. But here's the thing: we don't replace it with anything.

31:06And, friends, no throne ever sits empty for long. A throne is a vacuum. If someone isn't sitting on the throne now, someone will be sitting on the throne very soon. As the late Tim Keller observed, idols cannot be removed, they can only be replaced. Serving God must replace serving sin. So let's take a verse 13 here. Look at this. Paul says, 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.

32:06So Paul says, don't present your members, the members of your body, to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. Okay, good. Don't allow your body to serve sin, but that's not enough. You can't just say, I want to stop serving sin. That doesn't work. It won't work. You have to say, I will start serving Christ. He will reign in my body, in my heart, in my mind. That's why Paul doesn't stop with, don't present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. But he continues, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. You must replace serving sin with serving Christ.

33:00That's what has to happen. Because the scripture says, you cannot serve two masters. You can serve God or you can serve money. You can serve God or you can serve sin. But you cannot serve both, and you will serve one. We see this in King David's life. Take a look on the screen at 2 Samuel 11. The author says, In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah, but David remained at Jerusalem.

33:49So it's the springtime. I guess it's like football season here. It's battle season there. David decides he's going to stay home. And listen, there's nothing wrong with that. He's the king. He can go out with the army or not, right? But he decides to stay home, but he doesn't stay home and actively decide to serve God. He stays home and does nothing. He says, there can be an empty throne in my heart. But he wakes up from a nap one day. He goes for a walk on his roof with no purpose. He sees a beautiful woman bathing, and he lusts after her and he commits sin with her.

34:29In that moment, He was not serving God, so he served sin. Brothers and sisters, we must not let sin reign in our mortal bodies. We have to kill it. But after we've killed it, we have to replace it. By the grace of God and in the power of the Holy Spirit, we have to replace serving sin with serving Christ because we can't serve two masters. We are going to serve one or the other. So, how do we do that? What does it look like to serve Christ instead of sin?

35:04Well, what are we commanded to do in the scriptures? I want to highlight four ways that we are commanded to serve Christ instead of sin. First, practice the spiritual disciplines. Practice the spiritual disciplines. Make time to read God's Word, to meditate on it, to memorize it, and store it up in your heart. Make time to pray by yourself and with the church. If you haven't started giving to God's kingdom, give regularly and generously. Practice the spiritual disciplines. That is the foundation of beginning to serve Christ and not sin.

35:49Second, share the gospel. Share the gospel. Start thinking about and praying for non-Christians. Christians in your life. Spend time with them, serve them, make opportunities to talk about the gospel. You might get overwhelmed when you think about all your teammates, all of your classmates. We think about all the people we work with, all the people in our neighborhood. It gets overwhelming. I don't need you to think about 47 people. I want you to have one. Can we agree that there should be never a time in the Christian life where someone asks us, who is one non-Christian that you are praying for and building a relationship with, and we have no answer? That should never happen for a Christian. Share the gospel. Third, disciple younger believers.

36:43Disciple younger believers. What a picture we have this morning, all of these students in their shirts. There are scores of people in our church who are hoping and praying for an older, more mature believer to take them under their wing. Did you hear Shelby talking about what a blessing it is that an older woman took notice of her and is taking her through the gospel of Luke? You do not have had to go to seminary. You don't need to be an expert. You need to simply be willing to open the Bible with another person, read it together, and pray with them. That's all. There are scores of children in our church who are excited to be here on Sundays and other days during the week and learn about God. All they need is for adults and college students to raise their hand and say, I will go. I will do it. I will disciple them.

37:34Fourth and finally, serve others. Serve others. Of course, there's lots of ways to serve in our church, but we have these awesome local ministry partners. Aggie Land Pregnancy Outreach, Hope Pregnancy Center. They have ways you can serve all throughout the year. The Baptist Student Ministry, if you're a college student, even sometimes when you're an adult, there are ways to serve college students. The Bridge. They pass out food to the homeless every Thursday night. They've got many other exciting ministries beside that. Serve others because you have to replace serving sin with something.

38:17And so I want to challenge you not to be passive anymore, but friends, start with practicing the spiritual disciplines, sharing the gospel, discipling younger believers, and serving. We are going to serve sin or we are going to serve Christ. So let's present ourselves to God and our members to righteousness, not to unrighteousness. Now, if you are not yet following Jesus, you may have heard this sermon today and think to yourself, Christians are so obsessed with sin.

38:56Why do they talk about sin so much? Well, that is a good observation. We do talk about sin a lot. Hopefully, not as much as we talk about Jesus, but we do talk a lot about sin. And what you need to understand is the reason we talk about sin so much is because we were created to be in relationship with God and each other, but sin has ruined that. So if we want to be in right relationship with God and others, we've got to do something about our sin. The problem is we can't do anything about our sin. The Bible says we're dead in it. We can't rescue ourselves out of it. We can't try ourselves out of it. We can't work ourselves out of it. We need to be rescued. And that is why Jesus came. He said that he came to live and die and rise again to set you free from sin, its power and its penalty, so that you could live in right relationship with God and with others. That is what it's all about. That's why we talk about sin.

40:02Until you see that sin is your problem, you are not going to be able to live in a reconciled relationship with God or with anyone else. And so we pray this morning, if you're in that spot, that you would see your sin for what it is, that you would turn from it, and that you would receive Jesus Christ by faith. If you are already following Christ, I want to remind you here as I close. That the way you see yourself matters. I think our generation, we've got a lot of problems, but maybe one of the things that we understand better than previous generations is the way that we think about ourselves matters.

40:46And when you're not real clear on your identity, when you're not real clear on who you are, that has far-reaching effects into your life. So if you wake up and you look in the mirror and you see a dirty sinner, you are not looking at yourself the way that Jesus looks at you. God does not look at you as a dirty sinner, He shed His blood to wash you clean. You are clean in God's eyes. This is what Jesus told the disciples in John 13: You've already had a bath, you're already clean through faith. All you have to do now, friends, is present yourselves to God to say, along with the prophet Isaiah, Here I am, send me.

41:36Don't spend another moment fretting about the dirtiness of your sin. It was dirty, as vile and disgusting as we could ever think, and more. But Christ died for it, He paid for it, and He defeated sin by rising from the dead. Praise God. You are set free to serve Christ. With joy and zeal, because you are washed clean as a child of God. What good news. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this amazing truth that we get to meditate on.

42:36That mysteriously, in ways that we cannot fully understand or explain, we have been united to you through faith. God, we pray that you would help us to believe that we are, in fact, dead to sin. We pray that you would help us believe that what you want is for us to present ourselves to you as instruments of righteousness. Help us to do that. No more excuses, no more justifications. Help us present ourselves to you afresh today.

43:16Thank you for your grace. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information, Or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.