SECRETS TO LOVING FREE IN CHRIST – I

Romans 6:1-4
Bob Bonner
January 22, 1995

“I just can’t help myself. That’s the way I’ve always been, that’s just the way I am and that’s just the way I am and that’s the way I’ll always be. I guess they are right when they say, ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’ Besides, you know I can’t do any better than that. So what do you expect?”

Have you ever heard someone near you say things similar to that? Maybe even yourself? Those are the words of a defeated person. I’ve heard Christians and non-Christians alike say those things. In the past, I’ve even though them myself. After trying really hard to stop a bad habit or activity that I knew was wrong, and after a series of failures, I wanted to give up. I found myself repeating hopeless words like, “Well, that’s just the way I am. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to change. Others are just going to have to accept me the way I am, bad habits and all.”

A person who repeats those words of failure and defeat over and over again in his or her head, a person who excuses his or her failures with a hopeless attitude, that person pretty soon, will believe those ideas as true. And as a result, that person or that person’s identity or picture of himself or herself will become glued to his or her accumulative negative ideas or past failures. More often than not, how we see ourselves today is nothing more than a reflection or summation of our past. And if your past is filled with failure in a particular area of your life, then you will give up hope of ever changing or being different in that area. 

One woman approached a second rather confident appearing woman about serving a term as president of a ladies’ ministry. As soon as the first woman asked the second woman to consider taking the presidency, the second woman’s outward poise and confidence vanished. She stuttered, “Are you serious? You know I’ve never been a leader and have never gotten along will with people. No, no, I’d simply be an embarrassment to you. No, I can’t do that, don’t you see?”

This woman’s present day identity was based upon a summation of her past failures. And those past failures kept her from enjoying new experiences and possibly even discovering some of her spiritual gifts.

Another man, one who had been a substance abuser, had struggled all of his life with his failure to give up drugs. Finally, all he could say about himself is, “I’m a drug addict. I have been a drug addict for ten years and I will always be a drug addict. I have no hope of ever changing.”

Robert McKee, in his excellent work, “Search for Significance”, wrote, “Too often, our self-image rests solely on an evaluation of our past behavior, being measured only through memory. Day after day, year after year, we tend to build our personalities upon the rubble of yesterday’s personal disappointments.” [p. 102]

Dr. Paul Tournier once compared the successful Christian life to a man hanging from a trapeze bar. The trapeze bar was the man’s security, his pattern of existence, his lifestyle. Then God swung another trapeze bar into the man’s view, and the man faced a perplexing dilemma. Should he relinquish his past? Or, should he reach for the new bar? The moment of truth came when the man realized that to grab onto the new bar, he must let go of the old one.

So it is with the successful Christian life. If we are ever going to find freedom in Christ, freedom from our bad habits, addictions, sin patterns and to enjoy our new lives in Christ, we must let go of the old life and grab on to the new life that is offered to every believer in Christ. And how to do that, is the subject of this next section of Romans that we are going to be looking at for the next several weeks. We will learn what the secret is to living a changed life; to stepping out of the jail called “hopeless” and stepping into the freedom called “life”.

The secrets to finding freedom in Christ will be revealed to us in the next fourteen verses of Romans 6. It will take two, if not three weeks for us to digest the truths in this passage and their implications to our lives. You won’t want to miss these next messages. And I say that not to manipulate you, but because I know what a difference these truths have made and continue to make in my everyday living experience.

What these next fourteen verses teach us is this: If you have committed your life to Jesus Christ, then you have a new start, a new beginning and a new identity or nature. Although you may look the same or feel the same, you are not the same person. A dramatic, invisible but very real and dynamic change has taken place in you, the implications of which are astounding as well as liberating. As we saw last week, you are no longer in the race of Adam. You are in Christ. The key to who you are, your spirit, which is the control center of your being, has been totally transformed.

Where as you were once dead spiritually and helpless, you are now alive and empowered with authority and riches in Christ, riches that you will be discovering for the rest of your Christian life as you seek to know and honor God. This is such a tremendous concept that none of us have fully grasped it, and as we continue learning to grasp it, that is what riches we have in Christ, more fully as we grow in Christ. But the fact is, that the moment you trusted Christ to be your savior, you became a new person. And this “becoming a new person” is just what Paul wants us to see in these first fourteen verses of chapter 6.

In verses 1-2, Paul raises two questions that stem from a faulty conclusion that many Christians have come to accept as true. As a result, many Christians have never experienced or enjoyed their freedom in Christ. They have not experienced the new life in Christ that Jesus promised would be theirs. This faulty conclusion has lead many believers to live a defeated hopeless Christian life. To understand Paul’s questions in these two verses, we must understand what he has already written in chapters 3-5. So by way of reminder, let me quickly summarize Paul’s main points from these chapters.

Paul’s major thesis has been that mankind on his own could not do anything to earn God’s favor or acceptance or approval. We were spiritually dead and separated from God. Hence, there is nothing that imperfect people can do to get on the level of a perfect and holy God and maintain a relationship with Him. Furthermore, Paul showed us that left to ourselves there was nothing we could do on our own to defeat sin’s control over our lives. Sin and death reigned or ruled over us.

When man was first created, he was perfect and holy. He was the master over his life. Sin had no authority over him. But when mankind, “in Adam,” rebelled against God, sin entered the picture and has mastered our lives ever since.

Then came Jesus Christ, who died on the cross, in our place, to pay for the penalty of man’s sin. Christ’s death satisfied God’s anger and brought permanent peace between God and those who put their trust in Jesus’ work. Furthermore, as a result of Christ’s work, we were made righteous before God. That means that God not only forgives us for all past, present and future sins, but He also forever accepts and approves of us. There is nothing we can do to lose God’s approval of us. Even though parents, children, teachers or coaches may declare that we are good for nothing, God says that’s a lie. At this point, we have to make a choice. Whom do we believe? God or other human authority figures or people we admire?

The fact that we have been made perfectly acceptable to God, through Jesus Christ---the fact that we have been permanently approved of by God, never to lose His favor toward us, because of what Christ has done for us, has led many to embrace a faulty conclusion about how one can live their lives here on earth as Christians. Many believe and live their lives with this thought in mind: “If we do not have to keep the law of God in order to be saved or to please God and maintain His approval of us, then why should I want to obey God at all? If we are saved by grace apart from obeying the law, then we must be free to sin as we please. So, let’s all sin. Let’s indulge ourselves by doing any and every sinful thing we want to do---because, after all, we will get to heaven any way. And furthermore, aren’t we just showing the rest of the world how loving and forgiving and gracious our God is, by giving Him so much to forgive us for?”

In fact, this was part of the very problem that Paul, the author of this letter to the Romans, was faced with in the city of Corinth, (which by the way, is where Paul was residing when he wrote this letter to the church at Rome). When one reads Paul’s letters to the Corinthian believers, it is obvious that many Christians at Corinth felt that they could live as they pleased since they were already forgiven and were assured of their salvation. The Corinthian church, and understand we are talking about born again Christians, had problems with incest, adultery, drunkenness, at the communion table, exploitation of the poor and divisions. Rather than expressing disapproval of these practices, the Christian leaders in Corinth said, “These folds are simply exercising their Christian liberties.”

Now, it is true that no leadership can stop Christians from within the church from sinning. But Christian leaders are directed not to approve or sanction any sinful lifestyle among believers. The leadership is instructed not to turn their back on sinful lifestyles or pretend it doesn’t happen or matter. When we see sin as a lifestyle, not an isolated incident, taking place, we are to confront it, and if need be, remove those from the local fellowship, who refuse to follow the Lord.

As Christians, our liberty or freedom in Christ is not a license or permission to do whatever we want because “God will forgive us in the end because He is such a forgiving God.” That would be to mock God. And a holy and righteous God doesn’t look upon that kind of attitude with favor. Paul, in these next verses will demonstrate why it is impossible for a true believer to deliberately live a sinful lifestyle.

Now that we’ve gotten the setting, Paul opens chapter 6 with these words, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?” The word “continue” speaks of a habitual practice. Paul is not addressing the issue of believers falling into occasional sin, due to ambushes of the evil one. He is referring to intentional, willful, constant sinning as a routine of life. So, his question is, should we willfully sin so that in contrast, God’s forgiveness and His holiness and His grace will stand out even more?

To this question, raised by this faulty conclusion, the apostle responds first emotionally and then logically. First, emotionally he says in verse 2, “May it never be!” To even state this question is repulsive to Paul’s heart. He is shocked that he even has to deal with the kind of nonsense. If we truly understood God’s grace and His hatred toward sin, we would be just as repulsed by such a thought.

Allow me to illustrate the foolishness of such an argument, that we ought to do wrong because it make God look good and furthermore, we can live foolishly today, because it won’t change our eternal destiny.

Do you remember the disaster that took place in the late 1980’s in Russia, when the nuclear plant at Chernobyl melted down? Do you remember the thousands of people who died and the hundreds of thousands of people who are still suffering today from the nuclear fallout of that one disaster? Do you remember how the pollution from radiation rose into the atmosphere and contaminated surrounding countries’ crops, thousands of miles away? That was some disaster.

Well, suppose some brilliant technological genius was able to clean up the mess and institute a radical new energy source which was pollution free. How would you respond to someone who would have said of this whole situation, the disaster and the subsequent discovery of pollution free energy, “Hey, this is great, let’s have another meltdown to see what other great new discovery this genius would come up with next!” How would you respond to that? You probably would say, “You are nuts! God forbid that we should do such a thing when we already have a wonderful solution to our energy problem.”

This is just how Paul is reacting emotionally to this question of should we continue to live in sin, because God has already approved of us. Paul’s argument, in these next verses will be that we already have a solution to the problem of sin, so why continue in it? Even though we know that there may be momentary pleasure in sin, we also know that the destruction, Romans 6:15-23, sin brings is far greater in the end than that momentary pleasure.

Paul’s more logical response to this question is given in the rest of verse 2. He states, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” Now what does Paul mane when he says that the Christian “died to sin?” He does not mean that it is impossible for a Christian to sin. The rest of scripture and Paul’s writings teach us that Christians can and do sin. But what he is saying here is that it is not normal for a Christian to continue living a life dominated by sin. Being dead to sin means that sin has no power to control one’s life. And if a person knows who they are in Christ, and they know what these next verses teach, it is impossible for a Christian to be continually be dominated by sin.

Now, as soon as I say that, a defeated Christian will say something similar to the words I once cried out to God in the midst of my own struggle with sin. Words like, “Wait a minute Paul. If I am so dog gone dead to sin, then why are my thoughts so controlled by envy or jealousy or bitterness, or anger? Why is it that as hard as I try to cease from some particular sinful behavior, I can’t do it? Sin seems to be very alive in me, not dead!”

Neil Anderson describes one Christian’s struggle with lust, in his book, “A Way of Escape”. This individual came to Neil for advice when he was at his wits end. He said, “Neil, if I am so dead to sin, why can’t I stop carrying out my sexual fantasies which I know are wrong? How does one die to sin?”

Anderson correctly responded, “The answer is, ‘You don’t die to sin!’” You can’t die to sin. Why can’t you die to sin? Well, first of all, that is now what this verse says. This verse never says that it is up to you to die to sin or for you to put to death or kill sin in your life. Rather, look closely at the verse. What does it say? It is merely stating a fact that says you are already dead to sin, or the controlling power of sin in your life is now no more, the moment you were saved. “You don’t say.” I do say!

Look at the words, “You died to sin.” Those words are a statement of fact in the past tense. This is not something you must do. This is something that has already been accomplished or done for you. You are simply to accept the fact that it has been done. If you are a Christian, you are dead to sin. Sin no longer has mastery or control over your life. You may be allowing sin to have control, but it clearly has no right or authority or power over you. If you don’t want to knowingly sin, you don’t have to. How this is to be lived out in our lives today, Paul will more fully explain in our verses for next week.

But for now, allow me to answer a rebuttal that may be in someone’s mind right now. Someone here is bound to be thinking, “But wait a minute Bob. I can’t be dead to sin, because I don’t feel dead to sin.” I understand exactly what you mean. But you are just going to have to put aside your feelings for a few verses, because it is what you believe and know that sets you free, not what you feel. God’s word is true, whether you feel it or choose to believe it or not. Believing the Word of God doesn’t make it true; His word is true, therefore you must believe it, even if your emotions don’t want to cooperate at first.

Allow me to illustrate how we allow our emotions to dictate what we believe, rather than what we believe dictating how we feel. Imagine this young cadet who has just graduated from the police academy in New York City. His first day on the job, he is given the assignment of directing traffic on one of the busiest and most dangerous intersection in the city. There he stands on the corner, dressed in his neatly pressed uniform, with his shiny new whistle in his hand and watching all of those cards and trucks racing back and forth. He feels a little nervous and starts to question his ability to do the job. He questions whether or not people will follow his instructions. I mean yesterday they wouldn’t do it, why should they obey him today? He doesn’t feel any different today than yesterday before he graduated from the police academy, so why should they obey his orders, he thinks.

So, to be safe, he stands on the corner and blows his whistle and tries to direct traffic from there. And guess what? Nobody pays any attention to him. They don’t even see him! So, he becomes even more convinced that his feelings are right, that he is no different than he was yesterday. Hence, he has no business standing out there in the middle of the street directing traffic.

A short while later, his captain happens by to see how the new recruit is doing and is shocked by what he sees. So he walks up to the new officer and says, “What are you doing?” The young officer says, “I’m trying to direct traffic, but no one is obeying my signals!” At which point the captain pulls out his whistle, proceeds to blow on it, and all the while raising his right hand for the traffic to stop and he marches toward the center of the intersection. All the traffic stops. He then motions for the young officer to come out into the center of the street. Then he says, “Look son, I don’t care who you were yesterday, or what you feel today. You are a police officer. You are the law and they will obey you because you are wearing this badge of authority that says the entire NY police force stands behind you. Now, believe the truth and start directing traffic!” 

At that point, the captain leaves the scene and the new officer, motions for the traffic to continue and sure enough it did. Never again did he allow his feelings to determine whether or not he had the authority to direct traffic. His new authority as a police officer took hold, because he accepted it as being true.

 Most of us do not know or accept the authority or power we possess as believers over sin that is in our lives. We feel that because we had no authority or power over sin before, that we still don’t. But the truth is, where as once it could control us, it now has no ability to control us, unless we choose to let it by standing on the corner and not acting upon what we know to be true.

Allow me to take an important rabbit trail at this point. If you want to learn and grow from studying the Bible, there are some basics you must understand about Bible interpretation. Here are just two basics that apply to our study of this first half of Romans 6. When you come to a command in the Bible, the only proper response as a Christian to that command is to obey it. But when the scripture is expressing something that is true or states a fact, the only proper response is to believe it or to accept it as so.

A command is to be obeyed. A stated truth is to be believed. A command is something I do. A truth is something I accept. Very simple. But people often get it twisted by trying to do something or obey something that God only expects them to believe or accept as truth before living accordingly by faith in what He says is true.

Nowhere is this more important to understand than in these first eleven verses of Romans 6. In verse 2, most Christians ask, “How do I die to sin?” But Paul isn’t giving a command or asking us to do anything. He is simply stating a fact to be believed. If you believe what Paul says beginning with verse 2-11, it will totally change your life as a Christian. Simply accepting what Paul has to say here as true is the first step to freedom from those various sins that seem to control our lives.

Now, let’s see why Paul says that we are no longer to be controlled by sin, in these following verses. Notice how he begins in verse 3, “Or do you not know…”. Three times between verses 3-9, Paul tells us that there is something we must know. If we are going to live as people who are dead or no longer controlled by sin, then first and foremost, we must know something important. We need to get a few things straight in our thinking. Bottom line, the struggle against various sins’ control over our lives is not won or lost based upon our determination to do better or do what is right. The battle with sin is won or lost by first re-educating our minds so that we think correctly about ourselves and with authority take control of the “flesh” or this thing in us that wants us to sin rather than to allow the “flesh” to control us.

Also notice, that by saying, “Or do you not know…”, Paul expects us as believers to understand these following elementary or basic truths about our changed lives and identities since we have been saved. Or, a different way to put it would be this. Those of us who struggle with sin controlling our lives is due to not knowing what Paul is about to teach.

So Paul says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory [“power”] of the Father, so we too might walk [with this same supernatural power] in newness of life.”

This is the first time baptism is mentioned in Romans. Paul is not speaking about water baptism, but he is speaking of a spiritual baptism or identification with Jesus Christ.

The term “baptism” was used in the first century for dipping a light-colored garment into a dye that was, let’s say red. Once the fabric was dipped into the red dye, the fabric would be changed in its identity from its original color to the color of the dye. This process of changing a color or changing an identity is what this term, “baptism” refers to.

When Christ died for us on the cross, Paul is saying that our identity was dipped into the same scene. Although we didn’t feel it or see it or hear it, our lives were identified or baptized into that scene the moment we put our trust in Jesus Christ. Likewise, when we were baptized into Christ’s death it means that our previous lives were identified with Christ’s death and burial. But what does that mean? It means that our old lives (our spirit’s condition) governed by our relationship to Adam and sin’s control over our lives died.

It also expresses the impossibility of a new life taking place apart from divine intervention, such as the power behind Christ’s resurrection.

As a result of our identification with Christ’s death and resurrection, Paul wants us to know that the control of our old life died and we can’t go back to it. The old man in Adam is gone forever. We now have a new life to be lived in the resurrection power of Jesus Christ.

But before we can experience the resurrection power driven new life, we must understand and accept the fact that we have Christ’s new powerful life in us. The Christian life is not stumbling along, hoping to keep up with the Savior. Instead, it is me walking in and with the Savior, trusting in His invisible power to enable me as I out. My very life is now identified with His. His power becomes my power. I am no longer to live as a slave to sin, in Adam. Adam is dead and gone. I am a free man and can choose to have Jesus live His life, in His power through me, breaking any control that sin has over my life.

Once again, this old life in Adam, the control center of this old life, which was our spirit, died and took on a new identity. We are no longer sinners in Adam, but we are saints, holy ones, united to Christ. Today, Jesus lives in us through Christ’s power that is now permanently linked to us. We are new creations living out the rest of this life in old bodies, one day to have new bodies. We, as saints, do not have to sin. We can choose to sin, but we don’t have to. Nowhere does scripture say that we as saints have to sin. Rather, Scripture says just the opposite. It tells us to stop sinning, through asking Jesus, in His power to live His life through us, in those areas that we are being tempted to sin. When we renounce the temptation as being wrong, and choose to have Jesus live His life out through us in the way we know that is right and honoring to God, He will. And sin won’t take place, because sin cannot control us. It has no authority over us. The only reason we knowingly sin, is because we choose to or allow it to happen. When we consider what is true about us in Christ and call upon Jesus to live through us when temptation comes, we can’t sin if we know who we are in Christ.

Notice that Paul says in verse 4 that we live or walk in “newness of life”. What does Paul mean by “newness of life”? Imagine your body being a typical house that was run down. We once lived in a neighborhood where there was a particular house that was run down. The owners of the home parked their cars all over the front lawn, ruining the front yard. What flower beds that were there, were run down. The paint was chipped off the sides of the house, the porch was sagging. It was a mess. Then something interesting happened. The previous owners died and the house was turned over to new owners. These residents planted a new lawn, repaired the porch, poured a new concrete driveway, repainted the entire house, put on a new roof, planted new flowers and that house changed. Why? Because it had new owners dwelling in it and taking control over it.

The same thing is true of our lives. When the “Adam” dies within this earthly, bodily house, and leaves this house, and Jesus, a new tenant comes to live within and takes ownership of the house, the house takes on the characteristics of the new owner. The old owner has no right or authority over the house. The same thing is true when Jesus comes into to empower and live His life through us. When we submit to His will and put our trust in Him to empower us to live as we are, holy, rather than us trying to be holy, our lives change. We cannot go on sinning as though we have no control over sinful desires. We are a new home with a new owner who has the authority and will to live differently.

Let’s stop here. I realize that this is rather abrupt. I would like to encourage you to do two things this next week in preparation for worship next Sunday. First, read and reread verses 1-14 several times, thinking through and asking yourself questions of what you have read. Secondly, review the points that we have learned this morning. You will get much more out of the word next week if you do.

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