SECRETS TO LIVING FREE IN CHRIST – II

Romans 6:5-11
Bob Bonner
January 29, 1995

Before becoming a screen star, young Burt Lancaster was a circus performer---a job he was fortunate to land, considering his less-than-flawless audition.

Robert Wise, in his work, “Your Churning Place”, records what happened the first time Burt Lancaster auditioned for the circus. He writes, “He was asked to perform on the parallel bars, so he leaped on the bars and began his routine. Because he was nervous, his timing was off, and he spun over the bar, falling flat on his face some ten feet below. He was so humiliated that he immediately leaped back on the bar. As he spun again at the same point, he flipped off and smashed to the ground once more! Burt’s tights were torn, he was cut and bleeding, and he was fiercely upset! He leaped back again, but the third time was even worse, for this time he fell on his back. The agent came over, picked him up, and said, ‘Son, if you won’t do that again, you’ve got the job!’”

Doesn’t this image of Burt Lancaster spinning, crashing and coming back for more mirror our own Christian life at times? With determined self-sufficiency, we leap into this venture and that, teeter, and then flop face-first onto the ground. Then what do we do? We brush off the sawdust and go at it again, falling even harder the next time. If somebody doesn’t come along and stop us, or enable us to perform without beating up on ourselves, we will either become so frustrated and discouraged that we give up on life, or we might even kill ourselves. [The Birth of an Exciting Vision, Swindoll, p. 18]

Jesus came for that reason. He came to free us from the tyranny of failure and to give us life eternal, beginning with today. He came to rescue us from our sin habits and lifestyles and to transform our lives and make each of us into the person that we really want to be and the person God created us to be. He came to give us hope that we don’t have to continue living a defeated life.

No place in scripture better describes the truth about what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us, in terms of us giving us hope and enabling us to live free in Christ, than the passage of scripture that we are looking at this morning, Romans 6:1-14.

It’s one thing to know that we can be forgiven for our sin or for our total disregard of God or actual rebellion against God. But it is quite another thing, to know that we can live holy lives, even though in our past we have developed some rather deep rooted sinful habits and ungodly lifestyles. Habits and lifestyles that for the moment maybe pleasurable or make one feel good about themselves but in the end, are very destructive to us and our relationships with others.

As we saw last week, Paul introduces this chapter in verse 1 with a faulty conclusion that for the next 13 verses refutes. The faulty conclusion came from not fully understanding the following truth: If it is true, and it is, that when Jesus Christ died for our sin, He justified us or made us permanently righteous and acceptable, approved or fully pleasing to God no matter what we do in the future… if this is true, then the faulty conclusion is, why don’t we “live it up?”, meaning, do all those things that are selfishly pleasurable to us, even though we know they are destructive practices to us and negatively affect all those around us? God is going to love us anyway, so let’s just do whatever we want. We are free to sin.

From verses 2-14, Paul challenges this faulty conclusion by explaining further the implications of what Jesus Christ has accomplished for each person who has put their complete confidence in Jesus Christ, as their Savior and Lord.

In verse 2, Paul simply asks a rhetorical question that challenges this faulty conclusion. He says, “How can we [Christians} who died to sin go on living in it?”

Then in verses 3-14, Paul explains what he means that “we died to sin” and why this faulty conclusion isn’t true. Further, he explains how one can apply these truths to their lives and find true freedom in Christ, freedom from those sins which so easily entangle us and sometimes seem as though they control our lives, as hard as we try to break free of them.

If we are going to find freedom in Christ, to live as we ought and as we were created to live, Paul shows us three ingredients that must all be included in our daily living or we will never find our freedom in Christ.

Last time, we only started to look at the first ingredient. That ingredient is that we must know something, gain a better understanding of something that is now true of us because of what Jesus did for us.

Three times in these verses, Paul repeats the importance of knowing some very basic and essential facts about what happened to us as believers the moment we were saved. If we don’t understand or know these things, then we have no hope of finding freedom from negative controlling factors in our lives. We will never find true freedom in Christ.

To help explain what it is that we are to know, Paul uses two illustrations. The first illustration we looked at last time in verses 3-4. That illustration was to show that our old lives, who we were before we met Christ, died with Christ on the cross and was forever buried. Who we were in a very real sense is dead and buried.

But that’s not the end of the story. Just as Christ rose from the dead into a new life, so have we. We have a new identity today. Our identity, who we are, is tied together with who Jesus Christ is. We now, are to walk in a newness of life, as we are identified with Christ.

Paul’s second illustration, which begins in verses 5-10, is used to better help us understand what our new life, our new identity in Christ is all about. He says, in verse 5, “For if we have become united with {Him} in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also {in the likeness} of His resurrection”.   The term “united” literally is the same word for “grafting” a branch into a tree.

For instance: Let’s say you have a nectarine tree that isn’t producing very hearty nectarines, because the root of the nectarine tree is sick and weakly. If you choose, you can solve that problem of sickly nectarines by cutting off the nectarine branch (in a sense killing that branch because you have removed it from its previous source of life) and grafting it into a hardier similar tree, such as a hardier peach tree. In that case, the hardier peach tree gives life and power to the nectarine branch.

Meanwhile, the nectarine branch always knows that it is a nectarine branch and will always and only produce nectarines. The branch maintains its personality of being a nectarine. But it no longer produces its fruit from its old life, the old tree. It has no more ties to that old tree. Now, it has a new life source to which it is permanently united. It produces its fruit by the life and strength of the stronger and healthier peach tree. Over time, the branch and the tree grow together until you can’t tell the difference between the graft and the natural branch. The life of both is fully shared.

In the same way, before Christ, we were like the nectarine branch that was connected to Adam or a sickly nectarine tree. But when we were saved, we were place into a permanently grafted or united, like a nectarine branch, into a stronger and healthier stock of tree, Jesus Christ. We are permanently separated from the race of being “in Adam”. And we now draw upon His strength to produce spiritual fruit or changes in our lives that need to be changed. We draw upon His spiritual life to live holy lives and to conquer sin. Whereas before we met Christ, we could not make any significant changes, now we can. Being “united” or “grafted” into Christ, our new lives are lived in concert with the resurrection power of Jesus Christ. 

Notice something else about these two illustrations of baptism into the death of Christ and grafting of a branch into the life of Christ. There is no pick and choose offer here. You cannot die with Christ without also being raised to a new life. The death in Christ and the resurrection life happen automatically the moment we are saved. They go hand in hand. And that new life is not one of the physical new life, but a spiritual new life, drawing upon His resources that now reside in us, because He lives in us. There eventually will be a new physical life, but that comes later, after we die, with our new resurrection bodies.

Paul continues in verse 6, “knowing this [please note the stress of knowing this fact of having a new life and that the old life is dead. It’s not obeying anything or doing what so many of us keep trying to do, that is to put to death the old life and to try to make a new life for ourselves. Paul is saying that our old life is already dead, and right now we already have a new life in Christ. Knowing this, Paul goes on to say] that our old self [and the term there for “old” is not the word for old in age, but “old” in the sense of worn out, useless, only fit for the scrap heap, our old dead, powerless self] was crucified with {Him,} that our body of sin might be done away with,”.

This expression, “body of sin” needs some explaining. Paul is not saying that our bodies are sinful. Our bodies are not sinful. Our bodies are neutral. Scripture clearly teaches that sin arises from the heart, the inner life and then affects or corrupts our souls and bodies.

By “body of sin” Paul means that it is through this neutral vehicle by our bodies, that sin expresses itself. In one of his works, Neil Anderson uses the illustration that sin is like a splinter in our bodies, causing infections pain, etc. Sin is not our bodies, but it is through our bodies that we get splinters which lead to different kinds of struggles in our lives.

Paul is clearing here that our body’s previous enslavement to the control and dictates of is broken. Sin is no longer part of our spirits or at the controls of our nature. However, sin is still a part of our souls. We can still choose to sin. It is in us, does it have and can affect our bodies, but it is not us. Whereas before in Adam, we had no choice but to sin, now that we are in Christ, we can choose to live in His power. The truth of this is declared in 1 John 2:1, in which the apostle John says this, “My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin.”

Our identity is no longer related to sin, but to Jesus. He now abides in and with our spirits. It is Jesus and His power that can be at the controls of our lives, and we don’t have to allow the splinters of sin to remain in us and infect us. As we spot this splinters, we remove them by renouncing these temptations of sin as being wrong and choosing by faith and in the power of Jesus to live as who we are, new creations in Christ.

To “be done away with”, in verse 6 is another important expression to understand. It does not mean that sinful tendencies in us have been annihilated once and for all. The sinful tendencies or what the scripture will later call, “the flesh” is still in our being. We are continually reminded of and tempted by the momentary pleasures of sin. But no longer is sin at the control center. It is dead to our spirits. As being a part of the control center of our being, it has been “done away” or “rendered inoperative or powerless”.

Allow me to illustrate this rendering sin powerless to our bodies. Think about what happens when a serial killer has been caught, tried, convicted and sentenced to death. As that killer sits in jail, does his power to continue as a serial killer still exist? Sure it does. When does that power cease to control him or drive him to murder others?  When he is executed. What do they do with the killer’s body after it has been executed? They bury it. Isn’t it interesting that we don’t go on torturing the corpse. We don’t hang or shoot it again, etc. Why? Because when the spirit of the person has died, that person is free from the control of sin in one’s spirit and the body is no longer guilty of sin.

This, by the way, further emphasizes for us that the key to who we are is not our souls or our bodies. But the key to who we are is our spirits. Once a person’s spiritual identity is changed, that person is a “new creation”.

Now, there may be some twisted individuals who may attach the body and dismember it after the person is dead, but that’s not normal, nor does it have any effect upon that person’s spirit or sin. We realize that to do that is about as foolish or productive as kicking your car after it breaks down on the highway.

Paul’s point is that if Christ died in our place, then the sin which use to dwell in our spirit and controlled our body, no longer is in our spirit and we no longer have to allow the sin that dwells in our bodies to control us. We were identified with Christ on the cross when He died in our place and we are identified with Christ in His resurrection spirits, to enable us to live as who we are, saint, not sinners.

Therefore, Paul goes on to complete the thought in verse 6, that since this is true, “we should [we can choose to do otherwise, but we should] no longer be [or live as though we were] slaves to sin; [because we aren’t] for he who has died [our old man in Adam] is greed from sin [sin’s control].” Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again”. Just as Christ can never go back to His pre-resurrection body existence, neither can we. We are once and for all changed forever. We are permanently changed at the core of our being, our spirits, into new creations. We can foolishly choose to live like sinners and reap what we sow, but we don’t have to. We have what it takes to never live that way again. We are forever changed, never able to return to our previous condition.

For instance: If today, I am a virgin, but tonight I have sex, I have forever crossed a line over which I can never return. I can never go back to being a virgin. I can live and proclaim that I am a virgin. I could say that I had never had sex, but that doesn’t change the fact that I am no longer a virgin. Similarly, once I am born again, I have permanently crossed a line. I am no longer in Adam, controlled sin. I am in Christ. I am a new creation. I am free to live in the power of Jesus Christ, to live as who I am, a holy one.

Paul concludes, in the end of verse 9, “death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.” And just as He lives for God, so should we. Sin has no authority or right to control our lives. There is no logical reason for us to go on sinning; why do some? They’ve been deceived. The life we now live, we live to God, just as Jesus is now living to God. Paul puts it this way, in Galatians 2:20, “I [his spirit] have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I [the old dead spirit] who live, but Christ lives in me [my new spirit]; and the life which I now live in the flesh [in this earthly body] I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.”

The only way we, as Christians, can go on living in sin, is to deny who we are in Christ, and live like people we no longer are. If I was an orphan beggar boy, and adopted by a rich man, given his name and access to all his wealth, then I too am rich. However, I can choose to deny my new name, refuse to take advantage of the riches that are mine and return to the streets as a beggar, which is how foolishly many Christians are living today. They deny that they are holy ones of God and choose to live as someone they are not.

In verses 3-10, Paul has shown us that a victorious walk with Christ, victorious over the temptations to sin, begins with understanding or “knowing” these facts. But whether you live as a victor or a victim is determined by this second ingredient which Paul mentions in verse 11. He states, “Even so [in other words, just as Christ died and lives to God, free from the slave master “sin”, even so you believers] consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

Becky Pippert, a great evangelist and disciple of women, also author of a great book entitled, “Out of the Salt Shaker”, once said something about herself at a pastor’s conference that most of us struggle with. And furthermore, it is the very thing that prevents many of us from living free in Christ. She said, “It is easier for me to believe that Jesus died and resurrected, than it is for me to believe that I died and have been resurrected in Christ.”

In other words, she is saying that she understands that Jesus died and that she died with Him and resurrected with Him in her spirit, but believe it as true for her, live like it has happened to her, that another matter entirely.

That’s why Paul adds in this verse, something to the idea of “knowing something” from verses 3-10, if we are going to find freedom in Christ. If we are going to step out of the realm of being victims of sin to becoming victors over the war with sin, then we must not just know the truths of verses 3-10, consider something.

But what does that mean, “to consider” something? This term “consider” originally was a Greek accounting term. If a person had trouble in their business, they would hire an accountant to look at their books. The accountant would read the facts, and on the basis of the facts that he knew, he would turn to the troubled business owner and say, “Here is the state of your affairs.” In other words, it’s not enough for you to just understand the facts, but count on them as being absolutely correct. From now on, base your business practices upon what you now know. Consider it to be the truth.

Thus far, all that Paul has said to these Romans could be taken as a theory, a correct theory; but none-the-less a theory. It is only when we go from understanding what someone says is true, to believing or considering that these things are true, and act on the basis of what we believe to be true, that any difference will take place.

When Paul said, “Consider this as true”, he was not speaking of a psychological mind game, by which we keep affirming something over and over until we are convinced against our better judgment or even against reality that it is true. He is not asking you to deceive yourself of what you know to be true. To “consider” something, or as some translations put it, to “reckon” something is a matter of faith that issues action.

For instance: to consider something might be compared to endorsing a check. If we really believe that the money is in the checking account, we will sign our name and collect the money. Reckoning or considering is not just saying that something is true. Rather, it is acting upon a fact that we believe. Remember, God does not command us to become dead to sin. He tells us that we are dead to sin and alive to God. Now, believe it and make the choice to live like it. That’s what consider means. Considering yourself dead to sin has nothing to do with how dead to sin you feel; you are to consider yourself dead to sin because it is so. You are not dead to sin because you consider it so; you consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God because it is so.

Take note of something else here. If you have not read from the beginning of Romans to this point several times with an observant eye, you might miss this. But this is the first time in Romans that we as Christians are ever asked to do anything for ourselves. We are not even told to know something. Up till now everything Paul has written has been about what God has done for us. And now based upon the knowledge of what God has done for us and what He says is true about us, Paul says we are to do something. We are to consider two things when we are faced with temptation to do that which is wrong.

First I am to remember that I do not have to obey sinful desires, because I am dead to sin’s control in my life. Once I became a Christian, I finally became free from the forcible control of sin over my life, and I can refuse to obey it, whether it is the sin of bitterness, jealousy, greed, inability to forgive, etc.

Second, I am to remember that I am alive to God in Christ. I have the very power of God in me and available to me through Jesus living in me. Hence, I can offer my thoughts, attitudes, and body to Jesus, to be used by God in a righteous manner rather than a sinful manner, to bring glory to Him.

Now, there will be a struggle with sinful habits or practices to a point. Temptations will continue to ambush you, maybe several times a day, because, this thing called “the flesh” is very strong, “strongholds”, 2 Corinthians 10:3-5. And we will look at how to live through these ambushes when we come to chapter 7. But for now, just trust me---each time, by faith you renounce the lie that you aren’t dead to sin, and pronounce the truth that you are dead to sin and alive to God, and submit your life to live for Him, you will find His supernatural enablement to withstand temptation. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, bit with temptation will provide the way of escape also, that you may be able to endure it.” That way of escape is not just knowing what is true about sin; that you shouldn’t commit adultery or get drunk. That is not the way of escape. The way of escape is putting your trust in the strength and supernatural power of Jesus Christ who is linked with your spirit and choosing to live as who you are. 

It’s saying, “Lord, I am really bitter toward that person who wronged me. But as much as I know that You want me to forgive them, I can’t. However, I know that you live in me, and I don’t have to allow this bitterness to control me or my thoughts, because I am dead to sin. Sin has no power to control my life. Hence, I choose to take the way of escape through Jesus who is alive in me. I choose to live as Jesus would, to be a forgiver. I choose to have Jesus live His life through my thoughts, attitudes and actions right now.” And as soon as you choose that way, the battle amazingly stops right there, until the next ambush.

And there will be more ambushes. Paul recognizes that and that is why when he commands us “to consider”, he uses a present tense verb which fully translated means, “Keep on considering yourself dead to sin and alive to God.” This is not something that you do just once and it is all over. You are in a war friend. A war that is fought one battle at a time. But each victory you win, you become stronger and more convinced that God is faithful to deliver you when you understand what is true and you consider true so as to act upon it.

Next week, we will see more about how it is that we are to act upon what we know and consider. We will look to the third, final and absolutely essential ingredient that is necessary to experience victory rather than becoming a victim of our spiritual battles with sin.

There are two principles that we must keep in mind in the days ahead, if we want to find freedom in Christ. The first is, if Satan can keep you ignorant of the truth about who you are in Christ, he can keep you spiritually impotent.

Ladies and gentlemen, you cannot experience the abundant and exciting meaningful life if you are not continually studying and examining the word of God to learn truth. The reasons that the Christians in Rome were struggling with living for Jesus, is because they were ignorant. Three times Paul stresses the importance of knowing or being informed. Hence, it is very simple. If you don’t establish a discipline of sitting down alone with the Lord, preferably on a daily basis, to ask Him to teach you as you read His word, you cannot grow up in Christ. You cannot experience the abundant life. You will remain a victim to sin’s control over your life.

I do not want you to raise your hand, but men, how many days this past week, have you spent alone with the Lord, over His word. If it is less than three days, other than church, you are kidding yourself if you want to live for Christ and be used as a mighty ambassador for the King. Ladies, especially you mothers of little children, I know that your schedules are totally mixed up, and it is hard to find a regular time to get alone. Your very survival as a parent not only depends upon you staying close to the Lord in His word, it demands it.

You who are not married and are without children, are you in the word? If you are not, what kind of excuse do you think you can give to God that will really explain why you are not a student of His word, gaining understanding of Him, Jesus and who you are in Christ. Folks, spending time in God’s word is not an option for any of us.

The second principle hitch hikes off of the first. It is not enough to simply know the truth, but we must consider it or apply it. Christian living depends upon Christians learning and applying what they know to their lives. It does not good if you jam your head full of facts about who you are in Christ, or what are spiritual gifts, or what does God promise about the end times, if you don’t answer the question, “So what? How am I going to apply this to my life today and from now on?” James put it this way, “But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for {once} he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the {law} of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man shall be blessed in what he does.” Notice the promise, “He shall be blessed in what he does!”

God wants so much for you to get the most out of life, that He provided you with a Savior, the truth and an instruction manual and the power to get the job done. Let’s use ‘em. If we don’t, we have only ourselves to blame.

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