Dead to Sin: Romans 6: 5 – 11 Tape 3
The theme of
Romans 6 is that sin is inconsistent in congress and incompatible with the
spiritual life. The Chapter is really divided in half; you have verses 1
through 14 and then 15 through 23.
In Verses 1
through 14, the argument is based on the fact that because the believer is
united with Christ, sin no longer has a place in his life.
In verses 15
through 23 the argument is based on the fact that because we were slaves to sin
from birth, at salvation we became slaves to righteousness to God, therefore
sin no longer has a place in the believer’s life.
Having said that,
Romans 7 looks at the fact we still have a sin nature. When we get down to
That man on his own, (even regenerate man), cannot
live the Spiritual Life. It is spiritually empowered and until you come to
grips with the role of God the Holy Spirit and how He works in your life, you
will never get there.
The theme in
Romans 6 is that sin really does not have any place in the believer’s life that
means that at some level every single Christian is a hypocrite. Every time we
sin we are a hypocrite, because we are doing something that is opposite to what
we profess to believe, but we have this split problem and that is that we have a
sin nature that is driving us with its lusts and passions in one direction and
we have a new nature that is taking us in a different direction and we have the
Holy Spirit who is working in us to produce God’s plan which is spiritual
maturity in our lives and sometimes we want to fight and resist that. Since
believers always have a sin nature and you will always sin and every act of sin
is doing something inconsistent with what we believe to be true. So as
Christians every time we sin we are a hypocrite!
The first fourteen
verses focus on the fact that we as believers are united with Christ and that
means that there is death to the sin nature, “We are dead to sin.” The first
four verses which we have studied focused on the reality of our
identification with Christ in his death, burial and resurrection. That is
the foundational reality that under girds every facet of the spiritual life. If
you don’t understand positional truth and retroactive positional truth then you
will have difficulty understandings its implications for your spiritual
life.
You see in verse 1
Paul starts this section with a rhetorical question, “...What shall we say
then? Are we to continue in sin that Grace might increase? ...”
He has said in the
end of the preceding chapter that Law came in order to further reveal the
sinfulness of man. As that sinfulness increased grace also increased, in other
words the realisation of the need for grace increased and man became more and
more cognizant of the fact that he was completely incapable of doing anything
to please God.
But the objection
that is raised in the first verse is the objection one might say of the licentious
crowd. The idea that we can sin with impunity and that it doesn’t really make
any difference. Of course the other side of it is that Paul is also stating
this because he knows that there are those out there in the congregation that
don’t like grace. Once we come to grips with the fact that God has done
everything for us and so we are to respond in gratitude in living out his grace
plan in our lives.
The New Testament
warns us about the licentious crowd in Jude 1: 4, “...For certain persons have crept
in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation,
ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our
only master and Lord, Jesus Christ...” See the purpose of the Law was to expose
sinfulness and that man’s need was total that God had to do everything for man.
So Paul continues to develop the argument,
“May it never be!” we can’t justify sin and continue to sin with impunity.
Romans 6:2, “...How
shall we who died to sin still live in it? ...”
Now I want you to
notice that phrase, he say, “...we who died to sin...” Now “we” is believers
and he says “...we as believers died to sin...” Now this is a key phrase, now
look down to verse 10 and we read about Jesus Christ.
Romans
We have to ask a
very important question here, what does it mean to be dead to sin? We will come
back to that.
We talk about God’s
character in terms of His righteousness and his Justice. His absolute righteousness
is perfect; it is the standard of God’s character. His Justice is the
application of that standard. The reason we link those together is because in
both Hebrew and Greek they are the same word. In the Greek, it’s DIKAIOSUNE and
in the Hebrew it’s Tsedaqah. DIKAIOSUNE, depending on the
context it either refers to the standard or the application of that standard.
The SUNE ending indicates a quality, the quality of justice, the quality of uprightness
or correctness. So in that sense it can either apply to either the absolute
standard or the application of that absolute standard and so in some places it
refers to righteousness and other places to justice.
But because God is
absolute righteousness and perfect justice God can not have fellowship with
creatures that do not come up to that standard. We are all obnoxious to God and
we all have sin natures, we are all
falling short of the glory of God and that there is nothing in any of us, in
our personalities, in our upbringing, in our talents, in our abilities, in our
mental abilities, in anything that we do that makes us valuable to God. But God
has demonstrated His love for us in that He sent his Son to die on the cross
for us, so that all of our sins were imputed to Him. The reason we sin in the
first place is because we have one real imputation (we studied the doctrine of
imputations, that there were 7 different imputations), one of the real
imputations was Adam’s original sin, imputed to each one of us at the moment of
physical birth. We are born physically alive but spiritually dead and we have a
sin nature, so we are sinners because we have a sin nature. So our
unrighteousness and our sins had to be judicially imputed to Jesus Christ
because He was perfect righteousness. Because He was perfect righteousness there
wasn’t a natural home or natural affinity for our unrighteousness, so it’s a
judicial imputation. All of our sins were poured out upon Him on the cross; he
carried our sins in His body on the cross. He paid the penalty for every single
sin in human history and when we trust Christ as our saviour his perfect
righteousness is then imputed to us, that is a second judicial imputation
because there is not a natural home for perfect righteousness in our sinful
bodies, so His perfect righteousness is imputed to us and now when God looks at
us He sees the fact that we have this perfect righteousness.
The root of
righteousness is DIKAIOSUNE and so God then acts (this act is a verb and the
verb is DIKIAIO from the same word as DIKAIOSUNE), with DIKAIO God declares us
to be justified. He declares us to be righteous. We are righteous because we
possess the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. So God declares us to be
righteous. This is called justification and then he is able to bless us because
of the righteousness of Christ in us and not because of anything that we do.
That is the foundation for Paul’s argument here. Is that we have been justified
freely by God’s grace, He did everything for us and the results of that mean
that there is something different going on in the believer’s life, we are new
creature in Christ Paul says in 2 Cor 5:17. It is a radically new scenario, the
minute after we are saved. Paul begins to develop that.
Now the reason is
that at the cross there were certain eternal things that happened as well as
temporal realities. Part of the eternal realities is that we are united in
Christ and this is the subject of these first three verses “Do you not know
that all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus have been baptised into
his death” This is referring to the baptism of God the Holy Spirit. In the
baptism of God the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit identifies us with the
death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That’s the significance of that
word baptism, is that we are identified fully with the death, burial and resurrection
of Christ.
So the question
that Paul says in Romans 6:3, “...Or do you not know that all of us who have
been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? ...”
“Don’t you know?
Don’t you understand this?” experientially all of us that have been baptised
into Jesus Christ, (the past tense there refers to the moment of salvation),
have been baptised (that word is simultaneous with baptism, baptism into
Christ) at that moment we are baptised into his death.
Romans 6:4, “...Therefore
we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in
newness of life...”
“Therefore, [conclusion] we have been buried
with him through baptism into death…”
What has happened
here according to the chart is that at the moment of our faith alone in Christ
alone through the baptism of God the Holy Spirit, we are placed in Christ, that
unites us with everything Christ has done and everything that He is and we
possess a vast number of spiritual realities that are ours from that moment
forward. And that becomes the basis for being able to live the spiritual life.
Now the spiritual life is indicated by the filling of the Holy Spirit and that
is going to be a different subject that we will develop later on.
It starts off with
the word UN – “...therefore...” drawing an inference from the previous
statement. Paul in his process here is that he makes a point of doctrine and
then he says, “Therefore…” Let’s draw out the implications about this and go to
the next point, “If we have been baptised, if we have been identified with
Christ’s death. What was that death?” That death was His spiritual
substitutionary death on the cross. So death here is the first clue to gain an
understanding where we are going to go in verse 11, to be dead to sin is
related to what transpired at the cross. Therefore because we have been
identified with Christ death (that’s a real identification) conclusion, we have
been buried with Him, (after he died He went into the ground), so not only have
we been identified with His death but we have been buried with Him through
baptism into death. So we are identified with His death and burial.
This is the aorist
passive indicative first person singular of SUNTHAPTO which means to be buried
together with in co – joint with, so it indicates a unity and it is a figure of
speech that it represents something. It represents separation from, separation
from physical life and the point that is being made here is that just as we
died with Christ on the cross we are buried, now what is buried? Well we are
going to see that what is buried is the sin nature, it’s not removed, it is buried.
There is a funeral for the sin nature at the point of salvation.
Romans 6:4 states,
“...Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death in order
that [for the purpose] as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of
the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life…”
Jesus prays to the
father in John 17: 1 – 5 “…Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to
heaven, He said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the
Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all
whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. "This is eternal life
that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
"I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have
given Me to do.” Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory
which I had with You before the world was...” Now what is Jesus saying there?
Glorify me at the cross, resurrection and the ascension with the same glory I
had from eternity past when I was with you before the incarnation.
Romans 6:4 states,
“…Just as Jesus Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the
Father, so we too might walk in newness of life…”
This is the answer
to the high priestly prayer Jesus prayed in John 17:1 – 5. That the glory of
the father to glorify him throughout the angelic conflict raised Jesus Christ
from the dead as a validation of his substitutionary work on the cross. That’s
the analogy on one side of the equation.
Resurrection leads
to a new glorified life for Christ on this side, in the same way because we
have been identified with Christ our identification (this is still retroactive
positional truth) with his death, burial and resurrection means that we have
new life. A new quality of life! A new kind of life and a new basis of life,
after salvation. That is Gods purpose in
our life was not to save us, that’s the starting point. He saved us so we can
have a new quality of life, that’s the plan. The plan is not just to get us
saved but to produce in us the fullness of this quality of life.
Romans 6: 5
states, “…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.”
This moves us one step further in the
argument. Not only are we identified we have become united with Christ. The
Greek word for united is SUMPHUTOS, which means to grow together and relates to
something that is closely identified and likened together. So this unity that
we have in Christ is what is produced by that identification, it is a close
intimate unity. “…For if we have become …” is a first class condition. “If” and
we will assume it to be true, that we have become united with Him, certainly we
shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection. He is reiterating and
repeating himself.
Romans 6: 6
states, “...knowing this, that our old self was crucified with {Him,} in order
that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be
slaves to sin; ...”
Corrected
translation:
Romans 6: 6 states,
“… because we know this – our old self
was crucified with Him that [result] our body of sin [sin nature] might be done
away with, that [result] we should no longer be slaves to sin…”
Paul is assuming
that he and his readers both know this principle. Here he uses the Greek verb
GINOSKO. This word tends to emphasis experiential knowledge. This is something
they have learned already in their Christian life and their study of doctrine,
it’s a principle common to all of them and it’s in their soul. Paul is
appealing to something they have already learned in order to take them from the
known to the unknown.
What is the “old
man”? The person we were under the dominion of the sin nature before we were
saved. Where Paul is going with the
whole argument here is that before you were saved you were enslaved and under
the tyranny of the sin nature and there was nothing we could do but sin. When Paul says that the ‘old self was
crucified with Him,’ – all that we were under the tyranny of the sin nature is
crucified. That’s gone. For the purpose of; eliminating or abolishing the
effectiveness of the body of sin [sin nature]. If the old man is crucified so
we should no longer be slaves to sin, it’s the dominion of the sin nature (everything
we were under that tyranny) is crucified so that we will no longer be slaves to
sin. Remember this whole concept of slavery is going to be the image that Paul
uses in the second half of the chapter. Then he says “… because the one who has
died [identified with Christ’s death, burial and resurrection] is freed
[justified] from sin…”
Now he is going to
turn around and reiterate this in Verse 8 “…Now if we have died with Christ, we
believe that we shall also live with Him…” that’s indicated with death and
resurrection.
Romans 6: 9
states, “… knowing that [because we know] that Christ having been raised from
the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over him…”
What do we know
here? This is a self evident axiom from EIDO that if you just think about what
has happened historically it should be evident. He is developing this intricate
argument he says that because he died and he rose again, death is no longer
master over him. So let’s apply that. [Given in verse 10]
Romans
So He died to sin
on the cross, you died to sin on the cross. He now lives to God, so now we are
to live to God. Because the sin nature’s power was broken on the cross, we can
now live to God. We couldn’t before hand. So he has laid down this foundation
for us.
Same principle
Paul states in another Gal 4:20, “... I have been crucified with Christ, it is no
longer I who live but Christ who lives in me and the life that I live now in
the flesh [physical body] I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and
delivered Himself up for me...”
It is the
principle back in Romans
Romans 6: 9 states,
“...Because you know that Christ having been raised from the dead, is never to
die again; death no longer is master over Him. Because the death that he died, he
died to sin, once for all; but the life that he lives, he lives to God...” The
analogy is brought out in the next verse.
Romans
Here we have a
crucial word brought out in this verse, this is the word LOGIZOMAI, it is the
present middle imperative of LOGIZOMAI it’s a deponent, it’s a middle inform
but its active in meaning. This means that the believer performs the action in
carrying out this command. You are to consider yourselves dead to sin. But
‘consider’ is a fairy weak word. The word LOGIZOMAI means; to reckon, to
calculate, to count, to take into account, to evaluate, to estimate, to
think, to ponder, to deliberate, to
conclude. This is a THINKING word, not an emoting word or a ‘feeling’ word.
What have we seen here, we have seen because you know something? You know: -
Now, because you
know these doctrines, you are exhorted to go to the next stage and apply it
into your thinking. Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, because you were
identified with Christ’s death to Sin (v10), he died to sin on the cross,
therefore know: that you have died to sin. There has been a judicial break
there so that the sin nature is no longer in power. For every believer this is
true. You are dead to sin. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a sin nature, nor
are you immune to the temptation of the sin nature, it doesn’t mean it’s any
easier to resist the temptations from the sin nature. What it does mean is that
before you were saved you had no option but to submit to the tyrannical rule of
the sin nature. But that was broken at the moment of your salvation. So now for
the first time in your life, you have the full freedom that Adam had before the
fall. You are no longer a slave to sin. You now have true freedom to live for
God, which you never could before.
So the basis for
being able to live the spiritual life is firmly grounded in what happens in the
reality of our positional identification and union with Christ in death, burial
and resurrection. That’s why when we come to the three stages of salvation and
we talk about phase one, phase two and phase three, we always talk about phase
one salvation as a moment in time, it is not a process, (if you come out of a Roman
Catholic back ground justification is a process and its simultaneous with
sanctification, they are both processes). But this teaches that something
happened in a point in time that broke the sin nature, that’s Justification.
The spiritual life is phase two and it grows out of justification but it is not
the automatic results.
See, the Lordship
salvation gospel also gets there. In Lordship salvation they almost go as far
as to say that sanctification is so connected to justification that if you
don’t have sanctification then you were never justified. It is a slick way of
getting back into the same Roman Catholic problem. And then Glorification is
phase three. So we say that phase one is also called positional sanctification.
That’s why we use this terminology. We are positionally sanctified by Christ
and that provides the basis for our progressive or experiential sanctification
in time. (Phase two salvation). We grapple with all the doctrines of salvation
because they are designed by knowing them to motivate us to live more
consistently the spiritual life.
Father, we thank you for the
opportunity to get into your word and to be challenged by these things tonight.
We pray that we would understand more fully all that you have done for us, that
it is not so we can treat our sin lightly or justify it or even be licentious
about it but that we might realise that we were saved to be freed from sin,
that even though we still have this sin nature in us and that we still struggle
with it. We do have the potential and the power now, through the Holy Spirit
and your Word to make true free choices and not to succumb to that sin nature. help
us to understand and apply these things in Jesus name, Amen.