Presenting ourselves to God: Romans 6: 12 – 14 Tape 4
Review:
I.
Retroactive Positional Truth: When the believer is identified with
Christ’s spiritual death, this is a historical happening, the moment we trusted
Christ as our saviour, at that instant a historical reality takes place. We are
identified with Christ and identified with everything that takes place on the
cross because of our position in Christ. We are identified with His death (his
spiritual and physical death), burial and resurrection. That physical death and
burial signifies the judgement on sin so that the rulership of Satan and the
sovereignty of the sin nature are broken. Up to that point we are all under the
tyranny of the sin nature. So in
retroactive positional truth at the moment in time when we trust Christ as
saviour we are identified with the event 2000 yrs ago in church history and his
death becomes our death.
II.
Current Positional Truth: This is identification with Christ in his
ascension, compared to retroactive positional truth which goes to Christ in his
death, burial and resurrection as a historical event in the past. Now he is currently
seated at the right hand of God the Father. So it is identification with Christ
as he is now seated at the right hand of the Father in His resurrection
ascension and session, it focuses on the provision for the believer of a new
spiritual life with its attendant potential blessings. Now these are
potential only in the sense that they have been provided for us, they are ours,
they have been determined to be ours from eternity past and has nothing to do
with what we do or don’t do. We do not receive blessing because we are
obedient. We receive blessings and these blessing are handed out on the basis
of our maturity and as we reach maturity God then bestows those blessings and
passes them out because if He gives them too soon they could ruin us. Blessings
are not given as rewards they are ours already but they are not activated unless
we reach a position where we are ready to handle those particular
blessings.
Retroactive
positional truth cancels the power of the sin nature and it is current Positional
truth that provides us with the newness of life.
The eternal realities are realities we have “in Christ” this incorporates
all that He is and all that He has done are ours at the instant or faith alone
in Christ alone we are baptised by means of God the Holy Spirit, that means
that we are identified with Him legally and judicially so that everything that
happens on the cross in effect happened to us at that point so that we died
with Him, we were buried with Him, and we rose to new life.
The temporal realities are those realities that are temporal in the
Christian life. We are filled by the spirit and walking by the spirit or
whether we are out of fellowship in carnality under the sin nature. Prior to
salvation we had no choice but to be under the sin nature, but after salvation
it is exclusively a matter of our own volition.
I.
Phase
one
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Also
called positional sanctification.
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Phase
one takes place at the cross and it takes place in an instant in time, it is
not a process. This is the problem with Roman Catholic theology. Justification
in Roman Catholic theology is a process; it takes place over time, just as
sanctification does. So the happen together and frankly in Roman Catholic
theology you never know when you have enough! You are meriting the merit of
Christ and every time you participate in one of the seven sacraments, you
receive a little more grace. How much grace do you need to be saved? No body
knows! They don’t understand that phase one is a point in time.
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We are
freed from the penalty of Sin.
II.
Phase
two
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Also
called progressive sanctification.
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This
is the spiritual life and is called sanctification and it is our growth from
spiritual infancy to spiritual maturity.
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We are
freed from the power of sin. That’s why up to Romans
III.
Phase
three
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Ultimate
Sanctification.
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Glorification,
when we are absent from the body and face to face with the Lord.
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We are
freed from the presence of sin.
I.
We
have been identified with Christ’s death so that in His death we truly,
historically died to sin. It is not experiential in the sense that we feel
something. Or that at the moment of salvation you say ‘oh, now I realise I just
don’t have to sin anymore!’ We don’t know that until we read the scriptures. See,
baptism with the Holy Spirit and identification with Christ is real, its
historical it is retroactive. In Christ death on the cross we die but we don’t
know about it until we come to the scriptures and read about it and study it.
II.
We
have been buried with Him. We not only died with Him but we were buried
with Him.
III.
We
have been resurrected with Him to new life, the model that Paul uses is
that just as He was raised to a new life with God, so we are raised with a new
life, a new spiritual life, so that on the basis of that, sin is no longer to
be a master over us, we are free from sin.
IV.
Salvation
is not the end; it’s the means to an end. A lot of people think that salvation
is the theme of the Bible. But a theme has to express an end, not a means.
Salvation is merely a means to an end. What is the end? The end is to
glorify God. Towards that end, God gives us the new basis for life, quality
of life and capacity of life and that comes only by fulfilling the mandates
related to the spiritual life.
V.
This
new spiritual life is ours positionally but does not become ours in experience
until we apply the spiritual life mandates and make those habitual in
our lives. That means we have to change!
VI.
We
are no longer enslaved therefore to the tyranny of the sin nature, we do have a real choice to make now and we
can choose not to operate on the power of the sin nature.
Unbelievers can choose whether or not to sin, they can
either sin or have human good, but they can not choose not to operate on the
sin nature, because they do not have the Holy Spirit, they do not have an alternative
power source. All they have is their sin nature, its either personal sin or
human good. But we have an option and we can live on the basis of the Holy
Spirit.
The main verb here is LOGIZOMAI it is the present middle imperative, it
is a deponent verb, that’s the OMAI ending, it is middle in form but it is
active in meaning. This means that the believer performs the action in carrying
out this command. The word LOGIZOMAI means; to reckon, to calculate, to count,
to take into account, to evaluate, to estimate, to think, to ponder, to deliberate and to conclude.
One thing all of those meanings have in common is that this is a
function of cognition; this is not a function of emotion. What we learn when we
come to that verse is that the key issue, the central issues in the
spiritual life are going to be determined by WHAT YOU THINK AND WHAT YOU
CHOOSE. That’s the battle field. The
battle field is between our ears, the battle field is not how we feel. The
battle field is not what Satan is doing. The battle field is not what the world
is doing. THE BATTLE FIELD IS WHAT WE ARE CHOOSING TO ACT ON BETWEEN OUR EARS. It’s
what we are choosing to believe, to learn and to act upon.
So the fact that you have an active imperative here, addresses the
volition and the meaning of the word addresses cognition. We can go back and
see that this is the major emphasis in this whole section.
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Verse
three, “Do you not know that
all of us who have been baptised into Christ Jesus…’ then he explains the
doctrine.
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Then
we have a causal adverbial participle in verse 6, “…because we know this, that our old self was crucified with
him…”
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Then
we have a causal adverbial participle in verse 9, “…Because we know Christ, having been raised from the dead, is
never to die again; death no longer is master over him.”
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Then
in verse 11 concludes with a mandate to know something, “...Even so consider yourselves to be dead
to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus...” it is knowledge, it is thinking.
The Christian life is a life of thought; it is not a life of emotion
that does not mean that we do not have emotional responses to the truth as we
learn it.
What Paul says is that we need to think about it, focus on it, let it
sit on our minds and meditate on it and think about all of its ramifications
because it is in the power of the truth that our thinking changes and we begin
to realise who and what we are in Christ, post – salvation as opposed to who
and what we were under the control of the sin nature prior to salvation.
So the key to sanctification then is in the mentality of what you think
and that means you have to think about it. We can’t just come to Bible – class
and fill up our note books and say ‘isn’t that wonderful I understand the
terminology,’ but to go home and think about it, when you are driving home –
think about it, when you are alone and have the time to think what all this
means and all the ramifications are. Then Paul is going to unpack that for us a
little more in the next three verses.
Romans
Therefore because
you have been identified with Christ’s crucifixion, because you have been
identified with his burial, because you have been identified with His resurrection
and given new life, therefore because of that, do not let sin reign. Notice how
all of a sudden for five and half chapters there has not been a single command,
but now he is just piling up one mandate after another.
Positive command, ‘consider
yourselves dead to sin,’ think about it, calculate it, recon it, deliberate it,
conclude; you are dead to sin, therefore because you are dead to sin, don’t let
sin reign. Which is the present active imperative of prohibition from the word
BASILEIOS, which simply means to rule or to reign and indicates the imperial
tyranny of the sin nature over the unbeliever? But now because it’s an
imperative mood we know that that is addressed to the volition of the believer.
So now it is up to us, before you were saved you never had a choice, sin always
reigned. But now that we are believers we have a choice, sin can dominate or
not! What makes the difference? The difference is our volition. See, the sin
nature is the source of temptation but it is our volition that is the source of
sin. That is the determination. What choice we make. “Therefore do not let
sin reign [rule/reign/dominate] in your mortal body…”
Now why this
emphasis on the body? We saw earlier in verse 6 “...that our old self was
crucified with him...” What is the old man? It is at least the sin nature but
it is everything we are under the tyranny/dominion of the sin nature. It is not
excluding the sin nature from the meaning of the word but it is more than
simply the sin nature and it is more than just the positional death of the sin
nature. Because it is that old man that is dead and it is that dominion of the
old sin nature that is dead, old man includes all of that. “…That the body of
sin…” (The continuing sin nature that stays in our life, that continues to
plague us throughout our lives), “…might be done away with.” That is the
purpose! It is a potential, the reason that we are crucified is for the purpose
of doing away with the sin nature. Now that doesn’t happen completely until
phase three salvation … Now don’t go out here and think now I’m going to be
sinlessly perfect.
Romans
Romans 6: 13, we
come across a very interesting phrase. “…and
do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of
unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and
your members as instruments of righteousness to God...”
Now this is one of
those interesting phrases that have a lot of confusion to it, and a lot of
different historical aspects to it. You
have two imperative verbs in this verse and they are both translated in the
NASB version as present. The Old King James version translated it ‘yield.’ It
starts off with an imperative of prohibition, it is a present active imperative
of the verb PAR HISTEMI it is a compound verb, and it has a wide variety of
meanings. It means to place beside, to put at someone’s disposal, to stand, to
provide, to place, to bring, to offer, to approach. It has a wide variety of
meanings and one of many is the concept to yield! This was the word that was
used in the Old King James.
What does yield
mean? Submit to the authority of God, to give up your will and replace it with
God’s will.
There are a number
of verses in the New Testament crucial for understanding the spiritual life and
that use is the word PAR HISTEMI, an example is in:
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Romans
12:1, “I urge you
therefore brethren, by the mercies of God to present [PAR HISTEMI] your bodies a living and Holy sacrifice…”
You offer something to someone for there use. It is a term that in this
sense is part of our worship. We are presenting our lives to God, we are no
longer going to follow our will our dictate which would be from our sin –
nature but we are going to replace our thinking with God’s thinking and our
priorities with his priorities, our plans with his plans and our purposes with
his purposes, so that we can serve Him and demonstrate that His will is good, perfect
and acceptable.
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Colossians
1:22, “Yet He [Jesus
Christ] has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to
[purpose clause] present you before Him holy [HAGIOS], blameless and beyond
reproach…”
That is the goal of sanctification, God’s goal for your life is to
present us before God, Holy, blameless and beyond reproach. That is idea of PAR
HISTEMI, to present or place before or to offer to God.
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Colossians
1:28, “And we proclaim Him,
admonishing every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, that we may
present [PAR HISTEMI] every man complete [TELEIOS – mature] in Christ.”
That is the goal of the pastoral ministry, is to present every believer
mature in Christ, and that covers the sanctification theme. That deals with the
whole idea of offering ourselves under the authority of God as opposed to our
own authority.
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2
Timothy 2: 15, “Be
diligent to present [PAR HISTEMI] your-self approved to God as a workman who
does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of Truth.”
Now, that is the meaning of the word PAR
HISTEMI, to present ourselves to God.
History of ideas
of Spiritual life…
Romans 6: 13
states, “…and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as
instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive
from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.”
To bring it into
our vernacular is the idea of submitting to the authority of someone. Do not go
on submitting to the authority of the sin nature by presenting your body as
instruments of unrighteousness but submit yourselves to God’s authority as
those alive from the dead. See, this goes back to his argument, we are alive from
the dead, and we have been crucified with Christ.
Now the difference
is that the present tense prohibition indicates stop doing something that you
are doing, the aorist tense emphasises the importance of urgency of the action
but it is not making it a once off decision, it is not a once for all decision.
The aorist just takes all the aspects of something pulls it together and treats
it as one thing. It doesn’t emphasise it as a once for all decision, that has
nothing to do with the aorist tense, it emphasises the inception of the act or
the urgency of the act or both, I think its both here. It is urgent because it
is a priority in the Christian life, you are not going to get anywhere and you
need to start doing it if you haven’t been doing it, and that the context here
with the Romans. You need to start submitting yourself to the authority of God
as those alive from the dead because you are alive from the dead and your
members (that is your body, mind and every part of your being), as instruments
of righteousness to God.
Why? Romans
That’s why I went
back and traced the break down in church history, when you had that original
break down and failure to understand the distinction between
Father, we thank you that you
have done everything for us, not only for salvation but that salvation has
provided everything that we need for the spiritual life. It is based on the
fact that we have been positionally identified with Christ’s death, burial and
resurrection. Therefore the power of the sin nature has been broken so that we
can truly go forward with out being under the dominion and tyranny of the sin
nature. We pray that we would be challenged by these things and that we would
find the time to think, reflect and let our mentality be washed by your word.
We pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.