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Years ago, when our children were young, our family did some camping at Brown County State Park in Nashville, Indiana. One time as we were hiking through the woods, we spied a long, thick-bodied timber rattler slowly winding its way through the undergrowth a few feet from our path. We knew it was a timber rattler because we had just seen one in the nature center. What did we do? Did we invite him over for a friendly chat? Are you kidding? We took off as fast as our legs could carry us.
Speaking of snakes, we had a pastor in Greenville, SC, who warned us: “Run away from sin like you’d run away from a barrel of rattlesnakes.” Sin is your mortal enemy. Given the chance, sin would like to ruin your life. Sin has destroyed lives and ruined marriages, families, relationships. Sin is destroying our nation right now. Thomas Watson in the 1600s wrote about England, “Sin has brought our nation low. We are falling down—if not collapsed. We do not lack for sin. There is a spirit of wickedness in the land. Ours are mighty sins, bloody sins.” He could certainly have been describing America, 2023. Our land is infested with sins Thomas Watson never even thought of.
When God saved you, He saved you from sin’s penalty and now as a believer He is in the process of saving you or delivering you from sin’s power, which is what we call progressive sanctification. The opposite of sin is holiness, godliness, likeness to Christ. And Paul’s whole point in Romans 6 is to show us how God is developing holiness in our lives. It all started back in verse 1 when someone asked that impertinent question, “Shall we continue in sin that grace might abound?” And you know the answer: “Don’t even think about parking there,” or more forcefully, “Good heavens, no!” And right up to verse 11 Paul has shown us that we’ve been united to Christ, identified with Christ, died with Christ, and made alive with Christ, so that for a believer it is impossible to continue in a sinful lifestyle. But how do we successfully fight sin?
SAVED TO BE HOLY
Why did God save you? Not just to give you a “get out of hell free” ticket, although in Christ we have that assurance. Christ endured our hell for us. But Scripture repeatedly says God saved us to make us holy like His Son. Holiness is His purpose and must be our pursuit.
Ephesians 1:3-4, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, 4 just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him…
1 Peter 1:14-16, As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; 16 because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.”
There is no question that God’s will for us is to pursue holiness, which is the opposite of sin. This morning Paul is giving us a clear, simple formula for fighting sin in our lives. What kind of sins? All of them. Sins of attitudes, words, and behaviors. Sinful habits and addictions, sinful reactions and actions are all included. While some sins are much harder to conquer because they are more deeply embedded, for the believer in Christ there is no sin too hard for God to deal with in our lives. Our view of sin is too soft. We don’t see sin the way God does. If we had a greater view of God’s holiness, we’d see sin for what it is – vile, filthy, an abomination.
We need to be at war with sin and settle for nothing less than victory in our fight against sin. In verses 11-14 God has given us four key truths to help us fight sin and develop holiness in our lives. Let’s get started.
REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE
Romans 6:11, Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
This is the first imperative, the first command in Romans. Paul has taken great pains up to here explaining our identity in Christ, how we are united to Christ and our old man was crucified with Christ, that we died with Christ and now we live with Christ to God. Now, what should you do with all that teaching? Verse 11 summarizes what we’ve already been taught, but it is a command, something we are responsible to do.
“Even so consider….” The first thing you need to do is keep your mind active spiritually. God wants you to consider or reason with the truth. God wants you to learn to apply doctrine to your life. Consider yourself, think about yourself in a certain way. Not as an empty love tank needing other people to fill your neediness. Not as a poor victim who has been mistreated and is helpless to deal with life. Not as someone who is helplessly enslaved to drugs or sex or any other addiction. Have you noticed God only gave us one Bible for all different kinds of sinners – angry, depressed, worldly, lusting? The world divides us and pits us against each other, but God unites us in that all people everywhere need His truth. God’s message is the same for everyone. God’s word applies to every person in the same way, through Christ and His cross and in the power of His Spirit. God didn’t need modern psychology to help His people fight sin.
God says you need to think about yourself in a biblical way, as a child of God, as united with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, and that means think about yourself as dead to sin. Dead to sin means unresponsive to sin. Sin is no longer your life. You’re not entertaining and inviting sin in anymore. You died to sin. Any sin. All sin. Even though sin is still very alive to you, you in Christ are dead to sin. Keep that before your mind. When tempted, you remember to consider yourselves what? Dead to sin. If you go back over verses 1-10, you’ll see this over and over, beginning in verse 2, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”
The other side of who you are given in verse 11 is amazing and crucial. You are alive to God in Christ! You’ve been regenerated! You have a new heart! Your chains fell off, you’ve been set free! Your whole life is now living to God, responding to God’s will, God’s Spirit, God’s truth. Unsaved people are alive to sin and dead to God. Not you. You’re dead to sin and alive to God. You have an inner desire to please God. Philippians 2:13 says, “God is at work in you to will and to do of His good pleasure.” The more you think about that, the more you delight in God working in you through your Savior Jesus Christ. The more you delight in your Savior, the more your hope in God grows and your trust in God becomes living and active. You’ll love God so much you’ll want to deliver sin a crushing blow whenever sin sticks its ugly face in your life.
So step number one is to remember who you are – dead to sin and alive to God. Keep that truth always in front of you. Memorize verse 11 and think on it. Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God because you are in Christ Jesus! This will be ammunition to shoot down temptations that suddenly come upon you, whether they crawl up out of your own heart like filthy lizards or they surprise you from outside and try to get you to react in a godless way. Shoot them down quickly. Have no mercy on the little monsters.
NEVER QUIT FIGHTING SIN IN YOUR LIFE
Romans 6:12-13a, Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness….
You know what “therefore” means. In view of what’s just been said you have a responsibility. This is so important. As a believer you aren’t a victim of sin. You can’t say, “I just can’t help it.” You can’t say, “That’s just the way I’ve always been.” That may be so, but you’re not what you used to be. Maybe you developed habits of anger or were easily irritated or held grudges against people who hurt you or lied your way out of trouble. Maybe you’ve been very selfish, very self-centered, addicted to your own pleasure. But you’re not who you used to be! In Christ you’re dead to sin and alive to God and now you are at war with sin. Your hope is who you are in Christ. No matter what your past was or how you were treated, God says you can fight and defeat sin in your life.
The bad news is that sin is still alive to you. Sin is in your members, in your mortal body. Sin fights to gain the mastery over you again. Sin wants to climb back up on the throne of your body. Sin wants to crash into your cockpit and hijack your mind. But you have all you need in Christ to keep sin at bay. God says don’t let sin, any sin, reign. Christ delivered you from slavery to sin (v. 6). Now you must believe (because it’s true) that you can do battle with sin and knock him right out of the ring. He’ll be back, don’t worry, but you can deal sin a knockout punch! Like Rocky, sin may beat you to a bloody pulp, but like Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9, fight back.
1 Corinthians 9:27, but I discipline (beat) my body and make it my slave, so that, after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.
“I discipline” means I beat my body and make it my slave, unresponsive to sin. Don’t let sin take control and get you to obey its lusts. And sin does breed lusts – sinful desires that give you pleasure. It feels so good to unload on that character. Sin feeds our pleasure. But God says, “Don’t let sin reign in your mortal or physical body.” That means you are responsible and God gives you all the power you need to keep sin off the throne. Like one of our other former pastors used to bellow, “Boot him out!” Show sin no mercy! Don’t excuse or coddle sin in any way.
1 Peter 2:11, Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.
There’s a second “do not” in verse 13. Your body has members – a mind, eyes, tongue, ears, arms and hands, feet, all kinds of members that sin wants to use for his purposes. God says stop giving sin access to the members of your body! Sin wants to use your members or parts of your body as tools or weapons to work unrighteousness into your life and defile you, even potentially destroy you. Don’t allow it! Christ talked about this in Matthew 18:8-9. We call this radical amputation: cut off and get rid of anything in your life that makes sinning easier.
Matthew 18:8-9, “If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it from you; it is better for you to enter life crippled or lame, than to have two hands or two feet and be cast into the eternal fire. 9 “If your eye causes you to stumble, pluck it out and throw it from you. It is better for you to enter life with one eye, than to have two eyes and be cast into the fiery hell.
Jesus is obviously not speaking literally here, but he is emphasizing how radical we should be to fight sin in our bodies. Sin destroys and damns. And it not only destroy you, but your sin will affect those around you. Ask Achan. His whole family paid. Your greed can affect others. I’ve read recently about the sinking of the Sultana just days after the end of the Civil War on the Mississippi River near Memphis. It’s the biggest maritime disaster in U.S. history. More perished there than the Titanic. Why? One man’s greed. The government promised good money for transporting Union soldiers from a southern prison camp in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The 260-foot-long steamer Sultana had three boilers and one needed major repair, but Captain Mason seeing big bucks in his eyes, settled for a temporary fix. He didn’t want to miss the opportunity to make that money. The Sultana was designed to carry no more than 376 passengers, but they jammed almost 2000 on the boat. Just past Memphis at 2 AM on April 27, 1865, one of the boilers exploded, followed by the other two. Passengers were either killed in the flames as the ship was sinking or in the cold Mississippi River. Greed caused this horrific disaster. Captain Mason’s greed took his own life, and many others with him.
Don’t let sin reign or climb back into the seat of authority over your life, and don’t let sin use any parts of your body as weapons for its war against God’s work in your life. Guard your eyes. Remember Eve: she saw, she wanted, she took. Guard your mind. Romans 12:2 says, “renew your mind” by God’s word. What are you feeding your mind? I cringe to think what our nation is feeding its mind on. The previews of coming movies are almost all dark, ugly, bizarre. It doesn’t take much discernment to see how godless, ugly, and abominable so much of entertainment is as it glamorizes and affirms unthinkable sexual perversion. Beware of the perversions and bizarre ideologies permeating our society. Don’t become desensitized to them. Know what your children are learning under the guise of education in the books presented to them in public and school libraries. One author way back in 1963 said, “As a thinking being the modern Christian has succumbed to secularization.” Guard your eyes and mind. Don’t fudge even a little. Then guard your children. Know what is influencing them and what they are thinking. Choose your family’s books and entertainment very wisely.
Don’t let sin reign in your mortal body. I think it was MacArthur who said Christians and preaching are the conscience of a nation. That’s why we need strong Christians pursuing purity and godliness. We need strong husbands and fathers who are fighting fearlessly against their own sin and as good examples for their children. We need godly wives and mothers committed to purity, modesty, and loving their children.
NEVER QUIT GIVING YOURSELF TO GOD
Romans 6:13b, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
First a quick Greek lesson. “But” in this verse is a strong adversative, “alla.” In great contrast to presenting yourself and your members to sin, now present yourself to God. You’re alive from the dead; you’re alive to God. God gave you your body to honor Him, so present or bring your whole self, your body and mind, before God for His service.
And present your members as instruments or tools or weapons. We’re in a war for God’s glory in this sin-infested world. We are to be living righteous lives for the glory of God in our day. In one sense, God’s reputation in this world depends on you and me.
That’s why Paul wrote, “Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Put on the full armor of God so we can stand firm against the schemes of the devil” (Eph. 6:10-11). God wants every part of us, including all our members. Francis Havergal wrote, “Take my life and let it be, consecrated Lord to Thee. Take my hands, take my feet, take my lips, take my silver and gold, and take my intellect, my will. Take my heart, it is Thine own, it shall be Thy royal throne!” You are not your own; you should not live for yourself. God intervened in your spiritual deadness, joined you to His Son, gave you eternal life, and now you belong to Him. Present yourself and every part of you at God’s disposal! Keep God’s Word before your eyes and view every member of your body as a weapon for God’s glory and righteousness!
YOUR MOTIVATION TO KEEP ON FIGHTING THE WAR AGAINST SIN
Romans 6:14, For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
Here’s your hope in your fight with sin. As a believer in Christ, while sin wants to climb back on the throne and control your mortal body (physical body), you can be sure that sin with all its evil and corrupting and damning influence will never be your master again. We saw this back in verse 6. You will never again be slaves to sin; you are free from its shackles. This fight against sin and for righteousness should be filled with hope, joy, and zeal for Christ. It’s not burdensome. Nehemiah 8:6 says the joy of the Lord is your strength.
And why? Because you’re not under the law but under grace. If you were under the law, sin would still be your master because the law renders you guilty and helpless in sin. The law is good, but it can’t save or transform your life or deliver you from sin. Only the grace of God can transform your life.
Grace is your motivation. Commentator Robert Haldane wrote, “Holiness is not the result of the law, but of the liberty wherewith Christ has made His people free. He sends forth the Spirit of grace into our hearts.” By the grace of God we are what we are. Grace forgives and gives us a new heart. Grace empowers us to put off those ugly sins of the old man and put on the fruit of the Spirit. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness,” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
Fight against sin and for holiness and righteousness. God has given you more than enough through His Word and Spirit to come through your individual battles against sin triumphantly. And when you sin, which you will, His grace is right there to forgive you and restore you and keep you fighting the good fight of the faith. How are you doing in your fight against sin? Men, ladies, singles and young people – are you taking a firm stand and being careful to give yourself to God every day? With gratitude loving Him with your heart, filling your mind with His Word, and giving you body in acts that please Him?
And if you’re not a Christian, you need a Redeemer from your sin, a Savior to take your punishment for sin. Sin is anything contrary to the will God as given in His Word, the Bible. Sin is deadly, destructive, and damning. Only Christ by His grace can save you from that curse of sin on your life. And God sent Christ into this world to save sinners. Trust Him as your Lord and Savior. And then tell Him you are trusting Him.