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I want to zoom out a little before we dive into Romans 6:5-11 to get a bigger picture of the Christian life and what happens when you come to Christ. There are three major doctrines of your Christian life in relation to the curse and power of sin. All three have five syllables. First there’s justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Justification saves you from the penalty of sin by imputing to you Christ’s perfect righteousness. Justification is a once for all act by God when you trusted Christ to save you. But justification always leads to sanctification, which is a progressive, life-long saving you from the power of sin. As we’ll see later in Romans, as a believer God has given you all you need to be victorious over sin. No Christian can say, “I can’t help it; I just had to sin.” God’s sanctifying work in your life says you can overcome sin. You still sin, but you don’t have to. Justification is at the beginning of your Christian life saving you from the penalty of sin; sanctification is the life-long process of God’s saving you from the power of sin. And finally at the end, there’s glorification, when you either die and go to be with Jesus or Jesus comes back for us. Glorification is when God saves you finally from the very presence of sin and makes you just like Christ. So, through Jesus Christ and His work on the cross God saves you from the penalty, the power, and finally the very presence of sin.
But there’s another great truth that you need to understand that is behind these three doctrines of salvation. That is the great truth of regeneration (also five syllables), when God gives you a new heart. You would never believe in Christ unless God changed your heart. You were spiritually dead, blind, deaf, enslaved to sin, captive to Satan and the powers of darkness, incapable of discerning the things of the Spirit, and totally unable to change yourself any more than a mouse can change himself into an elephant. You were helpless and hopeless in your sin until God regenerated you. This is the new birth. This is when God monergistically, God Himself without your help, gives you that new heart Ezekiel talks about.
Ezekiel 36:26-27, “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.
How does God do this? James 1:18 says He gives us this new life through the preaching of the Word. First Peter 1:23 agrees, “You’ve been born again through the living and abiding Word of God.” In Acts 16:14 Lydia was born again, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.” How does this work? It’s a mystery, like the wind blowing where it wills. You may be sitting there listening to God’s Word and suddenly you realize this message is for you. At some point God regenerates your heart, gives you that new life, calls you out of death and darkness into spiritual life, and you believed in Christ. Charles Wesley described it in this powerful way:
Long my imprisoned spirit lay,
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night
Thine eye diffused a quickening ray
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light
My chains fell off, my heart was free
I rose, went forth, and followed Thee
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou, my God shouldst die for me?
So behind your justification, sanctification, and final glorification is your regeneration, that great renewing work of God in your heart that changes you forever. Paul is working with all of this in his counseling us through Romans 6, explaining and urging us to understand who we are in Christ and what God has called us to. This morning we’re going to look at five spiritual realities that take place in your life when you come by faith to Jesus Christ.
FIRST, YOU WERE UNITED WITH CHRIST or brought into union with Christ in His death and resurrection.
Romans 6:5, For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
In verse 3 Paul says you were baptized or immersed into Christ. Now he says you were united with Christ. “If” means “since.” “If and you have been…” United is a beautiful word – sumphutoi – either planted together or as Robert Haldane put it, “it signifies the closest union of any kind.” God implants or engrafts you into Christ. You are made one with Him. He’s the vine, you’re the branches. All your spiritual life derives from Him. It doesn’t get any closer. What’s true of Him is true of you. His story is your story. You are joined to Christ in an unbreakable union! His death is your death. His resurrection life is your spiritual life. James Boice asks, “How do we triumph over sin?” Then he answers, “By knowing what God has done for us when He joined us to Christ.”
SECOND, YOUR OLD MAN WAS ENDED FOREVER IN CHRIST.
Romans 6:6, 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;
Let’s notice how this verse ends before we take it from the beginning. “No longer slaves to sin.” Whatever Paul is going to tell us here has life-changing impact. Jerry Bridges in The Pursuit of Holiness gives several wrong ways Christians try to deal with their sin. Some think it’s easy-peasy no problem, until they mess up. Others say you need to stop trying and start trusting, but that doesn’t work either. Some look for a secret to a holy life, like “let go and let God” or the passive approach, “just let Jesus live His life through you,” like floating down lazy river. But Paul says we need to know and understand who we are in Christ. We were slaves to sin, but God has done something huge for us – He delivered us from sin’s tyranny.
What do you need to know? You need to know what happened to your old man. The word “self” is the Greek word anthropos. The KJV is accurate here. Your old man was crucified with Christ. “Old” means completely worn out, useless, fit only for the scrap heap. Your old man was who you were in Adam. Remember that? You’re either in Adam and condemned in your sin or in Christ, justified, being sanctified, and finally glorified. So, what happened to the old man? He was crucified. Your old status in Adam was ended with Christ in His crucifixion. He doesn’t exist anymore. Sometimes people say, “You’ve got to kill the old man.” No, when God united you to Christ, His death was your death and God saw you crucified with Christ. Your identity used to be in the realm of sin and darkness, but no more. Your old man was ended forever. Remember 2 Corinthians 5:17 – you are now a new creation in Christ.
THIRD, YOU’VE BEEN DELIVERED FROM SIN’S RULING POWER OVER YOUR BODY.
Romans 6:6b-7, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin.
This gets a little tricky here, so hang with me. The body of sin is our physical body under the domination of sin. God made our bodies and they are good. We are not dualists, matter is evil and spirit is good. However, we’re born with a sin nature and sin manifests itself in and through our bodies. Sin rules our minds and works throughout our bodies. We overeat with our bodies. We are sluggards with our bodies. We look at sinful stuff with our eyes. We gossip with our tongues and listen to gossip and slander with our ears. We let our minds, our imaginations, go wild thinking about sinful stuff. Cain thought, “I hate my brother,” and then used his hands and muscles to murder Abel. David spied Bathsheba getting ready for her hot tub, let his mind go crazy with lust, then sinned with his body. The body of sin is your body under sin’s domination, under sin’s slavery.
Now watch this. In your pursuit after holiness, you need to remember your old man was ended at the cross and now, for this purpose, sin’s power over your body might be “done away.” The word “done away” means deprived of force, influence, or power. Sin’s power has had the steam taken out of it. Sin is still there in your body, like those Canaanites running around causing mayhem in the promised land, but sin’s power has been gutted, deprived of absolute domination. This is why the believer can never say “I can’t help it” when it comes to sin. God has joined you to Christ, He has ended your old status in Adam, and sin’s tyranny over your life has ended. Through your union with Christ, you are no longer a slave to sin. You no longer have to obey sin like a slave obeying his master. When you do, you’re acting as if you were still the old man. You’re a new man. Live like it!
We see something similar in Ephesians and Colossians, but we must be careful and interpret in the context. Both references refer to the old man, but in a different way.
Ephesians 4:22-24, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self (man), which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, 23 and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, 24 and put on the new self (man), which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.
Colossians 3:9-10, Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self(man) with its evil practices, 10 and have put on the new self (man) who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him–
Here Paul is talking about old-man habits that we need to lay aside. Paul means stop acting as if you were still that old man. We don’t crucify the old man – God did that for us. But we do put to death those old-man habits of sin. Like the married man I mentioned last week. He’s a new man, he’s married now. So, he has to stop living like a single person and start living like a married man because that’s his new status. No more blatant burping, leaving dirty dishes throughout the house or blobs of toothpaste in the bathroom sink, or hanging out with the guys every night. He’s a new man and now he has to act like one. Sometimes we say, “You’re a grown man! Quit acting like a baby.”
How important to know and understand first who we are in Christ, and then to live that out. Be who you are. Paul is certainly not saying believers can achieve sinless perfection. Some have taught you can get to the point where you never sin. It’s been called “perfected in love,” no longer sinning. One dear soul said, “I’m so close to Jesus I never sin anymore.” “Wow, you must be proud of yourself.” “I am!” Because you are in Christ, you are no longer under sin’s domination, no longer a slave to sin.
FOURTH, YOUR UNION WITH CHRIST MEANS YOU ARE NOW ALIVE TO GOD.
Romans 6:8-10, Now if (and we have) we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
Everything about your Christian life flows out of your union with Christ and His work on the cross. It’s what He did that matters. He is our head and representative. What is true of Him is then true of us spiritually. Paul constantly brings us back to this. He wants us to see how vital our connection with Christ is. All our pursuit of holiness and fighting sin is because we are in Christ and alive with Christ. This isn’t ancient Greek moralizing or “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” philosophy. Your identity is in Him. If He died, you died with Him. If He lives, you live with Him.
Verses 9-10 say Christ died to sin for us, once for all, never to be repeated. Christ will never have to come back down from glory to die again. He is not offered week after week in the mass, where the Roman Catholic church says “Christ offers Himself to God in an unbloody manner under the appearance of bread and wine.” No, Christ died to sin “once for all.” He came under the law, went into death as our head for our sin, and bore the wrath of God for us once for all. Hebrews 9:28 says, “Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.”
On the other side of His death, in verse 10, “the life He lives, He lives to God.” All the trauma and horror of that cup Christ drank for us is in the past. He lives to God as the head of the new people of God. He is in a new, eternal relationship with the Father as head of the new creation, as the God-man seated at the right hand of God, as the Lamb slain, standing in God’s presence for us. After all His redeeming work, His bearing God’s wrath for us, going down into death, He now and forever lives to God.
When He comes to earth again it will be as Lord of Lords and King of Kings, on the clouds of glory, with myriads of angels, with His elect people with Him, coming to rule and reign on earth with all of His people, in brilliant, beautiful life. God’s plan flows out of and returns to Christ, from eternity past when God predestined for Him to come to this world of woe to redeem His people and bring them to glory!
Why did He do all this for us sinners? To display the glory of His pure, sovereign grace, mercy, and love. William Newell wrote these beautiful words:
O the love that drew salvation’s plan,
Oh the grace that brought it down to man,
Oh the mighty gulf that God did span, at Calvary!
Mercy there was great and grace was free.
Pardon there was multiplied to me.
There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary!
FIFTH, BE WHO YOU ARE – DEAD AND ALIVE.
Romans 6:11, Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Consider means reckon or count on it. Add up verses 3-10 and draw the conclusion. Paul has laid this great foundation of our identity in Christ, repeating himself, hammering away, fully explaining why it is impossible to continue in sin that grace may abound, and now, finally – here’s the first imperative in the epistle. Count on these two truths to be true: you are dead to sin and you are alive to God in Christ.
Where are you in verse 11? In Christ. Wherever He is you are. What’s true of Him is true of you. You are in Christ. If you are dying in the hospital, you are in Christ. If they are firing you for standing up for truth and right, you are in Christ. If someone is bullying or just making life hard for you, don’t forget, you’re in Christ. If they are tying you to a stake or laying your head on a stump or languishing in a miserable Burmese death camp like Adoniram Judson, this is the truth about you. You are alive to God in Christ.
Plus, when sin is nipping at your soul, you’re tempted to sit there and worry or feel slighted or tempted to hold a grudge or return evil for evil, remember, you’re in Christ and He died to sin and so did you. Put off the old man reactions of bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander, malice. Consider yourself dead to sin.
“Alive to God” means in Christ you are responsive to God. It’s present tense. You are continually and forever alive to God. What a fantastic truth. You are responsive with love and gratefulness and obedience and zealous worship and seeking Him and His kingdom first. You are alive to His Word, loving His truth, wanting His counsel, confessing and forsaking sin quickly when you are convicted in your heart about some attitude or behavior, responding in humility when God uses His people to encourage or even admonish you. Like Jesus at that well, you are ready to talk to a stranger about their need for Christ.
Nothing greater could be said about a redeemed sinner than this: “I am alive to God in Christ Jesus.”