The Sin Problem
Walking in Newness of Life
Romans 6:8-14
In the book of Romans, Paul is writing to first -century Christians to help them understand their relationship to sin and how their salvation changes that relationship.
As I've pointed out to you, prior to salvation, everyone is a sinner before God. We are born with this nature inherited from Adam, and no one escapes its consequences. The wages of sin is death.
But, motivated by His grace and love for a lost and dying humanity, God sent Jesus into the world, and the primary reason He came was to offer Himself as a sacrifice for sin.
And for those who profess their faith in Him, God changes their position and standing. We are not longer sinners before God; instead we have been justified. We are forgiven of all our sin, past, present and future, and we will never again be seen by God as a sinner.
Positionally, we are perfect in His eyes. We once were slaves of sin, but we are now slaves of righteousness. That means it is not our nature to sin and we don't have to sin. Instead, we are free, for the very first time in our life, to serve God and make right choices.
In fact, when we sin, like Paul, we can say, "It is not me, but sin that dwells in me. Committing sin is not an expression of who I really am.
But there are some holdovers from my old life that hang around in the human side of me. And that's what does the sinning. Now the wages of sin is death, but the promise of God is a sinner will never die. Want proof that God has removed our sin and no longer sees us as a sinner and that the sinning part of us is the human flesh in which we live?
Listen in on the conversation Jesus had with Martha after he had been told that Lazarus had died. Jesus said to her, in John 11:25-26, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die."
Years later, writing to the Corinthian believers, Paul would write about being absent from the body, and present with the Lord. This human flesh that housed the remnants of the sinful nature would expire and quit breathing and lie still, but the real Paul, the part that was made new by Christ, that part that was perfect before God, would never die. Instead, it would leave this earth to immediately be in the presence of the Lord.
That's what Paul was referencing in Romans 7, when he talked about how Jesus was the one who would deliver him from this body of death, and He, that is Jesus, deserved to praised because of that reality!
We live in this conflict of being freed from sin and alive to God and while the mind and will want to serve God, we find ourselves committing sin in the flesh. So how do we deal with that?
Well, to discover the answer, I want us to back up today to Romans 6 again.
We've already studied a portion of this chapter, but I wanted us to hear what Paul had to say about the struggle in his own life before we looked at chapter 6, verses 8-14 because in these verses, he gives us some insight into how to live in the conflict and make wise decisions about temptation and sin.
And before we look at these verses, I want to just insert this: I don't think I've ever met a serious Christian who didn't want to do a better job of serving God and resisting temptation.
As we've already discovered, it is absolutely inconsistent for a person to claim to be a Christian, then live any way they want to. It doesn't fit the mold, neither is it compatible with our new nature for us to love to sin and live outside of God's law and at the same time claim to be saved by the grace of God.
So this message makes the assumption that, as a born-again Christian with a new nature and a new Master, and as one who understands the ultimate victory comes only through Christ when you are delivered from this body of death, you want to live as free from sin as possible. So how do we do that?
Unfortunately, most of us deal with it only outwardly. We try to resist the devil and escape temptation, and those are important decisions, and we're going to look at those in the weeks to come. But there is something that has to happen inwardly before we can be successful outwardly and that's what I want us to see today.
Now we have already studied the early verses of Romans 6 where we discovered the results of what it means to be in Christ at His death, burial and resurrection, and we've looked at verses 15-23 where we learned about our new position before God and our deliverance from the mastery of sin. But today, I want us to see the verses nestled between those two passages.
Romans 6:8-14
It is not difficult to follow the flow of Paul's thoughts and the goal he is moving toward. His aim is to help those of us who are saved and delivered from the mastery of sin and who struggle with the conflict of wanting to do the right thing and not always doing it know how to live with agreement between who we are and how we live.
And in a word, the goal is obedience. We see that at the end of
verse 4
"We also should walk in newness of life."
So how do we who are saved learn to walk in newness of life? How do we develop a life of obedience to God? After all, as we saw in Romans 7, the Law is spiritual, it is good, it is holy, it is God-given. And even though we are not saved by keeping the law, we demonstrate the change in our nature by doing what God requires.
So how do we do that? How do live a righteous, God-honoring life?
In this section, there are three words around which all of Paul's thoughts revolve and they are the keys to walking in newness of life. Everything he says fits under one of these three words.
The first word is "know". It first appears in Romans 6:3 where he asks “Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?" In verse 6, he adds “Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him. . ." And then, verse 9 also says “Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more."
"For we know.” Walking in newness of life, spiritual obedience begins with someone knowing something. That’s the first step. You’ve got to know something.
The second word is found in
verse 11
Reckon yourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God in Christ"
Some translations use the word "count" or "consider", but I kind of like the old-fashioned word "reckon". We'll talk about that in a moment.
The third word is in verse 13 where we are told to
"present" ourselves to God, and the old KJV uses the word "yield".
So if you want to know how to live a life of obedience, there you have it: You’ve got to know something, you’ve got to reckon something and you’ve got to yield something.
Let's take a moment and explore them individually. First,
#1: Know!
If you want to be obedient, you need to know certain things. Christian living is always dependent upon Christian learning. Duty always follows doctrine. If Satan can keep us ignorant, he can keep us impotent. So if you want victory, it’s got to start in the mind with knowing certain truths.
So what is it, in particular that Paul wants us to know? Well, first of all we need to know
- what we were
verses 2-5
There we discover we were crucified with Christ. That's in verse 2. We were buried with Christ. That' verse 3. Verse 4 tells us we were raised with Christ, and finally, verse 5, we were united with Christ.
So let me ask you something. How many people were crucified at Calvary? If you said three, from a historical point of view you’d be exactly right. Jesus was crucified, along with two thieves.
But from a theological point of view, you’d be wrong. These verses are telling us that if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you were there that day. You were crucified with Christ, you were buried with him and you were raised from the dead.
Listen: I know I'm talking way above your head, but I'm talking above mine also! The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ are supernatural events that transcend time.
And they are so important that their impact begins before the universe was created and stretch out all the way to the end of time and along the way, they directly impact you. If you are a believer, your spiritual history begins at the cross of Jesus Christ. You died with him. You were buried with him. You were raised from the dead and therefore you are united with Jesus Christ.
Now, all of that is symbolized in the act of believer’s baptism. When we baptize somebody, they symbolically portray the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the New Testament the word baptism, though it literally means to immerse, has a symbolic meaning and that symbolic meaning is all wrapped up in the word identification.
When you are baptized, you are publicly identifying with Jesus Christ, and in particular, you are publicly identifying with the death, the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It symbolizes what happens to you the moment you say yes to Jesus. It happened historically 2000 years ago. It happens for you the moment you say “yes” to the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I want you to understand something. When Paul says, “We died to sin”, he's declaring a fact, not an experience. You may say, “I don’t feel like I was crucified with Christ.” Feelings have nothing to do with it. “I don’t feel like I was raised with Christ.” Your feelings have nothing to do with the truth.
From God’s point of view, he sees you as dead, buried and raised with the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore united with him so tightly that you could never be separated. That’s why he can declare you righteous and holy and perfect and change your standing. The truth is you were crucified, buried, resurrected and united with Christ. That is the basic truth of this passage and we need to know what we were.
We also need to know
- What we are
Now, based on the truth regarding our union with Christ, Paul draws two conclusions. The first one is found in
verse 2
There we discover that we are dead to sin. The second one is in
verse 7
And that tells us we are freed from sin.
To be dead to sin means to be freed from the ruining power of sin in your life. Dead to sin does not mean that you do not sin. We just heard about that from Paul last week. That's why I wanted us to see what he said in chapter 7 before we looked at this passage.
Paul was perhaps the most mature disciple of Christ the world has ever known, so much so that he encouraged people to follow him as he followed Christ. And yet what he says is he doesn't do what he wants to do and does what he doesn't want to do and it is because of this sin that dwells in him.
And yet he is the same one that tells us here that he is dead to sin. So obviously, being dead to sin
doesn’t mean that you never sin. It doesn't even mean we are not tempted to sin.
Think about it this way: Although you are dead to sin, sin is not dead to you. Sin is a reality in the life of a believer, but because we are dead to sin, it no longer has the power to dominate your life. You are separated forever from the dominating ruling power of sin.
It’s like watching a lion roar at the zoo. You may get a thrill from listening to the lion roar in his cage. But as long as the lion is behind bars, you’re safe. The lion can roar all it wants but it can’t do anything to you unless you do something stupid like crawl into the cage. Then you have problems.
Sin is like a roaring lion. As long as you understand that the power of sin is broken, sin cannot dominate your life unless you choose to let it dominate your life.
We need to know what we were, what we are and thirdly,
- What we you have
As believers, Paul points out two things in particular we have because of our faith.
First, we have a brand-new life
verse 4
The Greek roots of the phrase "newness of life" are very interesting in that they mean “new of a different kind.” It does not mean new in the sense of better. God did not save you to give you a better life. He saved you to give you a new life. He didn’t save you in order to renovate the old life that you messed up. Instead, he saved you to give you a brand-new life of a completely different kind.
Salvation is not reformation or renovation. It’s not just an improvement over what you used to have. It is God Himself placing His own life into your human body which means that you have something new that you never had before.
So what is it? This brand new life is resurrection life.
verse 5, 8-10
You now have the resurrection life of Jesus within. And again, that’s a fact, not an experience. You may say, “I don’t feel like I’ve got a new life.” It doesn’t matter what you feel on the inside. We all go up and down emotionally. If you’re a believer, then God has given you a brand-new life, the resurrection life of his son Jesus Christ. It’s a fact not an experience.
Now, before I continue, I want you to understand that what we've just covered is where obedience to God begins. Before you will ever grow and mature in your faith as a believer, you must have a proper understanding of what God has done for you. If you don’t understand what God has done for you, the next two essential aren’t going to work in your life.
It all begins with understanding what God did in your life the moment you trusted Christ. He gave you a brand-new life and transferred you from the kingdom of Satan into the Kingdom of God. But how do you make it real? How do we take this truth that we know and make it real on a day to day basis?
How does the fact that I was crucified, buried and resurrected with Christ, that I am dead to sin and freed from sin, that I now possess a brand-new, resurrected life, make any difference in how I live, and in particular, how I respond and react to sin?
Well, let's look at the second word.
2. Reckon!
verse 11
To put what we know into action, we have to "reckon" or consider or accept the fact that everything I just said is true and Paul just summarizes it into two statements. We are dead to sin and alive to God.
And if you don’t understand all of the stuff about baptism and the old man and being dead to sin and freed from sin, just focus on this one phrase: Dead to sin, but alive to God. You were dead to sin but now through Jesus Christ you are alive to God.
Paul says you've got to "reckon" that to be true. Now "reckon" is an old-fashioned word that my Granny used a lot. She also used the word "dreckly" which I didn't know was the word "directly" until I was an adult!"
But she used the word "reckon" and down here in the south, the word generally use “reckon” to mean “maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” as in “I reckon I’ll come by and see you.” That means, “I suppose I’m coming, but I’m not sure.” There’s an element of conditionality in that use of the word “reckon.”
But our usage down here in the south in English has nothing to do with the meaning in Greek. The Greek word is a term from banking or accounting. It means to credit money to a particular account. It means that when you deposit $1000, the bank credits your account with $1000. Therefore when you write a check for $500, you don’t worry about it because you are reckoning on the fact that money is actually in your account.
Reckoning means to depend on the fact that God has actually done what He said He would do. If we "reckon" something in Biblical terms, it means we are counting on the fact that if God said it, He meant it, and therefore He did it. It means to live on the basis of the fact that God wasn’t kidding or lying when He said He would do this, therefore He did it, and therefore you can count on it.
Reckoning is not claiming a promise but acting upon a fact. It’s not make-believe. It’s not getting yourself into an emotional uproar or pretending something is true that you know is not true. It’s believing that what God has said He would do, He really did do, therefore it really is true, therefore you can depend upon it, therefore you can stake your life upon it, because it’s an actual fact.
So what does that mean in regard to this text and my interaction and responses to sin? Well, we know everybody by nature is born into the kingdom of Satan and sin. It's a part of earth-dwelling as humans. We were born there and we are going to live there all our life until we come to Christ.
But when you say yes to Jesus, you’re transferred out of the kingdom of Satan and into the kingdom of God. Once you lived for sin, but now you’ve been transferred into the kingdom of righteousness.
And as Scripture says, we are in the world, but we are not of the world. Why not? It is because we have a new King and Master and Lord, we have a new citizenship, we have a new way of looking at things, we have new boundaries for our conduct and we have a new power to do what we are supposed to do.
We’ve been changed and transferred. We used to live one way, but we've been given a brand-new life and transferred to a brand new realm.
And to reckon means to accept and count on the fact that those things really are true. The truth is it's not just time that is divided by BC and AD.
My life and yours as believers are divided in the same way. There is a part of me that lived BC, before Christ and there is that part of me that exists in AD, after deliverance. The whole story of your life can be written in two volumes. Volume one would be called “What I was like before I knew Jesus Christ.” Volume two is “What my life is like since Christ came in.”
It’s like those ads you see for Jenny Craig. “I used to weigh 450 pounds until I started going to Jenny Craig. Now I weight 108 pounds dripping wet.” Or it’s like those old ads that said, “I used to be a 98-pound weakling. Then I signed up with Charles Atlas and now I’m a muscle man.” To reckon means to understand and accept that your life has a before and an after.
In 1972 an unusual thing happened on the island of Guam when a Japanese soldier named Shoichi Yokoi came out of the jungle. He had been living in the jungle for 28 years, since the end of world war II. He found out the war ended in 1952, but he refused to come out, thinking the Japanese emperor would think he surrendered. In fact, when hunters came across him, he feared he was being taken prisoner and begged them to kill him so he wouldn't be shamed by the homeland.
So let me ask you a question. During those 28 years was he free? Absolutely! At any time from 1944 until 1972, he was completely free to come out of the jungle. And for the twenty years between 1952 and 1972, he lived with the knowledge of that freedom.
But instead of living in freedom, he lived in isolation, fearing detection from US patrols and later from local hunters. So he gradually withdrew deeper into the jungle and survived by eating venomous toads and river eels and rats.
Originally there were dozens with him, then only two, and for the last eight years he was totally alone.
In his memoirs, he told of about thinking of his ageing mother back home, but then wrote, "It was pointless to cause my heart pain by dwelling on such things."
And of another occasion, when he was desperately sick in the jungle, he wrote: "No! I cannot die here. I cannot expose my corpse to the enemy. I must go back to my hole to die. I have so far managed to survive but all is coming to nothing now."
Now think about the tragedy of that: He could have come out anytime he wanted and enjoyed everything life could afford a young man who had faithfully defended his country.
But he refused to accept the fact the war was over, therefore, he never reckoned it to be true. He was completely free on a theoretical basis. But because he didn’t believe it, he lived in self-imposed bondage in the jungle for almost three decades.
Was he free? Yes. Was he free? No, because he chose to stay in bondage, in hiding, in fear in the jungle.
He is a vivid description of many Christians who are living in the jungle of sin. The war is over, Christ has won, but they refuse to believe it.
Therefore, they live in self-imposed bondage to sin. They are dug into a hole, living on rats and toads, isolated from the Lord and cheating themselves of the best life and relationships their faith can offer simply because they refuse to believe that Christ has set them free.
Living in America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, is the greatest privilege in the world. And in many ways, the immigration problems we are experiencing as a country are not surprising. After all, we are the only country in the world that people are fighting and dying and seeking to enter.
And I'm a big fan of immigration, as long as it's done legally. I am blessed every time I come to worship and find people here from Ethiopia and China and the Philippines and from all over the world. It is wonderful to see how the world has come to us and America is blessed by the contribution that those who come bring.
And it just seems to me that all the problems and challenges could be avoided if we just followed the laws that are already in place because there is a legal path to citizenship in America.
And when a person follows that path, there will come a day when they stand before a judge and that judge will say, "Do you renounce the government and the flag of whatever country they are from?", and the person seeking citizenship will say, "I do." Then the judge will say, "Do you swear allegiance and loyalty to the United States of America?" and the person will say, "I do." and that person, after meeting all the qualifications and requirements will become a legal citizen of the United States of America.
By legal authority, they are no longer a citizen of their former country and they can never return to that country as a legal citizen there because they aren't. Their citizenship has been changed.
The same thing is true when we become Christians. If you are a child of God saved by the grace of God through Jesus Christ, you are no longer a citizen of this world. At the moment you said yes to Jesus Christ, God changed your legal citizenship and you became a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven.
And just as is true with earthly citizenship, you can’t go back any more. You can’t pretend that you are still a citizen of this world. You’ve got to reckon yourself, count yourself, consider yourself transferred by God from one kingdom to another.
That means you can’t live the way you used to live because you’re not the person you used to be. By the way, you shouldn't want to! Once that Japanese soldier got away from Guam and no longer had to eat toads and eels, do you think he ever longed for the good old days? I greatly doubt it!
He fact, he got a bride through an arranged marriage and they lived together for 25 years! He traveled the news circuit and made public appearances on TV. His life was forever changed!
And you’ve been changed also. You’ve been transformed. Your citizenship has been transferred from the kingdom of the world to the kingdom of heaven.
We must know, we must reckon, and we must
3. Present!
verses 12-14
Notice, in verse 13, Paul uses the word "present" twice. Negatively, we do not present our members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, and positively, we present ourselves to God.
Now the word "present" carries the idea of a decision of the will. And if you are using the KJV, you see the word "yield". When you are driving, and you encounter a "yield" sign, you have to assess the situation and make a decision. Is it safe to proceed or should I stop and yield to oncoming traffic?
That is the idea here. I consciously assess the situation in light of what I know and reckon and then make my decision. And the instruction is do not yield to sin, but yield to God.
By the way, the tenses of the words in their original setting seem to imply that we are to stop yielding our members to unrighteousness and once and for all yield ourselves to God.
And just so we are clear, "our members" is simply referencing our bodies, and the parts of our bodies. Stop presenting your hands, fingers, eyes, ears, lips, legs, feet, toes, and all the rest to sin and instead, give the totality of yourself to God. So this is very practical and very specific.
And one other word helps us to understand exactly what he's saying and that is the word "instruments". “Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness." The word “instruments” really means “weapons.”
So a literal translation would be something like, "Don’t offer the parts of your body as weapons of wickedness but rather yield yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and offer the parts of your body to God as weapons to righteousness."
There are two facts about this yielding that we need to keep in mind. First, it must be
- decisive
By that I mean that you’ve got to come to a place in your life where you decide that you’re going to be God’s man or woman wherever you go. Too many of us are living partly in the world and partly in the kingdom of heaven. You can’t do that. You cannot do that and be successful and happy in the Christian life.
You’ll never be obedient to God and successful in resisting sin if you try to live in both worlds. The way to defeat sin is to understand that you are now God’s man or woman and you must now live for him.
Second, this yielding must be
- definite
Later in this letter, in chapter 12, verse 1, Paul says,
"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies (same phrase used here in chapter 6) a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.
What are you to offer to God? Your physical body. Why does God wants your body? Because that's where the sin lives. And if God’s got your body, he’s got you. Everywhere your body goes, you soon must follow. And that's where the sin happens.
As I said, this is very practical. That's why Paul talks about the specific body parts being presented, yielded to God. And we often forget that there’s a war going on between the forces of good and the forces of evil, a war between Satan and God, a war between the kingdom of evil and the kingdom of righteousness and that war is taking place in your members, your body.
And the battle is really over who will control you. The inner man that wills and delights in the Law of God or the flesh that loves sin. God wants you to be convinced, to know who you really are, so that considering that to be so, you will yield yourself to Him.
That's important because the truth is, God has no lips except your lips yielded to him. He has no eyes except your eyes yielded to him. He has no ears except your ears yielded to him. He has no hands except your hands yielded to him. He has no feet except your feet offered to him. And the truth is, you will never be obedient to God and victorious over sin until you make it particular and definite regarding the parts of your body.
So let’s talk about your eyes. Have you been looking at things this week that you shouldn’t be looking at? Let’s talk about your ears. Have you been listening to gossip, slander, filthy talk and coarse humor? Let’s talk about your lips. Have you used your lips this week for swearing, for anger, for bitterness? Are your lips yielded to God?
What about your hands? Are your hands yielded to God or do you use your hands to grasp more of this world’s goods? What about your feet? Are your feet yielded to God or are they constantly taking you where you shouldn’t go? What about the most intimate parts of your body? Are those parts yielded to God or are you using them for evil?
Obedience to God isn’t going to happen until you make it very personal. How personal? Yield your body to God. I challenge you to make a little list right now and check off those areas that need to be yielded to God.
_________My lips
_________My eyes
_________My ears
_________My mind
_________My hands
_________My feet
_________My heart
_________My intimate parts
If you want to be defeat sin, you can, but to do it you have to know something, you have to reckon something, and then you’ve got to get serious about presenting the particular parts of your body for the service of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And once your lips become His, your eyes become his, your ears, your hands, your feet, all become his, you know what’s going to happen? You’ll be his.
You’ll be his wherever you go and you will know spiritual victory. It’s possible. God has made it possible. But now you’ve got to be serious and yield the parts of your body to him. When you do that, you will know lasting and true spiritual victory over the sin problem.
Let's pray.
