Romans 6 (Part 1) :1-14 • United with Christ in His Death

We're going through the book of Romans, and we're in the sixth chapter. So open your Bible there, please, to Romans chapter 6. We're going to get started tonight. We have some really good stuff tonight, I've got to tell you. Not that, you know, any of it has been bad in any way, shape, or form, but we just really get into some things here in chapter 6 that are really critical. And Paul, the apostle, begins to bring some conclusion to some of the things that he's been saying up to this point, you know. He's been spending these first five chapters to talk about the fact that all mankind is under sin. He begins to talk about how righteousness is given by grace, not by works or religious observance, or even morality, which is goodness. And he's been developing these themes, but he needs to address some issues surrounding the gospel that are being misunderstood. What we're going to do here tonight is we're going to read through the first 14 verses of the chapter, and then we're going to pray, and then get into it tonight, okay? So follow along with me. It says, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were buried, therefore, with Him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in a death like this, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life He lives, He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. Stop there please. Let's pray. Father, as we get into your word tonight, as we just take time to ponder and unpack these verses, we come to you Lord with all humility. We bow before you and we ask you to speak to us. We ask Lord God for your Holy Spirit to bring clarity and understanding. We ask Lord God that you would speak to individual hearts and that you would cause our hearts to be filled tonight with grace and insight. Lord, we at the end of the day, we want to know these things, not just to know them, but that we might walk them out. For you have told us Lord in no uncertain terms that it is not the hearers of the word that you are looking for, but rather the doers. So Lord, it is our heart to hear so that we may do. Empower us, we pray, strengthen us, we pray, to live our lives for you. We look to you to accomplish this and we ask it in the authority granted us through Jesus our Lord, amen, amen, amen. As we read through these first 14 verses of Romans chapter 6, I think it seems pretty obvious that the Apostle Paul is responding to arguments, particularly arguments more than likely that were raised by his Jewish opponents, but there may have been other people too, because there were a lot of people that didn't like the gospel. When Paul declared the gospel, it was a little bit like, to a lot of people, that just didn't make sense. And they argued that the gospel itself was deeply flawed in the sense that it, to them, it opened a door. It seemed to open a door for people to just kind of sin however they want to sin. It's like, you know, you're not, Paul, you're not giving any restraint here to people. You're just telling them, hey, you know, you're forgiven. You know, when you sin, you can come to God and you can repent and be forgiven and it's wonderful and God's grace overflows and all these things. And people were like, really upset with the Apostle Paul for doing that sort of a thing. And they would say, you know, you just, you can't, you can't do that. They said, you know, you have to insist that people are going to, you have to tell them that they got to live by the Ten Commandments. They got to obey the law, otherwise sin is just going to run rampant. And what these people didn't understand is how in the world are you going to suppress sin in individual people's lives? The only thing they could think of was got to give them rules. You got to give them commandments. And if they don't have, you know, if you just tell them you're forgiven, well, they're just going to run off and do what they want to do. Well, that was one reaction to Paul's gospel. There were actually others, you know, as well. In fact, you might remember last week in our study of the latter part of chapter five, the Apostle Paul made a statement and he actually said where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Do you remember that? Well, there were some people that actually interpreted that statement as essentially saying that sinning is a good thing and you need to do it more and more because the more you do it, the more God's grace is going to flow into your life. Yeah, there were people actually saying that. And actually Paul talked about this even back in chapter three. Let me put this on the screen so we can see it together. From Romans chapter three, he said, why not do evil that good may come as some people slanderously charge us with saying. And so these are, you know, Paul talked about this earlier. Now he's getting around to answering some of these charges. I want to share with you a quote that I actually found. F.F. Bruce was a very popular Bible scholar, teacher, wrote tons of books, commentaries. Anyway, I found a quote from him. I'll put it up on the screen so we can see it together. Russian monk Grigory Rasputin taught and exemplified the doctrine of salvation through repeated experiences of sin and repentance. He held that as those who sin the most require the most forgiveness, a sinner who continues to sin with abandon enjoys, each time he repents, more of God's forgiving grace than any ordinary sinner. Yeah. So, it sounds to me like a wonderful excuse to just kind of, you know, do what you want to do. But these are teachings. This was already starting during Paul's lifetime. And that's why he is going to begin to answer and respond to some of these beliefs. And he's going to explain why the gospel of Jesus Christ does not promote sin. It does not promote an easy believability. It does not promote a sloppy agape or a grace that just kind of throws itself out there so that you can live however you want to live. I get that question so many times from people. Pastor Paul, what if somebody just says they're a Christian but they live the way they want to live? Well, that's not the gospel. That has nothing to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And Paul begins in verses 1 and 2, if you look with me again in your Bible, by asking kind of a series of very pointed questions. He says, now, and this is kind of a conclusion or a conclusionary question, he says, what shall we say then? And that's based on everything he's been saying. He says, are we to continue to sin that grace may abound? And then he answers the question, by no means. How can we who died to sin live in it? Now, I want you to pause with me there for just a moment because this is such an important statement by the Apostle. Paul. This first statement addresses that whole go ahead and sin mentality or belief, since you know all your sin is just going to give God more opportunities to show your grace and forgiveness. And Paul asks this interesting question in verse 2 that ought to stop us dead in our tracks. And he says, how can we who died to sin still live in it? All right. This is so important. I mean, this is critically important. This is where the Apostle Paul begins to introduce the idea that when you came into faith with Jesus Christ, a death occurred. Now, if I were to say that to you, most people would say, well, of course, yeah, I know that a death occurred. There's nothing confusing about that. The death belonged to Jesus. He died for my sins. That was the death that took place. But I want you to look again what Paul said. He said, how can we who died? Did you catch that? He didn't say, how can he who died? He said, how can we? He's talking to you and me. How can we who died to sin still live in it? The Apostle Paul just told you and me something very important. He said that we died. And we kind of look at this, we read this. Can you imagine reading this for the first time in your Bible and kind of going, I did? When did I die? Just exactly when did that happen? I mean, I think I would know if I died. Well, Paul goes on to explain it in verse 3. And it starts with, do you not know? And by the way, there's a good many Christians who don't know what we're about to look at here. He says, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Stop there, please. We need to talk about this. These are such important verses. In fact, I believe that verses 3 and 4 are the key to unlocking the whole understanding of what we're dealing with here when we talk about this death that we died. But in order to properly unpack these verses, we need to be clear on some of the language, all right? You might have noticed there in verse 3 that Paul used the word baptized two times. And then he used the word baptism once in verse 4. Now, if you allow yourself to think that Paul is talking here about water baptism, you're going to be confused. He's not talking about water baptism. Just because he uses the word baptism doesn't mean it's talking about water baptism. Because the word baptized means immersed, okay? That's why we immerse people in water when we do baptize them in water. We immerse them because that's what the word means. But it can mean things beyond simply referring to water baptism, right? And so when Paul says you've been baptized into Christ, he's talking about being immersed into Jesus. Guys, water baptism is a picture of what happens when you come to Jesus. When you come to Jesus, you're immersed into him. We go through the rite of water baptism as a symbolic picture of what has taken place when we made Jesus our Lord. And again, that's why we immerse people in water, because they've been immersed into Jesus. And so we're portraying that whole idea. It's the idea of being completely submerged into something. And that's what happens, you know, when you come to Jesus. You're submerged into Jesus, just like you're submerged into the water when you're baptized. But listen, water baptism is not what saves you. Jesus saves you, okay? There are a lot of people that believe that water baptism saves you. And you can come to Jesus all day long and you can repent of your sins and you can pray for forgiveness. But if you're not baptized in water, you're not saved. And what they're doing is they're putting, they're exalting the symbol above the idea, the truth, the reality, the root of what happens when you come to Jesus. Water baptism is a beautiful and wonderful symbol. And if you haven't been baptized in water, you should be out of obedience. But that's not what saves you. Jesus saves you by his death on the cross and your faith in his finished work on the cross, right? So we don't exalt the symbol over the substance. The substance is always Jesus. Just remember that. You know, if you're looking for an interpretive key to understanding the Bible, here it is. It's all about Jesus. And that's as simple as I can make it. It's all about Jesus. Don't put your emphasis on the idea, the outward symbols that we use. It's the same thing with like communion. I assume you've taken communion before. Communion doesn't save you. Jesus saves you. We take communion to remember what Jesus did. What is the substance? Jesus. What is the symbol? Communion, right? When it comes to salvation, what saves you? Jesus saves you. What is the symbol? Water baptism. We do not exalt the symbol over the substance. The substance is Christ. Always Jesus Christ. Boom. End of conversation. We don't add anything to Jesus. We don't say it's Jesus plus. Jesus plus water baptism. Jesus plus taking communion. Jesus plus keeping the Ten Commandments. Jesus plus going to church on a specific day of the week. No. It's Jesus and Jesus only who saves us. And that's all there is to it. So getting back now, when Paul talks about baptism in these verses, he's talking about being completely submerged into Jesus. And in this idea of baptism, he says you've been submerged into something specific. And that is his death. This is where we get into the dying part. It's not morbid though. You and I, when we came to Jesus, we were submerged into his death. Because again, in verse three, look with me again. In verse three in your Bible, he says, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized or immersed into Christ Jesus were immersed into his death? Now, guys, this is a new thought. You know, this took a long time for this to resonate in my heart when I first came to the Lord. When I came to Jesus, I mean, I knew that he had forgiven my sin. I knew that he made me a child of God. I knew that he loved me. I knew that I was going to heaven. I knew all those things. And I was confident in all those things. The problem is I had no concept of the fact that when I came to him, I had actually joined him in death. I didn't know that. It took a long time before I knew that, actually. But the question that naturally arises here is why? Why do I need that? I know I'm saved. I know Jesus died for me on the cross. I know I'm a child of God. I know I'm going to heaven. I know I'm forgiven. So why all this death talk? What are the implications of being immersed into the death of Jesus? What exactly does that even mean? Well, this is where Paul or what Paul goes on to explain in verses 6 and 7. Let me show you this. This is so beautiful. Verses 6 and 7. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. And then he says, and this is the conclusion, for one who has died has been set free from sin. Right? When you die, you don't have to worry about sinning anymore because you're dead. In fact, you don't have to worry about anything. You don't have to pay taxes. You don't have to go to the doctor anymore. You don't even have to brush your teeth because you're dead. But one of the benefits is you also don't have to worry about sin. All right, we've got a lot to talk about here. The first thing we learn by looking at these two verses, 6 and 7, about this death that we've experienced or that we've shared since coming to Christ, is that it involved what Paul calls our old self. And by the way, the English translators, the word self here is literally the Greek word man. It's anthropos. Paul is saying the old man. But the old self is put in there by the ESV translators because they thought it might make more sense to you. So Paul is talking about the fact that That old man, that old self that used to rule your life has now been crucified when you came to Jesus. And now, here's the thing, guys. I'm sitting here telling you this. I'm telling you, you know, the old self is dead. It died, you know. And the power of that old self is, you know, has been eliminated to some degree in your life. And people look at me usually with kind of a blank stare. And they're kind of like, you haven't seen my week. Yeah, you weren't there when this happened. And then, oh, last Tuesday, oh, I don't even want to talk about last Tuesday. I just lost it, you know. I fleshed out when somebody got in my face. And you're sitting here telling me, Pastor Paul, that the old self has been crucified. And I got news for you. He looks pretty alive to me, you know. This is the common sort of response that we get. Well, this is explained a little bit better, actually, in Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And I'm going to put this passage up on the screen for you. Wonderful passage. Check this out on the screen. Assuming, he says, that you've heard about him, Jesus, and you were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life. And, by the way, he says it's corrupt. In fact, it's been corrupted through deceitful desires. And then you are also taught to be renewed in the spirit of your minds and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. All right? Now, this is very important that we see this. Because this is really kind of an enlargement. This is an elaboration of what Paul is telling us here in Romans chapter 6. In Ephesians 4, he tells us that, yeah, the sinful nature has been dealt with at the cross, but you still have to put it off. You see, there's still some element of choice that comes into play. It's not like it's been eradicated from your life. What happened to the sinful nature? What exactly happened? Because I know that I still mess up. And I trust that you are fully aware of that in your own life. So, if the Bible is telling us that something happened to the old self, what exactly did happen? What happened when you came to Jesus? Well, this is where I want to read again, back in Romans chapter 6, verse 6. Look with me again in your Bible. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that, this is what I want you to see, that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. Did you catch that last phrase? That the body of sin might be brought to nothing. Now, if you have a New American Standard Bible or a New King James Bible, your Bible says that our body of sin might be done away with. Well, those are interesting statements. They sound pretty complete, don't they? Done away with. The sinful nature has been done away with, brought to nothing. It sounds like, wow, I shouldn't be sinning anymore. And you know what? There's a lot of people who have come to that conclusion. Once I come to Jesus, I shouldn't be sinning anymore. And if you were to read this passage and this passage alone, you might very well come to that conclusion. I shouldn't be sinning. Of course, you're going to know that you do, though, and then you're going to start to doubt your salvation. Well, I want to take you back to that passage once again, and we're going to highlight the key words from Ephesians 4. I put them in yellow, I underlined them, and it's that phrase, put off your old self. You've got to see that. You've got to see that there is still an element here that means that your sinful nature was not fully eradicated. It means that through Jesus, your sin nature was conquered, but not eradicated. And you still have a choice to make as it relates to sin. But here's the point. You now have that choice. Do you understand that you didn't have that choice before you knew Jesus? Do you get that? Paul already mentioned it in this chapter. He's going to talk about it again here in a couple of chapters. He's going to talk about the fact that before we knew Jesus, we were slaves to sin. He actually used a similar term here in this chapter. You were enslaved. Before you knew Jesus, you didn't have the freedom to say no to sin. Sin just ruled your life. It's the way it went in my life anyway. And by the way, I wasn't convicted about sin before I knew Jesus. That's something that happens through the Holy Spirit. But sin was just my MO. It was the way I lived before I knew Christ. And I didn't have the freedom to say no to sin, and neither did you. But now we do for the very first time in our lives. Because, see, this is what Jesus did to the sinful nature. Although he didn't eradicate it from your life, he took away its power to tyrannize your life. He took away its power to demand your obedience. He took away the power of your flesh to dictate how you're going to live. And now for the very first time in your life, since knowing Jesus, you can now look sin square in the eye, and you can say, no, I'm not going to do that. You couldn't do that before. Now you can. And that is what Paul is talking about in this chapter when he talks about the fact that through sharing the death of Jesus on the cross, your sinful nature suffered a blow and can no longer control or dominate your life. Again, you can say no to sin. But I want you to understand something about this freedom you've been given. You remember what Jesus said about freedom? He said the Son of Man sets you free. You know, he says when the Son of Man sets you free, you're kind of free. No, he didn't say that, did he? What did he say? When the Son sets you free, you're what? You're free indeed. Do you know that that means completely free? Completely free. What does complete freedom look like? Let me explain it for you. Complete freedom as it relates to sin means I can say no to sin, but I'm also just as free to say yes to sin. Did you somehow think that when you came to Jesus, you no longer possessed a free will and that you could no longer say yes to sin? Of course you can. That's why we mess up. Here's the deal. You're no longer under the tyranny of your flesh so that you have to say yes to sin. You can say no, but you can still say yes. And this really messes with people. They don't like hearing this, honestly. I've shared it before, and I've had people get mad at me. So you're telling me, Pastor Paul, when I fall into sin, it's because I want to? That's exactly what I'm telling you. That's precisely what I'm telling you. It's because you wanted to. You chose to. You were not obligated. In fact, Paul even talks of that elsewhere. We're under no obligation to the flesh. Right? We are obliged to the Lord and to His Spirit, but we can still resist Him. Here's the deal. It is possible to be set free when you come to Jesus, to be given the freedom to say no to sin, but to so regularly, even as a born-again saved person, say yes to sin, that you can put yourself back into the slave quarters and again, that's not a very fun thought that people like to hear about. As a Christian, you can re-enslave yourself. That's why Paul wrote what he did. I quoted this to you guys last week, but that's why Paul wrote what he did in Galatians 5.1. I'm going to put it up on the screen this time so we can see it together. He says this, For freedom, Christ has set us free. Stand firm therefore. And what he means by that is stand firm in your freedom and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Who is Paul writing this letter to in Galatians? Christians. Born again, washed in the blood, headed to heaven. Christians. And what is he saying to those Christians? Be careful. It is for freedom. In other words, it is for the purpose of you being free that Christ set you free. Now be careful and don't go back and chain yourself up and live in the slave quarters anymore. Because that's not where you are destined to live. Jesus set you free, but the choice is yours. I sometimes wish it wasn't, don't you? Don't you wish sometimes the choice wasn't yours? Don't you wish that after you came to Jesus you were just kind of locked, so locked in to the Holy Spirit, and I mean the holiness of the Holy Spirit, that you were just holy all the time, and you never messed up, and you never chose the wrong path, you never chose the sin path ever again. Wouldn't that be wonderful? It's just not reality. So we're going to look at what we've learned thus far before we move on. In fact, up on the screen you can see our heading is what we've learned so far. And so here's the first thing we've learned. The first point, Jesus set us free from slavery to our sinful nature. And again, that means that you're no longer under the tyranny or the dominion of your flesh to say, do this, and you say, yes sir or yes ma'am, right? I don't know if sinful nature is half gender, but we'll just throw that in. The second thing that we've learned here is that our sinful nature was conquered, but not eliminated. This is why the Apostle Paul elsewhere says there's this battle going on. I know what I want to do, but I don't do it. I struggle. He says, I see this law within my members dragging me toward sin, and I don't like it. But he's talking about that conflict between the sinful nature and the nature of Jesus that is now living within you. You thought you were schizophrenic. You're not. You're fine. It's just Jesus living in you, warring against and convicting you about that other sin nature that's been conquered but hasn't been eradicated yet. It's still there, and it still wants to have its own way. And we still get stubborn, you know? And we want to have our own way, and we don't like people telling us what to do. Don't you tell me what to do. It's just all the sinful nature, you know? The third thing that we've learned is that we must put off or resist the sinful nature. We're going to talk more about this later. But this is this whole idea of resisting. Now again, I have the freedom to do this now. I didn't prior to knowing Jesus. Now I can. I can resist sin. When temptation comes along, I can resist it. And God even promises in 1 Corinthians that he will give me what I need to resist that sin. So I don't have any excuses left when I mess up. Do you guys get that? I'm sorry to take away your excuses, but he took them away. He conquered your sinful nature, and he promised that he'd give you everything you need when you're tempted to sin. So when you and I sin, we do it because we choose to. Okay? This whole thing about the devil made me do it. Sorry. Can't go there. Yes, he will tempt you. Yes, he can weaken your resolve. But ultimately, you make the choice. The fourth thing that we've learned is that we are free to either say yes or no to sin. And then the fifth thing we've learned here is that it is possible to return to a place of slavery to sin. And I'm sorry, that's a horrible thing to tell you, but it's biblical. And it's a warning that the Apostle Paul gave, as we saw in Galatians. And so I have to say it too, you know. We have to look at the whole counsel of God's Word. Now, for those of you who are paying attention, you probably noticed I skipped verse 5. And the reason I did is I purposely skipped it because I wanted to read verse 5 along with verses 8 through 10. So verse 5 goes like this. Look in your Bible. It says, For if we've been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. And you read that verse, and it kind of sounds like Paul's talking about the resurrection of our bodies when Jesus returns, right? But as we skip down to verses 8 through 10, we discover that this resurrection he's talking about is more than just a bodily resurrection. The bodily resurrection is coming, but he's talking about something else. Look at verse 8. Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion. The NIV says over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lived, he lives to God. And then Paul says this in verse 11. So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Here's my point. It sounds like through this whole collection of verses that he's talking about the resurrection of your body from the dead, but then he ends it in verse 11 by saying, so consider yourselves dead to sin. Guys, that's for today. That's not something you're going to have to worry about after your body dies and when you're with the Lord waiting for your body to be raised. You're not going to have to worry about considering yourselves dead to sin. He's talking to Christians who are living their lives right here, right now. And he says, here's what I want you to do. I told you that when you came to Christ, when you were immersed into him, that you were immersed into his death. Remember I told you that, Paul says? Well, here's the deal. I want you to believe it. I want you to lay hold of it in such a way that you believe that you now have the power over sin in your life. I want you to consider yourselves dead to sin. But you didn't stay dead. You know, when we're baptizing people in water, which is the symbol of this whole thing, we don't leave them underwater. Some people are afraid we might. But we don't. We bring them right back up out of the water. What does that symbolize? Resurrection. The resurrection of the dead, as in bodily resurrection? No. It symbolizes being raised up to live a new life today. Today, right? You know, when I think about the resurrection, I think, you know, if all God ever said he would do for me is raise my body, I'd say, well, that's good enough. I'll take that. But he doesn't end it there. He doesn't say that's the only resurrection you get to experience. When you come to Jesus Christ, you can experience a different kind of a resurrection. It's a resurrection of new life today. You can live a different life than the one you lived under the dominion of the old man or old woman, as the case may be. Right? That's the life that he's talking about. Right? And that's why way back in verse 4, and I'm going to put this on the screen so we can just read it together. Chapter 6, verse 4 here, he says, we were buried therefore with him by, again, immersion into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we might, what, look forward to a resurrection of our bodies? It's not what he's saying here. He says that we might walk in the newness of life. We now have the ability, through Jesus, to walk in the newness of life. That means there's hope to change. Do you know that that's one of the most, I don't know, it might even be the most, I haven't looked lately, but at one time I checked into this, what was the most searched for question on the internet? It was something to do with, is it possible, actually possible to change? Can I change? In Christ, we have the promise of the ability to live a new life, different from the one that we used to live, and Jesus has opened the way for that to happen through his victory on the cross over sin and the dominion of sin. So Paul ends with this exhortation in verse 12, look with me in your Bible, please. He says, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. That's the first exhortation. Here's the second, verse 13, do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but instead, and I threw in the word instead, present yourselves to God as those who've been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments of righteousness. for just a moment if I can about these two exhortations because this is so important. Because we're sitting here talking about all this stuff about living a new life, how Jesus has allowed you to share in his death to free you from the tyranny of your old sinful nature and all that kind of good stuff. But you might be asking yourself, well, where do I start? Well, how do we do this? Give me some practical steps. And that's what Paul's doing here. The first thing he says is in verse 12, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body. And the idea of sin reigning means to offer sin an exalted place. In other words, don't give sin a throne. That's what he means by don't let sin reign in your mortal body. Don't give it a throne. We do that though, we exalt sin. Well, you know, the world around us exalts sin and we hear it all the time and it seeps into our hearts. Don't think it doesn't as Christians. But he's, Paul's saying don't crown sin as in some exalted position in your life. You're not to treat sin as royalty. We are to treat sin as an enemy. And that's what we have to start, we have to change our mindset. Because you know what? Before I was a Christian, sin was my friend. And I brought it into my life and I enthroned it in my life. And I wanted more of it and I wanted, I invited its influence into my life. I gave it that exalted position. When sin entered the room, I got down and I bowed my head and I said, yes. So Paul says, don't let sin reign. Don't let that happen. You now have the freedom to say, that throne is intended for someone else. That throne in my heart is intended for Jesus Christ, my Savior and Lord. He deserves to sit on that throne. You sin, don't. Get off. Don't crown it. Secondly, Paul says in verse 13, do not present your members to sin. And this is not the way we would say it today. By members, he's referring to the parts of your physical body. Because you know, sin is gonna play itself out, you know, through the members of your body, even though it begins in your heart. But he says, instead of offering yourself, you know, to sin and making it easy to have its way, which we all did before we knew Jesus. We invited sin into our lives. We gave it an open welcome. We not only enthroned it, we gave it free pass into my life, into my heart, into my mind, into my body. Hey, come on in, enjoy yourself. You know, that's the way I responded to sin. But now Paul says, don't present the members of your body to sin. You see, before we knew Jesus, we literally offered ourselves to sin. You can have me if you want me. Oh, and sin did. It wanted me bad. And I gave myself to it. And the only reason I'm fine admitting that in front of you, because I know you did too. And so he says, stop offering yourself to God. Stop making, or to sin, rather. Don't make it easy. You know, people ask me sometimes, well, what am I gonna do? Because again, like Paul said in Galatians chapter five, it's possible to go back and become enslaved again. So what happens when a Christian is set free and then becomes re-enslaved? What happens then? Well, I got news for you. They don't have to get saved again, but they do have to get free again. And that's gonna come through repentance and beginning to walk out some of these things and beginning to treat sin like an enemy and beginning to take some fairly drastic steps in their life, because you see, for them now, it is more than just the dominion of the flesh. They've become habitually addicted. And we like, we use this word a lot in our culture today. He's addicted, he's addicted to this, he's addicted to that. And you know what? It's a fine word. Addiction is an appropriate word because it describes getting into a rut in something. And listen, Christians, again, I'll tell you this, born again, washed in the blood Christians can get addicted again to sin. And that means they're in a rut and they can't seem to climb out of it. And in those sort of situations, you know, boy, I tell ya, fasting and prayer isn't off the plate, off the table, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. You gotta get free. Jesus is there to help you. He's there to strengthen you. But here are two very powerful exhortations. Stop bowing down to sin, right? Don't make it, don't give it a royal welcome into your life. And then the second exhortation, don't present your members to sin. Now, what does that mean? What it means, you guys, is that there are areas in our lives where sin has an easy inroad. But you know, sin is not easy to get out of your life. When you become addicted. Jesus talks pretty graphically about the need to get rid of sin. And he used terms that you gotta be careful not to take literally, but he said like, if your right eye, you know, causes you to sin, gouge it out. If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Now, Jesus wasn't telling you to maim yourself. There were very specific meanings to the right eye and the right hand. In the Jewish way of thinking, the right eye was your best eye. The right hand was your best hand. That's why my firstborn son would be called the son of my right hand. That's why Jesus is seated at the right hand of the father. That's the best, okay? So Jesus is saying, even if it's something that you adore, even if it's something that you love, better to get rid of it, right? But he also said, he didn't just say, get rid of it. He said, concerning your eye, gouge it out, and concerning your hand, cut it off. You know what that sounds like to me? Sounds like a big, fat, bloody mess. It sounds like a painful, horrific battle. Listen, nobody's gonna cut off their own hand, you know, and feel good about it. I mean, listen, Jesus is basically telling us, this is gonna be a battle. Let me show you, Paul also made a remark in later, and we'll see this later on in Romans. We'll get to this, but I'm gonna put it on the screen for now. Romans 13, 14, he says, make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. When Paul says, make no provision, he's saying, don't provide sin an opportunity. Take away sin's opportunities. When you are addicted, you gotta take drastic action. You know? We had people in our church, you know, I was pastoring in Ontario for 35 years. We had people in our church that would come to us, and they were addicted to certain things, like drugs, or alcohol, or something like that, and we had to talk to them about giving up their rights for a period of time, like giving up their right to have or get cash whenever they wanted to. They sometimes had to surrender their credit cards, sometimes had to surrender their car keys, and that wasn't legalism. It was basically what Paul was saying. Make no provision to the flesh. Don't give the flesh an easy way in. Listen, this world that you and I live in is filled with easy ways in, filled. I mean, let me tell you, sin is not hard to run after. It's not hard to get embroiled into. So, but this is still an exhortation. Make no provision for the flesh. Don't give it an opportunity. Don't make it easy for the flesh to go its own way. Make it hard, even if you have to give up some of your rights. Don't make it easy for sin to find you, right? And then he tells us what will happen if we do, if we follow these exhortations. It's the last verse we're looking at. You follow these exhortations, he says, for sin will have no dominion over you, since you're not under law, but under grace. Okay? It's not gonna be easy to get. And, you know, I hear from guys pretty regularly who are addicted to porn, and they are just absolutely filled with shame. And they hate what they do. They really do. They truly hate. But they're addicted. They're in a rut. They can't climb out. And one of the first things I tell them is, you cannot get free from that all by yourself. You've got to cry out to God like you've never cried before, and then you need to have some accountability. Because it's just too easy to fall back into it. You need to find some brothers in Christ who are going to stand with you, pray with you. Maybe even some guys who are struggling with the same thing. You can hold each other accountable. Call each other once a day. Text once a day. How you doing today? You standing strong? It's a tough rut to pull out of, but it's possible. With God, all things are possible. And he says, you begin to walk in that freedom again, and sin will have no dominion over you. Because you're under grace. And that grace is God's power. So the message here is that Jesus has set us free from the tyranny of sin to control our lives, but we still need to choose that victory every day. Every day, guys. I wish we didn't. I wish it was just, I got saved and I'd smooth sailing. I wish that were the case. I'd love to be able to tell you that. But you know what? I found out in my life, and I'm sure you have too, that this life is a battlefield. It's a battlefield. You know, sometimes people will say to me, Pastor Paul, I feel so bad because I'm struggling with sin. I said, oh, oh, don't feel bad. The fact that you're struggling means you're saved. Before you got saved, you didn't struggle with sin. You just lived in it. And that's the way I live too. I didn't struggle with sin. So you see, if somebody's struggling with sin, they're just in the battle that we're all in. It's a battle. Life is a battle. Life is a battle to walk with Jesus. Don't let anybody tell you it's easy because it's not. It's hard. And that's why when you read through the New Testament, you see all these exhortations over and over about living the life that you need to live, that you were born to live, that God has called you to live. But nowhere does it say this is going to be an easy walk. It's going to be a tough one. And you're going to battle every day. And it's okay to say to people when they say, hey, how's it going? You can say, well, you know, I've been really battling with the flesh lately. Boy, the flesh just doesn't want to die. But I need to do what God's Word says. I need to consider myself dead to sin and alive to God. And I need to, by faith, believe it. Because he did it. He did it for me. Amen? Let's pray. Lord, this is not an easy message to hear. This is not an easy section of Scripture to study. Because there's a lot going on here, and there's a lot that we don't really like to hear. I'd much rather tell these people, Lord, that they've come to you, they've been set free, and that sin's no longer an issue. But if that were the case, the Apostle Paul wouldn't have exhorted us to resist offering up our members to sin. And he wouldn't have given us all these other exhortations about not enthroning sin in our lives and giving it a royal welcome. Father God, we are flawed. That's for sure. But you have given us your Holy Spirit. And for the first time in our lives, we have the power now to say no to sin and yes to you. And I pray, my Father God, that we would do that more and more. Resisting sin, battling against sin, and saying yes to Jesus Christ. Yes to your Holy Spirit. Yes to the power of God to live the way you've called us to live. Lord, when we fail, we know that you still love us. And we know that we can run to the throne of grace and find forgiveness and then move on again in the power of the Spirit. Lord, I pray for anybody here tonight who's been caught in the web of sin and who's feeling discouraged, and I pray, my Father God, that you would speak to their hearts a word of hope, a word of life, and a word for the future that says, my power is made perfect in your weakness. Lord, may we all get weak before you, that we might truly become strong. Help us to remember, Lord, we cannot battle the flesh in the flesh. It must be conquered by the Spirit and through faith. So we look to you to accomplish these things in our lives. Lord, help us to walk with you day by day, putting one foot in front of the next, living for you, loving you, serving you. We pray this in the authority granted us through the name that is above all names, the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior, and all God's people said together, amen.