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And probably no text in the Bible more clearly speaks of that new life that we have in Jesus

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Christ than Romans chapter 6.

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I invite you to turn there with me as we look tonight at Romans 6 verses 4 through 14.

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Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ

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was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness

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of life.

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For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall

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be also in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified

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with him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that is, might be rendered inoperative,

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that we should no longer be slaves to sin, for he who has died is freed or has been freed

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from sin.

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Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing

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that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again.

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Death no longer is master over him.

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For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives,

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he lives to God.

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Then so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lusts.

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And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness,

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but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments

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of righteousness to God.

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For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

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The key that God has provided to victory over temptation and sin is the truth that we have

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studied previously, that in Christ Jesus we died to sin with its power and its reign.

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We were identified with the Lord Jesus Christ or united with him so that what happened to

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Jesus Christ 2,000 years ago happened to us.

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Whatever happened to Jesus happened to us.

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He died, we died.

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He was buried, we were buried.

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He rose again.

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We have risen in Christ Jesus.

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That is the truth.

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That is the key.

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But how can one experience in his daily life an increasing victory over sin?

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Doctrine is only head knowledge until it begins to affect the routines, the decisions, the

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thoughts, the words of our everyday life.

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How do we turn the key to victory?

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I believe the answer to that lies in three actions that are given in our text.

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As a saint, one who has been redeemed, who belongs to Jesus Christ, as one who has had

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a radical difference made in his identity, as a saint, you and I are to take the actions

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that are before us in our text.

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When we do that, we will turn the key and begin to walk in the newness of life which

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God has gloriously provided for us.

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Those three actions are these.

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Number one, know the facts.

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It has to begin there.

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You will find the apostle using that word in verse 3, do you not know?

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And again he says in verse 6, knowing this.

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And verse 9, knowing that Christ.

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And so the emphasis is upon knowing.

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Knowing the facts.

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It begins there.

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The sad thing is that so many of God's people are not aware of the truth that is involved

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in Romans chapter 6.

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We have to know the facts of identification before they can become real in our lives.

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So the first action is to know the facts.

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Secondly, we must consider them true.

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Verse 11, consider yourselves to be dead to sin.

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That word is a word that implies decisive, immediate action.

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He says take this action, consider it to be true.

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And then the third action is that we are to present ourselves to God to be his instruments

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for righteousness.

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The third action is to present ourselves to the Lord.

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Now let's back up and take these one at a time.

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What are the facts that we are to know?

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Well, we are to know first of all what happened to Christ.

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What happened to him?

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Well, he died.

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As it says in verse 10, which really is a summary of all that he said so far, at least

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about Christ, it says he died.

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He died to sin.

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That is with respect to sin.

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And he did so once and for all.

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He came into the world without sin.

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And he came to deal with sin.

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And at the cross, he came into a temporary relationship with it as he became sin for

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us.

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He dealt with sin.

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He died to it once and for all.

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And now he is no longer in the realm of sin.

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He died to sin, however.

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There was a time when he himself became identified with your sin and mine and he died to sin

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with respect to it.

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But he also lives.

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And it says that he lives to God that is in relationship to God continuously.

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His is a never-ending life.

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He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, as it says back in verse 4, which

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is another way of saying by the power of the Father.

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His was not merely a resuscitation, but it was actually resurrection.

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He was raised in a new form of life, the first of its kind, never seen before in the history

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of the world.

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The form of resurrection life that our Lord has is absolutely unique to him at this point.

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He is the first fruits, which means that someday all of us who belong to him will be like him.

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But right now he is totally unique in the resurrection form that he has.

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He lives.

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He lives in relationship to God.

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Verse 9 tells us that he will never die again.

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Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again.

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Verse 9 absolutely puts to death, it destroys, it annihilates the teaching that Jesus Christ

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dies every time the Mass is offered.

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That is the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church.

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That he is offered afresh, that he dies afresh.

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It's all over again that he offers himself for sins.

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But the fact of the Word of God is that he died to sin once, and he never will die again.

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It never will be master over him.

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Death is no longer master over him as it says there.

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Those are the facts.

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Christ died once and for all with respect to sin.

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Now he has been raised, raised with a continuous life, raised in relation to God.

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Death will never again be master over him.

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Now we need to know those facts.

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It begins there, but we need to go beyond those facts to understand what happened to

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you, to me, to we who are saved.

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What happened to us?

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What are the facts about us?

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Well we have talked about the fact that we have a brand new identity.

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That we are people we were not before.

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We were saved.

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We have a new essential identity because we have been vitally united to Jesus Christ through

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what he calls here baptism.

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Last week we discussed the fact that that is not water baptism, but that is the work

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of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit by which he places us into Jesus Christ.

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He identifies us with Christ.

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Notice that he says that this has happened.

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For example in verse 3 he says, don't you know that all of us who have been baptized

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into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death.

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He doesn't say there that we are going to be baptized into Christ Jesus or even that

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we should be baptized into Christ Jesus, but we have been.

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At the moment of our salvation we were baptized into Christ Jesus in the sense that we were

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united to him in his death, his burial, and his resurrection.

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I need to know the results of that to me and you need to know the results for you.

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The first one is that the old self was therefore crucified as he says in verse 6.

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Knowing this, that our old self, that is all that we were in Adam, that unregenerate man

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which was enslaved to sin and destined for eternal ruin and punishment in hell, that

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old self, the old man, all that we were before, that was crucified with Jesus Christ.

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It was buried, confirmation of the fact that it died.

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What we were before died.

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It was crucified.

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It's over.

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It's over, finished with, we've done with it.

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The old man is gone.

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Then who are we?

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Well, we're a new self.

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The deepest me, the deepest you as a Christian was brought into being by the miracle of identification

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with Jesus Christ's resurrection.

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You are a brand new person in Christ Jesus.

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In the innermost part of you, in the spirit, there's a brand new self, a brand new identity

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that you have.

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You need to know that because there are certain results that come from this truth.

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We need to know what happened to Jesus Christ and we need to know what happened to us at

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the moment we were saved.

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We, as we were before we were saved, died.

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Paul says in Galatians 2.20, I was crucified with Christ.

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The I that was was crucified.

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But he says, nevertheless, I live.

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I is a new person.

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I live.

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Yet, it's not I, but it's Christ who lives in me, he says.

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That's the miracle of the new man, the new nature, if you please, that we are and have.

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Now because that happened to us, there are certain results that take place.

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Notice that he says in verse 6, knowing this, our old self, our old man, was crucified with

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him that, number one, our body of sin might be done away with.

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That is, that it might be rendered impotent or inert or powerless.

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What does he mean, though, by the body of sin?

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I believe that he's talking here about the body dominated by sin.

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Some people identify this with Paul's other term that he uses, for example, in Galatians,

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as the flesh.

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They would say the flesh is the body of sin.

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It is the body in which sin tends to tyrannize still.

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The body in which sin still remains, the body of sin.

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Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, I think, has a helpful comment when he asks this question.

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What then does the term the body of sin mean?

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It means the body, our physical body, of which sin has taken possession.

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Here is the vital distinction, as I see it, the distinction between I myself as a personality

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and my body.

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Sin still remains and is left in our bodies, not in us, but in our bodies.

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As persons, as souls, we have already finished with it, but not so the body.

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This body of sin, this body which sin inhabits and tries to use, this body of sin still remains.

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Sin not only remains in our bodies, but if it is not checked, if it is not kept under,

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it will even reign in our bodies and it will dominate our bodies.

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We died as what we were and have been raised as new people, new persons with new identities,

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a new nature.

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But sin still is in our physical bodies.

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However, that death and resurrection process we went through made it possible for us to

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be delivered from that sin that is still in our bodies.

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That is what Paul means by our body of sin might be rendered inoperative.

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But he goes on to say that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

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We no longer have an obligation to obey the sin that dwells in us.

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Before we were saved, we had no choice.

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Sin was our master.

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We its obedient servants.

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We had an obligation to obey it.

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We belonged to sin.

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We were under sin.

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But now because of what has radically happened to us, no longer, it says here, need we be

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slaves to sin.

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We have been set free because, as it says in verse 7, he who has died is freed from

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sin.

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I want to point out, and we'll probably touch this again later, that sin didn't die.

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That's why it's still in you, in your body.

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Sin is still present.

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It still can produce temptations.

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Sin can still tyrannize you.

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Sin did not die, but you did.

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You died to your old master sin.

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Whatever obligations you had before that, death, are over.

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And you have been raised now with a new master.

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And the new master is Jesus Christ.

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No longer is there a continuing obligation to sin as a power within you.

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You must know that.

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You must understand that.

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Until we can somehow write that in the deepest part of us, sin will go on dominating us perpetually.

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We have to come to the place that we know this fact.

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No longer do I, no longer do you, no longer do we have an obligation to obey sin, which

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does still indwell our bodies.

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That's a second result of our death and resurrection with Christ.

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Now a third one is found in verse 8.

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And that is simply this, that new life is assured for us.

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Verse 8 seems to look ahead to someday when we will have a resurrection body like Christ

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in which there will be no sin.

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And even now we have new life just as we sang a few moments ago in that hymn.

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For example, back in verse 4 he says, we have been buried with him through baptism into

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death in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father,

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so we too might walk in newness of life.

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That's right now, not sometime in the future.

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The fact that you died to sin and have been raised to God with Jesus Christ makes it possible

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for you right now to walk in a new quality of life that was impossible before.

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A person who is unregenerate, who is outside of Jesus Christ may try to act like Jesus,

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may sincerely say he's going to practice the presence of Jesus or do what Jesus would

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do and all of those neat devotional ideas.

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But the fact is he has no capacity to do that because he's still under obligation to sin.

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And there is no new quality of life within him to be patterned after Jesus.

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When we come to faith in Jesus Christ and are identified with him in death and resurrection,

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the old is dead, the new has come.

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We are new creations in Christ Jesus and there is the potential of a new quality of life

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right now, right now, here in this world.

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And God wants us to experience that.

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And that's why Paul is writing these chapters to us.

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But as I say in verse 8, he goes on to even look further in the future, beyond this life,

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and he speaks about the fact that we shall live with him in the sense that in the future

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we shall be like him completely.

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And just as he has a body that is fitted for eternity, so you and I will have a body that

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is immortal, no longer a mortal body, no longer a body that has sin dwelling in it, a body

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that's able to have sin tyrannize it indeed.

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But we will have a body that will have no relationship to sin whatsoever.

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What a great day that's going to be.

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That's why Paul concludes chapter 7, he says, who will deliver me from my wretchedness?

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And he says, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ.

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He said there is a day coming when we will be entirely delivered, we will have no relationship,

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no more struggle with sin.

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It will not come until that day that we receive that new body.

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Now those are the things that we have to know.

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We have to write them in our minds, into our hearts, we have to know what happened to Jesus,

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we have to know what happened to ourselves because we were united with Jesus in his death

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and resurrection.

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Now the second action that we have to take is very simply in verse 11, he says, consider

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yourselves to be dead to sin and alive to God.

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He goes beyond knowing it here to considering it to be true.

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The word really means to calculate this.

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An accountant would draw a line here, and that's really what Paul is doing in his mind,

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he's drawing a line and he's saying now you sum up all of these things, you just add them

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up.

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And he says here is the sum total.

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Calculate this to be true, that in fact you are dead to sin and alive to God.

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Count on it as a fact, an actual truth that is just as sure, just as real, just as actual

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as the death and resurrection of Christ himself.

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He says count on this to be true, that you are alive to God and dead to the rule and

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the reign of sin in your life.

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Notice he doesn't say consider yourselves to be positionally dead to sin, or potentially

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dead to sin, or that sometime in the future you're going to be dead to sin, but he says

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consider yourselves to be dead to sin, actually and now.

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I'd like to read a couple of paragraphs from another writer whose book I recommend is called

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The Christian Looks at Himself, and the writer is Anthony Hokema.

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He says, I am to look upon myself therefore not as partly old man and partly new man, but

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as a new man in Christ.

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Does this mean that for the believer the struggle against sin is over?

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No.

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The New Testament is full of the language of struggle.

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The Christian life is called a battle, a race, a wrestling against evil spirits.

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We are told to be good Christian soldiers, to fight the good fight of faith, to resist

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the devil, to take heed lest we fall, and to put on the whole armor of God.

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Moreover, in this struggle we do not always win.

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We do not always resist every temptation.

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On the contrary, we hear New Testament saints confessing that they are far from perfection,

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that they have not yet attained, that in many things they all stumble.

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We hear John saying in his first epistle, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves

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and the truth is not in us.

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The point is, however, that when we do fall into sin, we are momentarily living according

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to the old man or the old way of living, which we have actually repudiated.

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We are then living contrary to what we really are in Christ.

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Though we are regenerate, we are living contrary to our regenerate life.

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Though we have put on the new man, we are still then living contrary to the new man,

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as if we were still the old man.

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But the fact that this does happen, and may indeed happen frequently, does not mean that

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we must therefore revise our self-image as having to include both old man and new man.

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For, he says, and this is the most important point, when we slip into an old man way of

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living, we are living contrary to our true selves.

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We are denying our true self-image.

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Paul does not say in Romans 6-11, consider yourselves to be mostly alive to God and mostly

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dead to sin.

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What he says is, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God.

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This then must be our Christian self-image.

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We must consider ourselves to be new men in Christ, who have once and for all turned our

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backs upon the old way of living called the old man, and who therefore refuse to be identified

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with it any longer.

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As we understand who we are in Jesus Christ, we are to see that in fact we are new men.

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We have new identities.

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And we are to consider that to be absolutely true, because it is true.

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We are to count on that as a fact.

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That's the second action.

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It goes beyond knowing the facts to counting it true.

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Then we are to take a third action.

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That is the action of presenting ourselves to God, verses 12-14.

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He says, therefore, because all that I've said is a fact, therefore, he says, do not

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let sin reign in your mortal body.

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The word reign here means to exercise kingly power.

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Do not let that happen, he says, and the tense of the verb here is present and it's an imperative,

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which has probably this meaning.

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Do not continue to let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey its lust.

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The point is this, that the Romans, to whom he was writing, were living like so many Christians.

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They were living contrary to who they were in Jesus Christ.

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Although they had died to sin, had been raised with new life to walk in newness of life before

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God, although that was true about them, they were allowing sin to reign as king in their

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lives.

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And so he says, don't go on that way.

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He says, do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness.

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He says, don't put the members of your body at the disposal of sin, for sin to use it

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as instrument, as an instrument.

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The word instrument here means a weapon.

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Sin will use the members of your body as a weapon in its fight.

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You say, what are the members of my body?

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What does that refer to?

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Well, it refers obviously to our tongues, our eyes, our hands, but it goes beyond the

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physical members of our body to include our abilities, our emotions, our capacity to reason,

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our imagination, our potential.

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All of those things are involved here in this idea of the members of our bodies too.

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He says, don't go on presenting your imagination to sin as a weapon.

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Don't go on presenting your potential.

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Don't go on presenting your reasoning powers to sin as a weapon.

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The implication being that they, like many of us, were doing that.

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They were putting themselves at the disposal of sin, and sin was reigning as king in the

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life of many of these Christians.

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So Paul says, look, don't you realize what is true about you?

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You must know that this is true and consider it a fact.

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And no longer allow sin to reign as king.

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Don't go on presenting all of the members, your capacities to sin as weapons.

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But he says, present yourselves to God.

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Here the idea is immediately do this.

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Decisively do this.

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Take this action now, he says.

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Present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments or

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weapons of righteousness to God.

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One cannot stay neutral in this matter.

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Either sin will reign as king, and it may if we allow it, and either we will present

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our members to sin, or we will present ourselves to God.

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Paul says later in Romans, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present

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your bodies as a living sacrifice to God.

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A very similar thought.

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Present all that you are to God.

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And all of your capacities, all the potential of your life to God.

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Oh, young people, if only you could see the life before you that God has.

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Present that to Him, even now by faith, though you don't know what life holds.

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Present it to God by faith, and say, oh God, use my life and all of its potential as an

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instrument of righteousness in this world.

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Moms and dads, the same way, present yourself to God as an instrument of righteousness because

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of who you are and what's happened to you because of your identity with Jesus Christ.

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He states clearly in verse 14, sin shall not be master over you.

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Literally he says, sin shall not lord it over you.

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The Greek word for lord is the word kurios.

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Here's the verb form of that very word lord.

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He says, sin shall not be your lord.

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Why?

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For you are not under law, but under grace.

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If we were still under law, then sin would be our lord.

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Because you see, law cannot deliver us.

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Law cannot deliver us from sin.

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It cannot give us freedom from sin.

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He'll get more into this in chapter 7.

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Law cannot deliver the sinner from sin, either its guilt or its power.

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It cannot do that.

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What can the law do?

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Just stimulate sin.

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If we were under the law, sin would be our lord.

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But he says we're under grace.

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We're under grace.

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Because we are under grace, no longer under law, therefore we have been freed from sin

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and its lordship.

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And we have a new lord.

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When a person comes to faith in Jesus Christ, it is not so that he can be freed from this

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lord of sin to live the way he wants to.

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When we come to faith in Jesus Christ, we exchange lords, this lord of sin to the lord

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Jesus Christ.

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Grace frees us from the lordship of sin to live freely under the lordship of Jesus Christ.

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In our lives.

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Bishop Hanley Mool has a helpful comment that I'd like to quote to you regarding this.

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He says, we have received the reconciliation that we may now walk not away from God as

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if released from a prison, but with God as his children and his son.

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Because we are justified, we are to be holy, separated from sin, separated to God.

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Not as a mere indication that our faith is real and that therefore we are legally safe,

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but because we were justified for this very purpose that we might be holy.

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The grapes upon a vine are not merely a living token that the tree is a vine and is alive.

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They are the product for which the vine exists.

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It is a thing not to be thought of that the sinner should accept justification and live

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to himself.

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It is a moral contradiction of the very deepest kind and cannot be entertained without betraying

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an initial error in the man's whole spiritual creed.

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What he was really saying there was that you and I have been justified by faith in Jesus

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Christ that we might be sanctified by the power of Jesus Christ.

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That's why Romans chapters 6, 7, and 8 follows chapters 3, 4, and 5.

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It's not just the numerical order, it's the order of truth.

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Justified, sanctified.

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The one belongs with the other.

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I want to ask you to determine in your heart to study and as the Spirit of God gives you

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understanding to know the facts we've talked about tonight regarding your identity.

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And as you begin to know those, I want to challenge you then to calculate them, to draw

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the line and sum them up and appropriate these things to be true.

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Who is your master tonight?

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Who is it that you're serving?

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Are you presenting yourselves to God or to sin?

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We are someone's servant.

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We have been freed from our servitude to sin that we might be the servants of the Savior.

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Thank God for that.

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Thank God for the radical change that has been made in you and me that that might be

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realized in our lives.

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Know the facts.

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Consider them to be true.

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And as an act and step of faith, present yourselves to God in all that you are and he will live

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righteousness through you.

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The power of Jesus Christ will flow through you.

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You will walk in newness of life.

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We'll talk some more about this next week.

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Let's bow together.

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Father, all of us hunger to move beyond knowing the doctrine to experiencing it in our lives.

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And so often we're looking for the quick fix.

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We want the shortcut.

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We want the ten easy steps.

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But that's not the way it is.

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Help us to realize that you give us handles in your word so that we can apply this truth

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and experience it in our lives, but that it takes time.

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There may be some brothers and sisters here who are struggling with discouragement because

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of long battle with sin.

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God refresh them tonight.

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And do a new work of illumination in the heart.

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May that brother, may that sister know the facts, calculate them to be true, and take

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a fresh new step of presenting himself, herself to God.

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Father, I pray that as a result of this truth being preached, being heard and applied, that

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you will continue that process of sanctification.

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That there may be a renewing of our minds, a transforming of our inner man, so that more

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and more what we really are in the innermost part of us will be seen in our attitudes,

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our actions, and our words.

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In Jesus' name, amen.