The opportunity to be away and to be preached at for a few days was refreshing for me.
Being the one who does the preaching most of the time here, it's good for me to be preached
at occasionally.
And I feasted in the messages that God enabled us to hear at the Bible conference in Chicago
this last week.
I would encourage you, if you have a few days on vacation sometime, to invest a period
of your vacation in a Bible conference.
You can do that without leaving home, actually, because there are some here in the cities
occasionally.
And you can also go to places where you can have your meals catered to you and sleep in
lovely facilities and attend a Bible conference that way.
And concentrated time studying the Word of God is a wonderful way to be refreshed on
vacation.
Tonight, we continue our look in the book of Romans as we seek to understand how this
book unfolds.
I'm not pretending that we're going to cover everything that might be said about the book
of Romans.
I spent over a year in it about ten years ago.
More recently than that, we took chapters 6, 7, and 8 and spent probably 12 weeks studying
them.
And tonight we're going to do all of that in just one service.
So obviously we're not going to say everything that one might say.
But I hope that we're able to unfold it in such a way that you might be able to grasp
how it's put together.
Then the Spirit of God perhaps can use that to take you deeper into it in your own study
of the Word of God.
Did you get an outline when you came in?
If you don't have one, you might lift your hand and perhaps an usher can bring one up
to you.
We do need some here toward the front.
Thanks for doing that.
Just keep your hand up and they'll see you when they get the outlines in hand and make
sure that you get a copy of an outline.
Tonight we're talking about the relationship of God to the believer in a part 2 message
because actually chapter 3 verse 21 begins this part of the book.
It concludes with the last verse of chapter 8.
We've looked at approximately half of that.
Tonight we look at the second half as we begin in chapter 6 and verse 1.
There's only one word really that can fully describe the summation of the relationship
between God and the believer and that is the word salvation.
Salvation is a broad and expansive doctrine that stretches from eternity to eternity.
It embraces so very much.
Here in the book of Romans the two key thoughts that fall under salvation are justification,
which we've defined as God declaring the believing sinner to be righteous in his eyes.
It's a legal declaration on the part of God.
And the word sanctification, justification and sanctification are included in salvation.
Whereas justification is God's legal declaration on behalf of the sinner trusting in Christ,
sanctification refers to the work of God whereby he makes the believer righteous in Christ.
It has to do with God's righteousness in the believer's experience.
Justification is the righteousness of God declared on behalf of the believing sinner.
Sanctification is the righteousness of God experienced in the life of the believing sinner.
Now while we do distinguish these two in definition it's important to know that they are not separated
in the mind of God.
What God begins he will complete.
There are some who seem to have the idea that one can be saved, can be justified, and yet
never experience sanctification.
There's never a change or transformation in the life.
I find that strange to the word of God, which describes salvation as beginning with a legal
declaration on God's part and consummating one day when the believer will be fully changed
to be like the Lord Jesus Christ.
Chapter 6, where we begin this evening, does not so much begin a new section of the book
as it continues this flow of truth about salvation that was begun in chapter 3 and verse 21.
So even though there is a chapter division here it would be helpful if in your mind you
could block that out and just read from chapter 5 into chapter 6.
Some people in studying the book do see a parenthesis here.
They understand chapter 6 and 7 to be parenthetical.
Paul digressing for the moment regarding some questions that come to his mind about what
he's just said concerning the relationship between grace and sin.
Where sin abounds, grace does much more abound.
Some questions arise out of that.
Paul deals with them and then he resumes in chapter 8, the victory of grace over sin.
There are two questions that come to the mind of particularly the Jew who listens to Paul
say that grace super abounds over sin.
One question is, will not that notion, that idea that where our sin abounds, grace supersedes,
will not that notion lead to more sin?
If a little sin causes God's grace to be glorified, if I sin more, won't God's grace even be more
glorified?
Well Paul spends chapter 6 dealing with that.
Then a second question that a Jewish listener might have after listening to Paul at the
end of chapter 5 is, well why was the law given in the first place?
Paul says the law came in that transgression might increase.
We talked about the meaning of that briefly last time.
The thinking Jew hearing that would say, well if the law causes sin to increase, then that
perverts the law, doesn't it?
The law must be evil.
Why did God give the law if it simply causes sin to increase?
So in chapter 7, at least in part, Paul speaks about the purpose of the law, the Old Testament
law with its regulations and its requirements.
The theme then of chapters 6, 7, and 8 is the theme of sanctification.
We want tonight to talk about the basis for this doctrine in the Bible.
Sanctification, what is its basis?
The answer to it is that it's the same as for justification.
That is, Christ's death and resurrection.
Just as Christ's death for our sins and his resurrection from the dead provide the basis
for God legally declaring us to be righteous in his eyes, so his death and resurrection
provide the basis whereby we can be made righteous in our lives, in the way that we live.
Our lifestyles can be transformed to be like Christ because of his death and resurrection,
and our union with him in death and resurrection.
When we understand that, we'll see that there are two significant truths that apply to our
lives because we are joined with Christ.
These are found in chapter 6 and in chapter 7.
The first significant truth is this, that we are now free from sin's domination.
Why?
Because we've died with Christ, we've been raised with him.
The first significant truth that falls out of that is that we are therefore free from
sin's mastery, its domination, chapter 6.
The second significant truth that falls out of this truth of our union with Christ and
his death and resurrection is that we are free from the law's dominion.
No longer is it over us.
We are free from the law's dominion.
We'll understand something about that as we look at chapter 7.
Let's think about this first significant truth.
We are free from sin's domination.
When I say this, I want you to understand that I'm not saying that we can't sin now.
But what I'm saying is that we don't have to sin now.
There's a difference.
When I say that we are free from sin's domination, I'm not saying that now we can't sin because
we can.
We all experience it, sadly but truly.
What I am saying is that we don't have to sin now.
We don't have to obey sin because we are free from its mastery.
In verses 1 through 11 of chapter 6, he talks about what happened to us.
As you look through these verses, you find that the basic theme is that we have been
united with Jesus Christ in his death and in his resurrection.
God has done that.
He has united us to Christ so that when Christ died, I died and you died.
When Christ was raised from the dead, we also were raised from the dead.
That's not merely a theory or an idea.
That is a fact.
It is a fact.
Just as we were identified as we saw last week with Adam in sin, and when Adam sinned
in the garden, we sinned in Adam.
So now we are identified with Christ and when he died on the cross, we died in him and with
him.
And when he was raised from the dead, we also, in him and with him, were raised from the
dead.
He says that the old man died.
Verse 6, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him.
That old self is the old person, the old identity, the old man that we were in Adam.
He says that old person that we were was crucified.
Not in theory, in fact.
And that old man, that old self that we were, died and is no more.
It's gone.
You and I do not have the old man in us today.
That is contrary to some Bible notes, including the Schofield Bible, in which I was weaned
as a young Christian.
But I do not believe that the old man, what we were in Adam, is still present in us.
He says it was crucified.
And he says in verse 7, he who has died is freed from sin.
Christ died to sin on the cross.
We died with him to sin.
That is the we that we were in Adam.
And we were also raised with him.
He says in verse 5, or verse 4 rather, we have been buried with him through baptism
into death in order that as Christ was raised from the dead to the glory of the Father,
so we too might walk in newness of life.
If we become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall be also in
the likeness of his resurrection.
Verse 10, the death that he, Christ died, he died to sin once for all.
The life that he lives, he lives to God.
And so consider yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
So what I was in Adam, that old self, was crucified with him on the cross.
And it died when he breathed his last.
It died with him.
And when Jesus was raised from the dead, we were raised with him as new people, new person.
New selves, new selves if you please.
We have a new identity, a new nature.
We are not what we were before.
We are brand new people.
If any man be in Christ, he's a what?
A new creation.
Not old and new, mingled and mixed somehow, as though the old man and the new man dwelt
within us.
But the new man is here.
And you say, well what about sin?
We're going to get to that problem.
He said, there's still something inside of me that wants to do bad.
He talks about that in chapter 7.
But it's important to begin here to understand, to know in your mind and to reckon it true
in your heart that what you were in Adam is no longer.
It was put to death and executed with Christ.
And now in Jesus Christ you are a new person with a new nature, a new nature.
So what are we to do in light of this?
Well he spends the rest of the chapter talking about that, verses 12 through 23.
And basically he says, now because of what's happened to you, because of the radical change
that has taken place, therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should
obey its lusts.
He says, that's over.
Sin will still seek to try to dominate you if you let it.
So he says, don't let it do that anymore.
Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin.
You see, we can do that.
That's the implication.
But he says, don't do it.
But present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as his instruments.
So that's what we're to do in light of what's happened to us.
We're to submit to our new master, our new king, who has freed us from the old master
sin.
And I repeat, it's not that we cannot sin, but it is that we don't have to sin.
We can choose to sin, but we are not any longer slaves to sin.
We are free from sin's dominion.
Now we have to move ahead to chapter 7 where we learn a second truth that's not unrelated
to what we just looked at.
He says, we are free from the law's dominion.
The law's dominion.
That's the theme in chapter 7, the law, the mosaic law.
He describes again what happened to us, just like he did in chapter 6, verses 1 through
12.
What happened to us?
Well, we died with Christ to the law.
That law of God, which he says here was God's instrument, it was good and holy and righteous
and so on, but which only because we were sinners stimulated our sin.
He says we've died to that law.
We're no longer under the law.
We've died to it.
We've been raised with Christ.
He compares it to a marriage union.
I would say that in verses 3 and 4 as he draws the analogy upon marriage, there are some
people who have taken what Paul says here and have made this seem as though it's the
only thing he's ever said about marriage and divorce and remarriage and so on.
That's not even his theme here.
What he says here is true, but he's not really talking about divorce and remarriage.
Keep that in mind.
What's he talking about?
The death of a spouse.
He says your death to the law is like this.
Before you were a believer, you were married to the law.
It wasn't a very happy union.
In fact, it was a miserable union, not because the law was bad, but because you were bad.
The law is holy, but you were a sinner.
The law did not have the capacity to make you righteous.
It could only aggravate and stimulate the sin that was in you.
It was a miserable union.
That law, which God counted as holy and righteous and good, brought you to death.
It could only condemn you because you were a sinner.
He says you died to that union.
He says when one dies in a marriage union, that union's over.
It's true, isn't it?
I know we like to think of marriage as being something that we'll enjoy forever, and I
think that we will know forever that we were united to the ones that we were in case of
multiple marriages where spouses die and a person is remarried.
I think that we'll have knowledge of that in heaven.
There'll be something special there, but death ends marriage.
Death ends marriage.
We died in that old union.
We died with Christ.
It's over.
We died to the law.
We were raised from the dead.
We were raised from the dead, and we married again.
This time we were united, as it were, in marriage to Christ, to Christ, and his spirit lives
within us.
That's what happened to us.
We died to the law, and we rose to a new marriage, a new union, this time with Jesus Christ,
a happy marriage, a happy marriage, because we now in him are righteous as he is righteous,
and his spirit lives within us so that our lives are being transformed, sanctified.
God is doing his work in us so that we are progressively being made righteous in the
way that we live.
It's a happy marriage, this one with Christ.
Now because of what happened to us, what are we to do?
You may recognize the outline in chapter 7.
It's the same as chapter 6.
What happened to us?
Now what were to do?
What happened to us?
Now what were to do?
He talks about this in verses 13 through 25.
He says, this has happened to you.
You need to recognize, though, he says, that there is still a struggle with sin which persists
in your earthly bodies.
We come to a controversial text.
I don't know if there's any text in all of the Bible that's had more difference of opinion
than this paragraph that we're looking at right now, beginning with verse 13.
Is Paul talking here about himself or of someone else?
Is he talking about a saved person, an unsaved person?
Is he talking about a spiritual Christian and a carnal Christian?
Who's he talking about in these verses?
Well, my understanding of the text, which is very close to right, I jest.
My understanding of the text, however, at this point is that the apostle Paul is talking
about his own experience.
He's not talking about somebody else.
This is autobiographical.
And I don't believe that Paul is contrasting here what he was before he was saved with
what he is now that he is saved.
I don't think he's talking to us about what happens when he's carnal and when he's spiritual.
I believe the apostle is describing to us what he experiences as a mature, spiritual
man of God.
The kind of honest, transparent insight into what's happening inside of him that he describes
here, it seems to me, can only be the expression of a man who is walking with God and yet who
realizes though he is a new creature in Jesus Christ, he is a new man, he still has a struggle
with sin.
And he seeks to uncover the root of that and to explain it.
I wish I had time to really delve into these verses, but let me just point out to you what
he says in verse 15.
For that which I am doing, I do not understand.
For I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.
Can you identify with that?
Does that seem like your life, at least on Monday mornings?
We can all identify with what Paul is saying here.
He says, but if I do the very thing I do not wish to do, I agree with the law confessing
it's good.
So now no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which indwells me.
Now basically Paul is going to repeat that series of thoughts two more times in the rest
of this chapter.
Let me just go to the conclusion that he draws here, which he draws three times.
Verse 17 says, no longer am I the one doing it, that is, the new I, who I am in Jesus
Christ, the new man, but he says it's sin which indwells me.
It's not that he's not taking responsibility for what happens, he is.
But he's saying that it's not really the new I who does these things that displeases God.
He says it really is sin that is still working in me, in that unredeemed part of me.
That's what he's talking about.
He concludes by a cry that I think all of us have at least once or a thousand times
cried.
Wretched man that I am, who will set me free from the body of this death, from this situation
that I'm in?
He says thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, implication he's done it.
He has set me free.
Then he returns to the realistic situation he faces.
He says so then on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, desiring
to please God, on the other hand with my flesh the law of sin.
So he talks about some principles that are active in his life and that leads him into
chapter eight and it brings us to where we need to go here in a real hurry as we talk
about the blessings of sanctification in chapter eight.
He has just transparently related to us the struggle that as a redeemed person he has
with sin who still dwells in his body, which still dwells in his body.
And he says therefore now even in this present state that I'm in, therefore now even despite
the struggle that I have with sin, he says there is no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus.
That's good news folks.
That's good news for us.
The apostle says even now in the midst of the battle, though sin still dwells in my
flesh, that unredeemed part of me, though sin as a principle is still active in my life
and I choose from time to time to yield to it and to obey it rather than God.
Even though all of that is true about me, he says, nonetheless now there is no condemnation
to those who are in Christ Jesus.
Good news.
It begins to unfold now blessings that come to us in this work of sanctification in our
lives.
In verses one to four he says there is a new principle.
He talks about the law of sin and death, verse two.
He's just described that law active in our lives.
But he says that law of sin and death has been superseded and overridden by another
law that is also active in our members which he calls the law or the principle of the spirit
of life in Christ Jesus.
The law of sin and death is a pull away from God within us.
It is temptation to disobey God, to use our energies, our drives, our opportunities to
disobey the Lord, the law of sin and death.
He says there is another law that is within us that causes us to rise or can cause us
to rise above that other law, the law of life in Christ Jesus and the spirit of life who
makes it real to us.
He says there is a new principle inside of you that's not in the unsaved person.
This has been compared and I will use the same analogy tonight to the law of gravity
which pulls us down.
And we cannot break the law of gravity in our own strength but we can override it by
employing a higher law, the law of aerodynamics.
We can rise above the law of gravity and fly even though gravity is pulling down because
the law of aerodynamics can override the law of gravity.
And so he says the law of the principle of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus is within
us and that principle can enable us to live above the law of sin and death that drags
us down.
One of the blessings of sanctification is that we have this new principle that is active
in our lives.
The second blessing is a new position.
Verses 5 through 9, the first part of it, he contrasts here those who are in the flesh
who cannot please God with those who are in the spirit who do please God.
We have a new position.
We are now in the spirit, not in the flesh any longer.
We must move ahead to the third blessing and that is a new person beginning in verse 9
through verse 17.
It's the Holy Spirit.
He says the spirit of Christ dwells in us and as such he indwells us, he promises things
to us, he empowers us, he leads us, he encourages us, and he witnesses to us.
That sentence is a summation of all of this wonderful paragraph about the blessing of
the spirit, the person who lives in us.
A fourth blessing of sanctification is found in verses 18 through 25.
We have a new prospect.
Before the only prospect we had was death and condemnation and hell and separation from
God.
But now we have a new prospect and that prospect in one word is glory.
Glory is the hope of the natural creation which shares the condemnation with us in sin.
He says the natural creation actually groans waiting for the revelation of the sons of
God so they can share in the release that we found in Christ.
A release by the way that it will know to measure in the millennium when Christ reigns.
And he says not only does the natural creation hope for glory, but he says the new creation,
you and me, we also hope for glory.
We're made for that hope.
We're saved for that hope of glory.
What is glory?
Well, it's being like Christ.
It's the end of sanctification.
Right now sanctification is a process in our lives whereby God is changing us step by step,
little by little to be like him.
One day we will reach glory where we'll be perfect.
We'll be exactly like the Lord Jesus, the new prospect.
We have to move ahead to the fifth of the blessings of sanctification.
It is a new purpose, verses 26 through 30.
What is the new purpose?
It is this, that God is working in every situation we encounter in life for our good.
And what is that good?
That we be like Jesus.
That's what we're called to.
And he says God has purposed, he's taken several actions described in verses 29 and 30, which
mean altogether that God's ultimate good for us will one day be realized.
We will be glorified.
We'll be like Christ.
All things even now though work together for this good to those who love God and who are
called according to that ultimate purpose.
We have this new purpose.
And finally he says our sixth blessing that we have from sanctification is a new protection.
A new protection.
He says that God is for us here.
God is for us, not against us.
God's on our side.
God's with us.
God's not our enemy anymore.
There's no more hostility with God.
That issue is settled.
We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And so now we have a protection from him.
He delivered up his son for us, verse 32.
He declared us righteous, verse 33.
He received our advocate, Christ, into his presence, verse 34.
He assures us of victory, verses 35 through 37.
And he secures our position, verses 38 and 39.
We have a new protection.
What a blessing God has given to us.
And so in the brief and acknowledged superficial overview of these chapters tonight, I hope
you can see the flow that the apostle is presenting to us.
Salvation includes justification and sanctification.
He says the basis of our sanctification, that is God's work making us like Jesus, is that
we're united with Christ.
We're being one with him in his death and resurrection.
We are free from sin.
We're no longer slaves to it.
We don't have to obey it.
We may choose to do so, but rather we ought to present ourselves to God as his servants.
He says because of our union with Christ in death and resurrection, we're free from the
law.
We're in a new marriage now with Christ.
Right in the midst of that marriage, we still have a struggle with sin that dwells in our
flesh, in our mortal bodies.
It's active there as a principle.
But he says God is working in you.
He's put a new principle inside of you.
He's given you a new person.
And you have a new prospect of glory.
And God is going to finish one day what he's begun.
And you're going to be just like the Lord Jesus Christ in every respect, not just legally,
but truly in every way.
You're going to be like God's Son.
And so we have the truth of sanctification.
The relationship between God and the believer can be summarized in the word salvation.
Salvation includes both justification and sanctification.
Salvation is based upon a radical change that has taken place.
We have a new union and a new identification with Christ that has given us a new destiny
and a new relationship with God.
We are new creatures in Christ.
I'd like for us to sing about this.
It's hard to find a hymn that encapsulates all that we've talked about tonight, so I've
just selected one that takes one piece of it, one aspect of the truth.
It's New Life in Christ, and it's hymn 537.
It talks about what wondrous blessings I see.
My past with its sin, the searching and strife forever gone.
There's a bright new dawn, for in Christ I have found new life.
That's really what he's talking about in this wonderful section of Romans as he explains
the believer's relationship to God.
Let's sing about it in the first verse and chorus of 537.
Stand with me please.
Gone is the guilt of my sin.
For I have found new life.
hide from it and I shall make rot.