Transcript
We are still in Romans chapter 6. Our concentration on verses 8 through 14. Verse 8 says,
8) But if we died with Christ, we believe that also we will live with Him:
9) knowing that Christ having been raised from out of the dead He dies no longer; death no longer is lording over Him.
10) For what He died, He died to sin once and for all: but what He lives, He lives to God.
11) In this same way also you yourselves calculate (impute) yourselves to indeed to be dead to the sin, but living to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
12) Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, for the purpose to obey it in its lusts.
13) Neither present your members as instruments of unrighteousness — members being the instruments or members of your body, the various body parts. Neither present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin: but present yourselves to God, as living from out of the dead, and your members instruments of righteousness to God.
14) For sin will not be lord over you: for you are not under Law, but under grace.
So far we have studied in this chapter, remembering that chapters 6 through 8 of Romans, again, has to do with sanctification. He spends three chapters detailing what it means to be sanctified. In chapter 6 he talks about both the flesh and the spirit in the struggle that is involved there. But when we get to chapter 7 he is going to talk strictly about the flesh. And then when we get to chapter 8 strictly about the Spirit of God.
But as we entered into this chapter, chapter 6 has to do with God’s deliverance as He has delivered us from the power of sin. That is a statement of fact. Stop to think about it. He has already delivered us from the power of sin. It does not seem like it, but He has.
This chapter is focused around two questions. The first question is in verse 1, and the second question is in verse 15. He says in chapter 6 that if we have died with Christ, shall we continue in sin? And he says, May it not happen! And here is the reason why. That Jesus, when He died, He died my death.
And remember the word death (thanatos) has to do with separation, not annihilation. So when it says that I have died to sin it means—and, in fact, there is a definite article in this text through chapter 6—the sin principle. And we know from I John chapter 3 verse 8 that is the devil. Satan is the sinner from the beginning. He is the one who energizes people who are not saved in order to satisfy the desires of the flesh and of the mind. When a person is saved, or becomes saved, that is not just a religious term, that is actually a spiritual experience. It is when the Spirit of Christ delivers us, or rescues us, from the energy force and influence of Satan himself to live for ourselves. But that death that took place was separation. I have been separated from the power of sin dominating my life.
And I now have God’s Spirit lording it over my life. You have heard the term demon possession. And you know that is a very severe situation to be in, where the person actually loses their personality, and they still talk but the demons actually speak through them. Guess what? A believer is Holy Spirit possessed. We are possessed by God’s Spirit. And when He moves in and through our lives it is our voice but it is Him moving because He is now the dominant spiritual force over our life. So it used to be that Satan would inspire me through the flesh to live a life of sin but I have been separated, I have died to sin, separated from sin.
But we will see at the end of chapter 7 Paul will say, But the law of sin still is the members of my flesh. The body itself is not evil. The body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is what our body is made of, it is made of flesh. It is not redeemed. It is not saved. The human element of my life is not saved but my spirit is. Once Christ comes into my spirit I am filled with Christ and the Holy Spirit seals me so nothing can penetrate my spirit, where Christ dwells. And I am being kept for Christ until His return. In the meantime, my spirit filled with Christ and sealed by Christ lives in this body of flesh.
So Paul says, I sense that there are two laws here. With my mind I serve the law of God, and with my flesh I serve the law of sin. I have two laws going on at the same time. But, I have died, I have been separated from, delivered from sin dominating my life. Sin is still there in the flesh but it does not lord it over me any longer. That is why Paul says that with his mind he serves the law of God. We are not talking about psychological principles. We are talking about the fact that with our reasoning processes, we will see this in Romans chapter 12 verse 1, that we serve the Lord with our reasoning processes. That is, as we think things out in life, we make decisions to serve Him and to be obedient to Him. Service is not a human effort. Serving the Lord takes place in the decision-making processes of our mind. When I make the decision to be obedient to Christ, His spirit energizes me to be obedient to that decision. And so as we think about the things of life and the realization that it is in the mind, the (psuchē), the psyche, Paul says, this is the arena. This is where all the thought processes take place. This is where Satan comes and he starts pushing buttons from our former life, and starts put pushing buttons that cause the flesh to rear up and become activated. And his sole purpose is to occupy the attention of our minds. Why? Because that is where we make our decisions.
We are writing an article now for StudyLight on the conscience. The conscience is the information gathering function of the mind. We are born with a conscience but that conscience—we were always led to believe, especially by the way our parents treated us, “You are five years old now. You should know better! Doesn’t your conscience bother you?” Like we are born with knowing right from wrong. We are not born knowing right from wrong. The conscience has to be programmed. The conscience will function about right and wrong based on the information that it is being fed. For each person right and wrong is different.
As we expose ourselves to God’s Word that part, that information gathering part of the mind becomes filled with God’s view of life and God’s ways. And the Holy Spirit uses that through our conscience to convict us about what is right and wrong in God’s eyes. So that as I think things out in life I have the information of God convicting me one way or another based on His Word. I have the process of His Spirit reminding me of what God’s Word says. Which is why the psalmist said, Thy Word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against You. Because God’s Spirit will bring God’s Word to mind and be convicting us that what we are doing is sin. It is not right with God and we have to deal with it, we have to respond. But it is not the human effort that serves God. With my mind I serve the law of God, and with my flesh the law of sin. Factual statement.
Beginning with verse 8, he uses the word knowing three times, actually beginning with verse 3. Verses 3, 6 and 9 all carry with it the term knowing. So obviously he is teaching us and instructing us. How can we who are dead to sin live any longer in it? Well, it is because we are ignorant. In chapter 6 verse 2, the believer is dead to the sin principle. Chapter 6 verse 7, we have been freed from the sin principle, the dominance of sin.
So he says in verse 8, And if we died with Christ, and that is literally since. It is called a first-class condition assumed to be true. Since we died with Christ, we believe that also we shall live with Him. Not only walk in His Spirit here, but in the future we are going to live with Him. (verse 9) Knowing that Christ having been raised from out of the dead He dies no longer; death no longer is lording over Him. (verse 10) For what He died to the sin principle, He died once and for all: and what He lives, He lives to God.
Jesus did not defeat death by avoiding it. Sometimes we think that we have mastered something by not allowing it to affect our lives. Jesus submitted to death. He experienced death. So that while in a condition of death He, by the power of God, could rise from out of the dead, death no longer holds Him. And He dies no more because He is now Lord over death. He defeated it. And all these things that Jesus did for us. He died for our sins. He defeated Satan. He defeated death. So that if I have Christ in me, that is my future. Death will not hold me because Christ is Lord over death. He defeated death. Sin will not lord it over me, Christ defeated sin. Satan will not dominate my life, Christ has defeated Satan.
And He has not given me those abilities, He is the ability. Because if Christ is in me and I am in Christ, we are one. His Spirit is in my spirit, and His Spirit will never be separated from my spirit from now throughout eternity, ever. We are one. So where Christ goes, I go. As long as Christ lives, I live. Where Christ dwells throughout eternity I am going to be there. Not by way of earning points but because His Spirit is in my spirit, never to leave or be separated from Him from now throughout eternity.
Because of who He is, and what He has done, and the fact that He now dwells in me permanently, because of this verse 11 says, In this way… that is what the word so means in the English text. So also reckon (impute, consider, calculate) yourselves to be dead to sin. See, that is a term of faith. The Bible tells me that I have become dead to sin. But I still see it, and I still sense it, and I still feel it. It is still active in my physical body. So that is why he says you have to impute it, you have to calculate it. It is a position of faith.
Three things as to why a believer finds that hard to believe.
1) They have never been taught it.
2) The new birth in Christ is not experiential. It is not physically observable. And is not verified by the human or the flesh.
3) And thirdly, our continual battle with sin and with the flesh makes us feel as though the facts of Scripture are not true. “Well, if I have been dead to sin, and I know that I sin, therefore I must not be saved.” That is why he says you must impute it. Calculate it.
You must consider, based on the facts of Scripture what Jesus did, based on the fact that if Jesus lives in you and you have been born of the Spirit of God, then you are called upon by faith to calculate that you are dead to sin. We are called upon to believe the truth of God’s word by faith, according to the facts, regardless of feelings. Faith does not go by feelings. Faith does not go by the human. Faith does not go by even human judgment.
So he says calculate yourself, compute, consider, put it put to your account that you have been made dead indeed to the sin principle, but living to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That spiritually I am alive to God, and I have experienced a spiritual death in the sense that I have been separated from the sin principle that used to govern my life.
So in verse 12, the implementation of the facts. We are to make decisions based on this truth. And our understanding of this truth will show in our decision-making. It says in verse 12, Therefore, based on these facts, do not let the sin principle, it has the definite article, reign in your mortal body, that is to obey it in its lusts. That is a command: do not let it reign. And the response in the human is, easy for you to say. If God tells me that I have died to sin—and He is telling me this as a spiritual truth, He is telling me this as an actual truth. Because inside, from the inside I am struggling, I am living in this body of the flesh of sin, so I am wrestling with it. And on the inside — I am reading God’s Word and He says, “Here are the facts,” but from the inside and struggling with it in the in the human, it does not seem like that is true. So I have to trust the Lord that has happened.
And when, in my decision making, when it says, Let not sin rule (or reign) in your mortal body, you cannot do anything about it. But you can make decisions to not let it rule your life. Period. Satan is there to move through the flesh to make us feel like we do not have a choice. We are just slaves to sin and we just, you know.
The second command is in verse 13. Neither be presenting your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but in contrast, present yourselves to God as if living from out of the dead, and the members of your body as instruments of righteousness to God. So he is telling us the person who does not know the Lord, who is not born of the Spirit of God, who has never been saved, not religiously but spiritually, never been saved that person can say, “The devil made me do it.” A Christian cannot say that. When we sin we sin because we want to because the Lord has delivered us from the power of sin dominating our lives.
And here is the principle, the promise, in verse 14. For sin will not lord it over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. Some of the libertines who said, “We live under grace and not under law, therefore I can do whatever I want to do.” He is finishing up here in verse 14 what he started in verse 1, How can we who are dead to sin live any longer in it? You cannot. It is impossible. Sin will not, not it should not, it will not. And for the believer right now these sin principle does not dominate or lord it over us, for we are not under law but we are under grace, by God’s grace. By God’s grace we have been set free. By God’s grace we can make decisions to not follow sin. We can make decisions to not do what the human, our human tells us to do, or even what we want to do as human beings. That in the decision-making process we can present the members of our body to Christ in our various situations.
And we will see that culminated in Romans chapter 12 verse 1, Present your bodies as a living sacrifice to God. What is God’s will for my life? That I present myself to Him and just say, “Lord, let Your will be done. Let Your Spirit move in me and through me and through my life to do according to Your will.” The same word translated present in Romans chapter 12 verse 1 as we have here in verses 13 and 14. It s the word used the Old Testament for presenting a sacrifice to God. Present your bodies as living sacrifices. That is, we continually – while we live continue to make the decision to offer ourselves as the sacrifice that God might use us. Whereas before the members of our body, hands and feet, all the members of our body were used for sin. To serve sin and self. Now he is calling upon us to make that decision to say no to what the flesh wants to do, and to present ourselves to Christ and say, “Lord, these hands are Yours. These feet are Yours. My life is Yours.” And present ourselves to Christ that the members of our body might serve righteousness not unrighteousness.
Next week, we start with the next question in verse 15, because he says, We are not under law but under grace. So he anticipates the next question, “Well, since we are not under the law, and we are under grace, you are giving us a license to sin.” And we will see him address that as he continues to show and teach the effects of salvation. We have been saved from the dominance of sin in our life. Though it still be there, the Holy Spirit is stronger and our decision to submit ourselves to God’s Spirit has more power and more strength than the flesh does. And we are called upon to make and serve the Lord in our reasoning processes. Make those decisions to do what Christ would have us to do. Knowing that we cannot do it, we can only present ourselves to Him.
Just like with salvation, you cannot save yourself. The only thing you can do is present yourself to God and ask for His mercy. The Christian life continues that way. The best I can do is make the decision to be obedient to Christ. I myself cannot do it. I must present myself to Christ.
Let’s close with prayer.
