Dying With Christ To Live - Romans 6:1-10
INTRODUCTION:
In the second half of chapter five Paul had been contrasting Adam with Christ and how by one act by each of them, they had affected the whole human race, how Adam through one act of disobedience brought condemnation and death to the whole human race and how Jesus Christ through one act of obedience made available the gift of grace and righteousness to the whole human race. Then in the last couple verses Paul speaks of the Law of Moses and grace. We learned that grace was part of the plan of redemption from the beginning and is the only means of salvation for everyone. The Law came in beside to cause men to see their need for God’s grace because they could not in their sinful flesh keep the righteous standard required by the Law. Paul wrote that the Law came in so that transgression would increase, man’s sin would increase as he failed to keep the Law, but where sin increased, Paul writes that grace abounded all the more. Grace will always be more abundant than sin, there will always be abundant grace to forgive the sinner who comes in repentant faith to Jesus Christ for salvation. Paul said that grace would reign through the righteousness of Jesus Christ to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Paul knew that by saying where sin increased, grace abounded all the more would cause some to say that Paul was teaching that sin itself glorifies God because it makes it possible for God to show more grace. Paul had already touched on this idea in chapter three where he wrote that some were claiming that Paul and those with him were saying, “let us do evil that good may come.” Paul knew that this accusation would be raised again so in chapter six he raises this question, answers it and then lays out the facts that prove that his answer is true, that as true believers we are no longer under sin, it is no longer our master and death no longer reigns over us. Let’s pray and then look at our passage for this morning.
SCRIPTURE:
Turn in you Bibles to Romans 6:1-10 our passage for this morning. I wanted to get to these verses this morning because they clearly explain what the symbol of baptism is and since we are having a baptism today I though it would be good to give you the meaning of baptism that Paul uses as an illustration to get his point across. Please stand if you are able in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
Romans 6:1-10,
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.” (Romans 6:1–10, NASB95)[1]
Paul begins this passage by asking the question that he knows would be asked. He had seen both extremes, those teaching that Gentile believers had to be circumcised and follow the Law of Moses to be saved and the other extreme that he now addresses that if where sin increases grace abounds all the more, then sin must glorify God by causing His grace to increase. This extreme position would go so far as to say that it is our duty to sin so that God might cause His grace to expand. Paul clearly shows how this teaching is false by giving us the facts that both uphold God’s grace and God’s righteousness. In Ephesians 2:8-10 Paul clearly teaches that salvation is a gift of God’s grace through faith, that there is nothing that we can add to it so that we could boast that we had something to do with God saving us, it is completely a work of God. With that being said, Paul goes on in Ephesians 2:10 to say that we are God’s workmanship “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” (Ephesians 2:10b, NASB95)[2] Paul is teaching here and it is taught through all the Bible that when we come into this saving relationship with Christ through faith our life is forever changed as we begin living out our faith in holiness by the power of God working in us and through us by the indwelling Holy Spirit. John MacArthur writes, “In God’s redemptive act in a person’s heart, true holiness is as much a gift of God as the new birth and the spiritual life it brings. The life that is not basically marked by holiness has no claim to salvation.”[3] He is not saying that a believer will be sinless, but that a true believer will not persist in sinful living. What Paul wants us to understand is that justification and sanctification can not be separated from one another as the two parts of salvation, they go hand in hand, new life in Christ through faith alone is accompanied by living a life of holiness in Christ that He provides, it is the evidence that we have been saved by grace through faith alone, it is the process that God uses to make us more like Christ.
So, Paul lays the question before us, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?” (Romans 6:1, NASB95)[4] The word translated “continue” is a word in Greek that means “to abide” or “to continue persistently.” That said, Paul is not talking about when a believer falls into sin because of a moment of weakness, but instead he is talking about a person whose sin is intentional and persistent, it is the pattern of his life.
Before salvation, sin is the pattern of every person’s life, we are all children of Adam and because we are, we are sinners with an innate ability and tendency to sin, sin taints everything that we do. But for the one who is redeemed and has come into the salvation relationship with Jesus Christ and is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, this person is changed, this person has no reason to continue in his old pattern of sin. He is no longer under sin’s control. Again, John MacArthur writes, “Put in theological terms, can justification truly exist apart from sanctification? Can a person receive a new life and continue in his old way of living? Does the divine transaction of redemption have no continuing and sustaining power in those who are redeemed? Put still another way, can a person who persists in living as a child of Satan have been truly born again as a child of God?”[5] Paul says that it is not possible as we will see and he will give us the facts as to why it is not possible.
Paul answers the question that he posed in verse one. And his answer is an emphatic, “May it never be!” (Romans 6:2a, NASB95)[6] We have seen Paul use this phrase before and it is the strongest form of negation in the Greek language. Paul uses it fourteen times in his epistles and ten of those times are in Romans. It is a phrase used to show outrage that such an idea could be thought to be true. The very thought that sin could in some way glorify God was inconceivable to Paul. Even though Paul could have easily condemned this idea and moved on, he takes the time to show why such a thought is so horrifying to him. He begins to answer this question with a brief answer that itself is in the form of a question, he writes, “How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2b, NASB95)[7] Paul is saying, the person who is alive in Christ is dead to sin. How can one live in sin when he has been delivered from it by death? To imagine that we can glorify God by sinning so that His grace increases is preposterous, God’s grace was given to deliver us from sin. If a person has died to one kind of life, he cannot continue to live in it. Death is permanent, once we have died to sin it is impossible for us to live in sin. Understand that when Paul made the statement that where sin increases, grace abounds all the more, he was focusing on God’s grace and magnifying it as super-abundant, he was not focusing on man’s sin. His point was that no single sin is too great for God to forgive, and God’s grace is abundant enough to cover all the sins ever committed by the human race through all of history, past, present and future. All sin is more than sufficiently covered by the immeasurable super-abundant grace of God that was activated by the death of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. When a sinner is justified by God’s grace through faith, he is no longer a sinner but a saint and his life both is and will continue to be a sanctified life. In other words, when a person is redeemed, God not only declares him to be righteous at that moment (justification) but also begins to develop Christ’s righteousness in him (sanctification). That being said, salvation is not merely a legal transaction where we are justified but results in a miracle of transformation. This work of sanctification will continue our whole life, it is a growing process that will not be completed until we enter heaven through death or rapture. But for the person who has truly come to God in faith for salvation and has been justified, then that person’s life will be marked by a change, a transformation will have taken place as God begins the work of sanctification.
Paul uses this phrase “died to sin” as his jumping off point for the rest of this chapter. It is impossible Paul says to be alive in Christ and still be alive to sin. Not that a person alive in Christ will be without sin but at the moment of salvation he is totally separated from the controlling power of sin, that is the sin life that he had before salvation, the sin life from which Jesus Christ died to deliver him is no longer a part of him. Paul will now give us the facts of this truth.
Paul begins this section by writing, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,” (Romans 6:3–5, NASB95)[8] Paul says that all true Christians have been baptized into Christ Jesus. Baptism represents identification. To say that all true Christians have been baptized into Christ Jesus is saying that we have been permanently immersed into Him, we have been made one with Him. This baptism that Paul is speaking of in this passage is not water baptism, but the spiritual baptism which water baptism symbolizes. When we are baptized as Matthew will be today, it is a symbol of what has already taken place in his life the moment that he in faith came to God for salvation, believing that Jesus Christ died for his sin and was buried and rose again. At that moment the Holy Spirit immersed Matthew into Jesus Christ and he became one with Christ. Water baptism symbolizes this immersion into Christ, Matthew is saying to those who are watching his baptism that he is identified with Jesus Christ.
Paul goes onto explain that to be baptized into Christ Jesus is to be baptized into His death and resurrection. In other words, we are not simply identifying with Christ, but we are identifying with His death and resurrection. That we are baptized into His death, we look back and His death is an historical fact and we look back at our union with Him on the cross. Paul writes that we have been buried with Him through baptism into death so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. This also is an historical fact looking back to our union with Christ in His resurrection. In other words, we died with Christ in His crucifixion, so that we might live through Him and have life in Him, the one that we identify with. Paul wants us to understand that by putting our faith in Jesus Christ for salvation we were made to participate in our Savior’s death, we were buried with Him, the proof of death. The purpose of this act of God bringing us through death, the death of Christ which paid the penalty for our sin, was so that through participation in the resurrection of Christ we are enabled by God to walk in newness of life. Paul said it this way in Galatians 2:20 speaking of himself, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” (Galatians 2:20, NASB95)[9] This life that we live is no longer ours, but belongs to Christ who gave us this newness of life and enables us to walk in it. Because we died in Christ and were raised in newness of life, we can no longer live a life of sin. The word translated “newness” is a Greek word that means a newness of quality and character, it is a different word in Greek that mean new in a point of time. What Paul is saying is that just as sin characterized our old life, now righteousness in Christ characterizes our new life. Paul’s teaching here is beautifully symbolized by water baptism as the person goes down into the water it symbolizes his union with Christ in His death, as he is under the water it symbolizes His being buried with Christ in His death, as he is brought up out of the water it symbolizes his union with Christ in His resurrection. A testimony to those watching that the person baptized has died to sin in Christ and is raised to a holy life in Christ and desires to walk with Him as his Savior and Lord.
Paul reaffirms this union with Christ by stating our identity in Christ another way, he writes, “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,” (Romans 6:5, NASB95)[10] Again stating that we died to sin in Christ and we were raised a new creation, to walk in newness of life. Paul’s point is that we are now identified with Christ, or united with Him. Before we were identified with sin, united with sin, sin controlled us. But we have died to sin in Jesus Christ, His death paying the penalty for our sin. We are now identified with Jesus Christ, united with Him.
CONCLUSION:
I am going to stop here this morning, my hope was to get through verse ten, but we made it through verse 5. Paul in this passage wants us to understand that we cannot as true Christians continue to live a life of persistent sin because we have died to the power of sin in our life in Christ. We have a new life because Christ’s death delivers us from the power of sin. We are raised in Christ through His resurrection to newness of life. Salvation is a legal transaction in which we are justified by Christ’s death on our behalf and we are transformed by Christ’s resurrection. When we come in repentant faith to Jesus Christ for salvation our old life of sin dies, and we are given a new life of holiness in Christ. John MacArthur writes, “As Christ’s resurrection life was the certain consequence of His death as the sacrifice for our sin, so the believer’s holy life in Christ is the certain consequence of his death to sin in Christ.”[11] We must understand that justification and sanctification are not separate parts of salvation, but they work together as the act of salvation. The moment you place your faith in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ for salvation you are no longer a sinner, you have become a saint in Christ you are holy, and your life will be characterized by righteousness. Paul used our baptism into Christ to show us that by identifying with Christ we identify with His death and His resurrection, dying with Him to sin, and being raised with Him to newness of life. This spiritual baptism is beautifully symbolized in water baptism, dying with Christ, buried with Christ, being raised with Christ in His resurrection. Water baptism is your public testimony to the world of your identification with Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord and your intention to follow Him as you grow in Him.
[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[3]MacArthur, John F., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Romans 1-8. Chicago, IL : Moody Press, 1991.
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[5]MacArthur, John F., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Romans 1-8. Chicago, IL : Moody Press, 1991.
[6]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[7]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[8]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[9]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[10]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[11]MacArthur, John F., The MacArthur New Testament Commentary – Romans 1-8. Chicago, IL : Moody Press, 1991.