Faith Bible Church - Sermons
How Can I fight Against My Sin? (Romans 6:6-14)
Well good morning and I hope you guys had a great 4th of July and when I say I hope you had a great 4th of July celebrating that, I sincerely mean it so I don't call it America's rebellion day or anything else like that, so I couldn't resist. Wayne's not here so I'll hear about it later but I hope you had a good good time celebrating with your family and just enjoying that there's a tradition to it. There's almost a ritual of celebrating the 4th of July but it's a beautiful yearly thing that we get to do. This week we are halfway through our series on deep roots and vibrant faith. We've been looking at how a Christian life is lived and how people grow in their walk with Christ. So we've covered explore non-Christians investigating the claims of Christ in the church and then discover new believers learning how to walk with Christ. And today we're spending 2 weeks on each topic so we're starting redeem young believers submitting all areas of life under Christ. But I have to say the same caveat that I think Buck and Rick and Wayne have all shared is that this is not just a linear process or progression where we graduate or we move on from one area into the next. I think we decided to go through this series because it is a helpful view of the Christian life and of discipleship. But we don't want anybody to get the feeling like they're certain hoops you jump through and then you become more and more mature, you don't need the earlier stuff. There's no super Christian out there who doesn't need these earlier things. We need to continue learning how to walk with God, all of our lives. We need to continue submitting our lives to Christ in all areas. Because following Jesus is a lifelong journey. You're going to spend the rest of your days submitting your lives to him in all the areas. So where we're landing today for this subject is Romans chapter 6. So if you could turn in your Bibles to Romans 6. And our theme is how can I fight against my sin? How can I fight against my own sinfulness? Am I really free from sin? Do I have what it takes to fight against sin in my life? And I keep coming back to this theme myself personally and also as I have been discipling others, just that privilege of walking alongside others as they've been fighting against sin. This theme keeps coming up because freedom from sin is such a crucial topic for us, a crucial thing to understand as believers, as we are disciples. And my passion for this chapter of scripture, Romans 6, goes back 21 years to 2003. It was the summer of 2003, I think I was 17. And I was working at a Christian camp in North Carolina at the Wilds. And the head cook, his name was Cal Mayer, and he was a former Navy cook. And he had 10 guys, we were serving, I think, 1,300, 1,400 people per meal at this camp. And he ran that kitchen like a galley, and we were his cadets. I mean, you know, he had a way, like, in a good way, he struck fear into our young hearts. Like, we respected him immediately, and there was a way that he could get us to work. I mean, he was of the Navy mindset that everything needed to be shined, whether anybody else could see it or not, everything needed to be clean. So we'd be underneath the sinks, scrubbing the pipes and shining everything once a week. But I learned a lot that summer about hard work. And I think it was the first or second week, I think it was maybe the first week that I was there. And he asked me to clean the top of the oven. We had two different ovens, or four, but the top of one of the stacks of ovens. And so I did that, and then I think I was on to another task, and I just hear, low pass! You know, I had a way of, like, getting your attention. And I see him feeling the top of the oven. And I'm, you know, my heart stops a little bit. And he's like, "Good! Do the other one!" And I'm like, "Yes, sir!" And so, you know, all summer, we'd be in the kitchen at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m., depending on the meal for the morning. I learned a whole lot about hard work and discipline, but I also learned about the importance of memorizing scripture. This was something he would do with all the cooks that worked under him, was that he would have them pick a passage of scripture. And then throughout the summer, we would be on the hook every Saturday to say the next group of scripture, or, you know, I picked Romans 6. So I would have to do two or three verses every week, but I'd have to do it cumulatively, so I'd have to start at verse 1 and go through wherever I was at. And for some reason, I didn't get the idea that I could practice it throughout the week. It was always Saturday morning. I was like, "Oh shoot, what do I have next?" You know, and I had my verse cards, and I was scrubbing something, or mopping, but I was also looking at my verses before it, because I couldn't leave until I got those verses done. And we'd go into his office and say the verses. I think he was pretty generous in helping a little bit, but he wanted us to know it. So I learned a lot about the importance of scripture memory, and this passage of scripture, Romans 6, was huge. It made a difference in my life, because I grew up in a Christian household, and I came to faith at a young age where I made a decision, "Yes, I want to follow Jesus." That's what everybody around me is doing, and so I had an idea of the Christian life, and I had an understanding of the basics. I was a good Christian kid. I knew all the right answers, but it wasn't until I was 15 or 16 when I started to really struggle and wrestle against my own sin, my own flesh. And I go, "Whoa, that's what the Christian life struggle. This is what the Bible is really talking about." And I started to be at a loss of, "How can I really fight against my sin?" When I came up against lust, or anger, or selfishness in my life, what resources do I have? My flesh seemed so much stronger than me. My good Christian kid ways couldn't cover it anymore. They weren't effective to handle my own heart. Was I saved? Yes, I think I was saved, but then how do I then live out this faith? And Romans 6 helped me. God taught me some lifelong lessons through this passage of scripture. It's a precious truth in these pages. So let's read Romans 6, 1 to 10, or 1 to 11, and then we will get into this beautiful passage of scripture. So Romans 6. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. That we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For the one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let's pray as we begin. Family Father, these truths are too marvelous for us to just sit and passively hear. I pray that these move us to worship. These truths about your son and his death and his resurrection and the death and life that that brings us. I pray that that would move us, that that would move us to tears and move us to action as well. I pray that you'd help us to hear old truths that we already know in new ways. Help us to where we have fear or we have a resignation towards sin. What I pray that we would have a renewed boldness and confidence in your life that you give us this morning. In Christ's name, amen. So in Romans 6 shows us that the story of Jesus is my story too. What happened to him, his death and resurrection happens to us. Verse 5 of Romans 6 says, "For if we've been united with him and a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." One commentator put it this way, "Our spiritual history began at the cross. We were in there in that sense that in God's sight we were joined to him who actually suffered on it. The time element shouldn't disturb us because if we send in Adam, it's equally possible to have died to sin with Christ." So the story of Jesus is my story as well as a disciple of Christ. That's what we should believe, that we died with Christ. That's a fact, that's a truth. Our old self, we heard about that last week in Ephesians 4, that was crucified with Christ. Now, crucifixion is a horrible death. It was what the Romans used for rebels. It was not used on their own citizen. It was actually against their laws for a citizen of Rome to die by crucifixion. Because it was a punishment that also was very public. It was an undignified death and it was used for shock value. It was used to say, "Don't mess with Rome. This is what happens to those that do." But crucifixion is what we get brought into because of Jesus. As this passage says, "We're baptized into His death. We are united with Him in a death like His." Paul says that this way in Galatians 2.20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me." So our old self is executed. It's dead. And that's the result is that we're no longer enslaved to sin. Verse 6 says, "We are no longer enslaved to sin. The one who has died has been set free from sin." He's going to keep coming back to this point several times in Romans. But the point is this. A death of a prisoner frees them from prison. You can't make them pay anything else. You can't make them go to court anymore. You can't make them suffer in prison anymore. They're dead. They're no longer in prison because death has freed them from that. The same with the slave. A slave is underserved to that person's master until they die. But once they're dead, they're no longer a slave. They've been set free from that relationship. And that's what's happened to us in Christ. Christ died on the cross as a common criminal. And while he was there, nailed to the cross, we were there too. It says this in Colossians 2, 13, and 14. God has forgiven us our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. That's what happened with our sins. Our sins are nailed there to the cross. The record of debt is gone. We're free. And the law, if you, in Romans, the law and grace are pitted against each other. Or saying the law would have still made me pay for those sins. But God and his grace paid for my sin on the cross. And because of that, we are truly free. We're truly made free by his sacrifice, by him paying for them. But going back to my opening story, I think this is what was uncomfortable for me, or what I didn't understand as a, as a teen, is that I still struggled with sin. Like I, I knew that I was set free. Like I, intellectually, I knew that that's what would, what had happened in my life. But then when I started struggling with sin, it's like, why do I keep on struggling? Like what the song says before the throne, Satan tempted me to despair and tells me of the guilt within. Like I, I saw my own sinfulness and I was like, I was bound and, and guilt and in shame. And I, I didn't feel like I could get help from anyone because good Christians don't struggle. At least that's what I thought. I know that's not what other people were telling me, but that's what I thought. And I think many believers have the same experience where, where they, they know intellectually. They died with Christ. I, I, I shouldn't sin any longer is what they think. That's not how it happens. We, we, we shouldn't be wrapped up in shame and guilt. We take our sin to the cross. Martin Luther struggled with this when he first became a monk. He would, he was the most zealous monk there ever was. I think it was what his words and his, his confessor, the guy that was, was his mentor. He said, can you actually, because Luther kept going to him and just kept confessing these sins. Oh, well, I think I did this and I think, and Staupitz was like, just please go and actually sin and then come and like confess something real to me. Because, because Martin Luther's conscience was so bound. And so when, when he realized the truth of the gospel, the, the freedom that comes with that, he writes some really powerful things. So this is one of the things he wrote about our sin. It's in the front of the bulletin as a meditation if you want to look at it. But Martin Luther said this about the devil accusing us. When the devil tells us that we're sinners and therefore damned, we may answer, because you say I'm a sinner, I will be righteous and saved. Then the devil will say, no, you will be damned. And I will reply, no, for I fly to Christ who has given himself for my sins. Therefore Satan, you will not prevail against me when you try to terrify me by telling me how great my sins are and by trying to reduce me to heaviness or distrust, despair, hatred, contempt, and blasphemy. On the contrary, when you say I'm a sinner, you give me armor and weapons against yourself so that I may cut your throat with your own sword and tread you under my feet for Christ died for sinners. So something you have to come to understand is that as a believer, you are a saved sinner. That Christ died for sinners, and now we're not under the law, but we're under God's grace. Now that doesn't mean we should just carry on sinning like it doesn't matter. The beginning of Romans 6 says, what shall we say? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound by no means? Absolutely not. We shouldn't continue in sin, but we can keep running back to him when we do stumble and fall because God gives grace. So in Romans 6 we see a progression. It's not just that we died with Christ. We also live in Christ as well, as verse 4 says, we are to walk in newness of life. Now Paul points out that we're united with Christ's life as well, just as he died to sin, and once for all then he lives to God. He is raised from the dead and will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him, and the same is true of us. Now we are in Christ. Our spiritual death is behind us, and we have spiritual life in front of us. We're called to that same type of freedom now to serve God, a freedom from the bondage of sin into true freedom in Christ. It's such a beautiful thing. And in Romans 6 it shifts now from the truth of what has happened in us, the truth of the Christian life, and then it shifts to what should we then do about it? Because our freedom is only good if we live in it, and as we act on it. Now I've been thinking about this this week because we're celebrating the 4th of July as Americans, and really do many Americans really enjoy the freedoms and the benefits of the freedoms that we truly have. Do we take our freedom seriously? Do we guard it? We celebrated freedom from the tyranny of the British by eating hot dogs and watermelon and having family get togethers and having fireworks. But how many of us really take the full advantage of freedoms that we have as citizens? Do we take advantage as Christians? We're free to share the gospel, free to share our faith. How many of us do? We have the freedom to be active in our communities for the sake of the gospel. We have the freedom to assemble like we're doing right now. We have the freedom to push for legislation or to pursue righteousness in our communities. We have those freedoms, but freedom is only good if you live in it and act on it. And in a much bigger way on a grander scale, that's what our relationship in Christ is. We have freedom in Christ. Are we living in it? That's what Paul is getting to. He shifts from, well this is what has happened in your life, but then are you going to actually live in freedom? Galatians 5-1 Paul says, "For freedom, Christ is set you free. Stand firm and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." Like we have been made free in Christ, don't go back to the old way. Freedom is only good if we live in it and act on it. So before I get into the next verses, I want to give, I think this illustrates this passage, illustrates something within theology. And theology is not just for nerdy Christians who like theology and coffee and like to talk about things together. The theology is for all of us. And it's the difference between justification and sanctification of being made right with God and then being made holy by God. So the difference between justification and sanctification, I put it up on a chart here, but really I'm getting the definitions from the Westminster Confession of Faith. So here's justification. Justification is an act of God's free grace by which he pardons all our sins and accepts us as righteous in his sight only because of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us and received by faith alone. So justification being made righteous, that's an act of God. You are in Christ, God looks at you and he sees his son, this is done. We are pardoned, we are forgiven. And this is of God's grace. It's not something that we've done on our own. We've earned or because we're better than anybody else. It's only because God loves you and has placed his grace upon you. It's his gracious work. We're made right with God. We're accepted as righteous in a sight. We're invited into his family. We enjoy the blessings and benefits of being his child. It's done. It's completed. But sanctification is different. Sanctification is ongoing. It's hard. It's lifelong. So sanctification, here's the definition for that. Sanctification is the work of God's free grace by which we are renewed in our whole person in the image of God and by which we are enabled more and more to die to sin and to live to righteousness. It's a work of God meaning that there's progress made. It's ongoing. This is still by God's free grace. Let's not get prideful on the afterside of salvation. If we're still, it's by God's grace that he does this. It's his grace working in us, his spirit working through us, his power, our work in us. But this is a process. We're being changed into the image of God. And more and more we're able to die to sin and live to righteousness. We're free from sin's penalty, just justification. But we're also free to live out the life of Christ that's in us. We get progressively more and more free from sin's power as well as its penalty. We live in the freedom that we have. As Jesus says in John 8, "If the sun sets you free, you're free indeed." I think that the Christian freedom is just, "Well, it's nice on paper, but really I'm going to struggle and I'm just going to fall to sin on my life." You don't need to fall to sin all your life. We are free in Christ to follow Him. We are free indeed in the sun. Sanctification is a process by which we little by little, day by day, battle by battle, live in this newfound freedom that we have from sin's power. Now, don't get me wrong, it is still a battle and some days it rages harder than others. But this is the gospel reality of what's happened in us, justification. And sanctification is what God does through us and in us. And just as we talk last week in Ephesians where doctrine comes before command or truth comes before action, let's go back to the original question of how can we fight against our sin. How can we do this? Paul goes to answer with three different commands or four different commands actually in these verses. So look at verse 11 to 14 and if you have a habit of writing in your Bibles, you can circle these four verbs that are commands to us. And verse 11, it's consider and verse 12, it's the word rain and verse 13, there's two of them, do not present is the first command and then present is the second command. Those are the commands that sort of frame what we are to do, how can we fight against sin? Let me read these verses, verse 11. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore rain in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace. So the first command to consider, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God strips in of its power over you by considering yourself dead to sin. You're supposed to think differently about yourself, you're supposed to wreck in or to see yourself. As one commentator said, he said the word translated count yourselves or wreck in or consider is one of the most important words in Romans. Paul uses it 19 times in the letter and if one does not know what it means, he or she will not understand Romans. To consider, there's a commercial term, it's to reckon to our account, to impute or place there in someone's account. The idea is we are to reflect on our position in Christ, who are we in Christ? And then we are to set these two things to our account. We are dead to sin and we are alive to God in Christ Jesus. So when we see the theological truth of justification, we need to view ourselves differently as we're sanctified. We're saved from sin, we're dead to it, so we don't have to live in it anymore. We're alive to God. So in Christ Jesus, the phrase in Christ in 11, that's the first time in Romans that this is mentioned in Christ. And throughout the rest of that book and also in Ephesians I mentioned last week, being in Christ changes everything about who we are. Jerry Bridges calls this preaching the gospel to yourself every day to remind yourself, I'm in Christ. I'm dead to sin, I'm alive to God. That changes my behavior. To consider yourself or to reckon yourself, dead to sin does strip it of its power. It's not a foregone conclusion when I'm alone and I've got my phone or a browser up. It's not a foregone conclusion for me to sin by clicking on an image or a video that's wrong. I'm dead to sin and alive to God, so I don't have to obey its call anymore. It's no longer my master. We realize that if we're alive to God, it's not inevitable that you snap at your spouse or your kids when you're frustrated, because I don't have to live by my feelings anymore. I'm alive to God, that changes the way I interact with others. I consider that I'm in Christ, so when I face uncertainty or when there's a trial that comes in my life, I can react to that differently. I don't have to be crippled by anxious thought. I can turn to Him who gives me new life and who is in charge of my new life. So, considering yourselves dead to sin and alive to God, strips it of its power. You can look sin full in its face and say, "You don't have power over me anymore." And there are times where it feels like sin does still have power over me, and it certainly will be a drawn out, bloody battle with sin, right? But sin does not have that power over you, because you're in Christ. Next, in the verse 12, we're to deny sin of its claim over us. Paul is pointing that this is a choice. Before, when you were a sinner before, that was your nature, to sin, then there was no choice but to sin. Sin was reigning over you. That's our default position as humans, as we're fallen, where we have a human sinful nature and flesh. That's who you were, and so it's not any shock when sin or sin, because sin is reigning over the world. This world, this flesh. But in Christ, we have freedom. We don't have to choose sin anymore. In Christ, don't let sin reign in your fleshly or mortal body, the body that is decaying and dying. Don't obey its lusts. So fighting against sin is a matter of worship. It's a matter of allegiances. Who am I going to worship and serve? Am I going to worship and serve the Creator who made me and who saved me? Or am I going to serve sin, my old master? And Paul is saying, don't let it reign in your life, in your body. Deny sin, its claim. You don't have to obey those impulses anymore. You don't have to feed those lusts. So you fight against sin by denying its reign over you and trusting that God has a better kingdom. He's a better king. Submitting to his rule in reign is better. Verse 13, that next command, do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. The word for instruments here in verse 13 literally is translated as a weapon or tool. Don't give yourself in your body as a weapon for unrighteousness. My brother-in-law gave me a piece of history about 12 years ago. It was a really kind gift of him. Somehow he had come into its possession and so he wanted to pass it along to me. It's a World War II Japanese samurai sword that was issued to the officers in the Japanese army in the 1940s. This sword was most likely surrendered to the American troops when Japan surrendered. They handed over these swords as a part of their surrender. The picture of handing over a weapon or presenting, as verse 13 says, presenting a weapon is saying, I'm no longer going to fight against you. I'm surrendering this weapon over to you. Now it's interesting to note that the last Japanese soldier to hand over his weapon happened 28 and a half years later after World War II. There was a soldier on an island in the Philippines and he and his three buddies didn't get the memo that the war was over. They were on a mountain side somewhere and slowly his other comrades, one gave himself up, another one died or two other died. He was left, Hiro Onoda. He didn't surrender until Japan was like, okay, they sent the commanding officer to give him orders to surrender. He handed, I saw it last night, the picture of, he was handing his sword to the president of the Philippines, 1974, 28 years and a half years later after the surrender. The point of Romans 6 is that we are, we're not to present our bodies or our members, our hands, our eyes, our feet, our brains. We're not to hand that to sin. We're not to present our lives to sin for sin to use as it sees fit. We're instead, he flips it around in verse 13, present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments or weapons for righteousness. So the next way to fight against sin is to offer your life, soul and body to God. I am yours, my life is yours, my soul and body are yours. So present yourself to God as someone who's newly alive. Present your body to God as a righteous weapon. One commentator said this, we are faced with this alternative of making ourselves weapons in the hands of God or weapons in the hands of sin. So offering ourselves, Paul says this in Romans 12, so later, six chapters later, I appeal to you there for brothers by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. So how do we fight against sin? We worship. We offer ourselves to God. God, I want you to take my life. I'm yours, my money is yours, my time is yours, my talent, my family, my career, everything God, that's yours for you to use. That's a huge way for us to fight against sin is to worship, to worship your way, to freedom in Christ, to defeat your sin. You can say to sin, I serve a new master now. I'm offering my life to a new king, to a new Lord. So as we see these commands, to consider ourselves dead and alive, so that strips sin of its power, to deny sin, it's rain over us, but instead to offer our lives to God, we need to be encouraged. Remembering those two things, that we are justified, we're made right with God, and that when God looks at you, he sees Christ in his righteousness. But also as a believer, you are being sanctified, that's a process that's going on in your life and will go on in your life until the day you die. There's no time where you're like, "Well, I've arrived, I'm good, totally conquered all, every and all, part of my flesh." No, it's a lifelong process to live in the freedom that Christ has won for us. But I need to end with the last verse, verse 14, because without this, I think we could still try to look at those verbs and say, "All right, boom, boom, boom, these are things I need to do." And don't remember this. So look at verse 14, "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace." You need to remember, as we fight against sin, we need to remember God's disposition towards you. That we're not condemned under the law. We're under God's grace. Those four words make the difference. You are under grace. Sin doesn't have dominion over you since you're not under law, because under the law, sin would. There wouldn't be any excuses. Every sin under the law needs to be paid. Every sin condemns and separates us. So the law condemns. The law shows us where we're wrong. The law discourages and burdens us. But we're under grace. As we fight against sin, what courage this gives us? We're under God's grace. That God claims you as his own, and he has the final say. He gives us what we need to fight against sin. God's grace is what gives us forgiveness. We have peace with God, like what Pastor Rick preached about in Romans 5. We have his blessing. We have status as his child. God gave his son for us by his grace. His son died for our sins. And his grace gives us the motivation and the power to fight sin. His grace gives us the boldness to strip sin of its power over us, to deny sin over its rule. And so that when we struggle, when we fall, when we get bloody by our fight with sin, because it is a struggle, don't get me wrong. This is not an easy walk. And we're going to retreat sometimes, and we're going to despair. We need to remember God's disposition to us. That sin will not have dominion over you, since you are not under law, that you are under grace as you fight against sin. Let's pray. God, thank you for the beautiful truths in this passage and how those truths push us to worship you, to offer our lives to you as a living sacrifice. Lord, help us to give our allegiance to you, to turn from ourselves and our own strength. Lord, I also pray that we would act. We would know that the fight against sin is severe, and it's hard, and it's lifelong, but that we have every grace for me to fight. And we are assured of your love and your care for us. God, I pray for us as a church, that we would live in this grace together. That when one of us is struggling with sin, that there would be five of us that would come around and encourage and exhort and pull along. That we would live this fight together. Lord, I pray that you would help us as we celebrate the supper of your son now, as we remember his body broken for us, his blood shed for us, that we would have a reminder that would carry us throughout the week of your grace for us. In Christ's name, Amen.