Lord, we do thank you for your word. We thank you that you have spoken to us, that you have revealed these wonderful truths to us. And we ask, Lord, this morning that you would make us attentive, that you would give us understanding. And we pray, Lord, especially that we would feel the weight of these words and that you would apply them by the power of your spirit to our lives, that we might reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to you in Christ Jesus. And we pray in his name. Amen. For the Christian, there is nothing more important in this world than the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. These events constitute the hinge of history such that everything that has ever happened can be reckoned as either before or after Christ. These events are at the very core of our Christian faith. They are often the focal point of our church's creeds. So often they are the sum and substance of our preaching as we perpetually proclaim the wondrous mystery of the gospel, calling all people to repent and believe. However, as those who hear of this death, burial, and resurrection so often, we are in danger, I believe, of regarding these grand events as maybe too abstract, too removed from us to be of any practical use. And isn't the cry for practicality so often the great cry of our age? Give us something practical. We don't need to hear about something that happened 2,000 years ago. We need help today. We need rules. We need principles. We need a philosophy for life. Even if people don't ordinarily put it quite that explicitly, many have surely held those sorts of sentiments. And we do hear such a sentiment in the church at times. It takes more subtle form. No doubt. But I would argue this morning that the form that this complaint takes in the church is no less insidious. It might sound something like this. Okay, we've heard the gospel. Now give us something to do. We've heard all that. Now tell me what to do. The problem with that request, noble though it might sound, is that it demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. It demonstrates a failure to reckon with the fact that these events are of cosmic significance, with effects which continue to reverberate down into the present. It fails to grasp the point that we are dependent upon the cross and upon the empty tomb, not just for the first day of the Christian life, but for every day of the Christian life. And Romans 6 verses 1 to 14 presses this point home with tremendous force. And so it's now that we turn there, and specifically I want you to see that this text pinpoints for us some of the practical implications of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. This passage answers for us the question, how are these events relevant today? And what we find, as we listen to Paul's answer, is that only the power of Christ's death and resurrection are capable of enabling the Christian believer to die to sin and to live to God. And so I hope you'll see that overarching theme in the text this morning as we consider now our passage under three headings. First of all, what I want you to see in this passage is that by faith, we are united to Christ in his death. We're united to Christ in his death. And Paul introduces this point, when we look at the context of the book of Romans, he introduces this point as he seeks to head off a critical misunderstanding of what he's already taught in this letter. In Romans chapters 1 to 5, Paul powerfully outlines the problem of sin, and the conundrum which it presents to all men, that we are, because of our sin, under the wrath of God and under his condemnation. And he's also, in these chapters, explained that the only way to fix this problem is by faith in Christ. We can't work our way out of the hole which we've dug for ourselves, but when we come to Christ by faith, we're reckoned as righteous in the sight of God. We're justified. In fact, our justification is so disconnected from our own works in Paul's teachings, sinful as they are prior to the coming of Christ, These works, which we do outside of Christ, primarily serve to illustrate just how great God's grace is. And that's where Paul ends chapter 5. And you might imagine how that point could be misconstrued. We read there at the end of chapter 5, look at verse 20. Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Grace abounded all the more as sin increased. And so you can imagine that if Paul had said that sin serves to magnify God's grace, some would come to the conclusion that, well, maybe we should just keep on sinning. God's grace will appear all the greater, right? His grace will seem bigger, wider, more expansive, so let's press on in our sin. That's why Paul asks in verse 1 of our text, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin? That grace may abound. Again, a reader of Romans 1-5 could potentially at least come to this conclusion, but Paul doesn't want to leave that question lingering in their minds. He takes it up directly. He gives an answer by no means. For Paul, the answer is a most emphatic, no, we should not continue in sin that grace may abound. But why? Why doesn't it logically follow that if sin makes grace abound, then more sin is better because grace will abound all the more? Well Paul immediately answers that question by asking a question of his own. Here's what he says, how can we who died to sin still live in it? Now notice this is a question, but there is an assertion embedded within the question. To ask how we who died to sin can still live in it is to assert that we have, in fact, died to sin. So the new question raised, following the logic of the text, is how can it be said that we died to sin? Once again, Paul stays a step ahead of us. Here's what we read in verse 3. 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, my baptism, into death. See, brothers and sisters, we died to sin because we have been baptized into Christ Jesus and thus baptized into His death. Don't let the language of baptism here throw you. Paul's point is not that baptism itself as a ritual water washing causes us to die to sin, or that washing with water inevitably unites us to Christ. What he's doing here is what is so often done in the New Testament. He's using the sign to point us towards the thing which is signified. In other words, he's saying, in your baptism, Christ's name is placed upon you. It signifies, in part, your union with Christ. So if you've been baptized into Christ, if you have the substance which is signified in that sacramental sign, then you've been united to Christ in His death. It's one of the things that baptism says. And so we see that Paul is here trying to pinpoint the absurdity of continuing to sin as a Christian. Yes, you were saved by grace alone apart from works, but in the process you were united to Christ. And as one united to Christ, like a body joined to its head, you were united to Him in His death. It's as if you, sinner, died and were buried with Him. And that might seem too radical a point to make if it were not for the fact that Paul himself makes the point in verses 6-7. Look what he says there. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Do you feel the weight of those words? Paul is saying that if we have been united to Christ by faith, our old sinful self was crucified with Him on the cross. As He hung there in our place, as our substitute, our sins were placed on Him such that it could be said, in one sense, we were crucified with Him. He was hanging there as our mediator. And so his actions are reckoned to our account. And then far from being some lofty ivory tower theological abstraction, Paul argues here that this point has the most practical of effects. Our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. He died for us so that our sin might be vanquished. Not just in penalty, but also in power. Sin and Satan had set up a fortress in our hearts, which Christ raised to the ground on the cross. He brought down the walls like Jericho of old. And if this is true, this is where Paul drives the point, if this is true, we are no longer enslaved to sin. We are no longer in that prison of our own making. The one who has died in this manner is set free from sin. This reality, as Paul teaches it here in the text, is what is sometimes referred to as the doctrine of definitive sanctification. We know that in our justification, we are reckoned as righteous apart from our works. So justification is not a process we undergo, it's a declaration made of us by God in Christ. This believer has been pardoned and counted righteous for my son's sake. On the other hand, sanctification, that work of mortifying our sins and living righteously to God, is a process. such that the work isn't fully complete until we are in glory. There's always more sin to be repented of. There's always more good works to be done. And for this reason, many think of justification as something which happens immediately and sanctification as something which only happens gradually. And as we've just demonstrated, that's partially true. Yet notice here, that while our sanctification continues until the day that we die, there is an aspect of sanctification that is complete as soon as we are united to Christ. There is a definitive aspect where in the moment we come to Jesus, we are released from the power of sin. The chains are broken. We're no longer slaves. We've been set free. And in that freedom, it's in that freedom that we engage in the work of mortifying sins and doing good work. So yes, justification is forensic and declarative. It happens immediately. And yes, there is a progressive lifelong aspect of sanctification. But insofar as we are sanctified in union with Christ, there is also a definitive aspect of sanctification, which is true of you the day that you believed. On that day, you are declared holy in Christ. You're set free from bondage to your sins. Here then is the point. Christian believer, you have been united to Christ in His death. As one united to Him in His death, your old man, your old self, has been crucified. You're no longer enslaved to your sinful passions. And so it would be entirely unnatural to dedicate your life to sin, to continue to sin that grace might abound. This is why we are trying to draw in some material in our membership vows. This is still part of that. This is why the third membership vow asks, do you confess that because of your sinfulness, you abhor and humble yourself before God that you repent of your sin? It asks this because if your profession of faith is credible, you should hate your sin. You should live as one humbled before God, knowing knowing your need of grace. And you should repent, endeavoring to live as one who has indeed been set free from slavery to wickedness and evil and sin. We're not made perfect until the last day, but the relationship between the Christian and sin ought to be one of animosity, it ought to be one of enmity, And it ought to be one of making war because we have died to sin as those who have been united to Christ in His death. However, we see in the passage here that that's not all that Paul has to say because it's not enough just to be set free from bondage to sin. No, we need to be set free from our bondage and we need to be empowered then to live as those who have been set free. That brings us to our second point, which as those united to Christ in his death, we are also, by faith, united to Christ in his resurrection. By faith, we are united to Christ in his resurrection. And you can see how this works in the text if you just back up a little bit. Looking at verse 4, it becomes evident that for Paul, union with Christ in his death was not an end in itself. We were united with Christ in His death so that we might be united also with Him in His resurrection. For Christ, these two events could not, should not, must not be divided, and so they remain conjoined for us as well. Here's what Paul writes in verse 4. 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." We might put Paul's point this way. If you have been united to the crucified and resurrected Christ, then you can be certain that the crucifixion of your old self is followed by a spiritual resurrection. We've not yet experienced the bodily resurrection. We await that coming resurrection on the last day. But as those united to the one raised by the glorious power and might of the Father, we are already in union with Christ, drawing from the well of his resurrection power. Yes, the old man is dead, but we are now new creatures in Christ who are enabled to walk in newness of life. Paul puts those pieces for us together in verse 5. He tells us that if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. And here's where the rubber meets the road. If all of this is true, if we have indeed been united to Christ in His death and resurrection, then that changes everything. Picking up in verse 8 we read, 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. Paul here shines a gleaming spotlight on the glory of the resurrection. When Christ came out of the tomb, it was not a mere resuscitation. We do not read later in the scriptures of Jesus going back into the tomb, of Him dying again, as perhaps we can think of Lazarus, who was raised for a time, but went back into the tomb. Now when Jesus was raised, He lives forevermore. He will never die again because he has defeated death. Death has no claim on him. He has powerfully broken its dominion. It's for that reason that we so often sing the hymn, Death cannot keep its prey. Jesus, my Savior. He tore the bars away. Jesus, my Lord. Up from the grave He arose with a mighty triumph for His foes. He arose a victor from the dark domain and He lives forever with His saints to reign. Consequently, Paul writes in verse 10 that the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. This does not mean that he died to sin in the same sense that we died to sin. Jesus Christ was without sin. He never was enslaved to sin in the same way that we were. However, he did die to sin in the sense that he took it upon himself on the cross and dealt with it fully and finally. As He gave up His Spirit, He said, it is finished. It was a once for all death which could not be repeated. But we know that He came out on the other side to live unto God. Always pleasing to His Father. Never again to bear sin. Living as the resurrected and glorified Son. And because this is true of Jesus, because we are united to him by faith. And so we also, Paul says, must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. That's verse 11. That's the practical importance of the death and resurrection of Christ for saved sinners. We are no longer dead, excuse me, we are now dead to sin, we're no longer under its power, it no longer has control over us, and we are alive to God in Christ Jesus. We're raised to walk, he said, in newness of life. in a manner that pleases and glorifies God. And this is how, brothers and sisters, we ought to think about who we are in Christ. This is how you ought to think about yourself if you have believed on Jesus. Paul says, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Oh, what a glorious life! which was purchased on the cross, empowered by the empty tomb. This is a reality that we live with day by day that ought to lead us to praise and to serve our crucified and risen Savior. Now Paul is going to get even more practical with this in verses 12 to 14, showing what it means to walk in newness in life. But before we move on, I do think that this is an appropriate place to issue a reminder and a warning for all of us. Perhaps you've noticed at several points that I've spoken of our union with Christ by faith. I've done that on purpose. Because only those who possess true spirit-wrought faith have been united to Christ. Therefore, Only those who have been faith have been united to Christ in his death and his resurrection. And that means that if you're here today and you've not yet turned from your sins to Christ in faith, then none of these blessed benefits of salvation which we've considered apply to you. You are still living in the old man. You are still, your old self is alive and well, enslaved to sin, spiritually dead. And what you need is the salvation which Christ offers. And this is again why that third membership vow, reading it at full now, says, Do you confess that because of your sinfulness, you abhor and humble yourself before God, that you repent of your sins and that you trust for salvation, not in yourself, but in Christ Jesus alone. You see friends, a part of being able to say yes to that vow is understanding that you cannot do the abhorring and humbling and repenting on your own. You don't have what it takes. We're too prideful. Our minds are too corrupted. We don't see things rightly outside of Christ. So you need Christ Jesus who provides a salvation which you cannot provide for yourself. Your works, your church attendance, your Bible reading, none of these things can save you. Only Jesus Christ can save you as you receive, as you accept, receive, and rest upon Him alone for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by the virtue of the covenant of grace, to use the language of Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 14, paragraph 2. So it's when you are united to Him by faith that the sanctifying influence of the cross and the empty tomb begin to have their effect in you. So that you can repent and live that resurrection empowered life. So for anyone here who would say that I've not yet experienced these benefits flowing from the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, come to Jesus by faith because He is a wonderful Savior and this too can be yours in Christ. But for those who already have come to Him, Paul has one last thing to say this morning. Maybe you've found yourself listening to the things that I've been saying, and as we've contemplated the text, and you've found yourself thinking, you know, this all sounds great, wonderful. Beautiful Sunday morning, I'm dead to sin and alive to cross. Walking in newness of life, yeah, but I continue to struggle against sin. The text says that it's crucified, and it feels very much alive to me. Once again, the Scriptures anticipate such a concern. Yes, we've seen that by faith we're united to Christ in His death. We've seen that by faith we're united to Christ in His resurrection. Therefore, in the third place, we ought to live as those who have been brought from death to life. Because we're united in the death and in the resurrection, therefore we ought to live as those who have been brought from death to life. Up through verse 11, Paul has been, I want you to see this, speaking in the indicative. He is explaining what is already true of the Christian believer. However, now as we come to verse 12, he shifts to the imperative and he issues a command. He says, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Maybe that command leaves you scratching your head. You wouldn't be the first person to feel that way. Paul's just finished explaining that our old self has been crucified by Christ, has been put to death, we've been set free from sin, so why then do we need to be commanded to do anything? If that's true, then why do we continue to struggle? Why does it feel as if there's so much work left to do? Are we really in danger of sin reigning over us? Those are valid questions and they're questions that have answers. And I think John Murray, a Reformed theologian and scholar, in his commentary on the Book of Romans explains this as well as anyone else I've read on the subject. He illustrates Paul's point for us here by appealing to the experience of a slave. And that's imagery which Paul has already used. He's used in the language of being enslaved to sin. He's going to continue using that language in the rest of the passage, in the rest of the chapter. And so this morning, as we try to penetrate to the heart of Paul's logic, I quote Murray here at length, because I think it's so helpful. Here's what he says, trying to put these two pieces together. He says, sin does not have the dominion. This is the indicative. This indicative is not only expressly asserted in verse 14, It is implicit in all that the Apostle has argued in the verses that precede verse 12. Let not sin reign. This is the imperative. And it flows from the indicative. It is only because sin does not reign that it can be said, therefore let not sin reign. In other words, the presupposition of the exhortation is not that sin reigns, but the opposite, that it does not reign. And it is for that reason that the exhortation can have validity and appeal. Notice the illustration he gives here. To say to the slave who has not been emancipated, do not behave as a slave, is to mock his enslavement. But to say the same to the slave who has been set free is the necessary appeal to put into effect the privileges and rights of his liberation. So in the case, the sequence is, sin does not have the dominion, therefore do not allow it to reign. Deliverance from the dominion of sin is both the basis of and the incentive to the fulfillment of the exhortation, let not sin reign. You see his point. Paul is here saying to us, if you have been united to Christ in His death and resurrection, you've been set free from sin, so live as one who has been set free from sin. Do not submit yourself to the remaining lusts of the flesh. Do not voluntarily put the chains back on when you have resurrection power from which to draw. Practically, this means not presenting our members, as he says here in the text, to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. Now to speak of our members is to speak of those body parts, which unfortunately we use to do unrighteous deeds. And so to make Paul's exhortation there in verse 13 more specific, we might say something like this, do not use your eyes for lustful purposes. Don't use your tongue to gossip and to lie and to tear down. Don't use your hands to steal, to kill, to destroy. Don't use your body to engage in sexual immorality. Just don't do it. Don't present your members to sin for unrighteousness. That's not who you are. That's not the sort of person you're supposed to be as a Christian. In the words of the third membership vow, as one who has trusted in Christ for salvation, you ought to abhor your sinfulness, to hate it, to humble yourself before God, and repent, rather than unrepentantly, repeatedly, presenting your members to sin. Indeed, Paul tells us positively that you are to present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. You see, we're to come before God as those who have been spiritually raised from the dead, ready to serve Him. We're to use our members for righteous purposes. So we might apply what Paul is saying, By saying, let us keep, brothers and sisters, our eyes chaste, watchful for the coming of the Lord. Let us use our tongues to build one another up, to encourage, to edify. Let us use our hands to serve one another, to serve the poor and the needy among us. Let us use our bodies to glorify God in every way. This is the life. which we're called to as those who have been saved by Jesus Christ, brought into union with Him. And while this can sometimes feel out of reach for us, we must, this morning, trust the Scriptures when they say that this sort of living is the standard for the Christian. It's more than possible, because verse 14 triumphantly declares to us, sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. What is meant here when Paul says that we are not under law, but under grace? Here he is speaking about the law as a principle of rule keeping. Following the law, keeping regulations and statutes for the purpose of acquitting ourselves, of finding salvation. And outside of Christ, that's the situation that we find ourselves in. trying to find salvation through our works, by keeping rules perhaps of God, perhaps of our own making, but that's not a position which brings life and salvation. And we're not under the law as Christians as such, but in Christ rather we're under grace. We know that we're saved by grace. We're saved by Christ's righteousness and what he does. And so rather than looking to the law to save us, we look to the grace of Christ to whom we are united. And it is from that grace that we draw the strength to walk away from sin, from which we have been liberated. And so rather than leading to our sinciousness, as some of Paul's readers might have supposed, We see here that God's undeserved grace actually releases us from the dominion of sin. For that we ought to give God the glory. Congregations, we close this morning. I hope you see from our text that the death, burial, and resurrection are far from being theological abstractions. That the fact that Jesus died and was raised from the dead on the third day ought to make a practical difference in your life every single day. By faith we're united to him in his death, so we're set free from sin. By faith we're united to him in his resurrection, so we're raised to walk in newness of life. Therefore, we ought, knowing this to be true, to live as those who have been brought from death to life. Your risen Lord demands it. Your risen Lord makes it possible. And so, with a heart of faith, let us daily look to the cross, to the empty tomb, remember who it is that we are in Christ, and act accordingly. Amen. Let us pray. Lord, oh Lord, what a glorious gospel. What a wonderful Savior. that in union with them our sins might be crucified, our old selves might be brought to nothing, that we might live in Christ's resurrection power, seeking to serve as those who have been saved all the days of our life. And so we ask, Lord, that You would continue to put distance between us and our sins. Sanctify us by Your Holy Spirit. Give us the grace and the strength which we need, which must come from You. in order to do this work. We pray, Lord, that we would daily remember who we are in Christ and act accordingly. Lord, may many more come to know this wonderful Savior. In Jesus' name, Amen. Our hymn of response this morning is number 448, Union with Thee. So we'll stand together and sing hymn 448.