You've walked with the Lord Jesus for some time now, and yet there are some sins that you seem to have no control over in your life. You weep about them, you confess them again and again, you make resolutions about them, you read about them, and yet they continually rise up to mock you as you speak about the power of Christ to live a new life. You're saved and yet enslaved. What's wrong? Well, the problem is, of course, that the flesh cannot be reformed or dedicated. It must be eradicated. The flesh must die. That's all that can be done with it. A book that I read during my vacation the last couple of weeks put it this way. You must render a judgment of death upon the flesh. This is called a crucified life. The problem is you see that you've never really died to yourself. You've never died to your old nature. You've never put it to death in your life. You've never experienced the truth of Romans 6. If you've ever heard a message like this, this is a very popular message at summer Bible conferences. It's a very popular theme on the deeper Christian life. And it has two points that run something like this, two themes. First of all, that you must render a judgment of death on your sinful nature. You must write your obituary and die to sin, and die to yourself, your old nature. And then, secondly, the second theme in this is that if you do, you will enter a new stage of Christian living, sometimes called the victorious. Christian life, or the deeper Christian life, in which you will experience a new unresponsiveness to sin, a new power over sin that you haven't known before. And this is based on Romans chapter 6. I'd like to take a look with you this morning at what Romans chapter 6 is not saying, and what I believe that in fact it is saying. For I believe that a lot of preaching today and a lot of writing is seeking to add to the gospel something on top of it that Romans 6 would appear to be saying. And I want to remind us of the gospel and see how the gospel is in Romans 6. We might be freed up to what God wants us to be. So let's take a look at Romans chapter 6, the first 14 verses. Try to follow the thread of Paul's thought as I read these and then we'll consider them together. Romans chapter 6. What should we say then? Should we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means. We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him. so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all. but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God through in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer the parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace." So far, God's Word. Now, I'm not going to claim in any way to cover all of Romans 6, 1 to 14. I simply want to give you some clues to what I think it is in fact saying that will help us as we hear the kind of messages that I just alluded to in the beginning of this message and examine that to see whether in fact that's what Romans 6 is saying or not. First of all then, what I would like us to do is to notice that the clue, I believe, to understanding Romans 6 here is to look at the verbs that are used And you'll notice that there's a contrast between the verbs that Paul uses in verses 1 to 10 and the verbs that he uses in 11 to 14. In verses 1 to 10, Paul is not calling us to do anything. The key words are knowing. You notice them used in verse 3. Don't you know that all of us who were baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Verse 6. For we know, since Christ was raised. Verse 9. He says, excuse me, verse 6. For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body of sin would be rendered powerless. And then verse 8. We know that since Christ was raised from the dead. Then verse 8. We believe that we also live with him. So in verse 3, 6, 9 you have no, verse 8 you have believe, and the whole idea is to look away from yourself to what Christ has done. Paul's not calling on us to do anything at that point. Then based on that, he gives us three verbs of action, three verbs that involve what we do, in verses 11 to 13. where he talks to us about counting ourselves dead to sin and alive to God, not letting sin reign, in verse 12, and then offering, not offering, and offering. So I want us to notice the contrast of that. In verses 1 to 10, we're to look away from ourselves to Christ. So much of teaching, the kind of message that I just got into at the beginning, would call us, emphasize us, what we do to crucify ourselves in order that we'll be dead to sin. That's not what Paul is saying. He's not calling you to do anything except to look at what Christ did. And that is an important difference. I hope that you can grasp that as we go through these verses this morning. Because so much of what I find Christians doing, as they talk about dying to themselves, is to look at myself in what I must do to die to sin. When, in fact, what Paul is calling for us to do is to look at what Christ did, what He already has done for you. Now, what is it that He has done? Well, verses 1 to 10 tell us that He has died and He has risen. He has died for you and He has risen for you. And you see that you are in such a vital union with Jesus that in His death and resurrection, you died and rose again. You have actually died and you have risen again in Jesus Christ. Now what does he mean by that? Remember in chapter 5 he talked about how we are justified, how we are declared righteous, innocent, forgiven of our sins on the basis of Jesus as our representative. And then that forgiveness is so free, so full, that in chapter 5 verse 20 says, where sin increased, grace increased all the more, that Paul says, now we got a problem here. Somebody might say, well, you know, forgiveness, justification is simply a blank check. And therefore, if I sin all the more, God's grace will abound all the more, and hallelujah, if I sin some more, so God's grace will be amplified. But Paul says to do that is to miss the fact that justification is not abstract, not just some abstract declaration of forgiveness, but is given in vital union with Jesus, who died for that justification, and that union with Jesus, who has risen again. so that we are joined with him in a new life. Now, I just realized this week, as I was looking again at Romans 6, something I had never seen there before. I had never realized before that the emphasis in Romans 6 is not primarily on Jesus' death and our death with him, as much as it is on his resurrection and our being raised with him to a new life. You always hear Romans 6 being appealed to for our death to sin, dying to our old nature. And that's there, there's no question of it. But the emphasis that Paul is placing here in these verses is on our resurrection to a new life that follows that death. Notice with me the train of thought as he follows through these verses. He's just said now, somebody's going to say, what should we say then, verse 1? Should we go on sinning so that grace may increase? The more grace, the more God's glorified? And his answer, notice, by no means we died to sin. That's a realm that we lived in and no longer live in it. We died to it. How can we live in it any longer? See? It's a realm that's foreign to us now. That was a life that I once lived in. I have died to that life. I'm no longer there. How can I live in a life that I've already died to? If I had the possibility of living on Earth a life, and then I died on Earth, and I got a second life on Mars, somebody might say, well, you know, I can go back and live on the Earth. You already died on the Earth, now you're living on Mars. There's another realm of your existence, you see. The realm of sin was my existence. I died in that realm. Paul says, I can go on living in that realm. You can't. You're in a new realm now. And notice what he says, verse 3, don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? He's emphasizing, we died, we were therefore buried with him, all complete, finished, we exited that life, through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life, We've been transferred, transported into a new life, he's now saying. If then we've been united with him in his death, we'll certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. Paul's saying it didn't end with death. There's a new realm now. We were united with him in his death, now also we're united with him in this new life, this resurrection. The only way that you and I could be justified was to have a representative of a new humanity, who is innocent, come and take your sin and my sin on himself. And then that representative of a new humanity, after he had died for that sin, to be raised up to a new life, a new humanity, that you and I are joined in. You see, we're part of a new humanity. because we have a new representative. Look at what he says. For we know, verse 6, that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless. He's done away with it. That body of sin no longer has power to control me. I don't live in its realm. That we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Now that word there, freed, in verse 7, is an important word because literally that is the word justified. Literally there you see Paul is saying, we're no longer slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been justified from sin. Let me try to illustrate that. Let's suppose you stole a car. You come before the judge. The judge says you're guilty of stealing this guy's car, so you've got to make retribution, you've got to serve some time. So you make retribution on the car, you go to jail and you serve six months or a year, and then they let you out of jail and what do they declare? You're justified now. You made retribution, you served time, so now you're free, you're innocent. You've paid the debt. You've paid all their needs to be paid that is judged fair, that is judged just in that crime. You're justified from the crime. Now suppose you murder somebody. The Bible's absolutely clear. Murder requires the death penalty. And so you go before the judge. And the judge says, because of this murder, you are condemned to death. And so they take you away. And they put you in the electric chair. And as they turn on the switch and you die, they watch that happen. And then they take your body. They lay it out on the floor. And somebody looks over at you and he says, Now you're justified. You've paid the penalty. You're free. There's no more guilt you have anymore, you see. You can get up and do anything you want now, because you're free. You've paid the debt. He who has died has been justified from sin, because sin requires the death penalty. And the only way that you can be freed is to pay the death penalty. Well, unfortunately, you're not in the position to enjoy that freedom anymore, because you're dead. That's what Paul's saying. You're free, but you're dead. Big deal. You know, not such good news. You know, sort of good news, bad news. You know, the good news is you're free, the bad news is you're dead. That's what it required in order for you to be free, to be justified. But then notice what he goes on to say. He says, this is the gospel. Why? Because verse 8 says, now if we died with Christ, We believe that we will also live with Him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, He cannot die again. There's no more sin that ever can cause your death again. You have fully paid the debt. Jesus can never die again for sin, because He has paid for every single sin you ever have, are, and will commit. Have committed, are committing, will commit, right? So you are freed and alive. You are dead, alive people in Christ. You and I have been judged in our death with Christ, and now we're given a new life that's His life in us. And in that life, we're no longer guilty, because we've already paid all the penalty we can pay. So Paul says, Since Christ can no longer die again, death no longer has mastery over him. Verse 10, the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. The life he lives, he lives to God. That's the nature of his life. That's the nature of him as the representative of that new humanity. His life is a life to God. Then notice verse 11. I hope this will put it in perspective now. In the same way, That's the crux of Paul's argument. In the same way, now I've told you all that Jesus has done and all that has happened to you passively in Him. You didn't do a thing to accomplish that. Jesus did that for you. He didn't crucify your old nature. He didn't do any of that. Jesus did it. Then he says, verse 11, in the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God. in Christ Jesus. See, based on what He did, not what you do, but based on what He did, you now realize that you are a dead, alive person. So much, you see, of what is preached today calls for us to crucify ourselves, render ourselves dead, But the whole point of Romans 6 is you can't do that. Jesus has done it for you. But now what you do, he then goes on to say, is three things. Notice, verse 11, three verbs. Count, do not let rain, and offer. And I put them down as these three ideas, to realize, to refuse, and to render. You are called to realize, to refuse, and to render. This is what you and I do based on what Jesus has done. What do we do? First of all, we realize that I have died to sin and I count on it. I realize that I've died to sin and I count on it. Verse 11, in the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Now that is not calling for us to render a judgment of death on sin, as that book that I quoted to you earlier said that we should do. It is not saying that at all. It is saying Jesus realized, in fact, that Jesus has rendered a judgment of death to sin for you. You don't render that judgment. Jesus rendered that judgment. You already have experienced that. Let me try to illustrate the difference between those two things because it may seem subtle to you and yet it's crucial for us in our freedom as Christians. It's the difference between depositing and recording. Let's suppose that you are in desperate need to pay off a thousand dollar debt. You've got to pay it off this week, okay? You say, Al, I'm just really in trouble. I've got to pay this $1,000 off this week or I'm up the creek. And so we come together and I say, well, you know, man, what you really need is $1,000 in your account. And let's pray that God will provide that $1,000 for you to deposit in your account. And then you'll be able to draw on that and write out the check and pay off the debt. You say, well, that's great. Well, let's pray that God will do that. And I send you on your way. I've given you a little bit of encouragement. I've said, God will provide that for you. Now just seek him for that thousand dollars. So you go on your way, praying and fasting and seeking for a thousand dollars, knowing that I'm at least joining with you in the prayer. You know, that may offer a little bit of comfort. But what I want you to see is the good news of the gospel. The gospel doesn't say that. That's not what Romans 6 is saying at all. Romans 6.11 is saying, realize that you already have $1,000 in your account. You say, I look at my balance and it says $5.50. And Romans 6.11 is saying, no, realize that you've got $1,005.50 for this need right now. It's there in your account. What you need to do is change the balance in your checkbook. It's already there. Realize it and count on it. Change that number from the 550 to 1550, and then write out the check and act on it. That word there, count yourselves, is the same word that we discussed a few weeks back in 1 Corinthians 13. Remember where Paul says, love doesn't keep a record of wrongs done to it. The word means to keep a record. It doesn't mean to deposit, it doesn't mean to do anything except to record something, to take account of it, to record it in your mind so that you can act on it. And that's what Paul's calling for us to do here. He's saying that you don't fight for victory in your struggle against sin, you fight from a victory that Jesus has already accomplished for you in your sin. Isn't that good news? I'm not calling on you to deposit anything, to crucify yourselves. I'm saying realize that you have been crucified in Jesus, and that he's already accomplished that victory on your behalf in the struggle against sin. You are alive from the dead. You're dead, alive people. Therefore, verse 12, don't let sin reign in your mortal body, that you'll obey its evil design. Act on it, you see. Don't let that sin reign in your body. You're not living in its realm anymore. It's foreign to you. It's incongruous to you. It's not impossible to you. Paul's point here is not the impossibility of sinning. It's the utter incongruity of sinning. He's saying it just doesn't make sense. You don't live in that realm any longer. Therefore, don't let that sin reign in your body. Rather, realize that you are in a new life serving a new master. And therefore, he spells it out in verse 13, by the third word, render. Realize, refuse, and render. Render yourself, the parts of your body, to him for his use. Verse 13, do not offer parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. And offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. You see, the purpose of Christ's death for you, and your being joined with Him, is as He says in 2 Corinthians 5, 14 and 15, Christ died for all, therefore we are all dead. And He died for us so that we who live might no longer live for ourselves, but unto Him who died and rose again on our behalf. And that's what Paul is saying here. You see, Christ died for you, you're already dead. and you're raised up now into a new life. But the whole point of that new life is that you have a new master, the new representative of the new humanity. And therefore give yourselves to him, because he's your new master, and he's a wonderful master. So give yourself joyfully and freely to him, specifically to him. Give yourself to him as a person who realizes that you are a dead, alive person. You once lived in the realm of sin, guilty for your sins, serving yourself. You've been freed from that. You've been delivered from both the penalty and the power of sin. Now you live to a new master, freed from that guilt and freed from the power of that sin over your life. Again, let me try to illustrate this. Not long ago, I read the story of a junkie in New York City by the name of Jose. And Jose was into drugs as deeply as you can get. He'd almost died in his life in drugs, destroying himself both in his the desperation to steal and do various things to get the money for drugs as well as the effects they had on his body. Then Jose met Jesus Christ. And when he met Jesus Christ, Christ began to deliver him from the drugs. Christ delivered him from the power of those drugs over him. And as Jose put it in his own insight to Romans 6, he said, I realized that Jose the junkie had died. He had exited this life, and then he had risen again as Christ in Hosea. See, a new identity. There's a new man here now, Christ in Hosea, no longer the junkie Hosea, but Christ in Hosea, living in a new realm, the realm of the kingdom by the power of the Spirit. Then he said one day it was tested. He was given 80 dollars. to deposit across town. And in order to get to the bank, he had to go past all the dealers that he knew in his former life. And as he got to one particular area, he said the temptation to just go to that dealer and to get some drugs became overwhelming to him, absolutely overwhelming. He couldn't get past that block. He began to struggle and to fight, and he said, I couldn't resist the temptation until he said, I realized that I was fighting that temptation as a man in my own nature. I was fighting it in my own strength as Jose the Junkie, trying to exert his will against the battle of Satan. And I said, when I did that, I stopped and I said, Oh Lord Jesus, I realize that I have forgotten you. You are in my life. I serve a new master with new resources. The Holy Spirit is in me. Lord Jesus, I can't fight this battle. I pray for the power of your victory in my life." He had come to see that he was dead to that sin and alive in Jesus Christ. And he said from that day on, not only was he able to pass that street, deposit the $80 in that bank, But he said from that day on, the temptation was never quite the same to return to drugs, because he had come to see that in that particular area of his life, he had presented that area of his body as an instrument to righteousness, and that Jesus Christ now had control of it. He had realized that he was dead to sin and alive to God. He had refused the old master from the old life, who no longer had power over him, and he had come now to render that area under the Spirit's control. That's the message for you and for me this morning. So as we come to wrap this up, let me try and make as explicit and specific what I'm trying to get at on seeing what Romans is not saying and what it is saying to you and to me. First of all then, look in the application on the back of the bulletin. First of all, Focus on Christ, not yourself, when you think of the crucified life. A under that, death to sin and the old self speaks of Christ freeing us from the penalty and the power of the law by His death and by His resurrection. not our rendering ourselves dead by our efforts and introspection. Praise God. How many times I see Christians walking around asking themselves, have I really died to my sin? Have I really written my obituary, you know? Have I really crucified my life? Have I really rendered myself dead to sin and alive to God? And they introspect and they examine all the things that they've done and all the conditions that they have met or haven't met, all the things that they look at and introspect. But Paul is saying, don't look at yourself to see whether that's true. You're looking at the wrong person. Look to Jesus. He's the one who did it for you. In Jesus, you're dead to that sin. not because you render the judgment, but because He has already rendered that judgment. So when you think about the crucified life and hear people preach on it or read things about it, realize that that which calls us to look to ourselves, to crucify ourselves, is not reflecting what Paul is saying in Romans 6. Check it out. Paul turns our attention to Christ because of what He has done. The key, you see, is to look to Christ by faith, not to look to myself by introspection. Then, I think of the early days of my swimming when I tried to float. I don't know how your experience in floating was, but mine was rather traumatic. In fact, it got so bad that I began to be convinced that the laws of buoyancy didn't apply to my body. I began to think that I didn't have enough meat on my bones. Maybe that was the key. You had to have a certain number of fat cells. You had to have a certain weight. I was just too thin. Bones are heavier than water. They just sink like a stone. Every time I'd get in, I'd start thinking about what I was doing. I'd curl up and I'd never arch my back. I'd always be thinking about how to float. and have I really gotten myself in the right position to float, and I'd always sink. And then one day I was laying in a pool and there was nobody around, no pressure on, nobody's telling me how to float and all the kind of things to do, you know. And all of a sudden I just thought, well, you know, I've tried everything else, I might as well just relax here and watch myself go down, you know. And so I just laid up and I just sort of relaxed there and lo and behold, the laws of buoyancy did apply to me. And from that moment, I began to see that there really was something I could experience because it was there for me to experience. That's what I'm saying about your death to sin. You look and you say, have I really crucified myself? Other Christians have, but maybe I haven't really. I'm still living in that old realm. I haven't been freed from it. And Paul's saying, man, if you're just going to sit around and look to yourself at what you have to do, you're never going to get out of that. This is true of all Christians, what Paul's talking about. All you have to do is rest in it. Record it in the ledgers of your spiritual account. I have died to that realm of sin. All there is for me to do is to refuse its power and to render myself in the power of the Spirit of God. Then secondly, B, Romans 6, is the realization of what Christ has done for all Christians, not my entering a deeper life by a crisis, not a curses, by a crisis experience which makes me unresponsive to sin and to temptation. It's not the secret to a higher plateau. It doesn't add to the mere gospel a deeper life of existence. Romans 6 is the gospel. During a vacation I read a book that listed six conditions into the deeper crucified life. Six conditions that if you and I follow them will give us that new unresponsiveness to sin, to walk more closely to Jesus Christ in the victory of the crucified life. That's not the gospel. The gospel says you have that life in Christ. You don't have six things that you got to do in order to get it. You look to Christ, you have it. Now live it. Now appropriate it. But you're not going to appropriate it on a new plateau because you've come to some zingo realization of something that you've dedicated that you haven't before. The Lord, by His Spirit, will give you the increasing realization of all the riches you have in Christ. And as you take those members of your body and offer them to Him, He'll give you an increasing sense of victory and closeness to Him. So that's the second one. I'm not calling you to passivity here, you see. I'm not saying, well, you see, all you gotta do in Romans 6 is just sit around and look at what Christ did. No, you see, on the basis of that, His call is great activity to present, to render those instruments of your body to God as those who are dead, alive people. So what does that mean for you? You, then, turn over every area of your life to the Lord, not so that you will die to sin, but because you have died to sin. You see the difference? One's law, and the other's grace. Paul finishes this whole thing by verse 14, saying, Sin shall not be your master because you're not under the law. But under grace, that's why you can do it. Because you have that power of the Spirit who has given you this new life in this new realm. Because Jesus has died and risen and you've died and risen with Him. And so you and I need to face that question about what are the areas of my life that I'm still leaving back in that old realm? The Lord wants me to take them and to recognize that I serve a new master and to present them before him so that I don't cling to those old idols and those old ways. How shall we who've died to that realm continue to live in it? It doesn't make any sense. So you need to present every area to the Lord. Your job, your future, your wife, husband, kids, your sweetheart. Your hobbies. How you spend your leisure time. Your clothes. Your friends. Your home. Your furniture. The TV. Your meals. The books that you read. Your kitchen. Your money and your budget. Your abilities. Your reputation. your most treasured possessions and your greatest accomplishments, your habits, your schedule, your fears, every act and attitude, every possession and possibility. I recently read of a woman who said that she had gotten into the custom of taking her winter vacations with her husband in Dallas. And in Dallas, she said, everybody's a collector. And so she said, I decided I'd take up a collection in order to fit with the people. And I took up bottle collecting. Now, she said, there's only one problem with bottle collecting. Most of the interesting bottles are wine bottles, beer bottles, and whiskey bottles. And so she said, as I got into this collection, I began to notice that all around my home were wine bottles, beer bottles, and whiskey bottles. And she said that was rather incongruous because I don't even drink. But everybody who would come into my home must have thought that I was always hitting the bottle because there was quite an array and collection of them around there. But she said, as time went on, I found an interesting thing happened in my heart. There was a spirit of rebellion that began to build up so that I began to think Even if the Lord wanted me to get rid of that collection, because of what it does to my witness, for those that don't know me, I wouldn't be willing to do it. Now, was there anything wrong with this collection of bottles? Of course, nothing in itself. But there was in her that spirit that said, I am going to hold this area back from the old life. And I am not going to submit that. Then she said one day she came to realize that she had died in Christ. And in that death, she no longer had the right to say that. She now served a new master. And in the flush of the realization of that, she said, I took all those bottles and took them out onto the back porch, and I took a hammer, and I smashed them one by one. And as I smashed them, she said, I could sense shackles falling from my life. and a newfound freedom, because I was living who I was. I had died as him, and I was now presenting the members of my life, my heart, as an instrument of righteousness. And as I began to do that in that area, the Lord gave me the realization of what it means to live that new life with Him. What is that area for you, or for me, this morning? Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, how we praise you this morning that you have died and that in you we have died to sin. It no longer has power over us. No longer power to penalize us, to make us feel guilty, to haunt us because we will face you one day with that sin upon our lives. no longer has power to control us, because we've died to its realm. And we live in a new life now, a new realm, as dead, alive people who serve a new master, Jesus. Lord Jesus, if there's anyone here who has never come to that place of recognizing their need to die, to have you take their sin and to remove it from them, We pray, Lord, that you would show them that need, that you would take that sin, that you would make them new people. Lord, we pray that you would show them that need right now, and show them the offer, the sacrifice of yourself, so sufficient. We pray for each of us, Father, who have taken that step and have come to Jesus Christ by faith. We would realize how rich the gospel is. we would realize the power that you have given to us in this new life, that we would realize our death to sin in Christ, the new life that we have in our resurrection, that we would refuse, therefore, the old master, and that we would render each part of our life to you. Not so that we'll die to sin, but because we have died Because you love us so much that you take us. And you're in the process of making us a new people. Have your way in us, Lord. In each area. Particularly that area that our minds flitted to when just a couple of moments ago you spoke to us. Lord, we pray for that victory. Not a victory that we will accomplish, but the victory of your Spirit in our lives. through Jesus Christ.