So years ago, I think it was 2006, we were attending a church in Okinawa, Japan. It's actually where we met the Hutzels, if you ever wonder how long we've known them. Chris looks a lot different, but Megan looks pretty much the same. Anyway, we had a very young pastor that was called to that church that we were attending, and I was teaching Sunday school at the time, and he had planned on going through a book of the Bible every week, basically to take people through the scriptures. and give them an overview. But what was odd about that, he's always picked one or two verses instead of giving an overview for that. But I remember looking at the schedule and it came around to May and thinking, that's weird. Why is Ephesians falling right there in May? And at the time I didn't think anything of it. And I was teaching Sunday school that morning and teaching all through the entire overview of Ephesians, which is a powerful powerful testimony of God's grace to save us from our sins and to be brought from death to life that while we were still by nature objects of God's wrath, Christ died for the ungodly and we were made alive together with him in Christ. And I joked at the end and I said, I said, yeah, some people might get to Ephesians chapter five and summarize it all as like wives submit to your husbands and that sort of thing. And so it got to the sermon, and it was Mother's Day. And the pastor preached on Ephesians 5, verse 22, wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands. And I was like, wow. So with that in mind, turn to Ephesians chapter 5, verse 22. No, I would never do that to you. So we are actually going to cover Romans chapter six, the first 14 verses today. And it's just one of those things that occurred to me as I was thinking through a passage that I thought would be appropriate as we're in the book of Acts and the gospel is now based on the persecution of Stephen going out into the land surrounding Judea and Samaria and that sort of thing. And it's a powerful testimony to God's grace. What's happened prior to this point in Paul's book to the Romans, or his letter to the Romans, his epistle, in chapter five he kind of unpacks for them this idea that there are basically two people. And I don't know if you've ever heard that there's two kinds of people in this, or I'm sorry, There's actually three kinds of people in this world, those who can count and those who can't. But in Paul's case, he talks about there being two humanities and one that all of us who were born in Adam, one of us that we're all counted guilty in Adam. And then he introduces Christ as this greater Adam who has now saved us from the wrath and condemnation that we all deserve because he's our head, he's our federal head, Adam is. And a Puritan once gave the analogy that You know, like if you're a Marine, you have those war belts that you carry all your gear around and that sort of thing, or now it's a vest. It used to just be belts with suspenders. But anyway, you've got all these things that you hang on them. And like we're, in Adam, we're all a humanity basically connected to him like as on a belt. And what Christ does to us is he takes sinners and he hooks, he takes us off of Adam's belt and he hooks us into him. So now we're in Christ. And it talks about the fact that the sin of Adam has, and our sin has caused sin to abound, that our sin is so sinful that God's wrath is poured out, but that Christ's righteousness, his grace is so great that where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more. That in other words, no matter how much the sin of Adam causes us to not only be guilty by nature in him, and by nature, objects of God's wrath, and because we're sinners, we sin, and so we just keep compounding sin and that sort of thing, that Christ's grace is so much greater that it superabounds where sin abounds, that the grace of God covers all of our sins because of Christ's sacrifice for sin. And so then there's, Paul is always dealing with these people in his ministry who are misunderstanding what he's trying to get at. And they're like, oh yeah, you sin all the more, so that you basically, if God's mercy is shown forth in how much I'm a sinner, and he can magnify his grace, then maybe what I can do is I can just sin and sin and sin and sin, and then God is able to then, his grace is so great that it's like, look how great God is, that he just keeps covering my sin. And so, the question becomes almost Paul asks the question, shall we sin all the more so that grace may abound? And that's where we pick up here. So if you'll stand for the reading of God's word, and with my poor vision, I'll do my best to read this well. 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 so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For 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 he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. Please be seated. So the reason I chose this is because it has this aspect of baptism in it, but you'll notice if you're really paying attention to this, I want you to think when we're talking about baptism in the future in terms of these stories of people being baptized into Christ's name, the importance of what baptism not only signifies, but actually spiritually seals for believers. It's a very common thing if you've been in some traditions to talk about for baptism to be called the watery grave of baptism, as it were. And a lot of what it comes to here is this idea of being buried with Christ. But if you're paying attention, what Paul is actually talking about here is a very spiritual thing. He's not talking about the mode by which one is baptized, but the spiritual reality that baptism itself signifies. This is why we talk about baptism being a sacrament, and I don't wanna get you guys all confused by using that word, but the whole idea of a sacrament is that you have something that represents, that signifies something, that we have water, right? We have water in something that God does for us through a minister, and that water is applied And then it signifies something that God does by his spirit. You following what I'm trying to say? Like the actual washing of the water does nothing but kind of, it can cleanse the filth off your flesh and that sort of thing, but it doesn't do anything unless God does something for that. But in the way the scriptures talk, it talks about the one thing, the thing of being baptized, the fact that you can look to something that physically happened to you as being representative of something that God does by his spirit, so that the two are so conjoined that you say, as I was baptized, I know that God, because of his promise, means that I can look to my own baptism, the thing that happened to me, to think about the spiritual reality of what Christ has accomplished for me, so that in times of trial, I can look back at that. And notice I talked about God's actions in that process, the thing that we emphasize in... in our church is not the act of the person, not speaking of the person in his action, because being baptized is a passive action. Something is done for you and to you in baptism. It's not something where the church is declaring something about you that if you lose that kind of intense sense of belonging to Christ that you lose your baptism and it's gone. Because what God is doing in baptism is he's making promises to you through a minister and he's administering, he's bringing you into the community. And it's meant to signify something that God is doing spiritually to seal you in Christ and to do work for you. And so that's why we don't re-baptize in this church because we believe that God's promises last, right? When he makes a promise in his baptism, it doesn't matter if you feel like you actually believed right at the time that it happened, or something happens along the way and you stumble. God's still saying that all who trust in me shall be saved from their sins, and so that's this important aspect of what baptism signifies is the thing that we should be reflecting upon in baptism and not getting too overwhelmed by the mode. And I'll just point out that if all we think of baptism as a grave, then there's all these other aspects of what baptism talks about in terms of being washed. being sprinkled so that we have a clean conscience and that sort of thing. And so we sometimes have to broaden our mind as the scriptures do to help us reflect upon what's really being said. And here, remember we talked about the two humanities, that you were once slaves to sin in Adam, right? You once walked, as Ephesians says, according to the power of the prince of the air, you were walking in darkness. You were slaves to sin and then what Christ does through his work is he comes in power on the cross. His work is this cosmic irony of Satan thinking that he's putting this very son of God to death. But what's happening is that Christ is born in himself, not only the curse, the consequence of every sin that you've committed, but the power of sin to enslave you. And because he is the very God and very man, he is not only fitting as a man to bear the consequences of sin for you, but because he's the very son of God from all eternity and one person, his death gives dignity and he's able to bear up the humanity in the crushing weight of God's wrath for sin. So all the wrath of sin is taken away by Christ that belongs to you, and the power of sin is broken. It's as if sin and the consequences of sin are then on Christ, and so he becomes sin itself, he becomes a sinner, and he dies. A sinner dies. You see what I'm saying? Like, Christ dies, it goes into the grave, that's what's being communicated. So as you trust in Christ, you think of Christ and you think, oh, If it wasn't for Christ, I would still be alive as a sinner. I would still be still alive to sin. I would still be guilty of sin. I would still be under its wrath and curse. And I would still be enslaved to sin. I would have to do what it tells me to do. And it's not like it's something whispering in our ears. It's something that we want to do because we're sinners. We're enslaved to it in that way. We're willing slaves to sin. we do the very thing that we desire to do. We do what is right in our own eyes, and we want to do that. But when we trust in Christ, we say, oh, that's what I was. I was enslaved to sin, and now Christ has basically, I've been united to Christ, and as Christ, As Christ died, my guilt died with him, the power of sin to enslave me, and so we're supposed to think of ourselves as being united to Christ in his death. You know, one of the thing that Paul calls Christians the most is actually the most common address towards believers as being in Christ in the scriptures, that you're in Christ. It's appropriate to call ourselves Christians. It was a term that were first called, actually, in Antioch, where Paul came from. But most of the time, he's not calling people Christians. He's talking about you as being in Christ. And this idea is that you're so identified with Christ, you're united to him. He is your He is your covenant head. He is your Lord. You are in Christ. And so in Christ, we are to consider ourselves to have died to sin, its power and its guilt. But did Christ die only? No, he rose from the grave, but we're united to Christ, right? And so as he rose from the grave, we rise with him because we're united with him and we are now alive to his life. What kind of life is that? Not only a life that's able to obey God, because we're united to him, now we have his life. In fact, death couldn't hold him. and we rise again with him and we're able to obey the word of God. And not only so, but Christ rose from the dead. And so because Christ rose from the dead, we know because we're united to him that we too will rise from the dead as well. This is the powerful thing about the Christian message. You are united to Christ, so identified with him that when he cast his care upon you and saved you, he united a sinner to himself. He didn't unite somebody who had cleaned himself up, who had cleaned herself up, who had decided to change your life and make yourself acceptable to God. He took you sin and all. And he died on a cross for you to take away your guilt and break the power of sin so that it might no longer reign in you. That's the kind of savior we have. The thing is is that one of the ways that we need to think of ourselves, it's really important to remember that you are a sinner, but you're in Christ. Because you know that Christ is a friend of sinners and you're in Christ and when you still experience the temptations to sin, you realize, oh, this is why I have those temptations. That's why I haven't been, that's why I still am tempted to do the very things I don't wanna do. We haven't gotten to Romans chapter seven, because in one sense, you could read this incorrectly and say, oh, it looks like, well, if sin has, if the power of sin to enslave me has been put to death, then it must not have worked for me. Like, because I still am tempted to want to sin. Does anybody feel that way? Like, you feel like you're tempted to sin, and so maybe you conclude from this, it must not have worked for me, I must not be united to Christ because I'm still tempted to sin. Paul's going to correct that in Romans chapter 7, so I don't want you to think about that, but think in that wrong way. but the point is Christ has united a sinner and the reason you're still tempted to sin is because he has united a sinner to himself and the basis for your acceptance to God is not that you that God is looking past Christ towards you to see how righteous is this person and will I save him but Christ is Christ is because he's our head we are all identified with him and so as God looks at us he sees the perfect obedience of Christ, and we're accounted as righteous in Him. Even though we're sinners, we're under this covering, we're united with Him, we are counted as righteous in Him. Even though we desire to do sinful things, even though we still, but Christ is working on us, right? I said the dominion or the power of sin to enslave has been taken away, but the power of sin to tempt has not, and so we still live in the in-between before we have been resurrected, but we are confident that in Christ, because of what he's done, that we are in him. And that's an important thing to remember, because it gets really discouraging sometimes, right? You think that you're making progress in the faith, and then somebody cuts you off, and some thought from the pit of hell comes into your mind, and you think, how could a Christian ever think thoughts like this? or maybe you're caught up in some lust regularly or you've done something in your past that you keep rehearsing and you think, I can't possibly be saved because somebody like this could never have committed a sin like this or to have thoughts like this. But the corruption that is in your heart is the very thing that Christ knows about. It's the power of his death to put the condemnation to death for you, you're no longer condemned to death for that within you, but you still have it and you struggle with it. But the next part of that, though, is because we're united to him, we're able to live in him, right? We're able to live righteously. Not perfectly, but because of that life, we're able to obey. But I want to make sure that you remember that the fact that you're a sinner is not a surprise to anybody here. And it's certainly not a surprise to Christ or to God, because it's Christ who is God, but he came to save sinners. He's a friend of sinners. He unites sinners to himself. So you need to remember you're a sinner, but the power of sin to enslave you and to hold you captive has been put to death. And so we are to live our lives, as it were, or to reckon ourselves, how we're supposed to think. We're supposed to, in this first part, it's like if the message is like, Think of yourselves as in Christ and now think of yourselves as what Christ has done. This is true of you, right? You don't have to do anything. This is all talking about like, this is news, okay? This is why it's called the good news. It's not, this is a proclamation of something that Christ has done. Don't hear in this saying, now, In Romans chapter six, I want you to think about the thing that you must do. This is a thing that Christ has done for you that he has put sin to death for you. And you are alive to Christ because of him. You're just hanging out, minding your own business. You're like a sinner just going la-dee-da, I love being a sinner and that sort of thing. And then the gospel comes and it changes us And then Christ has done all the work because he had us in mind, and when he died on a cross, he had you by name in mind, and he was interceding for you that you might come to faith someday. He died for your sin, to break the power of sin, and he's been using his church to basically change you from that life to be able to come now into him so that you might be set free from slavery to sin and life in Christ. And so that's true, okay, about being a Christian. It's like it's on your ID card. It's like written there. It's like you are by nature dead to sin and alive to Christ. And then the next part is like, okay, now, in light of that, how should we think? How should we think? Oh, I know what I should do. I should think of myself as dead to sin and alive to Christ. You see what I'm saying? This is the logic of it. If, in fact, you are dead to sin and alive to Christ, how should you think of yourself? Dead to sin and alive to Christ. That's where the next part is coming in, in chapter 11. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God and Christ Jesus. See, I wasn't lying. It's right there. That's how you should think of yourself. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments to 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. You see the logic here? This is one of the things that's very important too as you're thinking about sin, okay? First of all, We need to think of sin as like something that's active, not something that just kind of happens to us or something that we don't, that just kind of like takes us by surprise. Because if we think of ourselves as naturally good all the time, then we'll be surprised when we don't live up to our expectations, right? And if we think of ourselves as basically good, then we'll be shocked when other people who don't meet up to our standard come walking in the door as if we're not all fellow sinners, just dealing with the fact that if it wasn't for Christ, we'd be all by nature objects of God's wrath. We would have no hope apart from him. So we recognize ourselves to be sinners, and we recognize that sin is active to try and tempt us. We are internally desirous to do that which God does not command. But we have to reckon ourselves when that happens, to think when it happens, oh, when I am tempted to do evil, I don't have to obey the evil desire that comes into my mind at that point. You guys following what I'm saying? Because we're in Christ, we reckon ourselves dead to sin, not in the sense that sin will never tempt us, but in the sense that when sin comes and says, hey, you wanna do that thing that you know you shouldn't do? We can say, you know what? You no longer have any control over me. You no longer reign over me. I don't have to obey you. You're not the boss of me. You can say to sin, you're not the boss of me anymore. I'm in Christ. That guy's dead. That guy that used to have to do everything you say, that guy's dead. Whether it's Satan, whether it's the world tempting you to do things, don't be deceived that the reason we desire is not because somebody's making you do that, but there's a part of you, the flesh, the sin nature in you that desires to do that, and that sin nature used to reign over you. But you can tell that sin nature, you're not the boss of me. And you can turn to Christ and say, Christ, you put that power to reign over me to death. I really desire to do this thing. But Christ, give me the power in the moment to put this desire to death. Help me to kill the sin within me that desires to do this terrible thing. You see, what Paul is saying is that Pay attention to the difference of what I'm saying. What Paul is saying is that don't act, don't do sinful things because then you'll no longer be a Christian. That's not what he's saying. It's like, if you keep doing these sinful things, you'll no longer be a Christian. What he's saying is that every time you give in to sin, you're not acting like who you really are. You guys following what I'm saying? Like, if you're a Christian and you're just sinning all the time because you're giving into it, then what Paul is saying is like, you're already established in Christ, so stop acting like that's just not who you are anymore. Why are you still giving into this stuff as if it defines you? Now, I want to encourage you with that thought because you want to think of yourselves as being in Christ and it's actually really powerful to think about that, right? It's kind of one of those weird things, right? Because I understand why The Christian church gets a bad rap sometimes, right? Especially if you reckon yourselves to be righteous people in and of yourselves. Like you think, oh yeah, the reason I'm here right now today, Rich, is because I got up today and I looked in the mirror and I said, you're Rich Lino. You're a righteous dude. You need to be around other righteous dudes and dudettes. and the moms of dudes and dudettes. You can celebrate righteous moms and stuff like that. And righteous living, that's what we're about here in this church. And you think, yay, I'm going in to be around all the righteous people, right? And then people come in because they're struggling with all sorts of other things and maybe they get into church and they're like, hey, I'm not a righteous dude, what am I doing here? I don't belong. But when you think of yourself as a sinner, and you were once enslaved to sin, then what you're trying to avoid is the very thing you were freed from. You see, the thing is, is the reason why a Christian should be motivated not to sin is because they hate it. And they hate to see other people enslaved to it. So it should be pity and compassion to people enslaved to sin because we say, I know exactly what that's like. We don't need to rejoice in their sin. We don't need to cheerlead for it. But we also don't need to come across as righteous people condemning other sinners as if the reason we're here is because, well, the reason we don't sin is because we're righteous people. No, that's not the reason we don't sin. We don't sin because we're united to Christ and we do our best. We still sin. We're actually coming in here confessing our sins. You guys following what I'm trying to say? It makes a really big difference to think of that, to really look at sin in the proper light, not as, you know, you guys can get the idea, and the culture is like, I just gotta be me. I gotta like, whatever else is true, to thine own heart be true. I need to just be true to who I feel I am deep down inside of myself. That's Disney, that's not the scriptures, right? What we're told to do is we're told to like put the temptations that we have to death because we see in ourselves that in fact Christ himself says the heart is desperately wicked, right? It's Christ himself who says that about everybody. It's not like he's excluding some people from that characterization. It was the Pharisees who were most offended by that idea that you're calling me unrighteous, but I do a pretty good job of keeping God's law. Save that message for all the unrighteous people, but don't tell me I have a wicked heart or that I'm like a whitewashed tomb and inside is dead man's bones. were all in that category and the thing that distinguished the Pharisees or the people that didn't follow Christ from all the other sinners is they thought they were righteous but they were just as sinful as everybody else in their heart of hearts and they needed Christ's righteousness for them. They could have been part of the party just like the elder brother was invited in but they stood outside gnashing their teeth at Jesus because he was inviting sinners inside. But do you think for a moment that when the The son came home to the embrace of his father and there's a party where he says, I can't believe that you have thrown a party for me, that you've made me a son after everything that I've done. And everybody's like, this is great. You think that the son that day was like thinking, man, I can't wait to go outside my father's house again and do whatever I desire to do. You see what I'm saying? We actually see in ourselves that which would enslave us again. And that's what we should think of sin as, not as the world thinks about like, well, true freedom is actually being able to do whatever your heart desires. No, that's actually slavery. True freedom and liberty in Christ is the ability to actually resist the temptation of sin in our members and to recognize that we're alive in Christ and that we have the ability to obey God. And we encourage one another in that. And I just wanna make sure you understand what I'm not saying. I'm not saying you're gonna do it perfectly, right? If we were going through a series and then I'd go through this whole thing where Paul is now saying, okay, let's make sure you don't misunderstand me here because I wanna tell you about my life. I do the very things all the time I don't wanna do. and I don't do the things that I wanna do. And we're like, yeah, I can totally relate to that, Paul, and thank you that you're reminding me that you're just like us, that we're constantly in this battle against sin. But this is true, he never loses this truth that in Christ we have been baptized into his death and resurrection. We are united to him in his death so that you are no longer guilty of sin. You are no longer under its condemnation. You are no longer a slave to the things that it tells you to do. And you are united to Christ also in his resurrection. And you are able now to obey Christ, not in your own power, in your own strength, but by the spirit who gives you the strength to turn to Christ in the time of need and say, Christ, I don't have the resources within me right now to resist sin and temptation, but you do, and I'm a Christian. I know who I am. That man has died. I no longer have to obey it, and thank you that you freed me from that. And as we come into worship together, we see people coming in with all sorts of problems, and we were talking about this in Sunday school today, all sorts of whatever it is. We should never be shocked when we run into sinners. There should never be a sin that shocks us so much that we say, hey, that's for other people. This is the kind of church that welcomes sinners because that's the only kind of people that are qualified to be Christians are sinners. It's the only kind of people that are qualified for the gospel our sinners, people that need the gospel of Jesus Christ to pay for their sins, to free them from bondage, and to give them the life of Christ. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for the fact that we are baptized in Christ, into his death and resurrection, We thank you for the joy that we have in the gospel and the power that we have in the gospel. And we thank you that you are forming a community in us of sinners who are encouraging one another along the way as we strive together to live our lives and remind ourselves that we are dead to sin and alive to Christ. In Christ Jesus' name we pray, amen.