Ed Collierville, it's been a couple of years since I've been here and I've been very much looking forward to this weekend. I'd like to talk to you a little bit tonight out of Romans chapter 6 verses 1-11 amongst a few other passages of Scripture. But a lot of times we seem to get lost in some of the terms of Christianity such as regeneration, conversion, justification, sanctification. We start to lose meaning of what those words truly are. Sometimes they just seem like a legal word and we're not even sure what it is. There's a lot of overlap between those words. But they're very needed together because all of those words are part of God's greater plan that's talked about in Romans chapter 8 verses 28 through 30. God has a plan for His people. God has a purpose for His people. And each one of the steps of God's plan has its own purpose. So tonight I'd like to talk about what do we do after we're justified. The title is You're Justified. Now what? So for us to understand what it means for us after justification, we're going to talk about what it really means to be justified for a bit first. And we're going to go into Romans chapter 6 verses 1-11. I'm not going to read all those yet. We will get to those in a moment. But justification is a legal term meaning sinners are fully and completely justified before God alone by the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. It means you didn't do anything for it. It was Jesus Christ alone that justified you. Simply put, justification means you are declared righteous before God. It makes you right before God in a right standing before the great judge and before His great judgment seat. It gives you a proper legal standing like you would have in a court of law. A judge declares you innocent, not guilty. That is your justification before God. You are declared righteous. But it's important for us to know that our justification is solely on the righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. And we'll see why that's so important to understand that in a few minutes. But when we're in Christ, we're seen through His righteousness. God sees Titus through Jesus Christ. God does not just see the sinner Titus standing before Him. If I had not the blood of Jesus Christ upon me, in all of His sacrifice, in His blood, in His perfect life-giving sacrifice for me, if that was not on me, God would cast me away. In fact, I couldn't even approach God without Jesus Christ. So we are seen through His righteousness. A judge can't declare you any more innocent once he's declared you innocent. He can't say, I've declared you innocent. Now, I'm going to make a second declaration and you're even more innocent than you were before. You're either innocent or guilty. And in God's eyes, you're righteous or not righteous. There's not levels of righteousness at the throne. You are righteous or you are condemned. And when we are righteous through the blood of Jesus Christ, He has justified us before God's court, before that great throne. And He has covered us and says, No, they are innocent. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21 says, For He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Jesus was not a sinner. but our sins were placed upon Him at that cross. Our sinful nature, our evil deeds were placed upon the righteous Jesus Christ at the cross. And in turn, He placed His righteousness upon us. We are justified by the cross of Christ. We are made to be in a form of sense as Christ when we are looked at by God. Because we don't approach God by our deeds, we approach Him through the sacrifice of the cross. That sacrifice covers all of our sins and that's how God sees us as perfect, unblemished, clean, holy saints. Because God requires perfection. Perfect attainment of the law Perfect holiness. I can't meet it. You can't meet it. The best Pharisee out there could not meet that standard. But when Jesus Christ places His life upon us, God has placed us in that holy standard that we could never, ever attain. Romans 5, verses 18-19. This whole of Romans 5 is a chapter on justification. But verses 18-19 say, Therefore as by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, Even so, by the righteousness of one, Jesus Christ, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous." The whole purpose of that verse is to tell you that you are righteous in Christ. You are not condemned in Christ. You are not guilty. You were innocent before Him. Now Romans 3-4 also go with chapter 5 where they're all speaking. Paul is demonstrating what the doctrine of justification is and God's declaring us righteous through those chapters. He's writing it to the church at Rome. The Pharisees were not going to let their religion go easily. They were attacking churches wherever they could find them. And they were still trying to influence the message of the Old Testament to be that they themselves were good enough to meet God's standard. And they didn't want a bunch of Jesus-following people to tell them otherwise because then people would not see them as they saw themselves. If you don't see me as perfect, that was their whole goal. It really wasn't so God could see them as perfect. It's really so you would. So the people would look up to them as the righteous and holy people. They were banking on their own good deeds to get to heaven. They were banking on their own good deeds to approach God and say, you know, I don't need Jesus. I don't need justification. I don't need a declaration of innocence because I am. I have made myself innocent by the way that I walked, the way that I followed every jot and every tittle, by the way that I followed this law in perfect, perfect steps. I don't need Jesus Christ to cover me. I'm righteous in my own right. So Paul, what he's writing here in the Romans, is he's telling them to keep the faith of Jesus Christ. Not the faith of the law, because Christ was our fulfillment of the law. And then in chapter 6-8 he moves into what God is actually doing to those who are justified, that He is producing righteousness in you through Jesus Christ. Not without Him, never without Him, only through Him. So these chapters are specifically dealing with our sanctification. Being brought to Christ in holiness in a holy walk with Him. So what's the purpose of this justification? It's to bring a covenant of peace with the Son and with the Holy Ghost on behalf of those chosen people. Because what happened is we broke God's trust with that one man, Adam. We broke our fellowship. We broke our relationship with God. Ephesians 2 verses 13-14 says, But now in Christ Jesus you who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ, for He is our peace, who hath made both one and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us. That relationship was broken with Adam. That relationship was severed when he no longer needed that walk with God. and we could not mend it. It is a gap too big, a void too broad for us to span, for us to jump. Only one righteous person could bridge that gap. Only one righteous, holy, walk, only one perfect life who is Jesus Christ could mend that relationship that we broke. God's not going to fellowship with sin. God is holy. He does not fellowship with sin. He does not love it. He does not hold the hand of the sinner and walk with that sinner as they live in their sins and tell them, it's okay. Be you. It's okay. God does not walk with sin. So for us to have that relationship, for us to be made right, For us to bridge that gap that Adam started in that first sin and that we carry on in our very sin nature, we had to be justified before God so that we could fellowship with God. Because as a guilty man we cannot fellowship with God, but Jesus Christ has mended that relationship. That's justification. Okay, so you're justified. Now what? What do you do? How do you live? This is a wicked world. Sin is with me all the time. I'm constantly tempted. I constantly fail. What am I supposed to do with this relationship now that I can fellowship with God? Well, as I said, the Pharisees are still attacking the churches wherever they can, and Paul's refuting them here. What they're saying, in essence, is it's okay Here's what their argument back to Paul is. Paul, you're saying that if you're justified and you're made right, then you can pretty much do what you want, can't you? You've been made right before God, you're justified, you have this right legal standing. And if God holds you in His hand in that right legal standing, then what's the purpose of all this that we're doing now? Can't I live like the world? Can't I eat, drink, and be merry? Isn't it okay? I'm justified, right? The Pharisees' point is that you needed to live like them to get to God. You don't need Christ, you need to live like me. And they're trying to twist the Scripture by saying if you're justified, sin. What's wrong with it? Is there anything wrong with our sin if we have a legal standing of innocence before God? Well, Paul refutes this here. If we're already delivered into a right standing before God in salvation, then what happens to that sin that's with us? That sin nature that's always with us? That flesh of sin? That flesh of death? What happens to it? What are we to do when we're faced with it? So I like to use this example. It's kind of a gruesome example, but it really gives the best picture of what we, as justified people who have been brought to life through Jesus Christ, do with our dead sin. Charles Spurgeon gives the example that in the ancient days, a tyrant, if he wanted to punish someone bad enough, he would get a dead body and he would tie it to the back of the man he wanted to punish. And he puts it like this, wherever this man went, he was alive. But what was always tethered to him is this rotting, putrid, corrupting, dead body. Now this is just what the Christian must do. He has within him the new life. But every day He has to drag this dead body as abominable to this new life is the stench of the sinful man that we carry with us. See, the point is, sin doesn't go away because we're made right. So what is the now what? We have to live righteously. But didn't the Pharisees just say, live righteously and that's what you need? Well, the closer we draw to God, the more we love Him. The more we are aware of that dead man tied to our back. The more it starts to stink. The more you feel it. It's rotting. It's dead flesh. You hate it. It's not natural. It's not what you want to be near. And the closer we draw to the beauty and the glory of who God is, the more we feel, and the more we see, and the more we smell that dead body tied to our back. This is the reality of our life as a Christian now. We've been cloaked in the righteousness of Christ, but we still have to drag this corpse with us everywhere that we go. So what do we do? Romans chapter 6 tells us that we are crucified with Christ. We are buried with Christ and we are resurrected with Christ. This old body, this old body that follows me everywhere it goes, everywhere that I go, I feel it, I know it's there. But it's important for you to know that old body is not you. That's a dead man. And you, you are alive in Christ. You have been made alive in Him. The beauty of being buried with Christ crucified with Him and resurrected with Him, is that you are not left alone. Because you are resurrected with Jesus Christ to be something, to be in fellowship with Him, to be in communion with Him, to be part of His kingdom, to be part of His family. He does not leave you to your own devices. If God opened your eyes, He does not leave you alone. What would happen to Titus Cannon if God crucified me with Him and buried me with Him and resurrected me with Him. They said, OK, good luck, Titus. I'm going to go to heaven and wait for you to get here. Man, I'm going to follow that dead body wherever it goes. In fact, we're going to find a whole pile of them. And we will wallow in it and love it. We'll love the stench. That's what happens to us. But God is faithful. God does not leave you alone. We're not just declared innocent and then left. He doesn't pull you out of the courtroom and say, you are innocent. And then he leaves you to your own devices. He brought you from a state of death. He brought you from a state of bondage. to someone from someone else. Satan, who is the prince of the powers of this air. He took you from him and he didn't set you beside him and walk away. He took you from Satan and he brought you to himself. He brought you to his kingdom, to his home. He washed you. He made you clean. He put on cloaks of righteousness and he brought you into his home and said, you are my child. and I will watch you, I will guard you, I will protect you, and I will walk with you. You're not left to your own devices. You're brought to His kingdom. You're given His Spirit and He opens your eyes to see Him. This is what we call conversion. Conversion's a result of our regeneration when Jesus opens your eyes to see who you are. Then we're converted. We turn around and we start moving somewhere. Away from where we were. In fact, it's the opposite direction. As fast as we can get there. Conversion happens when a sinner turns from their idols. Turns from their sins and they turn to Christ. 1 Thessalonians 1 chapter 9 is just a very practical example of conversion here. Here's what it says. Paul is speaking, it says, "...for they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God." There's conversion for you. They're turning from idols to God. When sinners are converted, they repent. They repent from their sins and they turn as far away as they can from their sins and they run to Christ. We run from our idols and to something. We run to Jesus as our example. Because when we're with our idols, when we're controlled by the dead man, we're doing what the idols love, what the dead loves. But when we know that we have been bought with him, and now we see that we are a new life, and there's this dead, rotting corpse tied to my back, I gotta know what to do. What do I do? You go to Jesus as your example. You turn from sin into Him. You know, you're going to serve something, but you're not going to serve two things. You're going to serve one or the other. You're going to serve the flesh, or you're going to serve the living God. And when you turn from your sins and you turn to the living God, this is your first step in sanctification. Everybody that's been justified. You've been declared right before God. You've been regenerated. You've been brought to a spiritual life. You're created in Christ Jesus to good works. You follow Him and the fruit of faith follows with that. and that we do His will and we do His good pleasure. And then we see that our righteousness does not get us to God though. That's what's important when we see that we have this dead corpse tied to our back. We realize that our good works aren't getting me to God. God gets us to righteousness. That's our sanctification. Getting from that life of filth. Getting from the idols and turning to something. Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10 says, For a year His workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that you should walk in them. That goes back to God's plan in Romans chapter 8 verses 28-30. He didn't come to this world to justify you and leave you alone. He came with a great plan where He would justify you. Then He would wake you up to where you would see Him. Then He would conform you to something, to the image of Jesus Christ. That is our sanctification to be like Christ. But we weren't created into this new life to sit and wait patiently for God to come back. He says in that chapter of Ephesians that you're created in Christ Jesus unto something. Unto good works. That's our daily sanctification. constantly drawing to Christ through good works. That goes back to the statement before, your good works aren't getting you to righteousness. Your righteousness is what's causing you to do good works. It's what feeds you to do what Jesus would have you to do. So what's the difference here between justification and sanctification? Let's talk about that for a moment before we get into more of the weeds of sanctification. In justification, the sinners counted righteous. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to you. Your sin is taken away and placed upon Him at the cross. His righteousness is placed upon you. You are justified. You are made right. But in sanctification, we are actively being made righteous daily through the work of the Spirit in us. Our works play no part in our justification. Not a bit. but your works are very important in your sanctification because you have been called to them by Jesus Christ. You have been called specifically to good works. That's a very important part of our sanctification. Philippians 2 says, We are to be working, doing Christians. We're to be working for Christ, through the power of Christ, for the glory of Christ. Because it is Him in us that causes us to be able to follow Him, to be able to work for Him, to be able to live for Him. God brought you from a state of spiritual life from a state of spiritual death into the state of spiritual life in Him. And He's still working on you today. That same power that opened your eyes, that's the same power that enables you to walk in Him. It's the same Holy Spirit in John chapter 3 that wakens you to the spiritual life. That same Spirit is here today. as our great comforter and our great help to help you in this life. Because without that Spirit, without God's help, where do we go? Back to the dead body. Back to the old life. But He gives you the strength, He gives you the power to do what He has called you to do. When we try to get close to God without God, what are we doing? We're going back to just being a Pharisee. I'm going to be good, but I don't want God to help me do it. I don't want the Holy Spirit. I don't need the Holy Spirit. I don't need the righteousness of Christ, and I don't need God to help me get Him to Himself. I can do that on my own because I'm a good guy. I haven't killed people. I'm not a thief. I'm a good man. Isn't that good enough to get me to God? Isn't that good enough? Aren't you an obedient child? I haven't got a spanking and I don't remember when I'm good enough. We know we're not. That's a silly question. We know we're not good enough. Every one of us faces sins. We all faced them today. We all struggled with them today and we will tomorrow and the next day and the next day until Christ calls us home. We need Jesus. We need the Holy Spirit to walk with us each day. I don't want the life of a Pharisee. I don't want to bank on my own goodness to get to God. Because I know I'll never make it. I want the Spirit to be with me. I want the Spirit to fill me. I want the Spirit to show me the way. I want the Spirit to help me be sanctified. I don't want to do it myself because I know I can't. I know I'd be a failure. But God did not ordain us into this legal standing of justification for us to sit back-to-back with a dead corpse on a bench and wait for His return. God ordained you to get up, dead corpse and all on your back, and start walking. Start moving. Yes, it's still there. Sin does not go away in this life. It will be with you. It will weigh you down. It will stink and it gets hard. But He called you to work, to walk. Be a walking. working Christian, because that's part of your sanctification. That is how you're getting to a righteous walk with God, through the strength of God. We don't want to be a sitting Christian just waiting, just waiting for Him to come. When God makes you righteous, He puts a spark in you. I can't think of a better example than Lydia in Acts chapter 16. Paul gets there to Philippi and he finds this group of believers there. Now it says Lydia is a believer of God, but then it says Paul speaks to her and then it says something else. Then God opens her heart to him. God opens her heart and she does something. Now, she was already a believer, a follower of God, wasn't she? She was at a prayer meeting, wasn't she? Wasn't she doing what she was supposed to? But Paul preached. God worked. She saw. And then it says she went about the business of doing what Paul had preached. That means she repented and got baptized. And she followed God with her heart, not her works only, but with her heart. When God opened your eyes, He lights a fire in you to follow Him. You've felt it when He's opened your eyes. Sometimes we start to feel it fade away, don't we? That's when we have to look back to the strength of the Holy Spirit to walk righteous. Because we do get burdened. We do weigh down with sin. I hope, and I know that they're there, But I hope that we aren't just being the Lydias of church before God opens the heart. Isn't it good enough? I came to church today. What more do you want from me, preacher? I'm here on a Friday night. Shouldn't that get me to heaven enough? It's football season! Come on! I pray you're not a Lydia that's just going to a prayer meeting and just following God, but doesn't have your heart opened to God. Be the Lydia that goes about doing the things that Paul preached to her. When God opened her heart to see Him that she had to do then. And then she invited Him into his house and said, what should we be doing? And they started a church there. And it grew. And they supported Paul over multiple mission trips. Because she got about doing what God had called her to do. Don't be the Lydia's before. Be the acting, working Lydia who has her heart open to God. Justification is instantaneous. It's done. It's once. It's never going to happen again to you. You're not going to be justified, guilty. Justified, guilty. Once and for all. Hebrews says that He died once and for all. One time because it was perfect. The perfect sacrifice to cover your sins. The perfect sacrifice to wake you up to see Him once again. There's never going to be a charge laid to you again. Oh, Satan will try in Revelation 4. He's going to try to point the finger at you. He's going to say, Lord, didn't they do this? And Jesus is going to say, not so, Satan. That one's mine. I've covered them. But didn't they do this? Isn't this an adultery? Not so, Satan. I covered them with my blood. They are not guilty. They are righteous because I died for them. Once and for all it will not happen again. You are righteous in Him. Christ will not be crucified on that cross again. The sanctification is progressive. It's a progressive process. It's an ongoing process. It's a daily, daily process. That you and I have to walk. That you and I must do. That we are called to do. We are to be growing in our walk with God. We are to be growing in our understanding of God. We are to grow in our love for Him. We should fall more and more and more in love with God each day that you wake. Each time you open your Scriptures, you should love Him more. And until that day of glorification when He calls us home, you're to be about daily sanctification. A progressive process that will always be at work in you on this earth. So in answer to the question in the beginning, what do we do now that we're justified? We're made legally right. We are to be sanctifying ourselves. That's the answer to our question. We're to be sanctifying ourselves through the power of God. We've been given something beautiful. You have been given a glorious new life. That dead man tied to your back, that's the old you. It's dead and it's rotting. You've been made alive. That's a beautiful gift that He's given us. And it's our duty, our calling to walk this walk. But don't I still have the dead man tied to my back? Yep. He's going to stay there. He's not going away. And he's going to start stinking more. He's going to start rotting more. Because the more you walk with Christ, the closer you get to God, the smellier that corpse becomes. The more you hate it. It stinks. It's rotting. And it's heavy. And you are carrying it. But the more you get closer to God, the more you see that you need that burden lifted from you. This process that God is working in us begins in us, but we are commanded to work it out. We're commanded to daily strive for it. We can't sanctify ourselves in our own strength any more than you can save and justify yourself in your own strength. So there's some hope there. Because if you're walking out of here today thinking you're going to walk with this dead man on your back all by yourself, don't walk out of here yet. Because there's good news. He will carry your burden. He will give you the strength. You are not doing it on your own. The same God, the same Spirit that sparked your life in Him, that opened your eyes to see Him, that caused you to see the dead man is the same God that will help you carry Him until He calls you to glory. Colossians 2, 6-7 says, As ye therefore receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built in Him, and established in the faith as you have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. How am I supposed to do this? How do I carry this dead man with me? as you have been taught, so walk ye in Him." The Spirit is your first teacher. The Spirit is the first to awaken you to see that you need sanctification, that you need something better. But then we're also taught through the preaching of the Word, through the reading of the Word, through the singing of the Scriptures, through the praying together, through the encouragement of the saints together, because you know what? All the other people in here, that have been woken to see Jesus Christ, they've got a dead body tied to their back too. We all have it. So you know what? There's some encouragement. There's somebody out there just like you that needs some spiritual encouragement. They need you to help sanctify them. You need to help them. You need to walk together. Because it's a hard walk that we have to do. But you know what we're supposed to do with Thanksgiving? This walk is hard. I've said that and I can't say it enough. It is not easy. Temptation is strong. Sin is strong. Satan is not to be trifled with. This is a hard walk. So how do I do that with thanksgiving? I can't walk with this dead corpse in my own strength. It's hard. What am I supposed to do? Satan's seeking you right now. He's not out for the world. He's already got them. He wants you. He wants this church. He wants to destroy the church from within. He wants to convince you that dead body is okay. That you should love it. Or at a minimum, just sit and wait. Stop working. Just sit with that dead body. But you know how you can have Thanksgiving? Because you can guard yourself against Satan. You can guard yourself against him by what Ephesians tells us to do. There's some sanctification for you. Put on the whole armor of God. That is daily sanctification. You put on each piece of that garment. You put on the helmet. You put on the breastplate. You take up that sword. You take up that shield. And you put on those shoes. Gird up your loins. Because the fight is real and Satan is real. And he wants to devour you. But you have the armor of God that He cannot penetrate. You have something more powerful than He does. You have God on your side and He has given you the tools to fight Him with, to daily be sanctifying yourself. The day that you get up and don't put your armor on is the day He attacks the hardest. It's the day He can win. It's the day that He can pierce you through. It's the day that you fall to His temptations. You don't take a break from sanctification. You don't get up and say, I'm tired, the body's heavy, I want to sit today. I just want to wait. I'll pick it back up tomorrow. You put on the armor every day, even when you're tired. It's heavy too. It's hard. But you get in this Word, and you learn it, and when you don't know it, you go to others who do, and you say, I don't know how to put on the helmet. Can you help me? This sword is heavy. Can you show me how to carry it? This shield is big. I don't know what to do with it. Preachers, show me what to do. Mom and Dad, how do I do this? How do I use this shield to ward off the temptations? That's your daily sanctification. That's your daily battle that you must, you must fight. Don't grow weary in your walk, because He has commanded you to do it. Your commander, the great leader, has commanded you to put on your armor. Get up and fight that fight, even with that weight upon your back. Fight that fight. Don't let that weight bear you down. Don't let it bear you down. Because He has given you the strength to do what He has called you to do. Our captain, does not run. Our captain does not hide. Our captain is not asleep. He is there with you to help you put on your armor. So put on your armor. And I haven't even got to Romans chapter 6 much, so let's get into it for a minute. Let's go to verse 1. We'll start there. And I'm honestly not even positive what time I started, so y'all might want to tell me. Let's look at verse 1. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Just because the sin, that old man, is present and weighing us down, do we give up or do we get up? That's right, you get up, you don't just stay down. Amen. You don't just stay down. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid! That is not just a small phrase that Paul thought of lightly. Paul uses this expression some ten times in this book. This is the strongest way of expressing what he's trying to say. It contains almost a sense of shock, outrage that someone would even think that, God forbid that you would think that! He died for your sins! Would you continue in it? God forbid! Those are strong words from Paul. He's not taking this lightly. That it's okay for you to sit, or okay for you to continue sinning so that grace can abound more? God forbid it! Don't let the thought cross your mind. Don't let those words come from your lips. God forbid it! Do we just give up in this life? Do we continue that sin as the child so rightly said? No! No! God forbid it! So how do you continue to fight that sin? You have to kill it. John Owens was a Puritan preacher and he says it the best. He says, Do you mortify? Do you make it a daily work? Be always at it whilst you live. Cease not a day from this work. Be killing sin or it will be killing you. Be killing sin or it will be killing you. It's a daily work. Did you fight sin today? Did you mortify the flesh today? When you wake in the morning, will temptation come? Yes, it will. Kill it! Start your day with God. Start your day with His Word. Start your day with the armor. Don't get up and think that Satan's going to wait for you to put your armor on before he attacks. Get up with the armor of God. Mortify your flesh. Fight your sin daily. Because we said earlier, the day that you don't fight it, it will win. Hate your sin. Despise your sin. His blood, the precious blood of our Savior is covering you for those sins. That right there is enough to make you despise it every waking moment that one drop of the Savior's blood was for that sin. hate your sin, despise your sin, run from your sin, flee your sin. Now how are we able to flee it? How are we able to kill it? How are we able to mortify our flesh? because of something beautiful here in Romans chapter 6. You have been transformed. You have been made something new. Verse 3, Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death? Therefore you are buried with Him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so also we should sit and wait. No. Walk in newness of life. For if ye have been planted together in the likeness of His death, you shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that your old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might not be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. Verse 7, For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. You have been transformed. You have been made new. You are free from the bondages, from the chains of sin. It does not own you. You're buried with Him through His sacrifice. You have risen with Him. Your eyes are opened to Him. This is a transforming work to make you something new, to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ Himself as Romans 8.29 tells us. These verses here in Romans are telling us that we are not who we used to be. You're new. Your old sinful self is crucified. So don't go to the excuse, it's just who I am. I've got that old sin nature. I couldn't help it. Yes you can, if you fight it. But if you have that attitude, you will always fall prey to your sin. It does not own you. You're not in bondage to it anymore. It is not your master. You are not its slave. The dead man's legs are no longer walking. They are not carrying you. You are carrying them. You decide the steps you go on. Not the dead man. Because you have been made free. Yes, you feel his presence. But you steer the ship. Not the dead man. Not the sinful self. Not the sin nature. Because it doesn't own you. You don't have to do what it says. You don't have to fall prey to it. You can fight it through the strength of Jesus Christ. This old man, this old man that we carry, it's not old as in age. It's a Greek word that means something that's actually worn out and useless. Your old man is useless. It's a dead weight. It's a dead body tied to your back. That dead man can't make you go anywhere. He's useless. He can't tell you to turn right or left. He's useless. He's dead. You have been made alive. The live man can walk. The wise live man can decide what path to go on through the Scriptures, guiding you. You know, that's encouraging. Knowing that the dead man is not your owner. That's encouraging knowing that it's not his feet walking. It's your feet that are doing the walking. The old self is dead to him. You're enjoying a new life given in Jesus Christ. So you can't continue with that old useless man. So don't do it. Carry on in the new man working. Working in this life as he has called you to work. So what's the logical conclusion for us here? The old self is dead, but we still feel that stain of sin. I felt it today. I had to make some confessions to Brother Timothy when I got here. I got sanctified a bit today trying to get here, get kids in the van. That was a real sanctification process. I listened to the dead man a few times on that one, I hate to say. But we got here so the live men started walking. But what's our logical conclusion here? We're going to see that in Romans chapter 6 verses 8 through 11 where we start closing out here. This is a lifelong work. You don't get to walk for a few years and you older people in the congregation, you don't get to say, you know what? I carried that dead man for a while. I'm good. I'm going to sit and wait. You know what's still tied to your back too? The dead man. He's still with you too. You don't retire. from the Christian walk. God never says that I'm calling you to work until you get 70. And then you can stop and wait. He calls you to work! You've got a task to do in this church, members of Collierville. You older ladies are to be about teaching the younger ladies. You older men should be wise in guiding the younger men. You have a job to do. If you're invalid, if you're decrepit, you can't get about, you've got a mind and you can pray to God. You never stop working for Him. Young people, you don't have to wait until you've fallen into every trap of sin to start working for God. You can start now! When He opens your eyes at a young age, work for Him now! Don't fall prey to sins and say, I've got to sow my wild oats. You're letting the dead man carry you. You carry that dead man. Those wild oats bring nothing but pain. They bring sorrow. They bring tears at night. You don't have to sow your wild oats. You can live for God now. Right now. You're dead to sin and you need to believe that. You need to know that you are dead to sin and that you are alive to Christ. You need to know that you're no longer under the condemnation of sin. I have never liked the phrase, I don't really know if I can be saved or not, so I'm just going to trudge along and try. Know that you're saved. If He's opened your eyes, you do know it. If you hate your sin, you despise it more and more every day, you know that He's called you. You know that you are His. Know it, that you're not under condemnation anymore. You have been made right before Him. That sin is no longer imputed to you. It has no power to condemn you anymore. Christ died for it. Know it. Rest assured in it. Claim hold of that. Now I want you to do two things here. There's two things that I talked about. We're going to look at, in Romans chapter 8, you're going to factor and you're going to consider something. Since He died for our sins, we should not have any fellowship or relationship with our sins, should we? Nah, it's just old habits. They die hard. Yeah, they do. So you've got to kill them. You've got to mortify the old habits because that's your flesh. It's not a good excuse. It's a dead man carrying you. Mortify your flesh. That means you can't have anything to do with your sin. You don't need to nourish your sin. You don't need to excuse your sin. Man, had I excused my sins. We all have had that. Don't do it. That's just us having fellowship with our sins again. When we nourish it and excuse it, hate it! Don't give it an excuse. Hate your sin enough because you are dead to it. It does not own you. So Romans chapter 6 verses 8-11. Let me read those. Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died unto sin once, but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Now, here's our verse. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. When you come under the work of the Spirit, you realize that you are now dead to this sin. And you know that you are alive to God. Now that reckon, consider, that's an accounting term. It means to factor. Consider this. So I want you to consider this. I want you to factor this in when you're tempted. When you are tempted, consider that you are dead to sin and you are alive to Christ. Factor that into how you fight it. Know it. Consider it. Reckon it. That I am dead to sin but I live in Christ. That gives you the strength to actually walk in Christ when you factor that in. But when you stop considering yourself dead to sin, you start to think it owns you again. You start to think that that dead man's legs have some movement to them. Consider that you are dead. Factor that into your actions. Factor that into your attitude. Because when you factor it in, when I think to myself, sin doesn't own me. I am Christ's. I have His strength to fight it. He has given me His armor to do so. That gives me the encouragement I need in the morning to fight my sins. Knowing that I'm alive to Him. Dead to my sins. Matthew Henry says, We must rise from that grave of sin never again to return to it, nor to have any more fellowship with the works of darkness, having quitted the grave, that land of darkness as darkness itself. Rise up from that grave knowing that you are no longer dead, that you're alive in Him. Darkness is not your master. You are a part of the kingdom of light. That darkness has no sway over you. When the light of Christ shines, darkness has no room. None! Darkness cannot stay in the presence of the smallest light. So if you have the smallest spark of light in you, you can fight that darkness of sin. You can do it. Justification and sanctification are always linked together and here's why. Here's why I say that. Because you can't really have one without the other. You can't be sanctified if you haven't been justified. And if you aren't being sanctified, then there's a good reason to believe that you're not even justified. Those two go together. So don't think, you know what, I was brought to life, but I don't need that sanctification. That's a lot of work. So I'm just going to bank on being justified. Well, then you don't hate your sin, do you? You kind of like that dead man tied to your back, don't you? But if you are justified, you see, you feel, and you smell what that dead corpse is and you hate it. And you want to walk the walk of Jesus Christ. You don't want to go the path of the dead feet. You want your live feet to carry you where He has called you to be. If you're not fleeing from your sin, if you're not hating your sin, go back to that cross of Jesus Christ right now. If He has called you and you feel yourself fading, if you feel like you've gotten off the track, that dead man is still dead, he doesn't own you. You can pick your feet back up and start walking again. But if you haven't had your eyes opened to Jesus Christ, then I pray that He puts a spark in you so fierce that you cannot but run to His cross. and lay your burden at His feet. Because your burden is heavy. And it is hard. And you cannot carry it to His righteous throne. You must take your burden to His cross. A life devoted to God is a new life before we're an old dead self. And you know what my favorite thing was? Before He opened my eyes, I was saved at the age of eight. But you know what? As an eight-year-old, my favorite thing was me. You know what I start to have happen now sometimes when I get off that path? I start to like myself a little bit too much. We are our favorite thing when we don't have our eyes focused on Christ. But if you put your eyes on Jesus Christ, you see how much you and I need Him. Devote your life to Him. To live. To live to God is to live in deed. We see the evidence of our new life in Christ. I hate my sin. Don't you hate yours? I hate it. And the more that I know Him, the more I read His Word, the all the more I hate my sin. But at the same time, I understand I still got this wretched, putrid, rotting, dead body tied to my back. The more I walk on that road towards Christ, you know what? The more he stinks. The more he starts rotting and the more I hate him. I long, I long for the day when He cuts those tethers and that dead man falls from my back and I am glorified with Jesus Christ. And no more weight of sin, no more temptation of sin, no more trudging through this dark and weary land where I have to daily fight these temptations that sometimes I think I'm going to lose. I look forward to that day. But until that day you must fight! You give it no room! Give it no quarter! Mortify your flesh and kill your sin or it will be killing you. My prayer for you tonight is that His Spirit will guide you through this battle. That His Spirit will be right with you as you daily face the temptations. And as you daily face the darts and the snares of Satan, I pray that the Holy Spirit will be with you through each step as you seek to live for Christ. Because you are called to do something, to work for Him. And that is your daily sanctification. So what do you do now that you're justified? You walk. You live. For him, let's pray.