DIED WITH CHRIST

DIED WITH CHRIST

Romans 6:1-14 NET.

¹ What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase? ² Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? ³ Or do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. ⁵ For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection. ⁶ We know that our old man was crucified with him so that the body of sin would no longer dominate us, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷ (For someone who has died has been freed from sin.) ⁸ Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that since Christ has been raised from the dead, he is never going to die again; death no longer has mastery over him. ¹⁰ For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. ¹¹ So you too consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ¹² Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires, ¹³ and do not present your members to sin as instruments to be used for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members to God as instruments to be used for righteousness. ¹⁴ For sin will have no mastery over you because you are not under law but under grace.

We have been spending these first Sundays looking at the gospel message as defined by the epistles of Paul. Today we are going to look at what Paul said in his sixth chapter of Romans regarding the relationship between the grace of God and sin in the life of the believer. The gospel message is a balance between two unbiblical extremes. One of these extremes is what we often call legalism. Legalism says that faith in Christ is not enough. Once people put their faith in Christ, they are saved until they sin again. When they sin, they get unsaved. The only way to stay saved is to stop sinning and obey the rules in the Bible. We talked about a form of this heresy in our series on Galatians in October and November of 2020.

Today’s text deals with the opposite extreme. This teaching is a form of antinomianism (and I’m sorry there is no shorter synonym for it). It teaches that once you put your faith in Christ, you can sin all you want to. The hypothetical question that Paul asks in verse 1 is something an antinomian would ask: “Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase?” In other words, since we are saved already, why not keep on sinning so that we can demonstrate that God saves sinners?

Paul’s answer to that question in today’s text is “Absolutely not!” (verse 2). The Greek phrase he uses is μὴ γένοιτο, which might be literally translated as “it ain’t going to happen.”  Paul is adamant that once a person comes to Christ, he or she no longer stays in constant sin. A change takes place which puts an end to the habit of sinning. Today’s text explains why that is the case. The simple answer is that the Christian stops habitually sinning because he or she has died with Christ.

Paul explains the conditions of dying with Christ (5, 8).

Paul says “If we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be united in the likeness of his resurrection.” It could also be translated as “since we have become united with him.” The idea is that the condition has already been met. We are already united with Christ in his death. That is longhand for “we have died with Christ. That statement tells us that when we came to Christ by faith in the gospel, we died with him in some sense. Paul says, “If we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.” Dying with Christ is a prerequisite to being raised from the dead in the future. But there is more to it than that. There is a sense in which every true believer has died with Christ and is now living a resurrection life in the here and now.

Paul details the facts about dying with Christ (2-4, 6-7, 9-10).

One of those facts is that having died with Christ, we cannot go on living the sinful life we lived before we became Christians. A person can be one or the other; not both. Either a death has occurred, or it has not. Verse 2 says that the death we experience is a death “to sin.” That means that before becoming believers, we were alive to sin. But after becoming believers we became dead to sin. Now, that does not mean we are no longer capable of sinning. If that were the case, the antinomians would be right. We could continue to act just like we did before, only now it would not be sinning.

No, a change has taken place. That change is demonstrated by the believer’s baptism. When we were baptized, we were buried in the water as a depiction of that death we died with Christ. Then we were raised up from that water by someone else as a depiction of the resurrection. It depicts two resurrections. It is our way of saying “Just as Christ was raised from the dead, so we will also be raised when he returns.” But it also depicts our intention to live a new life from that time on. We died to sin when we died with Christ.

In some of the countries where Penny and I worked, people draw attention to that fact by giving themselves Christian names at their baptism. Another illustration of this would be what happened to our daughter last week. Once she said, “I do”, her last name changed. Her life is now identified as a new life from now on.

Christ was born here on earth into a world of sin. When he was raised from the dead, he was living from that point on in victory over sin. That is the kind of life you and I can live.

Paul outlines the implications of dying with Christ (1, 11-14).

One of the implications is that we cannot live the way we did before we got saved. We cannot remain in sin. But how do we go about living that resurrection life? First, we must consider ourselves dead to that old sin life, and alive to the new, resurrection life. Whenever we are tempted to sin, we must hold on to our new identity, and refuse the old identity.

Second, we must not allow the old passions and desires to dominate our thinking. The old desires will still be there, but the new desires and passions will also be there. The life that will dominate is the life that we feed. Either sin will reign, or holiness will reign. Now, one problem believers face is that we will be tempted to have two lives: the Sunday life and the Monday-to-Saturday life. You cannot live like that. You must make up your mind to let holiness reign 24/7.

Third, we must not limit the resurrection life to only certain aspects of our lives. Paul put it this way: “Do not present your members to sin as instruments to be used for unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members to God as instruments to be used for righteousness.”  When we were baptized, our whole bodies went under the water. When we were raised up, every part of our bodies was raised to new life. We now have new eyes. They see what God wants us to see. We have made a covenant with our eyes so that we refuse to gaze where our eyes have no business gazing. We have new hands: we have no business taking what God’s holiness does not want to take. We have new feet. They have no business going where we should not go. Our path is God’s kingdom path. All other paths lead to destruction.

Paul uses the language of sacrifice to describe what a Christian does to keep from habitually sinning. He says to present ourselves to God. We are not to present just part of ourselves, but our whole selves. Our lives are a total sacrifice. That is how we keep from being dominated by sin. We dedicate our entire lives to doing what God wants – all the time. That is the opposite of antinomianism. That is why Paul will go on to say in this chapter that we have been set from our old slavery to sin to be slaves of God.

Our challenge as believers is to thank God for his amazing grace but to never allow that grace to become an excuse for sinfulness. We have been set free, but not free to sin – free from the domination of sin. That is the way we can lead other people to Christ. When people see Christians living sinful lives, they rightfully think that they have no good reason to come to Christ themselves. But if they see Christians living lives characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control – they will want to have what we have.

For further study:

Donnelly Edward and Evangelical Movement of Wales English Conference (2001 Aug: Aberystwyth Wales). Life in Christ. Bryntyrion Press 2007. pp. 35-58.

Stott John R. W. Men Made New: An Exposition of Romans 5-8. [1st ed.] ed. Inter-Varsity Press 1966. pp. 30-52.

Penn-Lewis Jessie. Dying to Live. Overcomer Literature Trust 1935.

Davis Christopher A. The Structure of Paul’s Theology: “The Truth Which Is the Gospel”. Mellen Biblical Press 1995. p. 238.