A Changed Life

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Well, back when we used to live in town, I kept beds of wildflowers in the front yard. And now that we live where we do in such close proximity to places that celebrate things like a rattlesnake festival, I haven’t been able to bring myself to have lots of vegetation in the yard, maybe, because I know Charla would like to have elephant ears again. But anyway, I used to take especially Madeline and Jojo out to look at the flowers that would grow out there.

They liked looking at them. And, you know, there’d be hummingbirds and there’d be bees. There’d be butterflies, especially Jojo in particular loved looking at the butterflies.

She still likes butterflies. And we weren’t sure how well she was going to accept Abigail when she came along because she’s taken her place as the baby. But then she named Abigail Mariposa, which is Spanish for butterfly, and we said, okay, she likes her.

And that name is kind of stuck. Charlie calls her Abigail Mariposa. But we love the butterflies.

Jojo and I would like to sit there and look at them together. Sometimes you could go out on the underneath of these wildflowers, and you could see where they had hung their cocoons. Now, I think there’s a difference between a cocoon and a chrysalis, but it’s been so long since I was in fifth grade I couldn’t tell you what it was.

But Rick, you taught biology. You can straighten me out on that later. But whatever the thing is that they go inside of and they hang upside down, they go in as the caterpillar and they seal themselves up and then they come out as a butterfly.

We could look at those. I love butterflies, not really for the same reason Jojo does. She loves them because they’re pretty.

I love them because I love the picture that they give us of new life. And that’s why Christians for centuries have used butterflies as an object lesson of this idea of resurrection. First of all, they used to use it as a teaching tool about the resurrection of Christ, that he went into the grave much like the caterpillar in the cocoon and then he came out as alive again and glorified.

But it was also used as a symbol of the new life that we have in Christ. That’s why sometimes when you see the verse, if any man is in Christ, he’s a new creation. If you see that verse on a poster, it may very well be with a picture of a butterfly. And I’ve heard for years that Christians have for centuries used this as a symbol.

I did some research this week to try to figure out how far back that goes and who started it. I couldn’t. I just know it’s been that way for a long time because it is a beautiful symbol.

That we as people, we start out as these sinners that are separated from God. We start out as what the Bible calls enemies of God. And not because God said it was going to be that way, But because God as the king and the righteous judge of the universe created us and loved us and everything we did was in rebellion and shaking our fist at God, we fired the first shots in this war of rebellion.

And so we start out as these enemies of God, these creatures that are separated from Him. And yet something happens to us in Christ where we emerge as this new creation. I started talking to you last week about what it means to be born again.

when Jesus told Nicodemus that you must be born again. He was telling Nicodemus that his religiousness was never going to be enough to get him into the kingdom. I really want to spend the next few weeks talking with you about this new concept, sorry, not this new concept, this concept of new life in Christ. And I’m going to apologize just from the get-go if I stumble all over myself.

We went on a trip over the weekend, and I ended up bunking with Charlie. And I swear that boy was mixing paint in his sleep. I don’t know, either that or practicing karate.

And so I feel like I’m not firing on all cylinders. This concept of new life in Christ, this new life that we have. And I think the butterfly is a good representation of that.

The Bible teaches that when we’re in Christ, there’s going to be a noticeable change in us. And this morning, one of the places where we could see that is in Romans chapter 6. And that’s where I want us to look this morning is Romans chapter 6, starting in verse 1 and going through verse 14.

If you turn there with me in your Bibles, and if you can stand without too much difficulty as we read together from God’s Word, please do so. If you can’t find it or don’t have your Bible, it’ll be on the screen for you this morning. But Romans chapter 6, verses 1 through 14, this is what the Apostle Paul had to say in this spot about this new life that we have in Christ. He says, what shall we say then?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. Some translations say, God forbid.

I like that as well. God forbid. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death. that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.

Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God.

Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. You may be seated. Paul’s main purpose in writing this to the church at Rome, and to us by extension, was to point out that if we belong to Jesus, we will be different as a result.

We just won’t be able to help it. We’re going to be different as a result of the work that He’s done in us. And because salvation, as we talked about last week, is not based on our goodness, it’s not based on our good behavior, it’s not based on our religious performance or any ritual that we go through, because of this fact, some people think that we’re able to just go on sinning the same way we did before Christ. I mean, that’s the idea.

I’ve heard that accusation made against us as Baptists because we believe that, We believe the Bible teaches once you belong to Christ, you belong to him. It’s not that you prayed a prayer and said some words, and so now you have fire insurance. But if you truly belong to Jesus, you belong to him from here on out, no matter how you let him down.

Well, I’ve heard that, well, that’s a license to sin. No, because the Bible teaches that we shouldn’t want to sin. Now, will we sin?

Yes. But the difference between a believer who sins and a non-believer who sins is that the believer, typically because of the influence of the Holy Spirit, we feel bad about it. We want to get right with God about it.

We want it not to happen in the future. So even when we fall short, we’re there asking him to clean us up. But some people get this idea that, well, if it’s not based on my performance, if it’s not based on how good I am or how good I have to be, then I can sin as much as I want to, and then I can get by with it.

I can just ask him for forgiveness. Friends, you can ask him for forgiveness, but can I tell you if that’s your attitude, well, I can do whatever I want and then just ask for forgiveness. Can I suggest to you that there’s something in your heart not right with the Lord and you may not belong to him because he’s supposed to change the desires of our hearts.

This idea, I can do whatever I want because God will forgive me. That’s what Paul is talking about here when he starts out this chapter. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

That’s not just a modern invention. In the early churches, apparently some people felt the same way. My goodness, you read the book of 1 Corinthians, if there was ever a group of people who thought, well, I can just behave however I want and God will be fine with it.

It was the church at Corinth. But evidently there were some in Rome who felt the same way because that’s why Paul addresses this in verses 1 and 2. He’s writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit here, And he completely rejects this idea that we can do that when he says, what shall we say then?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not, or God forbid, how shall he who died to sin live any longer in it? So in other words, if our idea is that if God gives us grace when we sin, well, shouldn’t we sin more so that there’s more grace?

Paul says that’s insane. No. He says you’re supposed to be dead to sin.

You’re supposed to be changed. And if that’s the case, how are you going to be changed and go on to live deliberately in the same way that you did before? And I use that word deliberately, deliberately, right?

Because we do sometimes fall into the old habits and the old patterns. We do sometimes slip momentarily and live the way we did before. But it’s this idea that he’s talking about, I’m going to do it on purpose.

Because I can. Because I can. He says, this is crazy.

How are you supposed to be changed and yet unchanged? Instead, if we belong to Jesus, he’s given us new life. Verse 3 tells us, do you not know that as many as were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death?

Now, we have here the Greek word baptizo, which is where we get the word baptize. And for various reasons, when they were working on the English translations, they didn’t translate it, they transliterated it from the Greek. Instead of saying immerse, they said baptize.

They coined a new English word. And that leads to some of our confusion sometimes because this Greek word, it means to immerse, but it has here the way a lot of words do. It has a literal meaning and a figurative meaning.

It can talk about when it says to baptize, it can have the literal meaning of being immersed into something and it can have the figurative meaning of identifying with something. Like we would say you plunge into something, you know, you plunge in with both feet, say you’re going to get married and that’s the way you ought to do it is plunge into that relationship with both feet. You immerse yourself in that relationship.

It’s that kind of identification. I’m all in. This is who I am now.

I come to belong to Jesus Christ and I am immersing myself into Jesus Christ. I am with him. I’m jumping in with both feet. This is who I am now.

And so when we see the word baptize in the text, when we see that Greek word baptizo, it can have one or both of those meanings. And they are connected. I believe here it’s talking about identification with Jesus.

But the two are not unconnected because how would they identify with Jesus publicly? They would go through baptism. They would go through the immersion in the water.

This idea that we have today that, well, I’m going to follow Jesus, but I’m going to keep it secret. That was completely foreign to their way of thinking. Now, if you believe he’s Lord, then you make a public commitment.

You tell people. You publicly side with him. It was unthinkable, the idea that they would just be quiet about it.

Well, religion is something you keep to yourself. No, no, no, no, no, no. No, that’s something the world has convinced us. That is completely foreign to the idea of Christianity.

I’m not saying that Christianity is supposed to be obnoxious, but Christianity is very much supposed to be public. And so when he’s talking here about baptism into Christ, it’s not the water that saves anybody, but the idea that you would identify him without the water, again, was completely foreign to their way of thinking. So he says here, as many of us have identified with Christ, we have cast our lot in with him.

We have said we belong to him, which was not something you did lightly. In a world where it could cost you your life, in a world where it could cost you, if not that, it could cost you your livelihood. Which, by the way, we may be rapidly approaching that in our world again.

We may get to a point where we have to make some decisions. What matters more to us, our commitment to Christ or our commitment to our job? Our commitment to Christ or our commitment to you name it?

Because there are already circumstances where people are losing jobs and livelihoods because God’s word says one thing, society says another thing, and they’re siding with what God’s word says. But these people, they were identified with Jesus Christ. And it wasn’t their identification with him that saved them. It was Jesus.

He saves us. I mentioned this a few weeks ago talking about faith out of the book of Mark. We are justified by faith.

God calls us to faith in him. And he says we have to have faith in order to be saved. But we need to make sure we’re putting our faith in him and not our faith in our faith.

Because he’s the one that does the saving. It’s not our faith that saves us, but he says the faith is how you get to him. He’s the one that does the saving.

And if you say, what is he talking about? If you’ve ever wondered, well, did I believe hard enough? Our faith is not in how hard we believe.

Our faith is not in our faith. Our faith is in him. He’s the one that does the saving.

And they had come along and they had said, we belong to him. Even if we run into trouble with Caesar, even if we run into trouble with the Sanhedrin, even if it costs us our families, even if it costs us our job, even if it costs us everything in this world up to and including our lives, we are with Jesus. I mean, you’re looking at somebody who has been dramatically changed, somebody who is convinced that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be, somebody who is convinced that He’s their only hope.

You’re looking at somebody who truly believes when they’re willing to make that kind of commitment. And again, it’s not the commitment itself that saves us. He saves us, and then that commitment follows.

But he says if you identify with him, it’s not just identifying in the abstract. We’re not just changing a team jersey here. We’re identifying with him across the board.

We’re saying we belong to him across the board. We can’t just say we’re with him in life, we’re with him in the miracles, we’re with him in these good things like so many of the crowd did during his ministry. Yes, feeding of the 5,000, we’re with you.

take up your cross and follow me no thank you so many of the crowd did that but he says if we if we are identified with him we’re identified with him even in his death if we claim a connection with this savior we’re claiming a connection with a savior who died in a brutal fashion because of sin and when he was nailed to the cross our old sinful selves were figuratively nailed to the cross as well No, you didn’t put your wrist up there on the cross beam and get nailed into place. But the Bible teaches that we were there with him. Our sins were nailed to the cross in Jesus Christ because he took responsibility for them.

Our sins were put to death in Jesus Christ. That means we don’t get to take them out of the box and pet them and play with them and let them run around for a little bit and then shove them back in the box. No, they’re dead. They were supposed to be nailed to the cross with Jesus Christ. And so he says in verse 4, therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life.

So in the same way that we identify with him and we say we belong to him, well then, we’re tied to that death. We’re also tied to the burial and to the resurrection. When Jesus Christ died to sin, we as those who belong to him are supposed to have died to sin as well.

that old nature of ours was supposed to be buried in the ground, and something new was supposed to come out of the grave and walk because he rose to newness of life for us. We were raised in Christ to walk in brand new life. And the purpose for that is not just so that we can be better people, although God does make us better people.

It’s not so that we have something to brag about. It’s so that God would be glorified in the transition that’s made, in the transformation that’s made. When we look at where we started out and who we were, and we look at who we become, you and I don’t get the glory from that, or we shouldn’t.

People may try to give it to us, but I don’t look at who I used to be and who I am now and say, gee, I’m a great guy. Look at the change I’ve made. Number one, I recognize how far I really still have to go.

But number two, I didn’t make that happen. I didn’t just will that to happen. I didn’t wake up one day and say, you know, I’d like to be a more loving, patient person.

And poof, it just happened. I willed it to happen. No, God did that.

And sometimes God did that the hard way. You know what I’m talking about, yeah. I was talking with my dad about that on the trip.

I said, you know, I remember I used to think this way about, I can’t even remember what we were talking about, but I said, I remember I used to think this way about this, whatever it was. I said, and the Holy Spirit just honestly had to beat it out of me. I remember that.

I don’t know what I was talking about, but it could be any number of things the Holy Spirit has had to beat out of me. He’s the one that’s been punching and shaping and molding the clay. And so when this transformation happens, this new life happens, and we are something different on the other side of this new creation, God is the one that gets the glory.

God is the one that deserves the glory for that transformation that takes place in us. That’s why he says in verse 4, we who were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. This is so that God gets the glory He deserves.

And He says in verses 5 through 7 here, For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin, for He who has died has been freed from sin. He says that our old selves have been crucified with Jesus. If you belong to Jesus Christ, your old self has been crucified with him.

When he says, you’re old man, he’s not talking about some old guy you know. He’s talking about who you used to be. And he says, that guy, you remember that guy, or gal, or you ladies, you remember that person.

Yeah, that person was nailed to the cross. That person is now dead. And what remains is the new that has been raised to new life in Christ. Now for somebody that’s not a believer, you may look at that and say, well, that’s scary.

You mean I lose my personality? I lose my individuality? No.

I didn’t lose all, granted, I came to Christ early in life, but I didn’t lose all my memories and all my personality. That’s still there. It’s just a better version of it.

And by the grace of God, by the time I get to the end of this earthly journey, by the grace of God, it’ll be a better version of it than it is now. Some of you who have come to Christ later in life can tell stories. You didn’t lose your personality.

You didn’t lose who you were. You just became a better version. You became the version of that person that God intended you to be and created you to be.

And the scriptures, by the way, reject the idea that we belong to Jesus Christ without receiving new life. You say, well, that’s just for the super spiritual people that there’s this change. There’s this improvement.

No. The Bible teaches that if you belong to Jesus Christ, this will happen. Now, it’s a slower process for some than others.

And some of it depends on how much we kick and scream and drag our heels against it. But it’s a change that happens. It’s a change that is inevitable.

It also doesn’t mean that we become sinless. Now, hopefully we move closer to that goal, but we are not Him. And as long as we are here in this sinful flesh, we are not sinless.

We await a future glorification with Him. But there should be a change. And you can look around and say, well, I’m not as far along as so-and-so.

That doesn’t matter. I mean, that gives you some encouragement that, hey, they’ve made it this far. God can do that with me too.

But it’s also not a competition. And I’ve heard people that have come to Christ and they’ve struggled with the old sins that they used to struggle with, or that, well, they used to enjoy. And now they struggle with it and it’s a fight.

And God over time gives them victory over that, but it’s still a struggle. It’s still a temptation. It’s still something they deal with.

I’ve heard of other people that have come to Christ, and God just takes that desire from them, and they never deal with that particular sin again. And I can’t give you an answer on why God produces such rapid change in one and not in another. But ultimately, it’s for His glory, whatever He brings us through and whatever change He makes.

So if you look at this and say, well, I’m not as far along as I ought to be. None of us are. But just because you still struggle with sin doesn’t mean you’re not a believer.

As a matter of fact, I submit to you the fact that you struggle with it is good evidence that you are. Because non-believers, if you don’t belong to Jesus, you just sin and there’s no struggle there. You just enjoy it.

But it doesn’t mean you don’t belong to Him if you still struggle with sin. What should be a red flag for us, though, is if we make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ and nothing changes. There’s no change at all.

There’s the old self is dead, the new life has come. And the idea here is that Christians are not meant to go on serving sin. When Paul arrives at the conclusion in verse 14, he’s very clear.

He said, sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. He’s telling us sin is no longer our boss. This is a declaration of independence for Christians, at least from sin.

It’s a declaration of dependence on the Lord. But he says, sin shall not have dominion over you. That idea of dominion is being the boss, being the master.

And he says, sin is not your master, is not your boss anymore. And it’s not just that sin isn’t in charge, it’s that sin cannot be in charge. As believers, we may struggle with sin, but we do not go back to a place where sin calls the shots in our lives.

And the Bible’s clear that we’re always serving some master. Verse 13 says, do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. This idea of being instruments is being tools, tools in somebody’s hands.

And we’re either going to be an instrument of unrighteousness in bondage to sin, or we’re going to be an instrument of righteousness in service to God, but we’re not our own masters. And this is a tough pill to swallow for us as Americans, right? We don’t like the idea of somebody being our master.

Maybe it’s not just an American thing. Maybe it’s a human nature thing. But I get it.

If you kind of bristle at that suggestion, you’re not your own master, I get it. Right? I’ve got the rattlesnake flag that flies out at my house.

Maybe that’s keeping them away. I’ve got the come and take it flag. I mean, I get it.

But we get this idea that, well, I’m not coming to Jesus because I don’t want somebody to tell me what to do. Somebody is already telling you what to do. It’s called the sin nature.

It’s the illusion of freedom that says, I do what I want when I want. No, no, no, friend. The sin nature tells you what to do.

And you do it. We’re not our own masters. We’re going to be serving somebody, whether it’s Jesus or sin, but what we don’t have a choice in, we have a choice in who we serve, but we don’t have a choice in the fact that we serve.

And so he says in verse 12, Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. When we serve sin, the world thinks it’s free. I’m free to do what I want.

I’m free to do it when I want. But when we serve sin, we’re not free. we are obeying the lusts of sin, he says here.

We’re in service to something. We’re in bondage to something. It’s the lusts of sin.

And earlier there in Romans chapter 1, a few chapters back, Paul explains how dangerous this is, how rather than elevating our human dignity, it degrades us to serve sin because it makes us no better than the animals who just follow instinct rather than being what God created us to be. Sin shames us. It degrades us.

Sin is, by the way, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, what is sin? Because sin is a church word that you don’t, is not yet necessarily used all the time out in the world at large. Sin is anything that disobeys God.

Anything we say, do, don’t do, or think, say, think, do, or don’t do, that displeases God. Sin is anything that is in disobedience to God. And it shames us, it degrades us, it twists and distorts God’s image in us.

It tries to make us less than what God created us to be. And the world thinks it’s unloving. The society we’re in thinks it’s unloving to call out sin.

Folks, if sin is taking what God created us to be and trying to twist and distort us into something less, then there’s nothing more loving we could do than to point that out and to tell people that they can be free from bondage to that. Now, there’s a kind way and an unkind way to do that, just like anything else. I remember being in college and the guys with the big sign standing out there on campus screaming horrible things at people.

Don’t do that. The signs may be okay, but don’t scream horrible things at people. But the most loving thing we can do is to help people understand that God has something better that He’s created us for.

God created us to love Him and to walk with Him and to bring glory to Him. We were created to be instruments for His glory, and yet through the fall we have yielded ourselves to be instruments of of unrighteousness, in bondage to sin. And one is better than the other.

I’m not saying we are better than other people. I’m not saying we are inherently better or more valuable than other people. But I’m saying one way of life is better than the other.

Because one better conforms to what God created. And so if we’re looking at this saying, the way of sin sounds fun. It sounds enjoyable.

It sounds free. The Bible does tell us that sin is enjoyable for a season, for a short period of time. But you write the check and eventually the bill comes due.

And the consequences of sin are never fun. The problem here is that sin is something that once we engage, once we participate, we can’t undo it. And so many people out in the world are trying to do good things, trying to earn their way.

They’re hoping the scales will balance at the end. That if the good outweighs the bad, that that’ll be enough. No, God’s standard is absolute sinless perfection.

and once we have sinned, there’s nothing we can do to erase that. A payment has to be made and we’re in bondage to sin. We can’t do anything to get ourselves out of it.

But the good news here is that Jesus paid the price so that we could be free. He says in verses 10 and 11, For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God.

Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. He says that Jesus paid the price for sin once and for all. He paid the price for you.

That price is paid for anybody who will believe. And he says here that through Jesus Christ, we are made alive unto God. For the first time, we can have a relationship with him.

For the first time, we can have actual spiritual life. But it doesn’t come through the yielding or the reckoning or the things that he’s saying to believers. It comes about because Jesus Christ paid the price for that sin so that we could be forgiven.

And he says in verses 8 and 9, Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more, death no longer has dominion over Him. It’s not the fact that we’re dead to sin that makes us forgiven.

It’s the fact that Jesus died that allows us to be dead to sin. It’s the fact that Jesus rose again that gives us new life. Jesus paid the price for our sins in full.

And because He died and rose to new life, He defeated sin, He defeated death, And he opened the door for all who would believe. You and I cannot do enough good. He says here, you know, make yourself a tool of righteousness in the service of the Lord.

He’s talking to people who already belong to Jesus Christ. That’s not a formula for how you have a relationship with God. That’s what happens as a result. The starting point here is recognizing that our sin separates us from God.

And nothing good comes from our sin. But Jesus Christ paid the price on the cross so that our sin could be forgiven. so that we could be set free, and so that we could experience new life with Him.

And if you need that new life, if you need that forgiveness, this morning, there aren’t hoops for yo