Freedom from Sin

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We’re going to be in Romans chapter 6. Romans chapter 6. I am not a, I don’t watch sports a whole lot.

Some of y’all may, but I can’t sit still that long and just stare at the screen. But this week I did watch, there was a World Cup soccer match between the U. S.

and Belgium. And kind of a big deal, so I watched it and got the kids in there to watch it with me. I was trying to teach them to put their arms in the air and cheer USA, you know, real louder than that.

Trying to get them to cheer USA. It was funny watching them try to do it, especially Madeline, and they’d laugh at me because they didn’t know what I was talking about. But then they were trying to figure out on Friday what was going on as we were getting ready to cook out for the 4th of July.

And I was trying to tell them, you know, it’s Independence Day. They had no clue. So I finally hit on the idea of telling them we were having a birthday party for USA.

And then they got real excited about what we were doing and tried to talk to them a little bit about Independence Day. I realized they don’t understand all of it. They don’t understand everything.

They don’t understand most of what I talk about. That’s okay. I don’t understand most of what they talk about either.

You know, whether it’s religion, whether it’s politics, whether it’s our country’s history, whatever it is, I try to talk to them early about this stuff, even though they don’t understand it yet, hoping that they will pick up on it. Benjamin will tell me, I want to talk to you about Jesus. And usually it’s because he’s trying to get out of going to bed.

He’s figured out, if we can talk about Jesus, I can delay things a little bit, but I’ll take it. What do you want to talk about? I don’t know.

And I’ll just start telling him, do you know Jesus loved you so much he died for your sins? Yeah. No, you didn’t know that, but all right.

They just sinned right there by lying. Try to talk to them about things like, I’ve told you before, it’s going to be engraved on my headstone one day. Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff.

I’ve drilled that into my kids and their dealings with each other. And politics, too, I believe that holds true. And I believe that’s straight out of the, you know, it’s not an exact quote, but that’s straight out of the Bible.

That’s biblical. Don’t hurt people and don’t take their stuff. So I’ve tried already, even though they don’t quite understand it, to drill some things into my kids, to teach them about some things. And one of those things is freedom, that God has created us to be free.

That’s why Independence Day is such a big deal to me. You know, the Bible has been misused. You know, people say you can use the Bible to say all sorts of things.

No, you can misuse the Bible to say all sorts of things. The Bible has been misused down through the centuries to support all sorts of things. And I could get into some of the things that the Bible’s been misused to support even in our own country, but some of it’s just too disgusting.

I don’t want to get into it. But the Bible can be misused to oppress people. It can be misused and misinterpreted and twisted to say some people are worth less than others.

Some people are less important. Some people have fewer rights. I don’t believe that.

And I think when you read the Bible for what it is, for what it was intended to be, the Bible deals significantly with a case for our freedom, of God setting us free. Now, part of that is involved in our political freedoms, our freedom as a country. If you’ve had time to look at the bulletin, you’ll notice that I mentioned that, that the founding fathers used biblical principles when they set up this country.

Now, I will not tell you that they were Christians. I don’t believe they were atheists or deists, all of them either. but as far as their Christianity, you know, quite a few of them didn’t believe in the Trinity.

You know, they had some wacky ideas. And when you get to people like Benjamin Franklin, brilliant man, but when you read about his personal life, he was, well, not a nice man. But our founding fathers, I won’t tell you as some would that they were just these perfect paragons of Christian virtue, but they at least had the wisdom to realize that biblical principles were important.

Whether they followed them in their own lives or not, they were important. and I think that set up the beginnings of our freedom because the Bible is about freedom. God set us free from sin.

God set us free from death and hell. You look throughout the history of the Old Testament, how many times did God have to set the Israelites free from somebody who was oppressing them? The Bible is a book about freedom, and I don’t know if you can tell or not, but I’m kind of excited about the idea of freedom.

I like to talk about it because it’s important and it’s quickly becoming a lost value in our society. Through this month of July on Sunday mornings, Lord willing, I plan to talk about the subject of freedom from the Bible. Now, we will get around to some of the Independence Day type things, the freedoms that I believe God wants us to have as citizens, as people.

But that’s not where we need to start today because that’s not where true freedom begins. We can be free outwardly. I can be free to, I can’t even think of anything, run up and down the streets dressed in polka dots and yelling gibberish if I want to.

I’m free today to do a lot of things, but I still can be bound up inside. And I submit to you on the opposite side of that. We can have all sorts of political oppression and repression.

We can live in a communist country like North Korea and still be free, even though we’re not free outwardly, if we’re made free in Jesus Christ, if we’re freed from the ultimate oppression, if we’re freed from the ultimate weight, which is sin. And that’s where we’re going to start today. The entire point of the Bible is God setting us free from sin even when we didn’t deserve it.

And we’re going to look at Romans chapter 6, starting in verse 1, as it talks about this freedom from sin, Because freedom from sin is where freedom begins. It matters not at all how much political freedom, how much other freedom we have. If we are not free from sin, if we’re bound in sin, we’re going to live our entire lives in bondage.

So Paul writes to the church at Rome in Romans 6. 1. What shall we say then?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? And he has just been talking previously about God’s grace and that how because there was sin, there needed to be grace that God would step in and give us what we don’t deserve, that God would bless us, that God would forgive us in spite of our sin. And there would have been the idea, I think there was the idea in their day, maybe as there might be in our day, that, okay, if sin leads to grace, then if we sin as much as we can, then there’s more grace.

And that sounds like such a bizarre idea. And yet there are people who live their lives by that. There was an entire religion in Russia at the turn of the last century.

I don’t know if they’re still around or not, but was based on the idea. If you’ve heard of Rasputin, who was part of the imperial court in Russia, he was a part of this movement that said we need to sin as much as possible as a way of fighting temptation. Giving in to me doesn’t sound like a fight, but that sounds like what the loser says to explain what happened in a fight.

let’s just give in to temptation let’s sin as much as we can so the grace of God can abound and thousands of people bought into this idea and so Paul even then was dealing with this idea either of people who were saying let’s do this or who were accusing him in teaching this by teaching grace oh yeah you say God forgives you so that means you have a license to sin we’re accused of that today as Baptists that if we believe in eternal security and I do believe that that when we are truly born again, we cannot sin so as to lose our salvation. We sin, but we don’t lose our salvation because of it. Now, does that mean we have a license to sin?

No, because if we take that and say, oh, goody, I can sin as much as I want, we might need to step back and check if we’re really born again, because even though we will sin, there should be a change in our want to. There should be, even from the beginning, there should be some glimmer of change there where God begins to change just from the inside out. And so some would have said in this day, great, there’s grace we can sin.

Perfect. Others would have been saying, Paul, you’re preaching grace. You’re just giving people an excuse to sin more.

So against both of these, he says, shall we, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? He’s asking here a rhetorical question and answers it anyway.

He says, God forbid, not just no, but God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein. He says, how would that even be possible for us to be born again in Jesus Christ and then think to ourselves, oh goody, I can sin more so there’ll be more grace.

Guys, I don’t know about you, but I sin on a daily basis. I’m sure you do too. And when I do, I hate myself for it.

Just being honest here, I sin and, you know, I can’t help myself. I’m a born sinner and that’s what I do. And yet because I’m a believer in Jesus Christ, I don’t go, yay, that was fun.

in the moment it might be fun but then afterwards I think why did I just do that why did I just say that I’m such a disappointment to God I feel that way sometimes and you may as well no born again believer lives their lives I’m convinced thinking as a habit oh I’m forgiven so I can just go sin as much as I want no we are supposed to be dead to sin we are supposed to be dead to sin he says how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein he said It’s not possible for us to look at this, at grace as a license to sin. It’s impossible for us to look at it that way because we are dead to sin. How can we live in it any longer?

Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Now, a lot of things going on here in this passage that may need to be clarified.

These two verses, three and four, are not, they are not teaching that we are saved through baptism. It’s another one of those things where you can take the Bible and support all sorts of things. And I will agree to the statement that there are all kinds of verses in the Bible that sound like we are saved through baptism, at least in part.

They sound that way. But when you get into the context of what they’re really talking about, they’re not saying that at all. And the very clear passages of Scripture, the ones that are just black and white, so clear somebody might as well be hitting us with a skillet in the head, I mean it’s just that clear, say that it is by grace through faith.

It is not works, including baptism. Now why they continue talking about baptism in this sense? Well the word baptize is just transliterated from the Greek baptizo, which means immerse.

Sometimes when we say baptism in the Bible, they’re not even talking about water. Now, I believe as Christians, we are supposed to be baptized by immersion in water as an act of obedience to Christ after our salvation. But sometimes the Bible will talk about being baptized into Christ and people will say, well, there, you’re in Christ, you’re saved because you were baptized.

No, it’s talking about being immersed into Christ, not necessarily always literal water baptism when it mentions that. So he says, know ye not that so many of us were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death. Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death.

Even in this passage, if they are talking about water baptism, water baptism, at least the circumstances surrounding it were much different than they are today. You would trust Christ as your Savior. You’d be born again, and there would be a radical change of your life.

And also, you were putting your life on the line. This was a serious business. You had to be all in or all out.

And being baptized was a way of publicly identifying yourself as a believer in Jesus Christ. It was not something that you’d say, well, I’m baptized and then I’m going to go back from, because you were quite literally putting your life on the line. You would trust Christ, you would be saved, and then go and get baptized as a sign of I am in this, I am completely committed. And nowadays we look at baptism, a lot of people look at baptism as an option.

Well, yeah, I was saved, I’ll be baptized later. I did this. I mean, I was five years old at the time, didn’t completely understand what baptism was for, so it’s probably better that I waited a little while, but because I was scared of the water and didn’t realize it was a big, big deal, I was, I was saved.

I was born again in January and waited until August to be baptized. That’s after I told the pastor, oh, no, no, I’m not doing that until I’m 12. I don’t know why I said 12, but I told him when I’m 12, I’ll be baptized.

Ended up being convicted about it even at age five and said, no, I’ll go ahead and do it. But we see people get saved and then get baptized years later. Now, if that was you, I’m not criticizing you.

I am glad you followed Christ in baptism, as it were. But they would go out immediately and be baptized. Here is water.

What does prevent me from being baptized? The Ethiopian said to Philip in the book of Acts. And so they would go out and be baptized.

And baptism was a symbol, just as it is today, a symbol of the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When you see it done, you can see the similarity between that and somebody going into the grave, being buried. And that’s one of the reasons we believe in total immersion. That and the fact that Jesus was immersed and what the word baptized means.

But he was buried. And so we’re buried in the waters as a symbol of we are identifying with Jesus Christ. We are stating publicly our belief that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who died for our sins, was buried, and who rose again in three days. And so when he talks about this, even if he’s talking about literal water baptism here, being baptized into Jesus, it wasn’t the act of baptism that put us into Jesus.

It was the faith behind the act. Therefore, we are buried with him by baptism into death. That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

And so he here is making the case that when we were baptized, we were buried with Christ. We were buried to the old man, and then we rose to walk in newness of life. Again, not because of the act of baptism, but because there was no gap between believing and being baptized. You trust Christ?

Hey, let’s go down to the creek. Let’s get this taken care of. And so because of that faith and the act that follows it, demonstrating it, demonstrating what has happened in our trust in Christ, that the old man has died.

The old man has been put to death. The sinful person that we once were, I don’t know if I should say it that way, but the old man, the old way of living has been put to death. Now the problem for us as human beings, we still have that sin nature, and sometimes things like to come back from the grave and we have to fight against that.

But the old man has been put to death, and we’ve been raised to walk in newness of life, and the baptism is a symbol of that. And so looking at that, he says, what has happened here in the faith where we’ve trusted Christ, what has been demonstrated and symbolized in baptism, we are now dead to sin. How do we continue with that as our pattern of life?

He’s not saying we’ll never sin, but how can we continue wallowing in our sin as the pattern of the way that we live our lives? For if we’ve been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection. knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

So he says, our old man was crucified with Christ. That’s why Paul said in another place, I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live. Not I, but Christ who lives within me. I was remembering this yesterday, preaching a message on this.

I was so shocked to find out that there are a lot of different theories about what the atonement was for, what Christ’s death was for on the cross. And from reasonably intelligent Bible teachers who hold to these different theories, you know, knowing what atonement is, making peace between us and God, I can’t really see that there’s room for more than one theory. Jesus Christ paid the penalty for our sins.

That’s what he went to the cross for. And there are all sorts of theories out there that say, well, the cross just showed how serious God was about sin. God could have wiped every last one of us out, and that would have shown how serious he was about sin.

It showed Christ’s obedience to God the Father. Everything Christ did showed his obedience to God the Father. Coming here to earth showed his obedience to God the Father.

All of these other theories, for me, fall far short of what the Bible teaches, that Jesus Christ took our sins upon himself on the cross. The Bible says that he who knew no sin was made to be sin for us. Ladies and gentlemen, he took our sins.

He was sinless, spotless, blameless, the Lamb of God, and he took my sins and your sins as wicked as they were. He took them on himself and they were crucified in him and with him. He was punished for our sins.

So our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed and that henceforth we should not serve sin. The old man was crucified and the sin with it when Jesus Christ died for us. And in the sense that we’ve given up our lives in trusting Christ and said, I’m no longer mine.

I’m bought with a price. I’m yours. We’ve died to the old man.

There’s a lot of terminology in here that he uses that can be tough to get straight sometimes. But the bottom line is we have given up the old life for the new life. And having died and having had the old man crucified with him, the Bible says in verse 7, for he that is dead is freed from sin.

Now I notice here it doesn’t say free from sin. It says freed. We are not sinless.

We are not sin free in the sense that we will ever be perfect and without blemish on this side of heaven. But he has set us free from sin. And that’s an important distinction there.

Even though we sin, we are free from sin. And I’ll explain to you in a few minutes what I mean by that. Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we also shall live with him.

Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him. We died with Christ. When we trust him, when we’re born again, we die with Christ and we’re raised again with Christ. And the Bible says that because Christ rose from the dead, death has no more dominion over him. You know, death seemingly conquered him one time.

I won’t say death conquered him one time, but death seemingly conquered him one time. The world that hated him looked at him and thought, this is it. It’s over with.

He’s done. He’s out of here for good. And yet three days later, the most remarkable thing happened.

The man got up and walked out of the tomb. And what I maintain is an indisputable fact of history. I won’t go into all that again because most of you were here before Easter when I did the presentation on the facts of the resurrection.

But we know, people will still say it’s fairytale today, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt, as much as I can know anything that I wasn’t there to physically see, that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead three days later. And you know what? Death can’t beat him again.

Death cannot have him again. And we live with him. Verse 10 says, for in that he died, he died unto sin once.

You know what else? He only had to die to sin once. I had a friend who was talking about this the other day, how he was irritated by the teaching that Jesus went to hell after the crucifixion.

And I’m the only other person I’ve heard get irritated about this, so I was glad to hear him say this where I knew it wasn’t me. Now, there are the verses that talk about Jesus going and liberating the captives. So, you know, I don’t know how all of that worked.

But there’s a prevalent teaching today. This is the part that irritates me, not whether he went to hell and set the captives free or all that. But what irritates me is the prevalent teaching today that Jesus went to hell and continued to suffer for three days for our sins.

He was the once for all, all sufficient sacrifice. He died to sin once. He died for sin once, and it was all sufficient.

He accomplished everything. That’s why he said right before he died, it is finished. He meant it was paid in full.

You know what? Jesus didn’t have to go suffer at the hands of Satan for three more days in order to purchase our salvation. Jesus doesn’t have to die again at some point in the future because we’ve sinned too much.

You know what? Jesus doesn’t have to be offered every morning or every week on the altar of the Mass for our salvation. He has paid everything in full.

He has died to sin once. And now in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Verse 11 says, Likewise, in the same way, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.

I love Paul’s turn of phrase sometimes. I think he would have made a very good oaky. Reckon yourselves.

I reckon, he says in other places, reckon yourselves, see yourselves, understand yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Because of what Jesus Christ did, look at yourselves and understand yourselves in the same way that we understand Jesus Christ. That we have been crucified to sin, that we are dead to sin, and now we live unto God through him and because of what he’s done. Because of this, therefore, verse 12, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.

Because you’re dead to sin and alive to God, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey it in the lusts thereof. He said, don’t let sin have charge again. This is the difference between being free from sin and being freed from sin.

We have a sin nature. We are going to continue to sin, but we do not have to let that sin rule our lives. We’re going to slip and fall now and again.

And the difference here is do we get up and clean ourselves off, or better said, let God clean us off. Do we get up as believers who’ve already trusted in Christ, do we get up, let him clean us off, and continue pressing on, or do we lay down and wallow in the mud? That’s the difference.

Free from sin would imply, yeah, I’ll never sin again. Good luck with that. Being freed from sin means I don’t have to stay down in the mud when I slip.

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body. Sin does not have to be in control here, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

That word yield probably shouldn’t need a definition, but based on my trips on the highway, I get that most people don’t understand what yield means. It means to give way, to hold back, to submit in a way. If you’ve got a yield sign, it means the other person gets to go first. You defer to them.

To say, yield your members, that word members is used a lot in the Bible for parts of the body. And so when he says, yield not your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, what he’s saying is, don’t let any part of yourself be submitted, be surrendered to sin. Instead, yield yourselves unto God as those who are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

Instead, the way that we used to obey sin, the way that we used to be bound to sin, he says instead of that, submit every part of yourself. Surrender, yield every part of yourself to God to be used for his righteous work and purpose. And this all leads up to one of what I think is one of the greatest verses in the whole Bible.

Verse 14, For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace. And he goes on from there to talk about the law a little bit, but I want us to focus on that part. For sin shall not have dominion over you.

He says, Sin is not in charge of you anymore. Sin does not have to call the shots. You think, well, I just can’t help myself.

Sure we can, because we’ve got the Holy Spirit. I say that recognizing I sinned. But I shouldn’t.

Well, nobody should sin. But I’ve got the Holy Spirit, and I sin when I ignore what I know I’m supposed to do. But there are some points that we can take from this, from this passage, about freedom from sin, because that is the most important aspect of our freedom that God has given us.

Now, over the next few weeks, we’ll talk about freedom from condemnation, freedom from bondage, and freedom to serve. Some of the other places that the Bible talks about having freedom. But freedom from sin really is where it all begins, and it’s the most important part.

the first thing that I see in this passage, there are really just three points and we’ll try to finish up quickly. First thing that I see in this passage is that sin is a cruel master. Sin is a cruel master.

You may never have thought about sin being a master before. But every time I read this passage, I can’t help but think of sin out there cracking the whip. Saying, you do this.

Go here. Do it now. Do what I tell you to do.

That’s the way the natural man lives his life. We are born sinners and we execute that job description very, very well. When sin and the lust thereof say, you go there.

There aren’t a lot of people fighting their impulses. Even self-controlled people still in the back of their mind. Somewhere sin is telling them, do this, say this, think this.

The sin nature is there and tells us, just have one drink, it won’t hurt. The sin nature says, go ahead, give her a second look, it’s all right. The sin nature says, you don’t need to pray today.

It’s all right if you miss a day. The sin nature, guys, we know what sin is. It’s any time we disobey God.

It’s any time He has said in His Word, don’t do this, and we do it anyway. It’s any time He said in His Word, do this, and we don’t do it. It’s any time that we act in a way that is out of step with what God expects from us.

And the sin nature is there. Sometimes shouting, sometimes whispering, telling us, this is what I want you to do. And you know what?

before we come to Christ, we give into it because we can’t help ourselves. I’m not saying that we’re innocent in it because the devil made us do it. The sin nature told me I was only following orders.

No, I mean, we’re still culpable. We’re still guilty here. We really can’t help ourselves because of our sin nature.

Sin is a cruel master. See, it lures us in with the promise that what it’s telling us to do is sin nature. That what sin is telling us to do will be fun.

That’ll be great. It’ll be so much fun. It’ll be so fulfilling.

It’ll bring you joy. It’ll bring you prosperity. It’ll bring you wealth, happiness, relationships, whatever it is.

And the Bible does say, if I recall correctly, that sin is fun for a season. And yet there’s always the day to pay the piper, so to speak. And sin, when it gets a toehold, when we allow it to get a toehold, sin will take us further than we ever intended to go.

It’ll drag us deeper than we ever wanted to be. Keep us there way longer than we ever intended to stay. cost a lot more than we intended to pay and make it much harder than we ever anticipated to get back.

Sin will enslave us if we allow it to. We have these two dogs at the house. We have three dogs, actually, but it’s the two girls that fight.

There’s my blind rat terrier and my sister’s dog, and they get into fights. And we’ll go to put my. .

. You’re probably thinking, where’s he going with this? There is a point to this.

We will put my dog into a pet carrier to sleep or when she’s in trouble. just to get her out of the way so there’s no more fighting. And the other dog will go to the door and just kind of peek in and growl at her, making sure she’s going where she’s supposed to be.

And sometimes she gets a little too close, and they don’t like each other so much. Sometimes she gets just a little too close to the beast’s lair. And once or twice, we’ve had to step in because she gets too close.

And the blind dog reaches out and grabs her by the neck or by the leg or something and starts trying to drag her in. That dog never intended to go that far into the pet carrier. Never intended to share lodgings with the beast, especially with its teeth on her neck.

Never intended that. Just a harmless little sniff. I’m just going to peek in and growl at it a little bit and suddenly out come the jaws and drag it in.

That’s how sin is a lot of times. I’m just going to take a harmless little sniff. Just going to look in here and growl at it a little bit.

Out come the jaws and try to drag us in. I never intended to go in there. I never intended to go all the way in.

I never intended to get in this predicament, and yet here I am. Sin is a cruel master, and it will snare us in its clutches if it can possibly. But the good news there is that second of all, sin has been put to death in Jesus Christ. It says in verse 6, Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

In the life of the believer, we still have the sin nature, but sin has been crucified. sin’s body has been broken I love that phrase the body of sin might be destroyed that sin nature is not a threat to us that sin nature is not anything that we have to listen to anymore because it has been crucified it has been utterly destroyed it’s still still there but it’s powerless over us sin has been put to death in Jesus Christ and I submit to you it says as well that we have been put to death to sin there should we shouldn’t have the former interaction wher