Thank you. Yeah. It's a lot of mess. No, you can make it outside the
garage. You can't put it in your office. You have to make all your coins
inside. I was very tempted to do it.
I said, well, I'll try it. It would have cost you more than
that. It would get me a couple of years out of it. Does that
phone have a ringer off button? It's going to be too high if
we cut from that. Yeah. Maybe we need to push up. Yeah. All right, good morning All right,
we'll be in Romans 6 Romans 6 verses 7 through 11 Now last week, we saw how the
believer's walk is one of faith. We walk by faith. And so, working righteousness
We're to work righteousness, but working righteousness is
not something that we do of ourselves. It's not something of the flesh.
It's the work of the Spirit of Christ in us. The righteous fruit
we bear is His fruit. It's what He's accomplished for
us on the cross. It's all the result of His power
and His glory and His work for and in us. Last week in this
chapter, we've been in this chapter now for a little bit, but we
looked at one of Paul's examples of an instruction, of his instruction
to the believers there in Ephesus. And you'll recall that he never
threatened them with punishment or the threat of hell, and he
didn't turned them away from Christ. He didn't take their
eyes off of Christ and turn them back to the Law of Moses for
them to study and labor in and work under. He didn't do that.
He kept their eyes upon Christ. And what he actually did was
he reminded them that those that yet practiced these sins, they
were fornication, uncleanness, which is sexual sin, and covetousness,
which is idolatry. Those that practice those things,
they do so because they're yet in the body of sin. They're yet
full partakers. That's all that they know and
all that they have. They're yet under the dominion
empower, rule, and reign of sin, and the devil, and all those
works of darkness." And he said, they don't have, they have not
any inheritance in the kingdom of God. That's why they do those
things. And so he said to the Ephesians
in Ephesians 5-7, be not ye therefore partakers with them. Why? Because you do have an inheritance
in Christ. You have Christ and you have
been delivered and saved by his glory and power. Alright, so
this morning I want to show you how that hour being dead to the
law, right, because Paul didn't turn them back to the law. Nowhere
in Romans 6 does he ever turn them back to the law. An hour
being dead to to the law is tied to our being set free from sin,
being justified of sin, being delivered of sin out from its
power, our being dead to the law. So our title is Freed Through
Death to the Law. Freed Through Death to the Law. And we'll look at our death with
Christ and then being alive with Christ. Alright, so if you want
to understand how it is that believers live and serve their
Lord, how that we are, as we'll see as we go through Romans 6,
how that we are servants of righteousness now. If you want to understand
that and look at that, well then we just need to understand what
Christ accomplished for us. What did he do? What did he accomplish
for us? Look back in Romans 5. Romans
5, the last verse. Romans 5.21 Paul says that as sin hath reigned
unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto
eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. And so we've been looking
at how the Gospel The gospel is what reveals to us Christ's
righteous work on the cross. That's where we hear and know
and understand what Christ did, why he came, what he accomplished
for us and in his people. First we saw the doctrine that
Paul set forth in verse 5, Romans 6, 5. For if we have been planted
together, grown together, woven together by the power of God,
in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness
of His resurrection." That's a promise. That's a promise to
you. He's saying that you that have
died with Christ, you shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.
His power that's in Him that raised Him from the dead is the
power that now works in you. That's why we know Him and how
we know Him. It may begin as a little tiny
grain the size of a mustard seed of faith. It may be a tiny little
thing, and that's how it begins. And we know nothing at all, except
the Lord gives us faith to behold and believe what Christ has done.
And we rest in Him. That's of His grace and power.
And everything that follows, all of our learning and growth
and every righteous fruit that we bear is all of His Spirit. So just as our death with Christ
is the operation of the Spirit, so our life with Christ is the
operation of the Spirit in us. And we saw how he accomplished
this, 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." Right? As he said at the end of verse
4, the same thing. We shall walk in newness of life. That word should is shall. We shall walk in newness of life. So that again we see and understand
this is the purpose of God for us. Not only to save us by putting
away our sins, but also to reveal His power and glory in us through
Christ, to know and believe what Christ has done, and to be His
servants, and to cry out to Him as His children, leaning upon
Him, looking to Him, trusting Him, believing Him, in spite
of the things that we see in this life. In spite of the draw
and the appeal of sin to our flesh, it's the Lord that keeps
us. He's keeping us. It's His power
and glory that keeps us. So, Our God's purpose in His
covenant of grace is that sin no longer reigns and rules over
us, so that there is no difference between those in the body of
sin and those in the body of Christ. No, He makes a difference. God puts a difference between
His people and the children of darkness, the children of wrath,
the children of disobedience. He's the one that does that.
So, now in grace, in Jesus Christ, this grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life, beginning in the moment when God is determined
to save His people. When He's determined His time
of love for you, each individual, He reveals faith in you. And you hear that gospel and
you believe. And from that hour, you begin
to walk in faith. Through all your stumbles, through
all your joys, all your highs and all your lows, it's all a
walk of faith that God has laid out for you to reveal in you
Jesus Christ and Him crucified. so that you're not your own,
you are the Lord's now. All right, so Paul addresses,
he's been addressing the question that someone would raise in verse
one. Verse one says, shall we continue in sin that grace may
abound? All right, if someone hears grace,
they may say, are you saying that we can sin now? Because
that doesn't align with the scriptures, with the rest of the scriptures.
And that's right, no, we are not saying that in grace now
we can sin and do whatever we want. you know, whatever sins
that we want. The Lord's, the Spirit in us
is not going to allow us to be dominated and ruled by sin. So
one error that we see is in the self-righteous Pharisee, right? The self-righteous Pharisee.
They're every bit as alive and moving among us as they were
back in Christ's day. And they go by the name Christian,
right? But they're Pharisees. They're
Pharisees. They're self-righteous. They
confess and believe, yes, Christ's death justified us of our sin. But now, for our holiness, for
our life, for our sanctification, we've got to go back to the Law
of Moses. We've got to study that and work
under the Law of Moses and put our necks under that yoke and
that burden. They couldn't do it. But we can
do it now, and that's our life. And so they turn from Christ
and they trust their work of righteousness, which they are
now doing in the flesh. Because they're no longer looking
to Christ, they're looking to and gaining a confidence in their
flesh. And so that's actually lawlessness.
That's lawlessness. That's unrighteousness, what
they're doing, because they're denying the righteousness of
God. That's why it's lawlessness and
unrighteousness, because they're denying God's righteousness.
And you can see that in Romans 10, verses 3 and 4. Paul talking
about his brethren, the Jews. Romans 10, 3, he said, they being
ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish
their own righteousness. have not submitted themselves
unto the righteousness of God." Because Christ is the end of
the law, for righteousness to everyone that believeth. And
so, when we turn from Christ, and resting and trusting His
righteousness, Lord, you saved me from the first hour, you're
able to save me all the way to the last hour, everywhere in
between. Nope, they say, that's not sufficient. Maybe you were okay to do what
you did at first, but now it's on me. I got this, and they turn
away from Christ and work in the flesh trying to produce their
own righteousness. That's what's so horrific about
it. That's why we don't preach that
or believe that or give that any room or quarter or protection
because it's not right. They're not submitting to the
righteousness of God. They're trusting their own works.
And then others might hear it, such as an immature believer.
They might hear it and not really understand for a time. And they
might think, oh, we're without law now. We have no law now. And that's not what the scriptures
teach. They teach that we're under the law of faith and the
law of love to Christ. We love him. The love of Christ
constraineth us so that he's ever present dwelling among us
and teaching us. Because He's not going to be
brought under the reign and dominion of sin, that's for sure. And
He's not going to allow you, His people, to be brought under
that reign and dominion so that you continue in it. He'll keep
delivering you. He'll keep you in Christ, alright? So, What Christ has done is He's
made it impossible now for sin to have dominion over His people,
meaning it's impossible for you to just live in it and live in
it and continue in it and just disregard what the Spirit is
teaching you in the Gospel and just say, you know what, I'm
not going to hear that. Surely this is okay for me to
keep doing what I'm doing. You might do it for a time. There
may be a time while you're doing it, but it ain't gonna be forever.
The Lord is going to deliver his people from sin. All right, in Galatians 5, in
Galatians 5, if you wanna turn there and look at verse 16 and
17, Paul tells us this. We see that
those two natures, because we're still in the flesh of the old
man, But we know by faith that that old man is dead, and we
have the Spirit of Christ now. And so Paul says in Galatians
5 16, this I say then, walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not
fulfill the lust of the flesh. You can, if you're walking in
the Spirit, you can fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh
lusteth against the Spirit. We know this, we've experienced
this. The flesh lusteth against the
Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, And these are contrary,
the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that
ye would. And because the Spirit is not
gonna be brought into subjection to sin, so the Spirit's going
to deliver us. The Spirit's going to cause us
to hear the gospel, cause us to hear what the Lord would have
us to hear, and he turns our hearts. If someone comes to you
and says, you need to stop that, You might say yes at first, but
it hasn't changed your heart. You're still just as, you know,
you're holding that in your heart, and you want to do it. And when
they go away, you just go right back to doing what you were doing.
But when the Spirit turns you, He gives you repentance. And
He's the one that really turns you and keeps you. And if you
fall, He'll bring you right back out of it. He'll keep you ever
looking to Him. And so we're led by the Spirit
and walk in faith in Christ. And then look over at Galatians
2, verse 19. Galatians 2, 19. Here in Galatians,
he's declaring the same truth that he's declaring to the Romans. And he says in verse 19, and
this is an important verse for our study this morning, he says,
I, through the law, am dead to the law. that I might live unto
God. So what he's saying is when I
labored in the flesh, when I was laboring under the law of Moses
or the law of my conscience, either one, I was laboring under
this law which is in the flesh. He's saying I was laboring in
my flesh and I wasn't working any righteousness. God wasn't
pleased with what I was doing. He wasn't satisfied or pleased
with my works of the flesh, because they that are in the flesh cannot
please God. If you're laboring in the flesh
and trusting in the flesh, that's not pleasing to God, because
again, you're not submitting to the righteousness that God
has revealed and that he's given for the salvation of his people,
which is Jesus Christ. And so, look at it this way. Because of what we are in Adam,
Because of what we are in Adam. We are corrupt, dead sinners.
That means that we are unable to work a righteousness. And
because of that, we had to die to the law. Because the law was
given to constrain the flesh. and to keep the flesh at bay
and to keep the flesh not doing the things that it would because
it was just lawless and had nothing to prevent it. But we had to
die to the law and had to satisfy the penalty of our sins in Adam
and the sins that we commit in the flesh. We've accrued, worked
up, built up a huge debt of sin. We should have given God righteousness.
We gave him filth and sin and corruption and death. And so
we have this big debt that we cannot pay off. We can't work
it off because our flesh is corrupt and dead. It can't keep the law. And so Paul said, I threw the
law, I'm dead to the law. I had to die to the law. Why?
So that now I can live. unto God. Now I live unto Him. So what did the grace of God
do? How did this happen? What did God in grace do for
His people? He sent His Son, Jesus Christ.
He sent His Son. So if you look now at verse 20,
Galatians 2.20, Paul says, I am crucified with Christ. I am planted
together. in the likeness of his death.
Our old man is crucified with him so that we died." And he's
declaring that we're justified. I'm crucified with Christ. I'm
justified, freed from my sin. He died to put away my sin. Nevertheless,
I live. That's sanctification. Now he's
talking about sanctification. How we live, how we walk, how
we how we move and have our being in the body of Christ. And this
is what it is, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live
in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, the faithfulness
of Jesus Christ, His faithful work and power working in me
mightily to the praise and glory of His name. That's how I live,
in Christ. Even this faith that I have,
which believes Christ and trusts Him, that's produced of His seed
in me. That's His righteous fruit. Not
of this flesh, that's all His work. And to His glory and praise,
who loved me and gave Himself for me. So that now, when Christ
was raised from the dead, what He's showing us, when He was
raised from the dead, that same resurrection power, that raised
Him from the dead to never die anymore. That's the power of
God is the same power that resurrects you right now to walk in newness
of life. Believing Him, resting in Him,
looking to Him, trusting Him, believing, Lord you saved me,
you did this, I believe that He that which hath begun a good
work in you shall perform it unto the end. Philippians 1.6,
right? So, if He began it, He's going
to finish it. That's a promise. That's the
promise of God. He's promised to do that for
you as people, so that it's a sure thing that if He died and shed
His blood for us and is pleased to have us be raised up as people
and do things here, that we shall be born again. We're going to
have his spirit. He's going to create life in
us. He's going to give us faith and bring us under the sound
of the gospel to hear that gospel and believe Christ and rest in
his righteousness. And stop trying to work a righteousness
of our own. Alright, so we stand now born
of his holy seed. That's why it's so beautiful
when you see it. We stand now represented in Christ. That what we did in Adam is done. It's washed away. It's put away.
We have no standing in Adam any longer. We stand in Christ. So
the fruit we bear is the righteous fruit of our Savior, of our husband,
from his seed in us. And that new man, his creation,
which is created after His image and in His likeness and image,
alright? And so that same power, that's
when Paul cried out and said that I may know Him and the power
of His resurrection. That's what he's saying. I want
to know that power. He's promised it. He's declared
it. I want to know it more and more. and more and grow in that
knowledge and understanding of what he's done because that's
where he's keeping me, walking in the spirit so that I'm not
walking in the flesh and looking back at myself and all my sins
and trying to work a righteousness of my own rather than resting
and trusting his righteousness, right? And that's why he goes
on saying, in the fellowship of his sufferings being made
conformable unto his death. All right, so that's what he's
saying is when he says, crucify therefore the deeds of the flesh,
put to death those deeds of the flesh, that's what he's saying,
that I may be made conformable unto his death, that there's
a willing heart, that there's his spirit evident in me that,
yeah, I don't wanna do these things of the flesh. I want to
walk and serve my God who loved me and gave himself for me. All
right, now, let's see this being alive with Christ. Alright, so the gospel of grace
declares that believers are freed from sin. That word freed from
sin is justified. Let's look at verse 2, back in
Romans 6, Romans 6-2. He's showing us that we died
to the law. And so he's answering that question,
shall we continue in sin? And he says, verse two, God forbid,
how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? Look at verse seven now. For
he that is dead, You that are dead to the law and dead with
Christ is freed, justified from sin. That word is often translated
justified. You're freed, you're delivered,
it's put away. It's got no more say over you
at all. And so Christ accomplished his
salvation in us and Paul ties our deliverance from sin's dominion
over us with our being dead now to the law. Look at verse 14,
Romans 6, 14. 4 Sin shall not have dominion over
you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace." Doesn't
that sound funny why he would say that? Sin shall not have
dominion over you, for you're not under the law. And what he's
saying is, you're not in the flesh anymore, you're not laboring
in the flesh anymore, you're not under it. That's why sin
doesn't have dominion over you, because you stand in Christ now.
You're delivered From all that works and that constraining of
the body of sin, you've been removed from that body of sin
and you now stand in Christ having an inheritance in the Lord Jesus
Christ. And so, because of our infirmity
of the flesh, because we couldn't keep the law because of how weak
and dead and corrupt this flesh is, God saved us by grace, by
grace, apart from any works that you do. It's all of grace in
Christ. And so what Paul is saying is
that if the Lord had kept us under the law now, if he kept
us under the law, we would actually still be under sin's dominion.
Because if we walk in the law now, if we're supposed to now
walk in the law, we're still under all the curses and the
threats of punishment and threats of condemnation if you don't
do it. That's why he's saying you're dead to the law. It has
no more voice against you because you stand in Christ. If you still
stood in Adam, oh yeah, it can say something to you. You better
be perfect and righteous, otherwise all the condemnation of the law
is being poured out on you. But because you're in Christ,
you're dead to the law. He died under the law once unto
sin, and death hath no more dominion over him. It can't touch him
anymore. So he actually goes on and says
back in Galatians 3.10, he says, for as many as are of the works
of the law are under the curse. For it is written, cursed is
everyone that continueth not in all things which are written
in the book of the law to do them. And then he said in Galatians
5, 18, but if ye be led of the spirit, ye are not under the
law. Period. So he's showing us you're
dead to the law, brethren. You're dead. Don't look to it.
Don't walk back in the law because now you're walking right back
into the flesh. you're going to have to work
in flesh and you've been saved from that. And now sin has dominion
over you again because now you're working under threats and fears
and worries and you're not walking in the Spirit. You're not trusting
what Christ has done for you. Alright, so Christ put to death our old man
and again, I just want to emphasize, we're not in Adam anymore. That's
what he was saying in Romans 5.19 Romans 519, for as by one
man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience
of one shall many be made righteous. Alright, so now we are dead to
the law. He that is dead is freed from sin. We are justified. And so God ceases to deal with
us as children of Adam, and He deals with us now as His sons
and daughters, redeemed unto Himself adopted into the family
of God by the blood of Jesus Christ. And that's why we rejoice
in Him. That's why we preach Him and
declare Him and speak of Him always because that's our standing. He's our husband. He's our head.
He's our Father, our everlasting Father. Prince of Peace. He's our standing before God
the Father, who is perfect and holy, so that through Christ,
through His blood, we now stand before the throne of God, where
Christ is sitting in the power of God on His throne, we stand
faultless before His throne. And that's amazing. And we understand
that and know it and believe it by faith. all according to
the faith that he's put in us and given to us. All right? So
now, because we're dead with Christ, all for whom Christ died,
they shall be brought under the gospel. So back in our text,
let's just march through these verses together. Romans 6, 8.
This is what he's telling us here. Now, if we be dead with
Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. In other
words, we shall now walk in newness of life. In the time of His love
for us, we're going to hear the Gospel, and He's going to give
us that ear of faith, and we're going to believe Him, and then
begin to walk. From that little tiny fruit of
faith, we're going to walk in newness of life, believe in the
Gospel, growing in Him, growing in His grace and in the understanding
of what He did. And we know this because verse
9, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no
more, death hath no more dominion over Him, so that when He died,
when Christ, the Lamb of God, died as our substitute, He died
under the law to satisfy the law's demands and the holiness
of God, He satisfied it. He satisfied the Father. He satisfied the law. There's
nothing more that the law says to you and me because we're now
perfect and righteous and holy in Christ. we could die right
now and be perfectly acceptable to God in Christ. There's no
more holiness that we're trying to work out and perfect or tie
together. We'll grow as long as the Lord
keeps us. We'll grow walking in the Spirit
with our understanding and just being amazed at what God has
done for us in Christ. As He's tracing it out and showing
it to us and revealing it to us, we'll grow in Him but we
ain't getting any more holy than what Christ has made us. We're
as holy at the beginning as we'll ever be at the end, because it's
all Christ. All right, so verse 10, for in
that he died, he died unto sin once, but in that he liveth,
he liveth unto God. And that's just like what Paul
said, I have to die to the law that I might live unto God. And
so in Christ, I live unto God now. I'm his. And He is mine. And He's the one that does that. So He's put away our sin by the
shed blood of Himself. He's made satisfaction. And we're
in His body. No longer in that old body of
sin. We're even now in His body. Alright, so it's about headship. It's about headship. Adam is
out as our head. Christ is now the head of his
people. That's what it's about. And that's
why he says in verse 11, likewise reckon ye, impute to yourselves,
count it to be so because that's what it is. You yourselves to
be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. And he's saying that we really
were in Christ when he died. God put us in Christ, and when
He died, we died. And when God raised Him from
the dead, we were raised from the dead. That means it's certain.
It's a promise to us that cannot fail. We shall believe the Gospel. We shall hear it and believe.
And so, because God imputes or reckons righteousness to you
in Christ, He says, you reckon and impute righteousness to yourselves,
because that's what it is. It is so. All right? So I just
want to say, yes, this old man of sin is with us. We see it. We feel it. We know it's there.
We know its weaknesses. And we have to wrestle with it
and deal with it. And we're not dead from sin's
influence. All right? We stumble. and fall
into sin. We feel the lusts of our flesh,
which is why the apostles encourage us and say, don't do those lusts
that are in your flesh, that you feel. Don't do those things
because you have no part in those things. You're in Christ now. You'll feel them now. And you
may stumble, but the Lord's going to recover you every time and
keep you. So we don't want to walk in that
way because that's also walking in the flesh. We want to keep
walking in the spirit. That's our desire and it's a
promise to you that you shall, he'll keep you. He shall keep
you. Even sometimes we look back to
the law, right? We get scared and we look back
to the law. But the Lord delivers us from that as well. Same way
he delivers us from sin, he delivers us from trusting in the works
of the flesh. He's the one ever, ever keeping
us. And that's why Paul would say,
there is therefore now. no condemnation to them which
are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after
the spirit. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus
hath made me free from the law of sin and death. And when we
get there, you know he's talking about the law of Moses. because
he says it in the very next verse. He says what the law could not
do because of the weakness of my flesh. That's Romans 8, by
the way, but we'll get there and we'll look at that more when
we get there. I pray the Lord bless that to
your heart again, that he teach us, that we grow in Christ and
the knowledge of him and what he's done for us. All right,
let's pray and then we'll be dismissed for 12 minutes. Our
gracious Lord, we thank you, Father. We thank you for what
you have accomplished for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we confess that we are
sinners. We confess the weakness of our flesh. That's why we rejoice
in you, because though we be weak in the flesh, that's not
how you see us. That's not our standing. We are
in Christ now, justified from our sin. And Lord, we trust you
to keep us. Spirit, looking and believing
Christ, and not walking in the flesh, serving the lusts of the
flesh, or being turned back to the law. Lord, when we go astray,
save us, Lord. Deliver us from the bondage of
sin and death, and the law of sin and death, Lord. Keep us
from it. We pray that you would keep our hearts, that you would
cause us ever to fall in love with Christ our Savior. We pray
that you would bless us, bless this congregation, fix us in
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's in his name we pray and
give thanks. Amen.