Alright, we're going to continue
our study in Romans. We're picking up in Romans chapter
6 this morning, looking at verses 1 and 2. Now, remember that whatever Paul
is saying here in Romans 6, he's building upon what he's been
declaring all along through this epistle, especially in Romans
chapter 5. where he was declaring, saying,
seeing as we have received this free gift, the free gift of God,
which is the gift of righteousness, it's the gift of righteousness
by one, by one, the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's saying that
in Christ we've received justification of life. we've been justified
before God, made right by God, in God's sight, by the Lord Jesus
Christ. And Paul concludes Romans 5,
verse 21, Romans 5, verse 21, saying, that as sin hath reigned
unto death, that's what reigns in us by nature, reigned unto
death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ our Lord. And so, he's declaring that our
salvation is the work of God. He's made us righteous in the
Lord Jesus Christ apart from any works of righteousness that
we ourselves do. God isn't looking at our works,
He's not impressed by our works, He's looking at His Son, Jesus
Christ, the Lamb of God whom He has sent to obtain, to work
salvation for His people. And so, Paul now knows that this
message, this message of grace, of God's grace saving His people,
according to his good pleasure, is an offense to man. It's an
offense to the natural carnal man who thinks highly of himself
and thinks highly of his own works and trusts in his own works
and his wisdom and his righteousness. And so Paul, in chapter 6, he
begins to address the objection, the objection of natural man
who hears the declaration and the word of grace, of God's grace
and mercy toward sinners who don't deserve this mercy and
grace. He addresses this because man
typically hears grace and gets offended and says, well wait
a minute, what are you saying here now? You're saying that
my works count for nothing? You're saying that what I've
done and labored in religion is nothing before God? And Paul's
saying, yeah, that's exactly right. God's not looking to your
works of righteousness. He's looking to the one whom
he sent to obtain and work righteousness for his people. That's why Christ
had to come. That's why the Son of God took
upon him the likeness and this sinful flesh, this very sinful
flesh, yet without sin. without sin. So today, in our
study, we'll see how that sin no longer reigns in believers. Sin doesn't reign unto death
in believers, but righteousness, the Lord's righteousness, which
He's obtained, reigns in believers. In Christ, we're told that we
died unto sin. We're dead to the things of this
world and to sin, and we'll look at what that means, and that
we live in Christ now through faith by the Holy Spirit, by
the Spirit of Christ in us, by what He's created, His work of
righteousness in us. Our title is, An End to the Reign
of Sin. An End to the Reign of Sin. I
thought I was going to get through verse 4 with you today, but I
think we're just going to cover verses 1 and 2. So, we'll call
this an end to the reign of sin. Now, the objection, when man
hears of grace, the objection that he has is a natural rejection. It's a carnal rejection. He hears it in his flesh and
his mind begins to race and go through his understanding of
salvation, his understanding of God, what he thinks is right
versus what he thinks is wrong. And when we naturally, when we
only hear the gospel with the natural ear, not having the spirit,
it's an offense. It's confusing. It doesn't make
sense. We don't call it righteousness.
We raise up objections, and that's what Paul is addressing here. And so, when we declare the grace
of God, and people begin to object to grace, you know they're not
hearing it by the spirit, they're hearing it by the flesh. And
even that is confusing to people because It's very common, it's
natural for us to imagine that salvation is something that we
do for ourselves. Salvation is something that we
kickstart or fire up the engine of salvation by, for example,
our faith. People trust in their faith because
we don't understand that faith is a gift of God. It's a gift
of God, it's not of this flesh. If it was of the flesh, then
we'd have something to glory in. But faith is the gift of
God, Ephesians 2.8 tells us that. So it's in grace, it's what Christ
has obtained for his people. And he gives that faith to whom
he will. As Paul said to the Thessalonians, all men have not
faith. not all have faith, but to whom
the Lord is pleased to reveal this gospel to. Because many
hear it, but not all believe. But many hear it, so whom the
Lord is pleased to reveal this salvation to, He gives everything
necessary for salvation. Either salvation is by our works,
or it's by the works of Christ. And we either then rejoice in
what we've done for God, or what God has done for us. We're either
rejoicing in man or we're rejoicing in God. So Paul asks, he asks
the question which he's heard carnal men and religious men
over all the years that he's been preaching the truth, he
raises the question that they have when they hear of grace. So verse one is what man objects
to. It's his objection, the carnal
man's objection when hearing God's salvation by grace versus,
you know, where he hears, wait a minute, my works count for
nothing. And so he's starting to think, what am I doing in
religion here? And so this is what he says in
verse one. What shall we say then? Shall
we continue in sin that grace may abound? Is that what we're
to do? We're hearing of God's grace.
apart from any merited work by us, apart from any righteousness
that we do. Is that how God saves? In grace? And if it's by grace, then shouldn't
we continue in our sin? Shouldn't we do those works of
unrighteousness so that God is glorified? And when people hear
of grace for the first time, when they hear it laid out clearly,
that it is really, truly, apart from our works, it's all bound
and found in the Lord Jesus Christ, they wonder, well, what then
keeps a sinner from sinning? If we're under grace, what's
to prevent someone from just going out and sinning as they
please and doing what they want? Because if God freely forgives
what's constraining us, what's keeping us from doing what we
want to do naturally in the flesh. And if my worst sins and all
the guilt and corruption that's in me glorifies the grace of
God, well then shouldn't I go out and sin and do works of unrighteousness
so that God's grace is all the more glorified in my wickedness,
in my unbelief? Well, no. We know that Paul says,
God forbid. We'll see that. Absolutely not,
he says. So rather than answer whether
or not we should sin more, whether we should go out and do works
of evil and that which is pleasing in our flesh, we should ask whether
that question's even valid. Is that even a valid question?
Are they even on the right track when they hear of grace by asking
that? So, first of all, what is the
cause of God's grace? What's the cause of God's salvation
for his people? Is it our sin that causes him
to be gracious to us? No, it's not our sin that causes
God to be gracious to us, but our sin is actually the cause
of God's wrath and judgment. It's his wrath and judgment that
is the result of our sin. It says in Colossians 3 and 6,
Paul has just listed a number of common prominent sins that
many people practice and commit. And he says, verse 6, these things
are for the sake of the wrath of God. For these things, the
wrath of God is coming on the children of disobedience. And
then he says, in the witch, ye also walked some time when ye
lived in them. Alright, so every one of us is
a sinner. Every one of us who is saved
has been delivered and called out and have been brought out
of that group of those children of disobedience. We all naturally
are children of disobedience. We all naturally are children
of wrath and we need to be delivered from the wrath of God which comes
on the children of disobedience. Alright, so grace is glorious. The reason why grace is glorious
is because God isn't looking to the sinner for any part of
their salvation. He's not looking to you for salvation. When you know what a sinner you
are, when you see the evils that work in your heart, in your mind,
in your thoughts, in your deeds and actions, when you see that,
you realize, I can't keep the law of Moses perfectly. I can't
do what God requires of me. I'm not righteous in myself.
I can't work perfect righteousness. And if God requires me to be
righteous before he'll save me, if he requires me to do work,
I'm not going to be able to do that. And the more you grow in
grace of who our God is and the more we understand how holy and
righteous and perfect he is, we see ourselves to be incapable,
incompetent, unable to please him by our works. We always fall,
we always stumble, all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God, every one of us, so that none of us can boast over another
sinner saying, look what I've done now, look what I've done,
because even if we may appear to be better than someone else
in the flesh, God still isn't pleased or impressed with our
works. So, the reason why we rejoice in glory in God's grace
is because He's not looking to us first to work righteousness,
and he never looks to us for righteousness because he knows
what we are. He knows that we're dust. He
knows that we're unable to do those things contained in the
law of Moses. That's why he gave the law, to
make it evident to us how far short we fall of the things of
God and of pleasing him. Galatians, Paul said in Galatians
3 21, if there had been a law given, which could have given life,
verily righteousness should have been by the law." He wouldn't
have sent Christ. He would not have sent the Lamb
of God to put away the sins of his people if there was a law
that we could have kept to earn and obtain righteousness and
to be found righteous in God's sight. So, grace isn't glorious
in the commission or the committing of our sins, but rather it's
glorious because we see God forgives sin. He forgives sin by sending
his son and the sacrifice of his son, he forgives sin, the
sin that we've committed in our flesh. So grace is understood,
therefore, by the Spirit, by the Spirit. And that's something
that religion fails to grasp and comprehend, that it's by
regeneration that we hear. It's by the work of the Spirit
that we are made alive to the things of God, which is why Christ
said, ye must be born again. And being born again is not a
work that we do, because then it would be a work in the flesh.
were born again because the Spirit comes upon us, giving life to
whom he will, giving us an ear, an ear which hears by faith the
things that God is declaring to us. apart from us having done
anything to earn that ear of faith. It's all His grace and
mercy so that two people can be sitting there, they both hear
the same message, one hears it in the flesh and doesn't understand,
another hears it in the spirit, by the spirit, and sees, I'm
nothing in this, but God is all. He's done everything necessary
for my salvation. And that's a work of the Spirit.
That's why we must be born again, because naturally when we come
forth, we don't understand the things of God. We don't delight
in the things of God. We have no desire for the things
of God. We will not come to Christ. We
won't believe Him in truth. We'll only believe and practice
those things that are carnal in nature and very understandable
by the flesh, right? Where you see people will go
into a church building and they'll see, oh, over here on the left,
I go over here and I light some candles around my head, pretend
like I'm saying a little prayer for somebody, and then I go and
I sit down, and the natural man can partake in that because it's
a very natural thing. They can do that, and they understand
that aspect of it, but they don't understand grace, and they don't
know the Spirit, and they don't hear the grace of God in the
Spirit, so they don't understand what grace really is. But it's
grace that actually bears in us that hatred of sin. It's grace
that works that hatred of sin in us so that we don't want to
continue doing the things that we once did in the flesh. And rather than loving and pursuing
our sin that we love in the flesh, it's the Lord that turns us from
that. It's the Lord that teaches us
and breaks that reign of sin over our hearts and over our
minds. Now, Paul's response, therefore, to this argument of
verse 1, he says, God forbid. That's not why. We don't continue
to sin because we're under grace. We don't do that. We don't talk
like that. And that's where natural man
will go, and that's where a religious man will go, he'll say, well,
what do you mean? If it's all of grace, then you've
got to give him something to constrain the flesh, you've got
to give him the law. You've got to constrain them and yoke them
and bind them with the law of Moses. Otherwise, how are they
gonna be kept? How are they gonna seek the Lord?
How are they gonna desire him? Why aren't they just gonna go
off doing what they want? The spirit? The Spirit is teaching
us, the Spirit is constraining us and keeping us, so he says,
God forbid, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer
therein? So, what the scriptures teach
us is that Christ is the creator of the new man. He creates in
us a new nature, which we don't have naturally, which we didn't
receive from Adam, this spiritual nature. In Adam, we lost everything. We lost fellowship with God.
We died in sin. We became sinners and corrupt
in our heart, in our minds, in our flesh. All that was corrupted
in Adam. And we died spiritually that
very day, just as God said, in the day you eat of it, you shall
surely die. And we died in Adam, being in
his loins. We were corrupted just as he
is corrupted. And that's why we must be born again, born of
the seed of Christ. And so it's Christ's seed that
creates in us the new man, the new man, right, which Paul speaks
of in Ephesians and in Colossians, the new man, and it's in the
new man that we hear the Word of God, that we know our Lord,
that we begin to grow in our Lord and hear what he's teaching
and revealing to us, that it's not by our works of righteousness,
but by His grace. And He constrains us by His love,
by His Spirit and His love. Paul said to the Corinthians
in 2 Corinthians 5, 17, Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is
a new creature. Old things have passed away.
Behold, all things are become new. New in the Lord Jesus Christ. So, we're born of His seed and
that means that Well, in Adam, whatever Adam accomplished there
in the garden, which he lost, he sinned and corrupted himself
and all his seed in him, we lost fellowship and we died that day. But in Christ, being born of
his seed, it pleases him all whom he represents in Adam all
men died in Christ all whom he represents are made alive being
born of his seed whereby we hear of the glory of God and the mercy
and grace of God and are constrained by his love and turned to him
by his work so he's our righteousness and therefore being justified
in Christ we're free from the reign of sin. And what that means
is we're free from the guilt and the condemnation of it. Because
when we're laboring in guilt and under a sense of our condemnation
in the flesh, we begin to do religious works to try and work
off the debt that we feel trying to earn and obtain favor with
God by trying to please Him. So we try to read our Bibles
more, go to services more regularly, pray and do nice things for people
and do those good works because we think this is what pleases
God and this calms down my screaming conscience and the guilt that
I feel. He's got to deliver us from that so when we understand
grace and we understand what Christ has done, He delivers
us from that guilt and condemnation so that we we understand it,
we still know it, we still feel it in our heart when we do that,
we still feel this urge and this desire to try and do something
to please God, to put that guilt down, but knowing the truth,
we say, wait a minute, Lord, forgive me. Just forgive me. Forgive me for my sin, forgive
me for trying to work a righteousness of my own by something I do. And heal me, forgive me in Christ,
Lord and renew my mind, you know, renew me in the truth of your
gospel and your grace so we don't want to continue in the sin but
we are turned to Christ to rest in him and to say Lord thank
you for putting that away and keep me Lord so I don't go off
trying to work a righteousness for you because that just angers
God. That's not trusting Him, that's not believing Christ whom
He sent. And actually, in Romans 8, since
we're in Romans, if you want to turn there, we'll look at
a couple of verses in Romans 8 and then Romans 7. In Romans
8, 33 and 34, 34, Paul says, who shall lay anything
to the charge of God's elect? It's God that justifieth, who
is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather,
that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who
also maketh intercession for us. So that accuser, the accuser
of the brethren, that evil one, though he comes to try us and
to put our sin in our face, Christ ever liveth to make intercession
for us. This sin is put away. There's nothing we can do to
put that sin away more. Stop it, don't continue in it,
but trust, rest Christ. There isn't anything that you
or I can do to make it right. Christ alone, His blood is what
atones and has made it right, made us right before God. And
so, in the flesh, the flesh is still here. What you see, this
flesh is still here. The flesh isn't changed. The
flesh isn't transformed yet. It's still dead and still corrupt. It still has the lusts and the
passions that it has. We feel the influence of it.
Look over at 7.15, Romans 7.15. Paul says, for that which I do,
I allow not. I don't want to do it, it's not
something that I think is right that I should do. For what I
would, that do I not, but what I hate, that do I. So we feel
its influence and we feel its presence. Look at verse 21. I
find in the law that when I would do good, evil is present with
me. It's present right there, the
flesh The evil is still there. And then we feel the effect of
it when we sin. We feel the effect of it and
we feel the guilt of it. We feel the shame of sin. Look at verse 24. Oh, wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
All right, so we're reminded and we know what sinners we are
in this flesh because sin is yet present in our bodies. Now when I speak of the flesh,
when I say the word flesh, I'm talking about that natural sense. Some people talk about common
sense. Well naturally, based on our upbringing and our parents
and what we learned in school or what we see on TV or whatever
or the internet, we have a certain sense of what we think is right
or wrong based on our experience and what what we think pleases
God, who we think God is. We all have this idol God in
our imagination of what we think. God is. And so the flesh is whatever
it is that we think of or reason or do without the Holy Spirit. It's just what we are naturally
that we've inherited from Adam. And so that flesh didn't cease
to exist. It's still here. If we're honest,
we know the flesh is still working. We feel the corruption of it
in us. And we know it's there because
even Peter, when Peter was writing to the sheep in his congregation. He said, Dearly Beloved, I beseech
you, as strangers and pilgrims in this world, abstain from fleshly
lusts which war against the soul. So it's still there. It's in
our flesh. It's warring against that which
Christ has created, trying to bring us back under the bondage
of sin and darkness and corruption. It's warring there against the
soul. So the flesh is still the same, but us being made alive
in the new man, being made alive by Christ, He now reigns over
us. He now brings to light His truth,
and He makes us to know these things in the new man, in the
heart, not in the flesh. The flesh is not improved, it's
not changed, it's not getting any better but he by his power
he's the one that breaks its power and reign over us so that
we're delivered from it and turned from it back to the Lord and
that's true of in everything everything of our spiritual walk
it's true of our justification right Christ is the one by his
death he justified us and that's true of our sanctification everything
that we have everything that we Rejoice in, it's a spiritual
work, which means it's His work in us, not our work for Him. It's what He does for us. Listen
to 1 Corinthians 1.30, But of God are ye in Christ, who is
made unto us wisdom and righteousness, sanctification and redemption. All right, so that's all of God. And you notice it doesn't even
say justification there. But is justification left out
of that? Is it just that Christ is our wisdom and sanctification,
our redemption and our righteousness? Is he only those things? We know
that he's our justification. Which also tells us that wherever
you see justification, we know that he's our sanctification
as well. everything that was necessary he did for us and works
in us as it pleases him according to the measure of the gift of
faith as he gives it to us and brings to light bearing this
knowledge and understanding in us as we walk and by experience
we see the truth of these things and he's making these known to
us illuminating them to us in the spirit whereby we see Lord
you're right and you've done all things well And I've got
nothing to glory in myself. And so this flesh, we're left
with this weak flesh. And what's one of the benefits
that we see in that? The fact that in God's wisdom,
he left us in this flesh, which is still corrupt. One of the
things that we see is that we're reminded of what guilty, worthless
sinners we are, and how we do nothing to add to God, but it's
all God's mercy and grace, so that, as he said in the next
verse, that according as it's written, him that glorieth, let
him glory in the Lord. Because, I don't know about you,
but when things seem to be going well, and I'm doing really good
in my mind, there's an arrogance, there's a pride that comes in
there, there's a shortness with brethren, there's an exalting
of self over others who seem to be struggling with what I
was just struggling with two days ago. But now suddenly I'm
some special person? No, the Lord humbles us and reminds
us that we ever need Him. We never grow beyond Christ.
We never grow beyond Christ. It's not that we enter in through
Christ the gate and then we leave him behind because we're something
special now and some holy spiritual people now in ourselves. No,
we're always in Christ. We always need Christ. We always
need his blood and his cleansing and his power to keep us. Otherwise,
we'll go off in the flesh. We'll go off into dead letter
religion like so much of the world. Now, in John, he gives
us an example of the fruit. Well, before I get there, let
me just say, it's the Spirit. It's the Spirit of Christ that
makes us alive. It's the Spirit of Christ that takes the blood
of Christ and washes us, cleanses us of our sin, cleanses us of
our guilt, and makes us to know that we are forgiven of God. It's not still something that
we're laboring in to try and earn His favor. We are forgiven. We are washed and cleansed in
His blood by Christ who is our substitute. We are made to know
that He's the Lamb of God. He's the sacrifice. He's the
one who put away all my sin by the death of Himself in mercy
and grace. And so that we know that we are
forgiven in Him and that it's through the life which He's born
in us. It's that new man which He's
created in us apart from any earning that we did, apart from
anything that we did to earn it. So, from that point on, we
continue to live in the Spirit and walk in the Spirit, trusting
that the Lord has provided everything and that He's keeping us. And
so, John gives us an example in 1 John 3, verses 2 and 3,
if you turn there, And this, I think, is a good
summary of what I've been saying, that this flesh is corrupt, but
it's the Spirit, it's what Christ has done in us. All right, 1
John 3, 2. Beloved, now are we the sons
of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be. But we know
that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall
see him as he is. He's declaring there, yeah, your
flesh, my flesh, it's still corrupt, it's still dead, it's not profitable
in this. It still has its corruption in
it and the workings of sin and the lusts of this world and that
which is not useful or edifying, it's not good. But then he says,
verse three, and every man that hath this hope in Christ purify
it themself even as he is pure. So what's he saying there? Again,
is that something that this flesh can do? Do we purify ourselves
by the works of the flesh? Not at all. That's a work of
the Spirit, so that what he's saying is those who are made
alive to God, those who have the Spirit, they purify themselves
in the sense that we're turned from dead letter religion. We're
turned from sin, right? The Lord teaches us, and when
we sin, We know we have an advocate with the Father because it's
the Spirit that teaches us that. It's the Spirit that reminds
us and brings us back to the feet of Christ. Crying out to
Him, Abba Father, have mercy upon me. Lord, save me. Keep
me from the corruption of this flesh. Turn me to your Son. And
so it's His work. That's how we're purified. It's
all of His grace, of His fruit, being born in us, being born
in us by our husband, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, he's the
one bearing that hope in us, he's the one that bears that
attitude in us, he's the one that keeps us, shows us, wait,
don't go back to dead letter religion, look to my son, look
to the Lord Jesus Christ, trust him, he is your righteousness,
and all who trust Christ shall never be ashamed. When we stand
before the throne of God, you that trust Christ, you won't
be ashamed because Christ has made us 100% fully righteous,
without fault, holy, unblameable, unreprovable in the sight of
God who's sitting on the throne. And so we're not, the Spirit
isn't going to turn us back to the works of the flesh. The Spirit
keeps us ever looking to Christ. Those who say, well, I don't
know, I think Christ did good, but I'm going to add something
to that. I'm going to do a little something extra. I'm going to
keep working as hard as I can to earn God's favor. Well, now
you're an offense to God because all our righteousnesses are filthy
rags. If we think that in our flesh
we can earn God's favor, now we're not trusting in the righteousness
whom he sent, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now we're back to trusting
our own works. So it's the spirit though that
teaches us and keeps us. And when we are turned away,
he turns us back. And that's why we don't exalt
ourselves over our brethren and think that we're something when
we're nothing. And when we do think that we are something,
because we do have pride and arrogance, the Lord is wise in
His chastening and in His humbling and how He turns us back to His
Son so that there's love, love to our Savior and love for one
another because we know it's all of Him. We've got nothing
to glory in except for Him. So I pray the Lord will bless
that word to your heart. Let's pray. Our gracious Lord,
we thank you, Father, for your mercy. for your salvation by
grace, that it's not by our works of righteousness, Lord, which
we cannot do in this flesh. But Lord, we're so thankful for
what you've provided freely and abundantly in your Son, Jesus
Christ. And Lord, that not only are we
forgiven, but that you've given us your spirit, whereby we hear
your word and believe and rest in Christ, the salvation that
you've provided for your people. Lord, have mercy. Keep us, Lord.
Keep us ever looking to the Lord Jesus Christ. We pray that you
bless each one here, that you give us that ear of faith to
hear your word and to be settled in the Lord Jesus Christ and
his righteousness. Amen.