All right, I keep saying Hebrews
because I've got that on my mind for the next lesson, but we're
in Romans. Romans chapter six. Baptized
into Jesus Christ. Now the Apostle Paul, in the
first five chapters of Romans, the Apostle Paul had set forth
probably what I might call the clearest and most concise Definition
you might say or rendition of the gospel the good news of salvation
through the Lord Jesus Christ by God's grace through Christ
based on his righteousness alone and throughout these Chapters
up to this point and you know it this obviously this wasn't
written in chapters, but I'm just saying up to this point
the Apostle had done everything that he could as he was inspired
by the Spirit and to show the glory of the person of Christ
as God in human flesh. The gospel concerns a person. Remember, he started that in
Romans 1. And this person who is God in human flesh, he's made
of the seed of David according to the flesh. Sinless humanity. That's who Christ is, the God-man. And he was declared to be the
son of God with power. That's his deity. So he is God
in human flesh, God-man without sin. And of course, that's how
he's portrayed from the very beginning, in the glory of his
person. There's no one like Christ. He
is unique, which means he's holy. And that doesn't mean he's just
sinlessly perfect, which he is. But there's nothing, no one like
Christ. And that's why it's such a tragedy
when you see people who call themselves Christian talking
about there's more than one way to God. There are people who
have fallen prey to pluralism, and that's what that is. People
who say, well, yes, you can get to God through Christ, but you
can also get to God through Muhammad, or you can get to God through
Buddha. That's not so. Buddha and Muhammad, they do
not compare to our Savior. who he is. He is very God of
very God, the old writers used to say, and very man of very
man. He is Emmanuel, God with us. And then Paul had also set
him forth in these chapters in the success, the accomplishment,
and the surety of his saving work on the cross to save his
people from their sins, from our sins. In other words, he
shows that the work upon which God saves a sinner, justifies
a sinner, sanctifies a sinner, preserves and brings a sinner
to glory, the work upon which that is all grounded and based
is totally, 100% and exclusively The righteousness of God in Christ. That phrase, the righteousness
of God, that's what this next book that's coming out is about.
What is the righteousness of God? I'm not ashamed of the gospel
of Christ, Paul said. It is the power of God unto salvation
to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first, the Greek also,
or the Gentile, for therein is the righteousness of God revealed. And it's not the righteousness
of man, for man has no righteousness. Paul made that clear. There's
none righteous, no not one. There's none good, no not one.
Paul made all this clear. The works of man are totally
excluded from the ground of saving us or preserving us. The works that we do in honor
of him are the workings of God in us, not the ground of our
salvation, not any part of our righteousness, or not any part
of our redemption. That's all Christ. It's all that
one glorious person, Christ. Now, when you preach that, and
just like Romans 5.21 here, he said, as sin hath reigned unto
death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal
life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, when we preach that, in
its clarity. What it does to the unbeliever
is basically this, it removes all of their motivation for obedience,
for morality, for service, for what they call godliness. Because
you see, their motives are different. I often classify the motives
of an unbeliever, even a Christian, or even one who calls themselves
a Christian, but doesn't know the true Christ. They're motivated
in one of two ways. It's either legal fear of punishment
that motivates them to do right as they see right, or it's what
I call a mercenary promise of earned rewards. That's legalism. You know what a mercenary is?
You remember back, if you remember studying U.S. history back during
the Revolutionary War, The British hired out some German soldiers
called Hessians. And they came and fought for
the British. And why were they fighting? It wasn't because of
their loyalty to the king or their loyalty to England. They fought for England for pay. Hired out. And that's a mercenary. Well, why do you serve God? Why
does a true believer serve God? Somebody said one time about
obedience, they said, I can't afford not to obey. What do you
mean by that? Well, if I don't obey, God's
gonna cast me into hell. That's legalism. Now, I don't
wanna go to hell. But see, what happens when God
saves a sinner and brings that sinner in the power of the Holy
Spirit to faith in Christ, What he does is he replaces those
old legal mercenary motives with the motives of what I classify
as grace, gratitude, and love. And that's more like the, when
you think about the Revolutionary War, the soldiers who fought
because of their love of their country, and that's what In other
words, Paul said this in 2 Corinthians 5.14, the love of Christ constraineth
us. And that's talking about Christ's
love for us. In other words, that's what constrains me to
be obedient, to fight sin, to worship God, to serve him. It's not legalism or mercenary
promises of earned reward, it's love. And that's the love that
the Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts. Paul talked about
that in Romans chapter five. He says, now, as Christians,
as true believers, we still have the retaining, we still retain
those old motives in the flesh, and we have to fight that. That's
part of the warfare of the flesh and the spirit. But that's what
Paul's answering here. He anticipates an objection that
would come from an unregenerate, unbelieving person. And you need
to understand, and he says in verse one, what shall we say
then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Now that's
spoken in light of verse 20 of chapter five. He says, moreover,
the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound. It's kind of like saying this,
it's kind of like saying, well, in other words, if the The quantity,
you might say, of my sin brings more grace than should I sin
that grace may abound? Should I just go out and sin
more that grace may abound? That's where the question comes
from. And so the reason I'm believers, as I said, raise this question
against the true gospel of grace. The salvation that God has for
his people, the blessings that God has for his people, they
are totally unearned and totally undeserved. You've come to church
this morning, you've come to worship God, you've come to study
his word, and you will be blessed. But you didn't earn it. It's
not because, well, you've got a notch, you know, a plus sign
on your, listed by your name, it's not because you're earning
it by being here. This is just the means that God
uses to bless his people through his word. And it is a blessing,
but it's an unearned, undeserved blessing. The next breath you
take, how many times have I told you, that's a gift from God.
You didn't earn it, didn't deserve it, none of us do. And so why
do we, why do we come to worship? Well, because we're afraid that
if we don't come on Sunday, God's gonna curse us on Monday, Tuesday. I don't know what God's gonna
do with you tomorrow, but I do know this. I know this. He gives
his people a heart to desire the word of God. Now that doesn't
mean in your flesh you're always gonna jump out of the bed Sunday
morning and raring to go, you know. It doesn't mean you're
not going to have a fight within yourself. You know, well, I need
this. You know, I worked hard this week. I need two more hours
of sleep. That's not what I'm talking about. He gives us a
desire to feed upon his word. This feeds your spirit. And you
can't feel that like you do if you're hungry and you feel the
hunger pangs, then you go eat and you feel full. You can feel
that. This is not by feeling. This is a product of the heart.
This is a matter of the heart, a matter of the mind. And so
what we see is that the question that the true gospel brings out
has to do here with the motives of obedience, the motives of
worship, the motives of praise, the motives of service. What
are we gonna say to this? Well, shall we sin that grace
may abound? How many times have you had people
tell you when you talk to them about the gospel, and they say,
well, if I believed like that, I'd just go out and sin as much
as I want to. Well, people don't realize they do sin as much as
they want to, in whatever capacity they do
it. But the motive of grace does not inspire or motivate us to
sin. Now we sin, we're sinners, but
it's not God's grace that makes us that way. It's not God's grace
that inspires us or motivates us this way. And look at how
the Apostle Paul answers the question. Look at verse two.
First of all, he says, God forbid. God forbid. That's some of the
strongest language you can find in the New Testament. There is
absolutely no way that God, in the power of his grace, would
motivate a believer, inspire a believer, one of his children,
to sin more. So when we sin more, we can't
blame it on God. God forbid. Now we do know, we
understand that God is sovereign. That God is in control. Period. And so we understand
that because he says that. And we do know that God is so
powerful and so good and wise that He, and He alone, overrules
sin for His glory and our good. Somebody told me one time, they
said, well, if God, for example, if He ordained the fall of man,
or if He ordained the death of Christ, then what's to stop us? from saying, well, if I do this
sin or commit that sin, it won't glorify God and be for my eternal
good. You know what the equivalent
of that is? You're trying to play God. Now
God, he has the foresight, the wisdom, the knowledge, the power,
and the wisdom to overrule sin for his glory and our good. But
we don't have that. All we have in our puny minds
is the revealed will of God. which says, sin not. That's all we have. God's in
control, I'm not. And what I do, I'm accountable
for what scripture says. Now some people say, well I can't
reconcile that in my mind. Well that's not my problem. I
can't reconcile it in my mind, but what I'm saying is, the fact
that that's the case, that just simply lowers us to a position
where we need to be in the dust. and glorifies God. But here's
it, he says, God forbid. The secret things belong to God. The revealed things belong to
us. And so he says, how shall we that are dead to sin? Now listen to the language here.
I mean, this is astounding. Dead to sin. Now do you feel
like you're dead to sin? If you're honest? Every true
believer knows that we are still sinners saved by grace. Every true believer knows that
we have absolutely no righteousness before God except the imputed
righteousness of Christ. I don't have any within myself.
Oh, I know the Holy Spirit indwells his people and he's given us
a new heart, new life, new mind, new motives, new goals, all of
that. But that's not our righteousness
before God, is it? No. Christ, in his obedience
unto death, the merits of his obedience unto death is our righteousness
before God. And yet he says in verse two,
how shall we, who's the we there, children of God, justified sinners,
sanctified sinners, regenerate sinners, believers, how shall
we who are dead to sin live any longer therein? Now, obviously
one of the first things you see here is this. You better find
out what, if you're gonna understand these scriptures, you're gonna
have to find out what it means to be dead to sin. Without lying
to ourselves. Isn't that right? Now there are
some people who think that they can achieve a state in this life
where they are no longer sinners. Now it's true. In the Bible,
sometimes the word sinner refers and describes exclusively unbelievers. And so I've heard people say,
well, I'm not a sinner anymore. Now, wait a minute. Only two
types of people in this life, sinners still lost in their sins
and sinners saved by grace. That's it. You're either one
or the other. And then there are some people
who say, well, in this dead to sin, he's talking about the new
nature. You heard that? I've got a new nature that cannot
sin and cannot be contaminated. That's heresy. Now we do have,
again, when the Holy Spirit regenerates us, you know, the new birth.
What is regeneration? That's putting life again where
it was lost. Life where it's not. It's a spiritual
resurrection from the dead. The new birth, regeneration and
conversion. And in that regeneration, again,
we have spiritual life given to us from Christ, which wasn't
there before. We're born spiritually dead,
ruined by the fall. And when we're regenerated, we're
given spiritual life. And the Bible speaks of that
metaphorically. We're given a new heart, new
mind, affections, a new will. He makes us willing in the day
of his power what we were before unwilling to do. He gives us eyes to see. Remember Christ said you must
be born again or you cannot see the kingdom of God. You may have
physical eyes and you can read the Bible and you can do moral
things in the eyes of men, but you can't see the glory of God
in Christ. power of God unto salvation,
where the righteousness of God is revealed, until the Holy Spirit
gives you those spiritual eyes, spiritual ears to hear. Remember
what Christ told the disciples, Matthew 13, blessed are your
eyes, they see. You see things that others don't
see. Now why do you suppose that is? Is it because you were a
better person than the rest of them? Absolutely not. It's because God sovereignly
chose you, redeemed you, and now has regenerated you. You hear things that other people
don't hear. When this gospel is preached,
I'm gonna show this in the message later on. I'll show you this in the scripture.
Look at the difference between the crowd that Stephen preached
to and the crowd that Peter preached to. What's the difference? Well, that crowd that Stephen
preached to, they were a bunch of immoral ingrates who were
just worse. No. The difference is the grace
of God that brought the crowd that Peter preached to to be
pricked in their heart. And so we know all that happens.
And I've often told people, if you want to call that a new nature,
then that's all right with me, but be careful there because
that can be a slippery slope. And the slippery slope that some
have slid down into is this notion that I've got a new, they'll
even call it a divine nature within me that cannot sin and
cannot be contaminated. That's the slippery slope, that's
heresy. Now it is, you don't have a divine
nature, you've got a human nature. Now you may have spiritual life,
But you're not divine in any stretch of the imagination. I
preached this last week in 2 Peter 1. Partakers of the divine nature
means we are brought by the Spirit as He reveals the gracious promises
of God to us in Christ. He brings us into fellowship
with the divine, with God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit through
Christ. So how are we dead to sin? Well, we don't have to speculate
on that. We don't have to argue about
it. We don't have to get your opinion or my opinion. He tells
us, look at verse three, here it is. Know you not, don't you
know that so many of us as were baptized or are baptized into
Jesus Christ, were or are, it's a continuing thing, were baptized
into his death. Now the first thing you've got
to understand here about if this is a definition of what it means
to be dead to sin, we gotta understand what he means by baptized. And
you know a lot of people go to this verse and they'll talk about
the ordinance of believer's baptism. Well I got news for them. This
isn't talking about the ordinance of believer's baptism. Now you
know there's two church ordinances. commands of Christ for the church
in the New Testament that he's given for us to symbolically
confess and profess our faith in him and our union with him.
And the first one is believer's baptism. That's a Christian ordinance
of immersion in water for believers. Some people say the word baptized
means immersion or submersion. In other words, sprinkling won't
do it. Pouring water over your head won't do it. It's an identification
with Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. You're immersed
into the water and you come up out of the water, proclaiming
your trust in him and your identification with him. When he died, I died.
When he was buried, I was buried. When he arose again, I rose again.
And that's believer's baptism. And of course, the second ordinance
is the Lord's Supper, which is a memorial ordinance. where we
identify with Christ and confess our faith in him. The word baptized
literally means placed into. And you can read it like this.
Know you not that so many of us as were placed into Jesus
Christ, were placed into his death. Or you could say we were
immersed into Jesus Christ, or immersed into his death. So what's
he talking about here? He's not talking about believers'
baptism. He's talking about our union with Christ. And my friend,
that's the key to the whole scripture. If you're a believer, you've
been placed into Christ. Now, when were you placed into
Christ? Well, we can talk about several things there. First of
all, we can talk about our eternal union with Christ. Before the
foundation of the world, what did God do? He chose his people
and gave them to Christ. You were placed into Christ.
He's our representative and he's our surety. My sins, which I
hadn't even committed yet, and Adam hadn't even fallen yet,
but my sins, the debt of my sin, was charged to him, given to
him. He took my sins upon himself. He became accountable and responsible
for my sins as they were imputed to him. He's my surety, he's
my representative. So I was placed into him eternally
in electing grace. He's my surety. Well, I was placed
into Him, united to Him in His death on the cross. He came and
He became my substitute. As my surety, He took my place. It behooved Him to be made like
unto His brethren. In God's eyes, legally, we were
considered one with Christ. So that what He did, He did it
for us, His people. And so he came to this earth,
he became incarnate, he lived an obedient life, he went to
the cross, suffered, bled, and died, was buried, and arose again
the third day for his people. So we were placed into him redemptively,
you might say. And he is our substitute. And
that's what Paul's talking about here. He's talking about our
legal death to sin in Christ. We're dead to sin. How are we
dead to sin? We are totally, 100%, completely,
unequivocally dead to sin's condemnation. It cannot condemn us. It cannot
be charged to us. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputed not iniquity. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord imputeth righteousness. We in Christ being one with him,
being placed into him, when he died, I died, he did it for me.
When he was buried, I was buried, he did it for me. When he arose,
I arose, he did it for me. I didn't do any of that stuff
personally or experientially, he did it all. For by one offering
he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified, them whom
God set apart and placed into Christ. And that's what he means,
you were baptized into his death. Now when we go through the ordinance
of believer's baptism, we confess that when we go down into the
water. We died with him, we're buried
with him. And he says, look at verse four now. He says, therefore
we are buried with him by baptism unto death, that 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 when we come
up out of the water, we're confessing that when he arose, we arose,
and we have life, resurrection life, by him. And that's what
Paul means by dead to sin here. We're baptized into Christ. He's
talking about our legal standing before God based upon Christ's
death, burial, and resurrection, his blood, his righteousness
imputed. That's the only way we're dead
to sin. And the whole context will tell you that. Those who
believe that Paul is talking about believers' baptism have
no ground to stand on. For example, if Paul was talking
about the ordinance of baptism, he'd have said so. And the context would bear it
out. But the context won't bear it out. What Paul is saying here
is this. The reason that we are not among
those who promote sin under the guise of grace, In other words,
if I'm saved by grace, then it doesn't matter what. The reason
we don't do that is because we have a legal foundation that
gives us a right standing before God, and we're ever aware of
that by his grace through the righteousness of Christ, and
that gives us the motivation to do what? Look at verse four.
To walk in newness of life. So that our, what is walking
in newness of life? It's walking by faith in Christ.
looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. It's
walking in repentance. It's engaged in the warfare,
the flesh and the spirit. It's seeking to feed upon his
word and to follow him, not to be saved, not to be made righteous
before God, not trying to earn our righteousness by which we're
made right with God, but because we're already saved by grace.
We've been baptized into Christ. We're one with him. And the Holy
Spirit has implanted that truth upon our minds, our affections,
our wills, our hearts. Look at verse five. He says,
for if we've been planted together, now that's a key. If he's talking
about believer's baptism, were we all baptized together? Well,
no. You were baptized on one day,
somebody else was baptized on another day. You confessed, you
took part of the ordinance of confession on different days. But here he's talking about something
that we all did together. Every one of God's chosen people. All that the Father gave Christ.
We did it together, we were planted together. In the likeness of
his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.
And what's he saying there? He's saying just as Christ's
righteousness, which he alone worked out for his people, demanded
his own resurrection, and that's why, you know how, you know why
Christ was raised from the dead? Because he finished the work.
He brought forth, Daniel chapter nine and verse 24 talks about
it. He made an end of sin. He brought forth everlasting
righteousness. Finished the transgression. And
so since he arose from the dead, you know what that's the assurance
of? That everyone whom God gave him before the foundation of
the world, every sinner for whom he died will be risen from the
dead. Will be risen first in the new
birth. Will be given spiritual life.
Will be resurrected from our natural death, spiritual death
unto spiritual life. But then will be raised again
at the last day. In other words, this is the assurance
of eternal life for everyone for whom he died. That's the
motivation that causes us to fight. That's why we have to
be reminded, and we do forget now, we lose sight of things.
You go throughout this week, and let's say you have a bad
week. You ever had a bad week? And you're not thinking about
spiritual things. You're upset, maybe. You're angry, or you're
sick. or you're grieving, or you just
feel like you're banging your head up against the wall. Well,
does that mean you're not a Christian those days? Well, if it does,
we might as well shut this book and go home now. Right? Y'all with me on that, aren't
you? That's what happens. And so God has ordained certain
means to bring us to a better realization of who he is and
who we are and who Christ is. And this is what we're doing
right here today. And if you have opportunities
throughout the week to read scripture or to think about these things
or to recall, call to memory these things, that's God's way.
That's how he motivates us. Look who we are. And that's what
he's saying here. Should I go out and sin the more?
No, I'm in Christ. And look at what he's given me.
Look at the blessings. You know that song, Showers of
Blessings. We have showers of blessings.
Ephesians 1.3, we're blessed with all spiritual blessings
in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Now does that motivate
me to go out and want to dishonor him? You know they talk about doting
parents who give their kids everything they want and then their kids
kinda go crazy and turn on them and dishonor their name. Well,
that's not the way it is here. Because one thing that God does,
he gives us a heart of a bond servant. A willing, loving bond
slave. Realizing that God has blessed
us so much. I'll tell you what. I'm gonna
talk a little bit about this in the message. Here, I'll close.
The Bible says that many are called, but few are chosen. What does that mean? Well obviously
there he's talking about the general call. They tell me that
on, a fellow tell me on television, on our television program, we
have probably on Sunday morning, they can tell what, if your television
set is tuned in on this program because of the new digital capabilities
they have. He told me, he said, there's
probably around 6,000 TVs that have our program on, on Sunday
morning. Well, look around you now. You see 6,000 people here? And
I'm not saying all those 6,000 are unbelievers, because they're
not here. But you know, a lot of people watch that TV. I had
a lady Friday night told me, she said, you're on TV, aren't
you? I said, yeah. And she said, I watch you. She
said, I really enjoy your program. Hope she does. I hope she believes
it. She lives a little bit away from here. But we all realize
that there's a lot of people who hear the gospel, and they
don't believe it. But you do. Why? Is it because you're better than
them? Maybe you're more agreeable. No, you know better than that.
You know the only reason you're here and you believe what I'm
preaching you is the sovereign grace of God. Now I'll tell you,
that sends chills down my back. Now is that what, so all right,
well let's just go out and have a wild party and let's dishonor
his name. No, no. Let's return our love
to him, our gratitude, thank you Lord. Let's let our lives
be thank you, why? Because we're dead to sin. How
am I dead to sin? I'm a sinner, I sin all the time.
I never measure up to perfect righteousness. I was baptized
into Jesus Christ, into his death, his burial, his resurrection,
and I'm one with him in the eyes of God's law and justice. I have
a righteousness that answers the demands of God's law and
justice. It was a total free gift to me I didn't have anything
to do with, but I have it by God's grace. All right.