Romans
8
A best selling Christian author wrote a book entitled, “What’s So Amazing About Grace?” The answer is in the latter part of Romans 5. Sin ruled and reigned over us. Sin abounded. Eternal death would be our everlasting destiny. But Jesus came and identified us with Himself. He offered grace to cover all our sin. Now believers can ‘reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.’ Where sin abounded, grace superabounded.
Grace challenged sin for our dominion and grace won the battle. Sin is dethroned: its reign, its tyranny is past. Grace has triumphed. By free, unmerited, undeserved favour we are what we are. We are eternally exalted through righteousness, by grace.
Here’s a vital truth. One is constituted a sinner through Adam, not because of one’s personal sins; and one is constituted righteous through Christ, not because of one’s personal acts of righteousness, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit” (John 3:6)
Moffat translates Romans 5:17 onwards as: “Well then, as one man’s trespass issued in doom for all, so one man’s act of redress issued in acquittal and life for all. Just as one man’s disobedience made all the rest sinners, so one man’s obedience will make all the rest righteous. Law slipped in to aggravate the trespass; sin increased, but grace surpassed it far, so that, while sin had reigned the reign of death, grace might also reign with a righteousness that ends in life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Now we begin Romans 6 which Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones called “the most misinterpreted chapter in the New Testament”. Some objected to Paul’s teaching of justification by faith alone because they thought it would lead to moral irresponsibility. It can appear to encourage lawlessness. Romans 6:1 “Shall we go on sinning, so that grace may increase?” Paul’s response is “Of course not.” We died to sin. Through faith we’re united to Christ now, just as through our natural birth we were united to Adam. We’re in Christ now. As a Christian, we are dead to sin. We don’t feel dead: that’s why Paul must inform us. We have been grafted into the body of Christ when we were born again and therefore have died and been raised again with Christ – which baptism symbolises. In Christ you have died to the reign and rule of sin.
Note that Paul does not teach that immersion in water at baptism puts people “into Jesus Christ”, for that was accomplished by the Spirit when they believed. Their water baptism was a picture of what had already happened: the Holy Spirit identified them with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.
Jesus referred to His death, burial and resurrection in Luke 12:50 as a baptism. “I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed.” God has put us into Christ, members of His body, identified with Him. He is everything to us. As it says in 1Corinthians 1:30: “… our righteousness, holiness and redemption.”
Grace is more than pardon from sin; it is power over sin. When a believer is grafted into the body of Christ at conversion, the very life of Christ, the righteousness of Christ is literally in him. We are united to Him. We’re not meant to keep going under our own steam – but we do. So often all the world sees of Christianity is the best that man can do by his own efforts. They fail to see the grace of God operative in many Christians.
Romans 6:6 is an amazing revelation truth. It says, “For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.”
The old man has been crucified; the man I used to be in Adam, the old ego, self; the hold of the old nature has been forever broken, snapped, severed. We were crucified with Christ and therefore have died to the reign and rule of sin. We are out of sin’s territory altogether. In Jesus Christ we have died to sin so that we no longer want to ‘continue in sin’.
Galatians 2:20 is the summing up of Paul’s argument on justification. It declares, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” We would not know we were in Adam if God had not told us in His Word. We would not know we had been baptised into Christ if God had not told us in His Word. The Holy Spirit baptizes us into Christ whereupon we died to sin because God told us that’s what happened in His Word. Our old way of life was nailed to the cross with Christ. The Message puts it this way: “When Jesus died, He took sin down with Him, but alive He brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you … You are dead to sin and alive to God.” Sin and death have no dominion over Christ. We are “in Christ”, therefore, sin and death have no dominion over us. We mustn’t let it. We’ve a part to play.
In a nutshell it is this: Know, Reckon and Yield.
Romans 6:6 “We know that our old self was crucified with Christ.” We must reckon this fact to be true in our own life. But it doesn’t square with my experience. Nevertheless Romans 6:11 says, “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Count on this; reckon this to be factually true, because God says it is.
Your feelings tell you differently, but God says you’re Satan’s slave no longer, you’re now a child of God. The devil always tries to make us doubt the divine facts.
As Watchman Nee taught, “Knowing ourselves to be dead, we must reckon it so. Our reckoning must be based on knowledge – knowledge of a divinely revealed fact.”
Then we must yield our bodies to the Lord to be used for His glory. We are to offer the parts of our body, all our faculties, to God for His service.
Do remember the devil is not extinct, nor is he annihilated. But he was dethroned at the cross. Our old man was put to death. Now, if we sin, we sin by choice. Before we couldn’t help it. We were in the realm of sin and death. But now because He lives, we also live.
Sin will keep asserting itself, but know this; God did not send the old man to hospital to be cured, but to Calvary to be crucified. There’s a new man living in this mortal body now. When the enemy whispers, “Nothing’s changed. You’re just the same.” I can echo Peter’s words, “I don’t know the man you’re talking about.”