Romans
9
Have you ever said as a Christian, “The old man is dead, but he won’t stay dead. He keeps coming back to life.” That’s not strictly true. Your old man is dead – crucified with Christ at Golgotha. You’re now “in Christ”, a new creation, a new man. What keeps asserting itself is your sinful nature, the old habits, the old patterns of behaviour.
Galatians 5:17 reads “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want.”
Put another way, we’ve been delivered from Egypt – we’re never going back. We’ve been through the Red Sea of the blood of Jesus Christ – but we must drive out enemies from the Promised Land. “Our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body of sin, i.e. our old nature, might be done away with or rendered powerless that we should no longer be slaves to sin”. The old man’s gone. God has put me into Christ – but the sinful nature remains in our mortal bodies. God’s divine purpose is spelt out in Ephesians 1:4 - “… that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.”
Notice that the believer is not told to “let go and let God” but to co-operate with God in this whole act of freedom. If a Christian is to become in experience what he already is in position i.e. dead to sin and alive to God, he can’t just sit back and do nothing. Romans 6:12 says: “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.” In other words, resist the devil, put up a fight, exercise your will. Romans 6:13 says, “Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God … and offer the parts of your body to Him as instruments of righteousness.”
Here’s the glorious truth. When God justified us, He also sanctified us. We are holy and set apart for Him because we are “in Christ”. The whole work was finished at the cross. We realise it progressively, but it is true now.
Christ by His death and resurrection is our sanctification. The sanctification accomplished for us must be accomplished through us. We must work out what He has worked in. Sanctification is righteousness reigning in life today.
Romans 6:14 declares, “Sin shall not be your master.” Sin is personified and is seen by Paul as a power that enslaves. A believer is ‘not under law’. That doesn’t mean one can do anything. It means one is under obedience unto righteousness, but ‘under grace’, wonderful enabling grace. A willing servant to righteousness.
Romans 6:17 “You used to be slaves to sin” – slaves were beaten and we were slaves in the slave market of sin. And Jesus paid our ransom; we’re the purchase of God. Now, we’re God’s slaves, His bondservants.
We have exchanged masters. Now we present ourselves to God for His exclusive use. We’re enslaved to righteousness. To be righteous in the New Testament sense means you live to the glory of God and live to please Him. As Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “The man no longer under the law is now under law to Christ. He is not free from righteousness, but free to righteousness. He is set free for the practice of righteousness. He is now a slave to love, under the ‘tyranny of love.’
Note that Romans 6:19 is an exhortation. It is a command. It is not done for us. “Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness.”
As Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote, “You gave yourself to that, now give yourself to this. Every Christian, by definition, has already been set free from sin. Sin in the Christian is no longer our master; it is just a nuisance, an annoyance. A Christian is “enslaved to God.” We have no right to sin. For a Christian to sin is like a man in an army fraternising with the enemy. When we sin, as a Christian, we sin because we choose to sin.” Derek Prince, the renowned Bible teacher, put it this way, “It is impossible to live in sin and be in the grace of God. God has only one remedy for the old man and that is execution. Mercifully it took place 2,000 years ago. Like Barrabas, I realise I am the rebel who goes free, because Christ died in my place. Now there is a double yielding for the Christian. Yield your will to God and then yield your members to God as weapons of righteousness.”
At the end of Romans 6 we see the contrasting results of two different life styles. Give yourself to sin and you remain free from the control of righteousness, and your shameful life style ends in death. Become God’s love slave and you reap all the benefits of holiness and eternal life. But there’s no escaping the fact that something is going to control you – either sin or righteousness. It’s not a case of choosing whether you will serve, because serve you will, but rather whom you will serve – Satan or Jesus.
Romans 6:23 is the gospel in a nutshell: “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “The wages of sin” or ‘the rations of sin’ is death – even the second death – a final and irreversible separation from God and from ‘the face of God’, from the life of God. It means to be eternally outside God’s life, with all the consequent misery and suffering. God’s free gift of eternal life is inestimably better. There’s really no contest.
I like the way Matthew Henry concludes his commentary on Romans 6. He writes, “Sinners merit hell, but saints do not merit heaven. We must thank God and not ourselves, if ever we get to heaven. And this gift is through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is Christ that purchased it, prepares us for it, preserves us to it.”