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The power of sin can feel overwhelming:
How we can we be free from our sin?
The opening chapters of Romans (Rom 1–5) were about the question, “How can a person escape the penalty of sin?” The penalty of sin is the wrath and judgment of God. How do we escape it? The answer: The righteousness we receive from Jesus Christ by faith in him.
The question in our chapters of Romans now (Rom 6–8) is this, “How can a person escape the power of sin?” The answer: our union with Christ in his death and resurrection.
But don’t miss the fact that the answer to both of these questions is Jesus Christ. How do we escape the penalty of sin? Faith in Jesus Christ. How do we escape the power of sin? It starts with faith in Jesus Christ.
Justification (declared righteous) AND sanctification (growth in holiness) are found in Jesus Christ. Yes, we need to put forth a lot of effort grow in holiness. But our success in that project is not because of our effort. It’s because of our union with Christ in his death and resurrection.
Romans is a letter Paul wrote well into his ministry. At this point in his life he had planned to visit Rome and then go from Rome on to Spain in his missionary life. But God had other plans. He did get to Rome—but as a prisoner. He would be released and then get re-arrested and finally martyred in Rome.
This part of Romans—chapters 6–8—is about walking in new life. Chapter 6 tells us how we can live free of our sin and why we must do that.
Sermon: 1. Our Death (6:5–7); 2. Our Life (6:8–10); 3. Our Self-Image (6:11)
Prayer
Read Rom. 6:5–7.
He begins by making a summary statement about our union with Christ in Rom. 6:5. The word for “united with” there is means something like “grown together” (sumphutos). Horticultural term. Paul’s accenting the result of it. We are now one with Christ. The verb is perfect, something that has happened that continues to affect us.
He’s really repeating what he said in the first verses of chapter 6, but he wants to develop it a little more. He focuses on those two aspects of our union with Christ—“in a death like his,” “in a resurrection like his.”
He develops the “death” side of this in Rom. 6:6–7. What does it mean that we have died with Christ? That’s what he’s getting at here.
What he says is shocking.
“Our old self [man] was crucified with him” (Rom 6:6).
When Jesus was crucified, “our old self [man]” was crucified. The shocking part is that Paul isn’t just saying, “think of it this way,” or, “pretend for a second,” or, “imagine if you will.”
He’s stating a historical fact for the Christian: “our old self [man] was crucified with him.”
When Jesus was crucified, it wasn’t just Jesus’s body on that cross. “Our old self [man]” was also on that cross. And when Jesus died, our old self died.
Not just a part of us that died on the cross—our sin nature or something like that. It was the whole of us, our “old man,” what we were before we were a Christian.
What we were “in Adam.”
You can hear this same language in Colossians 3:9–10:
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self [man] with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator. (Col 3:9–10)
John Stott speaks of us as having a biography in two volumes.[1] Volume 1 is our biography before we were a Christian. What we were in our old man. That old man died on the cross with Jesus and was buried with him.
But then Volume 2 is our biography after Christ, what we are in Christ. In our “new man.” It is our new man raised up with Christ and united with him in his resurrection. The old man and the new man. The old man is what we were before Christ. That old man died on the cross with Jesus. The new man is what rose up out of the grave—also with Christ.
This Christmas I was given a 2-volume biography of Oliver Cromwell, leader of England in the 1600s. Volume 1 is called The Making of Oliver Cromwell (Ronald Hutton). Birth to his becoming a war hero in the English Civil War. Volume 2 is called Commander in Chief. His years as leader of all of England.
Our 2-volume biography reads differently. An unusual biography. In Volume 1, it’s the part of us dead in sin and dead in Adam. It’s our sinful self, our God-hating self, our rebellious self. It ends with a crucifixion.
But in most biographies, when you get to the part where the main subject dies, the book is over. Like in my 2-volume Oliver Cromwell: He doesn’t die till the end of Volume 2.
But in our biography, Volume 1 ends with a death, and Volume 2 begins with a birth. It’s a spiritual re-birth. We are born-again. It starts with the resurrection of Jesus, and we are somehow there—in him. Our new man is right there. And unlike most biographies, Volume 2 has no ending: We are raised with Christ, and we live forever after with him and in him!
So, back to Verse: “The body of sin might be brought to nothing” (Rom 6:6).
One of the purposes of the crucifixion of our “old man” is that “the body of sin” might no longer enslave. “The body of sin” means our body as a sinning, rebellious body. Both our body and our soul died on that cross. The whole of us.
Sin doesn’t only reside in our body. But it does attach itself to our bodies in a unique way. The idea here is that now our bodies are not only given to sinful desires and sinful deeds. It has been “brought to nothing.”
John Murray:
The expression ‘the body of sin’ would mean the body as conditioned and controlled by sin, the sinful body....The body of the believer is no longer a body conditioned and controlled by sin.
John Murray, Romans[2]
The result? Back to Rom. 6:6–7: “...so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free sin” (Rom 6:7).
How could we be enslaved to sin? We died. Dead people aren’t slaves to anything. No master can exercise
Phil Ryken, The Message of Salvation:
On that day at least four things were nailed to Calvary’s cross. One was a sign announcing that Jesus of Nazareth was the King of the Jews. Another was Jesus himself, who was fixed to the cross with hammer and nails. The third thing was the debt of our sin, which God canceled by nailing it to the cross. The last thing that was nailed to the cross with Christ was every Christian.
Philip Ryken, The Message of Salvation[3]
He continues, “In the death of Christ we made a decisive, definitive, once-for-all break with the life of sin….The general principle here is that dead men cannot be slaves; the term of their enslavement ends at death….We still struggle with sinful desires and inclinations, but from this point on they will not dominate us” (241, 242).
Read Rom. 6:8–10.
In the first part of the passage, he looked at our death. But now he looks at Christ’s death and resurrection.
Rom. 6:8 once again gives the summary idea.
In Rom. 6:9 he looks at one aspect of Christ’s death and resurrection. When Christ died and rose again, death lost its hold on him. Death’s dominion was broken!
For thousands of years and thousands of generations, the fallenness of Adam gave death a power over humanity. It had a lordship, a dominion. It was a dominion no typical person could escape or break.
But Christ broke it! When he died and rose again, death itself changed. Now its reign and dominion was not a universal reign and dominion.
“Death no longer has dominion over him”—and because of that, death no longer has dominion over God’s people.
That’s why Jesus can say to Martha at the tomb of Lazarus:
“Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25–26)
But he could only destroy death’s dominion by dying himself.
Then a second aspect in Rom. 6:10. Again his death is in view.
Paul tells us something about his death we don’t want to miss. Normally we talk about the fact Christ died “for our sins”—and that’s true (1 Cor 15:3).
But here Paul says that Christ “died to sin.”
But then he died on the cross, and he died “once for all.” A definitive, one-time act, never to be repeated.
Paul then speaks of his life when he rose. When Jesus rose, he rose to a glorified new life. And the result is never again experiencing the residue of sin.
Read Rom. 6:11.
The final verse of our passage is a passage about our self-image. We are to have the right self-image. Paul says we are to “consider ourselves” to be a certain kind of person with a certain kind of history.
He says we are to “consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Throughout the passage there are words of knowledge and understanding:
It’s a reminder that Christianity involves us using our minds to really grasp something.
The 1611 King James Version in Rom. 6:11 uses “reckon yourselves.”
When Phil Ryken was reflecting on 6:11 he drew out that idea of “reckoning” by pointing out “dead reckoning.” Before GPS, when sailors couldn’t see stars or the sun or landmarks, they would sail by dead reckoning.
You would use your last known location and then map out your present location by factoring in things like speed and direction and the current. It was no easy task and doesn’t always get it exactly right![4]
But that’s a helpful image. Things you can’t see or touch, you can still use to guide you and shape you and inform you.
You are “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” These are absolute true facts of your life. You are to use “dead reckoning” to navigate by these absolute facts.
Anthony Hoekema uses these ideas to talk about “The Christian’s Self-Image.” Reflecting on Rom. 6:11, he wrote,
This is as clear a Biblical statement of the Christian’s self-image as I can find anywhere. Because of what Christ did for us, and because we have appropriated that benefit by faith, we now are to look upon ourselves as no longer living in a manner called the old man, but we are now to live in a manner called the new man. We are to look upon ourselves, therefore not as partly old man and partly new man, but as new men in Christ.
Anthony Hoekema, “The Christian’s Self-Image”[5]
A few things as we close. Go back to those opening scenarios:
Our passage helps you in all these places, but maybe not in the way you expect.
Our passage is getting at what theologians call “definitive sanctification.” There’s Definitive Sanctification and Progressive Sanctification. Definitive sanctification is that once-for-all moment when we come to Christ. Happens in an instant.
Instantly at conversion, we are “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
That’s the starting point and foundation for all progressive sanctification. Walking in obedience starts with being dead to sin. The dominion of sin in our lives is broken. Now we can live as those freed from sin and able to walk in righteousness. That’s where he goes next in Rom. 6:12ff.
To grow in obedience in these scenarios, you’ll need to build on the right foundation.
Second, Romans 6 reminds us of the obstacle we face: sin. It reveals more of the sheer power of sin. The only solution for the problem of sin is a gospel solution. A little help won’t do it. A little more will power won’t do it. Sin has to be killed FIRST. Then we can fight it.
You need a radical solution to the radical problem of sin. That solution is all about the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. Go there to battle your sins!
But then third, the passage is a reminder to add a particular spiritual discipline to your weapons in battling sin: meditation. to meditate: “Consider yourselves...” “Reckon yourselves...” “Count yourselves...” “Think yourselves to be...”
The Puritan John Ball (1585–1640) said on meditation:
Meditation is a serious, earnest and purposed musing on some point of Christian instruction, tending to lead us forward toward the Kingdom of Heaven, and serving for our daily strengthening against the flesh, the world and the Devil. Or it is the steadfast and earnest bending of the mind on some spiritual and heavenly matter, discoursing on it with ourselves, until we bring it to some profitable point, both for the settling of our judgments, and the bettering of our hearts and lives.
John Ball, A Treatise of Divine Meditation[6]
Prayer and Closing Song (“And Can it Be”
[1] John Stott, The Message of Romans, one of the greatest commentaries on the book of Romans.
[2] John Murray, Romans, NICNT, Volume 1, 220.
[3] P. 239.
[4] See https://passagemaker.com/technical/the-lost-art-of-dead-reckoning/.
[5] Anthony Hoekema, “The Christian’s Self-Image” [Part 2], Reformed Journal 21 no 8 (1971):18.
[6] John Ball, A Treatise of Divine Meditation (Crossville: Puritan Publications, 2016) 27.
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