Our Union with Christ, review

Well, good morning. So today we're going to... I was thinking we've been doing this for about a month now. We had Miles do an overview kind of of Romans 6, a little bit, 5 and 6, and then we had the last three weeks we've been going through these verses.

But I thought, you know, we're working toward Romans 6.11, which I'm going to cover next week, but I thought it would be appropriate that we Review and I called this section our union with Christ, and I'm gonna start in verse 2 verse 1 is kind of the you know his His gut feeling and then he gets into 2 he starts laying out these wonderful truths and on your handout I put down to my account their 18 statements and About what we have in Christ or the statement is about what Christ has done for us So I'm going to cover those hopefully in a summary fashion and Hopefully it'll be helpful.

I actually toward the end. I have some pictures For our brother how that that over the years have been around Holly Hills They're familiar to some and hopefully they'll be helpful to all so all right so I just Nope, it turned here. Okay, so, we're going to start off here, kind of, just kind of backtrack for a second, and just look at, I did this earlier a couple of weeks ago, and God's plan of salvation is past, present, and future. But for the believer right now, in his life, he comes to faith in Christ as his Savior, and then the rest of his Christian life is what we call his Christian walk by faith.

So I wanted to kind of put down the contrast between those two. So as you look at the bottom, you'll notice it's from the three Ms. McCauley, Merriman, and Malloy. It's interesting how their names worked out that way. So it's pretty cool. And I've benefited from both of them. Actually, a few of these are mine, too, in these statements. And some of Mike, too. So we all influence one another.

So let's start off. So a person comes to faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. First, and he realizes that he's been saved from the penalty of sin. And then he realizes that Christ died for him. He realizes that Christ is his substitute. And that Christ is his propitiation or his satisfaction for his sins. And notice the focus when we first come to our Savior is on our sins. And that's by God's design. It's on our sins. The focus is on that Christ was God's satisfaction for sins. And Christ's payment for sins is the issue. And it's an event, right?

You come to faith at a point in time, and it's actually retroactive. You realize that you've been chosen for the foundation of the world, so there's all those wonderful things, but to you it's an event in time, and it was an event on the cross, certainly. God did it for me. You didn't do it yourself. You didn't work up. You didn't show God how great you were and he said well good job I'll give you salvation that it doesn't work that way.

It's all of Christ and nothing of you faith is all that you offer and that's called justification and We studied that earlier several months in the past in Romans 4 it talks about be our faith was reckoned to us as righteousness and But now we come to the, so once that has happened, you become a believer, now you're walking by faith in Christ. And what does that look like? And what it looks like is what's described in Romans chapter six, seven, and eight. But it's interesting, you don't, in most of the churches, people, for whatever reason, they don't cover that. It's just not covered.

It's sort of like I'm saved, and now I go to heaven at some point, and in between, You pray a lot, and you're guilty a lot, and that's just kind of what it's about. But God's Word has this incredible instruction in this area. So let's start off. In the Christian life, you're being saved from the power of sin, from the sin nature. And you realize that I've died with Christ. As Mike pointed out last week, what we're going to see, died or dead, so many times in those ten verses. I'm separated from my sin nature, my Adamic nature, Christ is my life. It's a process. You're in this process of growing in grace and the knowledge of Him. God is now dealing with the sin nature. Before, the focus was on your sins, plural. Now He's dealing with And unfortunately the translations translated just sin.

Sometimes they'll put the definite article in there. Sometimes they won't. The only translation that I know of that puts in sin nature or sinful nature is the Wyss translation, which isn't a real popular one. You have to order it. You can get it online. And it's very beneficial. Anyway, I'm not trying to sell it, but anyway. But it will show you the word sin nature. But it's there. And this is called sanctification. We see this what we see today, and we'll see it next week in in Romans chapter 6 and verse 11 just marvelous counting upon What Christ has done for you?

All right, so let's so here's a here's the two through ten So I know Mike went through and he highlighted all the ones about death Well, I took a different tact I wanted to highlight so if we're talking if this is to tell us about our sin nature and Highlighted those every place. It says these sin. I put these sin in there. I put the V in there So it's about five times possibly through the verses, but the other part that kind of struck me was this is a very personal Account because it talks about Paul includes himself.

He says we all of us And the like are all he says we are Have something or something happened. We died with we died to the sin nature We have been buried with him We have become united with him so that we're you know Every believer is in this text what has happened to him is in this text, and that's that's really important to see yourself I was thinking you know God paid for our sins he had every one of our sins on the cross with him in a sense and But it's even more personal than that. He has us on the cross with Him. And our brother Vern used to say, the cross is a crowded place. Our Savior had us personally with Him on the cross for the purpose of to separate us from our sin nature, from Adam's nature.

And it just struck me, if that isn't accomplished, we could never have fellowship with Him if that separation wasn't made. from our sin nature, we could never have fellowship with God. And it kind of just struck me, wow, he spends all this time telling us about this separation that's occurred. It's still there, but we're separated from it.

Okay. So now the task is, your handout has, I listed the 18 different statements. So now I want to go through those verses, those two through ten verses, and I want to look at it kind of, hopefully, kind of a combination of It's not really a sentence diagram, but it's kind of a version a little bit up from that, and maybe just trying to grab the statements one after another. I've done it before. Hopefully it's helpful. So before that, hold that thought. Let's look at some definitions here.

Baptism. Key part in this text. Some will take this as water baptism. Boy, I got and actually I was reading somebody doing that you got to do some hijinks here because if you look at it, it's It's the idea to be immersed or to dip and we're placed into Christ and by the verb tense We're placed into Christ and never taken out. I think I've shared with you I did I've done baptismal services and I said well if we really did this, right We put the person in never take him out. That would be it. I Because that's the picture. That's what's happened. We've been baptized into Christ and never taken out of Him. It's a permanent relationship. We become identified with Him. So that's baptism in Romans 6.

The term old self, which I don't like, old man is much superior because it's actually Anthropos. All that we were in Adam, and this is from Mike here from last week, totally depraved, lacking of the life of God. Pretty, not a pretty picture. Totally depraved lacking from the life of God that that's what God had to separate us from if he didn't take care of that We could never have fellowship with him The sin will just see it just sin sometimes singular.

It's the sin nature. It's Adams fallen nature Crucified it's actually literally to be put to death and then done away with or if you have the King James which I I I could never understand, might be destroyed. It's not annihilation. The sin nature was not annihilated. It was rendered inoperative or taken offline or taken out of commission. That's what that war is talking about. And then lastly, the body of sin is that all that the sin nature stands for, and our brother Hal called it the corpse of sin.

Pretty graphic. So there are definitions that we're going to see. These words are going to show up in the text as we go through it. So the plan here is to go through each of these verses and to show you in sort of diagram form the statements that are true about us and about Christ. Let's start off.

How shall we who died to sin still live in it? So here's talking about singular sin How are we who died to the sin nature still live in it? And you could say we were cut loose and the question is how do we how do we picture this? How we were cut loose from our sin nature, but it's still there and our brother Hal took a crack at that and I'll show you that at the last Or do you not know that all of us all believers including Paul Who have been baptized into Christ Jesus and have been baptized into his death.

So there's, and this is not, as I mentioned, this is not water baptism. So we've been baptized, or I like better, we, that's a really great job, you've been placed into, you've been immersed into, into Christ. So you're immersed into the person of Christ and his death. Into Christ himself and in his death. And so we now have this union with Christ, with the person of Christ and his death. Okay, so there's three statements there. We died to the sin nature. We are baptized into the person of Christ and His death.

If you're counting that as three, we've got 15 more to go. This is going to go fast. This hopefully is superior. If you do it the other way, anyway, it's a lot more reading. This is hopefully superior. I like it. The speaker always likes it, right? He wouldn't do it otherwise. Okay, so here we go. Verse 4.

We have been buried with Him. And how were we buried? It was through baptizing, through baptism, being placed into His death. So that, with a purpose that, as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, we too might walk, all the ones in dark blue there, having been buried, that's all the verbs there, have been buried, was raised, might walk, in this really cool word, in newness of life. Newness of life, just a beautiful, and that's really to walk in our new life in Christ. That's what it's all about. So this stair step thing is all to get to the end, to get us to walk in newness of life.

It couldn't be accomplished without this happening. So Paul's going through each of these verses and explaining why it's critical for us to realize what's happened to us. Okay, let's go on here. I just want to expand on newness of life a little bit. So we see it's God's desire for us to walk on our new life in Christ. But it's conditioned or based upon our being buried with Him and raised with Him.

So verses 5 and 6, which come next, are going to give us more detail about how that was accomplished. And you'll notice that this is kind of a repeat. I underline all the we's. So the we have show us what the believer possesses. They're his in Christ. That's what the believer has. Okay, so now we're going to five.

So what happens in these verses which is no great mystery. If you look carefully at scripture you'll see that many times You'll have a capital, the sentence will start, and it will go over several verses, and that's the case here. This sentence starts in verse 5, and it actually continues on past this, but it goes, there are connectives between each part of the verse, and then on to the next verse. So I tried to include those as we go through here. So let's start off.

The first part is, for if, and if is what's called a first class condition, it's sense or Based upon that, we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death. So you say to yourself, it sounds awful familiar, and it is, because he just repeated, he restates this idea of being placed into Christ's death, but he uses a different word this time. There's more information there.

You become united with Him in the likeness of His death. And then I, certainly it's a kind of connective, We've been united with him like certainly we shall also be and by implication you could be united with him in the likeness of this resurrection So and that's a restatement also We said the fact that we've been placed in his resurrection So we've been we've been placed into his resurrection or united in that and also in his death So now there's a connective to the rest of the verse. We're going to see that come up here and So we start with the last part of verse five, which is this, we shall also be united with him in the likeness of his resurrection. And now we're going to connect it to verse six, since, that's implied, knowing this, that our old self, or old man, was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with.

Just a crucial verse, verse six is just crucial. The idea we were put to death the old the old man was put to death or crucified with him In order that is that it was a purpose that our body of sin that corpse of sin if you will Might be done away with Better render an eye idle take an offline like if you have a stick, you know if you had a six-shift car Which there aren't very many left, you know, you could put it in idle, right?

And it wasn't in any gear It would do you know if you were going a hundred miles an hour. It would probably slow down after a while, but So you know it's it's not you're disengaged, so that's what that's what it's about. He's disengaged our sin nature So that there was a purpose in doing that We would no longer be slaves to the sin nature, so I have a story here Why not I have a confession to make we watch YouTube a lot we were for YouTube and And there's good things, like anything else in this world, there's good things on YouTube and there's bad things on YouTube. It depends on what you look for.

So we came across this gentleman named, I forgot his last name, buddy. Titus Morris. He's a believer. He comes out of the Amish. He kind of dressed kind of a sloppy Amish. That's my take on it. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Titus. I'm sorry, Titus. Anyway, he's an interesting guy.

He lives on five acres in Kentucky. He's a believer. He has a YouTube channel. He doesn't have a whole lot of income. He borrowed money to buy his property from his dad. He lives by himself. Because of YouTube, he has a He has a gal that's staying with his family that may become his wife at some point. She didn't appear on YouTube.

But anyway, he talks about his Christian life. He gives his testimony. In his testimony, he talks about his struggle with sin. I'm listening. Wow, this is a guy. He's not well-schooled in the Scriptures. He knows his Scriptures pretty well. But he hasn't apparently read Romans 6. But he describes something that happened to him. He's struggling with sin. He has pornography as an issue and other things that are an issue in his life. And this guy interviews him and says, you're such a godly man. You have problems with that? Like, how could any godly man ever have a problem with that? Well, we'd have to look at the news to tell you that, but anyway.

So, he says, yeah, and he's a farmer, so to speak, so he says, yeah, I got this, there's this big root that was in the ground, and every year I go over it, and I just chop the top off, and he said, but last year, I went through with my tractor, and I got the root out, and I pulled the root out.

And he says, you know, that's what's happened to me in my Christian life. I got the root of sin out of my life. I thought, hmm. And he testified that that helped him, He says, I still have problems, but I got the root of sin out. I said, hmm, he's got the right idea. And he gave credit to Christ. The Lord did that in my life. Well, you got the right idea. You just haven't read the right chapter to tell you the rest of the story. In his mind, I got the root of sin out.

Well, this is telling us, right? We've crucified We're no longer slaves to that. He's talking about being slaves to his sin nature. He didn't say that word. So it's just kind of interesting how you look at that through the lens of Scripture and say, well, man has that. Even believers who aren't schooled, they have the idea of being freed from sin.

Hopefully that wasn't too much of a diversion anyway. Hopefully that was helpful. It's just kind of interesting. Back to the text here. Okay, so now we're going to see that this verse connects with the next verse. So basically, so that we would no longer be freed from the sin nature. So we would be freed from the sin nature. We wouldn't be slaves to the sin nature, but be freed from it. Okay, so now we connect to verse 7. Knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be done away with. So that we no longer serve sin. Four, there's the connective in verse seven.

For he who died is freed from sin. Actually, I was going to tell the story here. I should have told it here, but never mind. The believer, and this is what's wonderful is, this is what our brother Titus needs to understand. He is permanently freed from that sinful, we are permanently freed from that sin nature. And that's what the Lord wants us to know. We're permanently freed from that sin nature. Yes, we can return to it, but we've been freed from it. We've been permanently free from our sin nature. That's a wonderful news. Okay, now to verse 9. We believe, notice Paul saying we believe. This is something that he believes and we're to believe.

We believe that we shall also live with him if or since we have died with him. We will live with Him since we've died with Him. So important, death and separation, all about separating ourselves from the sin nature. We will live with Him since we've died with Him. We are eternally secure in Him. And this personal nature of us being, not only having our sins on the cross, but ourselves on the cross with Him.

Just a beautiful picture. Another connective, knowing that, So we start with the last part of verse 8, knowing we believe that we shall also live with him. And just for sake of understanding, the sentence here starts with now and ends with him. So in there we have like a main clause, subject and verb, and everything comes off of that clause and that's what we believe that we shall live with him is.

So here's what modifies that, now the connection, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Death no longer is master over Him. Just a marvelous thing. So think about it. We've been united or placed into Christ. If this is what has happened to Christ, this is information for us, right? Since we're in union with Him, sin no longer now has mastery over Christ. Or death has no longer had its master over us. Marvelous news. Marvelous, wonderful news. Then on to verse 10.

For the death that he died, he died to the sin, once for all, the sin nature, but the life that he lives, he lives to God. So you could say Christ died to the sin nature for all believers. That summarizes the top line. Christ lives his life to God, the Father.

And it actually isn't any, it seems remarkable, but it's actually not. Think about Christ's own words so many times in the Gospels. He says, I only do what I see the Father doing. I do nothing else. He said that, I don't know, 20, 30, a lot of times. He made that point over and over again.

They are they are in you know the father and son are one essence the three persons, but they're the same essence So he they don't do things outside of one another they don't think outside one another and that's actually the picture he has for us We're not to think outside of who we are in Christ. That's where that's who we are That's what we're about and that's what that's what he's saying there, and we're going to see a marvelous next week We get to verse 11 next week. We're going to see a marvelous connection between verse 10 and verse 11, which we'll see next week. Okay, so now for the pictures and Hal's pictures and a few other things. So here's Hal's kind of summary of what we just talked about.

The believer has been baptized or immersed or placed in union into Christ and never taken out. He also has been baptized, immersed, identified in the work of Christ. I was kind of thinking about this. We talk about often that the unbeliever is to believe in the person and the work of Christ to be saved, right? Well, it's interesting is that this is the same kind of set of things. As a believer, we are to realize that we have been united with, or placed in union with, the person of Christ and the work of Christ.

Kind of really cool. It exactly kind of transfers over. It changes. It doesn't change. It does not change. Into His death, when Christ died, we died. When He was buried, we were buried. When He was raised, we were raised. We have this newness of life, this new and quality life. We have Christ's very life.

And that's what Galatians 2.20 says, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and so on. Our old man was crucified or put to death. We are now separated from him. So how to show that? So I reused one of Hal's pictures. So I had to do some. I didn't have the original PowerPoint. So I had to do some hygiene, so I did it by putting pieces of you know anyway Here's my attempt at it so here.

We have the believers on one side And we have the Senate when we know that when we come to faith in Christ He addresses our sins the sins of the world were placed on him on the cross so here's what happened as we realize our baptism identification with Christ and We were co-buried.

That was in verse 4. We were co-crucified. And we haven't talked about this, but our sin nature was condemned. We'll see that down the road here in Romans 8, 3. We were co-risen. We're now in this living union with Christ. And we have this, we have Christ's nature. And then eventually, we haven't, this is in, not in Romans, but other places. And now here's some characteristics of the believer. Christ in you and you in Christ, your new creation. And then lastly, we're co-seated with Him, with the risen Christ. So here's a pictorial of Romans 6, 1-10. Co-buried, co-crucified, co-risen, co-seated.

So that's kind of part one. So part two is talking about our sin nature here. Old man our old man and body of sin is rendered inoperative are taken offline put in idle It's still there We are free from our sin nature We need not be slaves to our sin nature We are free free to live live with Christ moment by moment so so how to picture that so our brother to how many years ago back in the This is back in 2000, actually way before that, maybe 10 years before that. When he was teaching Romans 6, he put some pictures together and they become kind of traditions at Holly Hills.

So here we are, the first one, the unbeliever. So what Hal has done here is he wants to show that the believer only has his sin nature, his Adamic nature, and he's connected to that. There's a, quote the term, if you're an engineer, rather than saying you have a switch or something, you have a wire, a hard wire, that probably means nothing to some people, but anyway, you have a connection, a direct connection between who you are, in this case he shows the soul, and the sin nature.

So, with that in place, all men sinned in Adam and have a sin nature. All men are slaves to their sin nature. So the unregenerate man, the man outside of Christ, this is how he operates. He operates whether good or bad, whether he does good deeds, what he considers good deeds, he operates that way through his sin nature.

But the believer, things have changed. The believer now has Christ's life and he has the ability So this picture attempts to depict being separated. So he shows this idea of abiding. We're told to abide in Christ. So I can abide in Christ or I can abide in my sin nature. So you could say the believers are now separated from their sin nature and they can abide in Christ or their sin nature. to think of this you think okay Roger told me this I got a sin nature I got a Christ nature I'm gonna keep tabs my little but every time I'll start marking it off I'm gonna decide where am I at now I'll be happy when I'm abiding in Christ I'll be sad when I'm in my sin nature well you're gonna go nuts pretty quick and scripture doesn't want you to do that right what does it tell you it says abide with me walk with me hang out with me Set your mind on things above. The focus of scripture, almost all the time, is your focus is on Christ. When you do sin, when you do go over and hang out in your sin nature, abide in your sin nature, what do you do? You go to 1 John 1, 9, right? You confess your sins. Or, better, we're going to find out, we're going to find out when we go to Romans 6, 11, we said, Lord, I see that temptation.

I'm dead to that. And you don't have to go there. You don't have to go down the path. So anyway, that's just some caveats on that. And there's a lot more to be said about abiding in Christ and abiding with the Lord. But these pictures have helped me. Some people, it hasn't helped as much, but hopefully they'll be helpful to you.

So let's close. We thank you, Father. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior. Thank you for your marvelous word. And thank you how precise you are, how loving you are. to not only pay for our sins, but to take us personally with you to the cross, to take care of our nature from Adam, the head that we had to be separated from to be in fellowship with you. We ask it in your son's name. Amen.