Christ Life In You Rom 6:1-10 We Have Died with Christ

We know that Jim's talking about these verses. I could tell you my story about these verses too. I think I might probably as well. You come in the morning that, I'm glad you're here. I'm glad we have lots of folks this morning. I would venture to say that what Jim just read, many people say, what's all this death? What's all this dying? What's going on here? It sounds like, you know, it really sounds almost incomprehensible. And Jim was very accurate about that. It is very, can be very incomprehensible. So, Lord willing, if we can just make a small inroad today, I'll be excited. If you only take away, you know, one or two points, I'll be excited. Not to say that many of you have been exposed to this for years.

So I have the privilege of talking about the verses 8 through 10, but as it turns out, verses 8 through 10, you probably didn't catch it, but it's actually a review of 1 through 7. But I wanted to start off with this. This is 6 verse 8a. It just makes the statement, we have died with Christ.

What if you told that, what if you went, I don't know. To me, that's an incredible statement, because your first question, and I have six questions. The first question is, how is this possible? You know, God is not a liar, he doesn't lie. He says we have died with Christ. So he got some options here, right? You say, well, this is just a story. It sounds like a good story. It sounds like it's nice we died with Christ. Or better, maybe you've heard the idea that I'm dying to Christ daily in my Christian life. Oh, the trouble I've seen. I'm dying daily. Oh, woe is me. So I'm going to die. That's how I'm going to die. No, he doesn't say that. He says, we have died. It's, what's it called, the Aristents? It's an event. It's at the cross. Every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross with him.

I mean, I find that incredible. I'm not sure about you, I find that incredible. And you say, why don't, and I have other questions, you know, how can that be? So we, you know, in our human minds, Macaulay says there's no time between the believer and the cross. that time has been collapsed. In God's sight, time doesn't exist. So he sees every believer on the cross with Christ.

And there's a reason why we have to be there. And what I thought was, we have such a, I'll take myself as an example, we have such a under, Small view of God a small view of what Christ did we say? Oh, yeah Christ he paid for all my sins isn't that wonderful I can sin, and I know Christ has paid for it. I'm good. I'll go to heaven, but it's so much more than that There's so much more to it if he just paid for your sins That's only the beginning. There's so much more. There's another thing that isn't talked about. What about that nature that we all know we have? Why do Christians continue to sin? Shouldn't we have stopped sinning a long time ago? It doesn't happen. So let's go on.

So the possibility, I'll give you a couple of my thoughts. You can think of, and I mentioned it, God sees us on the cross with Christ, and it's a spiritual event, obviously. I didn't go to the cross physically, but spiritually I have been there with the Savior, and for a very important reason. Next question is, who is this talking about? I've already kind of said that it talks about every single believer in the Lord Jesus Christ died with Christ on the cross.

Thirdly, why was it necessary? Verses 1 through 10 are telling us about why it's so important that we died on the cross with Christ. If that didn't happen, we would be slaves to sin. We'd have no choice but to follow our sin nature. Thirdly, and this is kind of like, what action do I have to take on my part?

Well, if you're a believer, you've already taken that action. You already have trusted in your Savior. And this is information that is sorely undertaught, sorely understood, and sorely believed. But it is so important. And the fifth question is, what if I don't believe it? Or maybe better, and then it kind of goes along with that, Why haven't I heard much about this?

I venture to say if you're new to Holly Hills or not too much involved with our ministry here, you probably haven't heard too much about dying with Christ. you know, I don't like show of hands. Maybe you have asked for a show of hands. But I won't do that. You know, and I don't like show of hand things. You know, some you shouldn't do that. Anyway, it's it's super important. It's very important. So let's see why is it important. So let's go on.

So to show why it's And I borrowed the pictures I have from our communion slides. Our brother Vern Peterman developed a bunch of communion slides and he had all these neat pictures of Christ on the cross, of what people think Christ looked like on the cross. probably not nearly, it's a lot more graphic than this and a lot more awful looking than what is shown here.

But anyway, so we have Christ, we die with Christ, versus Christ dying for us. And that's one of the key things you need to keep in your head. There's two aspects going on here. We're dying with Christ for a reason, God had a reason for us dying with Christ, and then Christ dying for us is much better understood, right? If I tell you to share your faith with somebody, you'll share, well, Christ died for me. And you'll repeat, hopefully the gospel, you'll give the gospel out, you'll say, this is what happened, I'm gonna show it shortly here. You'll explain to a person why Christ died for them. So that's why I wanna show why both are necessary. And hopefully you see they're two different things, right? They're not the same thing. Okay, let's go on. Okay, but first I'm gonna take a little digression.

I wanna point out the, the dual problem that God had to solve. When God and eternity passed, God the Father and God the Son had an agreement. They met what's called the Eternal Covenant. And God the Son said, I will lay down my life for the sins of the world. And the Father said, I will raise him up in the third day. Well, they had two problems to solve. So let's talk about those two problems. So I have my favorite tree here, computer-generated tree. And on this tree, we have some fruit.

So the fruit's going to represent man's sins, plural. Lots of sins out there, right? And these are the result of his internal fallen nature from Adam. And this is what Christ When I say Christ died for us, He died for those sins. Those sins, plural, right? He died, Scripture says, the most amazing thing, He died for every single sin, past, present, and future, that every human being will ever commit. Or haven't committed them yet, He died for them in advance of that. It's the most incredible thing ever. So every, the worst person, all those sins, everything, He paid for every single one of those. But He couldn't stop there.

He had to go to the root of the problem, because you don't sin without a nature that causes you to sin. We call it the sin nature. You could call it, Scripture calls it the fallen nature. It calls them Adam's nature, the old nature, the old man. There's some slight differences there, but for talking purposes, that's the root of our problem. So that's what I'm talking about when we say Christ died with us. He's dying to address this root problem, the root problem of our sin nature. And here again, undertaught, terribly undertaught in our churches, just terribly.

It's a crime. I don't know. Anyway. If you don't look at God's answer for the root problem, you won't understand the total package. You have to see what has God done about the Adamic nature in every believer. It's still there. I'm gonna show you charts on that as well. Okay, now that you see, we got two problems. In fact, we're gonna have a cool song we're gonna sing at the end.

This gentleman called Augusta Topley. He was a pastor in England. and he wrote this song in 1763, and he understood this. He understood we had two problems, and he wrote this song, and one of the stanzas has, be of sin the double cure. He recognized that God needed to have, quote, a double cure, if you will, and that's what he calls it, to attack the sin issue.

Okay, let's carry on here. So now let's get back to Christ. So now we're going to talk first about Christ dying for us. This should be easy, right? This is Christianity 101. This is the Gospel, right? Christ dying for us is the message of the Gospel. And maybe you haven't actually heard the Gospel. Maybe people talk about the Gospel. Most people here have heard about the Gospel. Hopefully you've heard, you know, the complete version. Maybe you've heard... Anyway, let's just do it. There are two aspects to that. The gospel is about who Jesus Christ is. He's very God and very man, and what he accomplished on the cross. And we see a very good delineation of that in 1 Corinthians 15. So let's go look at that.

But first of all, I want to caution. You know, they have like little caution signs, caution, caution, caution, don't do this. I would say in talking with people, and maybe you've had the same experience, the number one thing they come out with first is, Well, I'm a good person. I do good things. And I don't doubt that they don't do humanly good things.

But that's, unfortunately, that's not what God desires that we know. He wants to have a relationship with us. So don't try to do good things to please God. Please, don't try to do good things. And don't try to live your Christian life doing good things. It's just not the way, it doesn't please God. First of all, okay, so the gospel message is, first of all, he took my place. He was my substitute. He died for me. He was buried for me to prove he was dead. And he rose on the third day to prove that his sacrifice was sufficient.

There's actually four verbs. He died, he buried, he rose. There's actually a fourth one. And he was seen by men. But that's the heart of the gospel. And I just love this verse. Mike's coming to it. We just touched on it a little bit on Wednesday night. John 5, 24. So that's the gospel message. That's Christ dying for us. But there's a level deeper I want to go. So let's look at that.

So upon believing the facts of the gospel, you know, in your Christian life, I hope you've experienced where you start out, you come to know who Christ is, you come to know about him, but then you want to know more. And as you progress, you understand more and more about him. And this is kind of, once you've been saved, you understand this. And you can say these things. This is from the three M's, Merriam, Malloy, and Macaulay. Okay, here we go.

We can say we've been saved from the penalty of sin. The penalty of sin is separation from God. We've been saved from the penalty of sin. Christ died for me. Christ is my substitute. Christ is a propitiation or satisfaction for my sins. Notice this is sins plural. Christ's payment for sins is the issue.

It was an event. It's the event of the cross. That's why it's not this idea of, you know, you having some feeling. It's an event which you were looking to, the event of the cross where Christ died for the sins of the world. God did it for me. It's called justification. And there's a verse that talks about that. I'll just read that to you here.

It says, Romans 5.4 says, but to the one who does not work, right off the bat, don't work, but to the one who does not work, but believes him who justifies the ungodly, God has credited this as righteousness.

Okay, by the three M's. Okay, let's carry on. So now, We looked about Christ dying for our sins or for us. Now let's switch over. This is the main topic of the rest of the presentation. We have died with Christ. So this is sort of like, and with all of us and with me, I think with Jim, we don't really understand this. It seems like it's still some time past our salvation experience, but it doesn't have to be that way. So let's go on. So Christ dying with us. I'm being saved from the power of sin. I died with Christ. I'm separated from my sin nature, my Adamic nature. Christ is my life.

It's a process, not an event, it's an ongoing process, day by day. This process will continue in the believer until he goes to glory or we're raptured or whatever. This is the process of the entire Christian life. That's why it's so important to know this process. If you don't understand what God's doing, then it makes it very difficult to live the Christian life. God is now dealing with the sin nature. It's called sanctification, that big 64. I never liked that word. I'm not sure I still like it, but anyway, it's there.

Anyway, and it's Romans, just what we're studying, Romans 6, 1 through 10. And this is from the 3Ms as well. At least a good part of this is from that. Okay, so let's get into it here. So let's look at, I just want to back up a second. Mike did this when he taught, either last time or time before. But this is kind of an overview. This is Wiest's overview, six through eight. So we start off with. mechanics of the believer's life is talked about in chapter six.

So he's going to look at it from a kind of mechanical view. He was kind of, in reading his writings, Miles and Mike and I have been reading a lot of his writing, he used a lot of mechanical illustrations. So this is his kind of take on it. Maybe if you don't like mechanical things, maybe if you're a computer nerd, you'd have something else in here. But anyway, he has mechanics in here.

So the mechanics of the believer's life This is God's inner working in the believer's life. This is how God's working in the believer's life. All of chapter 6 is going to talk about how God is working in our lives. And then another point is, in that working, we see that He was our substitute. He paid for our sins, plural. He also separated us from our sin nature and has given us His very life. We're going to see that. Mike has taught a good part of that already. We're going to see it again. So I'm going to jump to Chapter 8. Chapter 8 is what's called the dynamics of the Christian life.

This is how the life is to operate, and it operates by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Remember when Christ left and he said, I'll send to you another of the same kind, another as myself, he'll be God, and he will show you everything that I taught. The Holy Spirit is to show us the things of Christ. He is the Spirit of God working in every believer's life. And at least as he is the dynamic, the Holy Spirit is the dynamic of the Christian life. He's the source of power in the Christian life. And he calls him the operator. I don't know, not my favorite term, but anyway, he's the operator of the spiritual life, machinery, and the inner being of the believer. And then thirdly, the monkey wrench. Mechanical illustration, again, if you're a mechanic, you know, you throw a monkey wrench in there, right? And, you know, it's going to cause problems. So it's a monkey wrench to the believer's life.

And we're going to see that sometime here in the future. And actually, what that turns out to be is falling back to relying upon ourselves to say, Well, God, I see that you've done all these, you've paid for my sins, I see all these wonderful things, but you know, I think I can do it. When our kids were growing up, I'm not sure which of our children, maybe it wasn't our children. Anyway, have you heard the expression from a little tiny child, mind do it? He had to speak good English.

Mind do it, Daddy. Mind do it, Mommy. He's basically saying, I want to do it. I don't like what you're doing, I'll do it. Get out of my way, I want to do it. Mind do it is what, I think I already said that. Somebody will correct me later. Anyway, so you don't want to be the mind do it variety. You want to have God do it. And you want to do it in your relationship with him. And that's the important point. So Weiss' statement here is that self-reliance or the self-life dropped into the workings of the Holy Spirit, working Christ through you, will stop it working. It prevents the Holy Spirit from giving the believer victory over his sinful nature.

All right. So now, I just want to review a couple charts here, what Mike taught the last couple weeks. So here we go. Verses 1 and 2 just come in a one-line statement, verses 1 and talk about we're not to live under the control of the sinful nature. You know what you're going to see in Romans 1 through 10? Paul makes statements, and he seems like he repeats himself in different ways to reinforce this point.

He'll come back again and again, so we come over these points again and again and again. It all has to do with the sin nature. How do we control this Adamic nature that we have, every believer has, how is God going to do that? How will He control the sin nature? So the first statement in 1-2 is, we're not to live under the control of the sinful nature. And then 3-7, just roughly speaking, is our identification with Christ, or our union with Christ, and how is that made possible?

So Weiss kind of summarized that. He says the above verses, he likes, he has this surgical operation that God performs in the sinner's life, namely the separation of the believer from his sinful nature. So now, here's a short, here's a one short review of what Mike taught for two weeks. This is like one of these, can you do it in two sentences or one sentence? Anyways, here's my shot at it. If you don't like it, that's okay too, but hopefully it's good. So I'm going to call this the Roman Six Road to the Seven. Here we go.

It starts off, we died to the sin nature. All these statements are almost, many of them are errors, they're a fact, they're statements of fact that God is making. We died to the sin nature. We have been baptized or placed into Christ. Don't think of water. When you're in chapter six, don't ever think of water. Let water go someplace else. This is talking about being placed into, being identified with Christ. And it has three aspects. We are placed into his death. When Christ died, we died. When Christ was buried, we were buried. When Christ was resurrected, we were resurrected. Just think about that. Just think about the, isn't it incredible that God has paid for the sins of the entire world? Every single one. But in addition to that, every believer is with Christ too.

This is a whole nother level. We're with Christ in his death, in his burial, in his resurrection. I mean, it took that, Christ had to be that involved with the believer for us to live the Christian life. It's just, it's so underappreciated. And here's the reason. So we might walk in newness of life, and that newness of life is Christ's life, and that's God's plan. He desires that his children walk in this newness of life, walk in Christ's life, not our life, but his life, Christ's life.

And then he goes on to say, our old man was crucified. And that's the idea, to be put to death, put to death on a cross. It took that action, put to death, crucifying the old man, that old Adamic man, with a purpose. that our body of sin, now here's where we get into, Jim touched on this briefly. If you read the King James here, you'll see it says, our body of sin was destroyed. New American Standard says, our body of sin was done away with.

And then we have many other translations, but they never really get to the core. This is katergaos in the Greek. It's a word that can be taken, I chose offline, taken offline, because I'm gonna have an illustration using that. Taken offline, put in idle, taken out of gear. And the point is that it's still with us. So whatever picture you have of this sin nature, it's still with you. It's been disengaged, taken offline, but it's still there kind of waiting in the wings, so to speak.

So how do we view that? How do we see that? I'm going to give you a chance to... And the result of that, because of this putting to death, crucifying the old man, we've taken the sin nature offline. The result of that is that we're free. We're free from this sin nature. We don't have to listen to it. We need not be slaves to sin. So that's a beautiful, two through seven, that's a beautiful message there.

But I want to hone in on this taken offline. How to understand, I have a sin nature, it's kind of waiting in the wings. How does that work? What's the dynamic? How can I view that? So I've taken my shot at this. I'm gonna call this our sin nature online or offline. Okay, here we go. So let's start off with an example.

OK, so how many have a cell phone? How many have a laptop? And you probably see the traffic cameras. You go on your computer, and there's a traffic camera looking at the traffic at x, y, and z. All these are connected to the internet or the World Wide Web, whatever you want to call it. They're connected to it, but, right? They can be taken offline, right? If you fly in an airplane, what's the first thing, what's the stewardess says, everybody put your cell phones in airplane mode, right? You disconnect from the internet, but then, of course, the airlines have gotten smart. You connect to their internet in the phone, and they charge you for doing that, which I think was kind of clever, but never mind.

It's another story. But so, the idea here is that you can go, you can go, whoops, let me come back here a second. Anyway, I got, here, let me go back. So you can be online or offline, online, offline. Okay, so the cell phone's still there, the laptop's still there, the traffic camera's still there. So that's my example here in our world.

So let's move over to the unbeliever's life. So the unbeliever's life, sadly, he's connected, he is always connected to his sin nature. And that's a pretty, and he's a slave to sin. But because he hasn't come to trust Christ, he doesn't realize that. He needs to understand that, but that's his place. And it's not because I say that. I'm not trying to be the bad guy saying that. That's what all the scripture from Genesis to Revelation document the fact that man has a fallen nature and that he is tied to that fallen nature and he's a slave to that fallen nature.

And that's why Christ had to go to the cross. So let's get to the believer's life. The believer, is because Christ, because we died with Christ on the cross, we stand in the state, we are free, we are free from the sin nature. But, unfortunately, we can reconnect. But we can go, we can reconnect ourselves, go back online, so to speak. And that's the Christian life. Sometimes we're, oops, you know, we're disconnected, Hopefully we're walking with the Lord then, and then we're connected back and we can go back online to the sin nature.

And what we're gonna see next week, he's given us his remedy or his approach. Here's what we're to do. We're to consider or reckon yourselves to be dead or separated from the sin nature, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. That's his prescription. That's his prescription for the Christian life. And there's many other verses that speak like that, but in this passage, in this context, that's what he's telling us. Consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God. And alive to God, I'm beginning to learn, that's the idea that we now have his life. We're alive to God because we have the very life of Christ.

Okay, so let's go on. So finally, today's verses. That was all background. All right? This will be short. Oh, good, good, good. We'll have time for lunch. I'm joking. OK, here we go. Today's verses. Now, like I said before, these kind of, you're going to say, Roger, these verses say somewhat the same thing we just talked about. And they do.

Now, if, it can be sense, if or since we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. Notice this one sentence, knowing that, having been raised from the dead, no, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again, death no longer is master over him. And then 10 kind of summarizes it, for the death that he died, he died to the sin, once for all, the life that he lives, he lives to God. So you can see here, Weiss points out here that he, in these verses, he shows us that God has introduced his Son, the Lord Jesus, into the equation. He talked about separating this and that in 1 through 7, but now he says, but Christ was the key aspect of that.

Christ himself is now into the very being. He's our very life, into the believer's life. Okay, so let's go into the verses here. It won't be too bad here. This won't hurt. You're allowed to, you know, I was listening to you, you're allowed to think in church. Don't leave your brains at home. Don't leave your brains next to your computer or next to your cell phone. Bring your brain to church. Okay, so we learn from this, this is actually the first half of one sentence.

Now, if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. We believe is the main subject and verb of this sentence. So we believe, the present tense, continuous action, we believe, and taking it as sense, sense, We believe, since we have died with Christ, that have been on the cross. So he actually restates something we learned earlier. We learned earlier in 6.3 that all have been baptized into Christ Jesus' death. So we have one piece of scripture telling us we've been baptized or placed into Christ. This scripture says we died with Christ.

Very, to my mind, very similar ideas. Therefore, when Christ died, we died, okay? So we believe that we have died with Christ, that we shall also live with him. So we believe we have died with him, and that's a logical conclusion, right? We died with him, then we're gonna live with him. And then Romans 6 was a very similar thing. When Christ was raised from the dead, we were raised.

The believer's new life imparted to him at the moment of being a believer in Christ is Christ's life. And actually, Weiss brings it across, I like this last part, he says, we will live by means of him, by means of the Lord Jesus. That's how the Christian is to not live by his means, he's to live by Christ's means. And as the Holy Spirit is involved in our life, we're to live by means of Christ, by the means of Christ, or means of the Holy Spirit. Okay, so the second half of the verse is, it actually modifies, we believe, We believe, now we have two aspects it's going to point out here.

Knowing that we have been raised from the dead, as Christ was raised from the dead, is never to die again. That's point one. Christ has been raised from the dead and he's never to die again. And his death was out from among the dead ones. Christ is never to die again.

Second point is that death no longer is master over him. Remember those several verses that talk about how he conquered death? Christ has conquered death. Well, the wonderful news is since Christ has conquered death and we are in Christ, we have conquered death as well. Death is no longer master over Christ, therefore death is no longer master over believers.

So you begin to see how critical it was for Christ to go to the cross and us to be there with him for God to accomplish his purpose. Okay, so that's verse nine. Verse 10, so it looks back to what, see part of verse nine, death no longer is master over him for or because the death that he died It's a fact. It's an event on the cross, a factual reality.

Christ did it. Remember, he said men didn't kill him. He said he gave up his spirit. Christ gave up his spirit. The death that he died, he died to the sin, the sin nature once for all. Christ died to the sin nature for all believers. And another related verse that we're going to cover a long time from now In addition to that, Paul writes, he condemned the sin nature in the flesh.

It was condemned. We were separated from it, and he condemned it. And then Romans 6, we saw earlier, he cut us loose. He took it offline, as we saw in the example. He broke our union with it. And the last part, and I almost got too far ahead to get my health, hit myself here, okay, last part.

But in contrast, so we have the death part, we died to be separated from our sin nature, but the wonderful part is, the contrast to that is, but the life that he lives, this is Christ's life, but we're gonna see that since it's Christ's life, that's to be our life. The life that he lives, speaking of Christ, Christ is living that life, He's continual. He's eternal. It's factual. He is, by very definition, life, right? Christ is life. He's the I Am. He's always, ever-present. He's the true life.

The life that he lives, he lives, it's interesting, Christ said, I never do anything that I don't see the Father doing. He never, he and the Father were totally in sync, if you will. They never did anything outside of each other, and that's, in a sense, the way the believer is to be with the Lord Jesus, too, with God, basically, the same way. He lives to God. This is how Christ is continually living. He is totally occupied with God. That's his life. He's totally occupied with glorifying God.

And much of these comments are from her brother, Hal. OK, so now let's get down to the, here's my final thought. I scrunched my guy down. You guys in my Sunday school class, Andrew has this big, long picture. You get to see the whole person. I got scrunching this guy down. Actually, it's a lady, I think. I scrunched her down. You can hardly see her. She's a midget now, but you can't see her anymore. But anyway, OK, that's a side point. Anyway, OK, so Wiest has these final points.

Romans 6.10, he says, speaks to the relationship between Christ to the sinful nature of individuals. Here again, we're going to just review what we said. Our Lord's death not only paid the penalty of human sin, Christ dying for us, but also the Lord's death was used of God to break the power of the indwelling sinful nature of the believer. We died with Christ, Okay, so here's, I kind of alluded to this already.

There's a songwriter, he had two last, in verse one, the two last stanzas, the two last verses, lines, there we go, are as follows in Rock of Ages. It says, be of sin the double cure, save from wrath the penalty of sin, and make me pure, save from the power of sin.

And I have a chart on this. So here's a picture of Mr. Toplay, Augusta. And we're going to sing this, a couple verses after I finish. So it's, Rock of Ages, cleft for me, let me hide myself in thee. Let the water and the blood from thy wounded side which flowed be of sin. Here we are.

He recognized that. 1763, we have no excuse. 1763, and actually I was reading about, he kind of came up in the holiness movement, and he moved away from that. Interesting, he was, he really, he matured, and he learned about this somehow, I don't know. It's not before the Brethren, I don't, it's amazing.

Anyway, save from wrath a double cure, save from wrath and make me pure. And there's an alternate reading, which we're going to sing, cleanse me from its guilt and power. And just one last point, we kind of found this, this is, I don't know, partly AI, partly we edited a little bit, but anyway, this is what people say about the song. This hymn is a powerful expression of Christian salvation, highlighting that only Christ can provide the double cure for sin, saving from its guilt and power. All right, hopefully that was enlightening.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior. Thank you for the double cure, Lord, something that we probably didn't realize we even needed. But we thank you that you didn't leave us without taking care of both the nature to sin, our sin nature, and our sins. You took care of both of those on the cross. We thank you for that. We ask it in your Son's name, amen.