Christ Life In Us Romans 6:23. The Free Gift from God

Well, we come to a very amazing verse here this morning, a very well-known verse, and brief, short, but incredibly packed. We'll find out why that is. So let's open with a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, as we approach your word this morning, we're just reminded that your word is so precious, so valuable, and so worth our time to study, not so that we can cram our heads with information, but so that we can know you. And so, Lord, we pray that this morning you would just open our eyes to see what it is that you have for us here this morning. and that you would speak to us through your word, through your written word that's for us. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

So, a very well-known verse, and Tim, thanks for the songs you picked this morning. I knew in advance Tim's been practicing them all week, but I He asked, well, maybe he knew a verse we were on this week, but I think we discussed it briefly. I said, yeah, I'm doing Romans 6, 23, and then he goes to the hymn book, and he does his thing and goes searching and playing through. Tim loves to play the hymn book front to back and just playing through. And now he's got some new hymn books here, and there's some great new songs in them.

And two of those songs this morning I've never sung before, and I loved them. Really really neat things in there and sometimes it's it's amazing that to you know hear the worst these songs and realize how we've been reading the same Bible for you know I'm talking about these believers, you know, I didn't look at the dates in these songs here But you know, we're talking.

Oh, yeah, 1840 19. No, these are old. These are old words and and the same message, right, as what we're going to be looking at this morning. So, some neat things there. Christ liveth in me. And the last, that song, Christ liveth in me, the last line of the refrain, oh, what a salvation this, that Christ liveth in me. That really summarizes everything that I'm going to be talking about this morning.

Because Romans 6.23 is an interesting verse. We often hear it in the context of evangelism. And I'm not going to be too critical of that, because I think the principle that we see there, the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life, that principle applies in terms of evangelism, in terms of the loss. accepting Christ, coming to salvation, receiving the gift of life, going from death in trespasses and sins to life in Christ Jesus. But what's interesting is that this verse does not come in that kind of context.

This is about the salvation that God has provided to believers. to you and I, if we put our faith in Jesus Christ, that's you, you're a child of God, you're a believer, a Christian, then this verse applies to you. This is about the salvation that you have as a believer, and you might ask, do Christians need to be saved? And the answer is yes. A justified, born-again Christian believer needs to be saved, needs salvation. And that might sound strange, but as believers, I think it's quite true that we desperately need this salvation.

So if you came this morning thinking, oh, Romans 6.23, this verse isn't for me, well, think again. This is about God's salvation for you as a believer. Now, if you're not a believer, if you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ, and I know most of you, but not all of you, If you have never put your faith in Jesus Christ for salvation, then that is the first step. And that is something that is offered freely to you by God's grace, that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins and rose from the dead so that you could have eternal life. And if that's not something you've done, I encourage you to talk to one of us to make that decision.

But if you have, then there's some incredible truth in this verse for us this morning. So Paul gives us a clear contrast in this verse between death and eternal life. And as I said, though we often think of this as being applied to the unbeliever, in the context this is about the Christian walk. And we have to understand that, as a Christian, we can be walking in death or life. We have to understand that in order for this verse to make sense. We've got this contrast between death or life, and we need to understand that a born-again believer who is, we would say, positionally alive to God can be walking in life or death, conditionally, at any given moment.

You can look in chapter seven, Verses 9 through 11 if you've got your Bible open to Romans still we're gonna be flipping around in Romans a lot today But but look in in chapter 7 down at verses 9 through 11 And we see that this is exactly what Paul talks about in terms of the Christian life He says I once was alive apart from the law but when the commandment came sin became alive and I died and And this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me. For sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it, killed me." So Paul, as a believer there, is talking about this experience where, as a born-again believer, alive to God, he became dead. He existed in this, what he calls, a state of death.

And what Paul is saying here in 623 is that this state of death that the believer can be existing in is the wages of sin, or the result of walking as slaves of sin. And on the flip side, walking by faith in our death to sin and our new life in the Lord Jesus results in the gift of eternal life. And this is what we've been covering in Romans 6 for quite a while now. So this verse, taken in context, is about the condition of the believer, which depends entirely on how we respond to the truths of Romans 6. Either death or life. Bondage to the power of sin or salvation from its power.

This single verse, Romans 6.23, I believe summarizes everything up to this point in the whole book of Romans, the whole letter to the Romans. And we can kind of just break it down this way.

We can say that chapters 1 through 5 are the background for chapter 6. By the way, the things highlighted are the blanks on your handout if you want to do that, just if it helps you stay engaged. Chapters 1 through 5 give us the background for understanding Chapter 6. Chapter 6 is the core or the heart of Paul's message. This is really what he's been aiming at, and Chapter 6 is where he unfolds this. But he took five chapters to lay the groundwork for it.

And then what we have in 623 is the summary of all of that, which means that essentially 623 summarizes the whole letter up to this point. So very brief, but that's why I say it's very full, very compact. And it's important that we don't think of Romans 6 as additional information, something that Paul tacks on, like he taught, you know, through chapters 1 through 4, talking about justification, and now he's kind of saying, okay, and now I've got this additional piece of information for you. The truths that Paul presents in Romans 6 are the whole point. It's what he's been aiming at all along.

And really, chapter 6 is the message of salvation. for you as a Christian. And that's Paul's whole purpose in writing to the Roman Christians. And so I want to just show that textually here this morning. So I want you to flip back to chapter 1 of Romans. to find out and to really see that this is exactly what Paul has set up. Paul has been aiming at this salvation for you as a Christian, and chapter six is where he really opens up that truth. So it's not additional, it's really that the earlier chapters were building up to this and laying the foundation and the framework for understanding chapter six correctly. So we want to see Paul's purpose for writing the letter and how it fits together with this salvation that we're talking about.

So look at chapter 1, verse 11. Paul says, for I long to see you so that I may impart some spiritual gift to you that you may be established. And this is NASB. And let's talk about this a little bit. Because having studied this verse, especially this last week, I've shifted my interpretation a little bit. The word gift, and we'll just unpack this a little bit, the word gift in verse 11 here is our point of connection between here and 623.

The word there is charisma. You'll recognize, and of course we get an English word out of that, right? But you'll recognize that this is very similar to the Greek word for grace, right? This is based in the same word for grace, or charis. And the suffix ma, charis ma, indicates the result of something. So here we have the result of grace. And it's translated as gift. Now in 623 it's translated in NASB as free gift. And we talked about that in Galatians this morning.

You know, Bob was teaching us that that's a redundancy, to call it a free gift, but it's probably a necessary redundancy because, you know, for whatever reason, when it comes to theology, people forget that a gift is free. We understand it, you know, often, you know, well actually maybe not so much because Bob was talking about how we always want to repay a gift. You know, if we really think about a gift, it's not a gift if it's repaid. But anyhow, our word translated gift is this word charisma, or the result of grace, or we can say a grace gift.

And so that's where this 111 connects with what Paul is saying in 623. He's talking about a grace gift. In 1 Corinthians 12 and other places, this same word charisma is used to refer to spiritual gifts, right? Gifts that God gives to the body. We could see maybe ministries within the body or one believer the Holy Spirit uses to minister to others in the body and so forth. And so we have the idea of spiritual gifts. But the word charisma obviously isn't limited to spiritual gifts in that sense. It's anything that is the result of God's grace. So having studied this out, I don't think so much anymore that Paul's talking about sharing his spiritual gift with them. OK?

Though it would be an exercise of his spiritual gift if he came to them and taught, that would be an exercise of the gift. But what Paul is saying here in this verse, he's establishing his purpose for writing this whole letter. And I believe that he is saying that since I can't come to you in person to impart this gift to you, I'm choosing to write to you about it instead. It's kind of the idea. And so I believe that this, rather than being some spiritual gift, that this is the grace gift of God that Paul wants to instruct the Roman believers about.

And in the English, as soon as we attach the word spiritual gift together like that, we automatically think 1 Corinthians 12, spiritual gifts in the body. It really just has a gift that is sourced in God's Spirit, a gift from God. And so without taking time to unpack this too much more and get into the grammar, I would say this morning that a valid translation could be along these lines. For I long to see you that I may communicate to you a certain gift that is of the Spirit.

And that's Paul laying out his purpose for writing. So it's not just some gift, but a particular gift. And then notice that Paul has a certain expected result, that communicating to them about this gift has a result. And what is it? That, or to the end of that, you may be established. That's Paul's goal.

He knows that if he can communicate to them about this gift that God has for them, then they will be established in their faith. They'll be standing firm, we could say, as believers. And that's where we really begin to see there's something particular about this gift that Paul wants to communicate to them, because whatever it is, it's going to establish them or cause them to stand firm as believers. Now scan down in chapter one to verse 15.

Paul says, so for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome. Okay, and so because he couldn't come in person, he was eager to preach the gospel, share the gospel to you who are in Rome. But who is Paul writing to? He's writing to believers. He's writing to Christians, right?

And so we often hit this verse and we think, well, why would you share the gospel with believers? Well, again, gospel simply means good news, right? And this is good news that is for believers. And what exactly is that good news? Well, he tells us in the next verse, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, or in the tense there, to everyone believing. to the Jew first and also to the Greek. So this good news for believers is the message that God has provided salvation for them.

And connecting with verse 11, he's provided it as a grace gift. So we see in chapter one, two key words that Paul's used to introduce his message and his whole purpose for writing. We have charisma in verse 11, a gift or a free gift, a grace gift. And then here in verse 16, we have salvation. the root word sozo.

And what's interesting and I think important to note is that neither of these words appears again in the letter of Romans until after Paul has explained the doctrine of justification. He doesn't use either of those words again until chapter 5. And what that tells me is that justification is not the gift of salvation that Paul has been aiming at all along. Justification lays the groundwork or the foundation for understanding the gift of salvation that he's about to talk about. So it's only after Paul has explained justification in chapters 3 and 4 that he begins to talk about this gift of salvation.

Turn to chapter 5 to see this. Chapter 5, verses 9 and 10. And I pointed this out before because as I study and seek to understand what chapters 6, 7, and 8, where we're really focusing on here in this study, are all about, I think that this is really key. What does he see in verse 9?

Much more than having now been justified by his blood, aorist tense, We shall be saved from the wrath of God through him. Future tense. And this is the first time that Paul has used the word saved or salvation since 116. Okay, so having been justified on that basis, we now on that basis shall be saved. And so he's returning to this message of salvation and it's on the basis of justification.

In verse 10, he repeats and clarifies, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more, Having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life future. Okay, so Paul is finally picking up the doctrine that he's been aiming at, a salvation that is provided to believers, but notice at the end of verse 10, how is it provided? By what means is the believer saved? What does it say there? by his life. We shall be saved by his life. So this is salvation from the dominating power of sin, and it does not come through my effort to live the Christian life. Salvation for the Christian is by his life.

And I feel the need to pause at this point and say that this salvation is something that many believers are not enjoying. Many believers don't realize their need for this salvation. They're going along, working at the Christian life, and under the impression that they're doing alright. I've got this more or less together. And they're blind to their need for salvation because of their own self-righteousness.

There are those who see their need, and they've come to the realization that they're not doing all right, and they see their failure, and they cry out with Paul in Romans 7.24, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me, or maybe we could translate that, save me, from the body of this death.

And this is the believer who sees their need and they're crying out to be saved. This is the believer that's prepared. He's desperate for the salvation that he needs. And quite frankly, this is the believer who's better off. But tragically, most of these believers never come to see the salvation that they're so desperate for. Because the message that they're hearing in the church today is, try harder. Recommit your life. Spend more time in prayer. Read your Bible more often. Do more. Get active. All these kinds of messages.

They never hear the message that God has provided salvation to them by grace. And so they give up. They totally despair of ever living the Christian life. They walk away from the church many times forever. They may be born-again believers, but they're not enjoying the salvation that God has provided them right now. Salvation for every moment of their walk. Why is that? Why aren't they enjoying God's salvation from the power of sin? Because they look at the life of Christ as something to emulate rather than something that God has provided for them by grace.

And this is where we connect with the word gift, charisma, from chapter 1, verse 11. The life that God has provided as your salvation as a believer is provided by grace, not by works. And so, many, many believers are not enjoying this, but it's right there, available for them every moment.

So, continuing down in Chapter 5, in 5, 11 through 14, Paul explains that death came into the world through the one transgression of Adam. In verse 15, he picks up the word charisma that he hasn't used since 111. He says, but the free gift is not like the transgression. So again, Paul has explained everything about justification by grace through faith, but now, after that, he's picked up again this word free gift.

And Paul's explaining that this salvation by the life of Christ, in verse 10, is unlike the transgression. So, if you're there in chapter 5, look at verse 10. For if, we looked at this, but we took a little parenthetical there, so let's just look at it again, right?

For if we were enemies, if while we were enemies of God, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. Okay, and now just four verses down, five verses down, that the salvation that is by His life, okay, it is unlike the transgression. it's given as a free gift, okay? So the one transgression of Adam resulted in death to Adam's entire race, right? We all died in Adam because we all sinned in Adam. Death was the wages of that sin, but the free gift is different.

The free gift of God can only be received as a gift, can only be received by grace. And look at verse 17 of chapter 5, for if by the transgression of the one death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. So salvation by the life of Christ is a grace gift and it must be received by faith. It's only those who receive of the abundance of grace who will reign in life.

Okay, now, Chapter 6. Having covered all that and seen the background, hopefully it connects a few dots in understanding Paul's purpose here. We want to understand that Romans 6 is where Paul gets down to the nuts and bolts of how this salvation has been provided to us and how it works. This, in Chapter 6, is the mechanics of the believer's salvation. Okay, so up to this point, Paul's been explaining things.

He's explained the fact that we need salvation as believers. He's explained to us that this salvation is found only in the life of Christ. And he's shown us two different kinds of life that exist, and there are only two. Okay, the one that we have because we were born of Adam, right? And the righteous life that belongs to Christ alone.

And it's in chapter 6 where Paul explains just how it is that we go from having Adam as our life to having Christ as our life. So, how is it? How is it that we go from having Adam as our life source to having Christ as our life? How is it that we've been separated from the life of the old man and become partakers of the life of the new man, Christ Jesus? What is that key thought that Paul communicates in chapter six? How is this accomplished? Paul answers it in verses 3 and 4 of chapter 6. It was through our participation in Jesus' death and resurrection.

That is the only way that we could be separated from Adam and his life, the domination of sin, and be free to have Jesus Christ as our life. 6.3. Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? So every justified believer has become a participant in Christ's death. Verse 4, therefore we've been buried with him through baptism into death. As a believer, that's a fact. If you've placed your faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you have been buried with him or identified permanently with him in his death.

And why? That's the real question. Why was that done? Why is, what is God the Father's goal in joining us to Christ in his death? So that, purpose clause, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. There's a life that springs out of this death. And as Christians, God's plan is for us to walk in this new life.

And notice the two words there, that we too might walk. What does that refer to? This is referring to Christ. The life that Christ has We now share in, we too walk in newness of life. Jesus Christ has this life, he always has, right? And now we too have this life.

And notice the words, newness of life, sort of a strange phrase in the English. Sometimes we get to phrases like this in the Bible and we're like, I don't know, I kind of get sort of the idea, but why would you put those two words together, newness of life? I don't think we use that in common everyday speech. We should understand here that this is a new kind of life.

It's a totally other kind of life. No man has ever had it. It's a new life for us. For Jesus, it's the kind of life that he has had for all eternity, because it's natural to him. It's who he is. But this newness of life is totally new for us. It's something we never had.

And it's directly parallel to the phrase eternal life that Paul uses in 521 and in 623, our verse for this morning. When you see eternal life in 623, don't just think of a life that goes on forever in time. It is that, right? It is eternal in that sense.

But when the word eternal is connected to the word life, It's referring to the life that exists only in God Himself. Because what other life is eternal, right? Every other life is created life. Only God's life is eternal. Which means that if you're talking about eternal life, you're talking about a specific kind of life. You're talking about the life of God Himself. There is no other eternal life.

And so this is the life that has existed in God for all eternity. And when Jesus, who is God, and existed with his life for all eternity, when he took on human flesh, that is something, we just came through Christmas, right? And we talk about this, that the word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. And what we need to realize in that is that in that instant, This totally other kind of life came into the creature realm for the first time in all of eternity. That is a monumental truth that we really need to grapple with. This life that existed for all of eternity, this kind of life that only existed in God, came into the creature realm. became at that moment the life of a man, of a human, a creature, the God-man. And so Jesus is the first man ever to walk the face of the earth with this life in him. In fact, if Jesus, the Son of God, had not taken on human flesh and become a man, there would never have been a man with God's life, with God's kind of life.

And that in itself is amazing. But the miracle is far, far beyond that. It's not only that God brought this kind of man into the universe, right? The greater miracle is that He designed all of this in such a way that we could be joined to Him and share in that life. That is far beyond anything that we could ever imagine, to have His life, to have God's life as our own, as our very own life.

So the whole purpose for us being crucified as Christ is so that we would become partakers or participants in this other life, this totally other kind of life, this God life. And that, that is the believer's salvation. That's the salvation that Paul's been aiming at all along here. The life of Christ is our salvation. Having his life as our life is what gives us salvation. So it's not through trying to be like Christ, right? How could we ever produce that totally other kind of life out of the source of life that we have, right? Not through trying to be like Christ, but by accepting it as a free gift.

And the critical thing that Paul's trying to explain in the last half of chapter six is that as a believer, you have two paths before you. Now, when I say that, this isn't like what's so often portrayed in gospel tracts, you know, one path leading to hell and another path leading to heaven. This is speaking to Christians, right? Justified, born again, eternally saved from hell, citizens of heaven, but walking in this world. And that's why I think we can picture it as a path, because there's a walk for you as a believer.

And the question is, in your walk, will you be controlled by the life of the old man, Adam, or we could say the self-life, trying to produce a righteousness of your own, or will you yield yourself to God as one who is alive from the dead, dead to the old man, Adam, and alive to God in Christ Jesus, and will you allow him to live through you? Because the Lord can and He will live His righteous life through you. That's what He's provided.

But He will not do it while we're trying to live the Christian life in our own strength. While we're trying to operate out of the old man, out of the self-life, trying to produce something that approximates God's life and His righteousness, When we're doing that, he won't do what he is offered because you're trying to achieve what he's offered rather than receive what he's offered to you. We honestly have to come to the point of despairing, despairing of ever producing this new life out of the old man. And when we read in 623 that the wages of sin is death, don't think of sin there as just the immoral things.

This is everything that comes out of self. This is you and I trying to live a righteous life out of self. This is you and I trying to live the Christian life. And that'll never happen. We will never be able to produce the life of Christ out of self. The Christian life is the life of Christ. It's a totally other kind of life. We don't have it. And we certainly can't produce it. It's a life that must be lived through us by Him.

The life of Christ is a righteous life. The Adamic life is an unrighteous life. You can't get righteousness out of unrighteousness. Now, when we say that the life of Adam is an unrighteous life, the self-life is an unrighteous life, that doesn't mean it always looks unrighteous to us, right?

In fact, we're very, very bad at judging this, okay? We should just be really honest about that. We're very bad at, you know, observing others and saying, oh, that's righteous, that's unrighteous, right? We see things in the natural man that look very good to us. But anything sourced in the Adamic life is unrighteous no matter what it looks like to men. Others may think we're doing pretty good. We may even deceive ourselves. But God sees what every thought and word and action is sourced in. And Alyssa was probably wondering what it means here in parentheses when it says tea biscuit story. Do you guys call them tea biscuits? Biscuits?

You guys do biscuits and gravy for breakfast down here. Corny doesn't. Anyway, that aside, we eat biscuits with things like soup. Soup and biscuits, right? Which is exactly what we did on Thursday as I was preparing this. And so I put tea biscuits right in here because I thought it would be funny for my family. The girls were baking biscuits. And there's nothing like a fresh-baked biscuit with soup when it's still hot enough to melt the butter. And so they were baking them fresh as we were eating lunch.

And I heard the timer go on the oven, so I grabbed the pan that was out of the oven and set it on the island. I thought, oh, those ones look even better than the ones that are still on the table. And I came back to the table. They needed a few minutes to cool, right? Kind of kept going.

And there was one biscuit left on the pan. And I wanted a biscuit. So I took the pan and I said, Tim, do you want the last biscuit? And Tim Elite, like a hundred of those things, but he, so he had the last biscuit and then I headed off to the kitchen and brought back the fresh bit so that I could have, you know, one of the fresh biscuits.

And we can laugh at this, you know, but I sat, then I sat down to write this portion of the message and I thought, you know, look, look at the life of the old man in me, right? Was that the life of the Lord Jesus? No. Now did it look probably pretty nice? Maybe, you know, probably. And now this is a relatively obvious example, and at least it was to me.

But there are so many things that we think and do, and we don't even realize that they're sourced in the old sin nature. It's just constant. It's always the thing that's bubbling up and boiling over. And so when we say sin, I don't just mean the unrighteous things, you know, the foul word that comes out of our mouth or the, you know, immoral thought or whatever. It's the things that we're, it's us trying to do, you know, something good out of our own strength. It's unrighteousness, it's filthy rags, and it's not the life of Christ. The life of Christ is a purely selfless love, purely selfless life.

And it's what he's offered to us. And so we don't have to try to produce that out of ourselves. He's offered it to us. And we talk about these two paths, these two walks, and we're constantly walking in the life of the old man, and we don't even realize it. But the thing is, as believers, the Lord patiently reveals this to us. Not all at once. He couldn't do that. We couldn't handle it. But He does it very gradually, and we can trust Him about it. That's the other thing that's so important. It's not our job to worry about this. The Lord isn't worried, by the way. He knows our hearts perfectly. He knows what they are. He knows what they're full of. He knows what we're made of. Even as believers, right, in our nature.

And what he does is he patiently works to reveal this to us. He just patiently shows us what we're made of, and the reason that he does that is not to shame us, by the way, it's to show us that we need a new life. It's simply to show us that we need his kind of life, and it's a life that we don't have. And so the more that we come to see that in ourselves, the more we are prepared to receive the life that we can't produce, but he can, right? The life that he has and the life that he's made available to us. But he can't be living his life in us at the same time as we're doing the living.

So he's got to show that to us. He's got to show us what we are, and he's got to bring us to the point of giving up on trying to produce that kind of righteousness, and bring us to the point of depending on him to do what we can't do. So we can be thankful when the Lord shows us these things in ourselves.

It's an opportunity to count ourselves dead to the old man and alive to God in Christ Jesus. To count on our crucifixion death and our resurrection life that we share with Him. To allow Him to live His life through us and to receive it as a gift. But the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We could never achieve it through law. And that's where we're going next in chapter 7. Mike's going to get into that next week. We had to be made to die to the law so that we could have the life of Christ under the principle of grace. It's the only way we could receive it.

And so with verse 23, Paul summarizes everything that he's written up to this point. The Christian salvation from sin, or domination of sin as a master, is summed up in this simple contrast. And as believers, we're either walking as slaves to sin, resulting in death, or walking in dependence on the Lord to live His life through us. And the good news really is that none of us as believers ever has to walk as a slave to sin. We've been judicially freed from its power. We are free every moment to have Christ's life lived through us. And that's an amazing gift of grace. The more we come to know Christ, the more we appreciate him, the more we desire to be like him. Did you notice that in our other, I think it was the last song we sang. There was a word, there was a line in there. I was like, we could look at that. But now I can't find it. It's okay. Someone with a more photographic memory could do that.

But just desiring to be like him. It's a wonderful thing, it's a beautiful thing, but I mean, we often hear that taught, you know, to be like Jesus, and then we're taught that it's our responsibility to go out there and try to be like Jesus. And we can't. But to be like him is a truly wonderful thing. It's an awesome thing.

And when we've come to the point that we despair of ever being like him, then we're prepared to receive from him what he's provided, his life in us, his life, his righteousness operating in us every moment. It's always available. When I say every moment, I don't mean that, you know... that we're necessarily going to live like that. We will continue to fail. The Lord will continue to show us what we are until the one day when we will be like Him because we'll be with Him and that whole process will be complete. But we don't have to wait for that day, right, in order for His life to be operative in us as our life, it can be right now, because it's available to us by grace.

And that's what Paul's talking about. That's his whole message here to the Romans, is that this is the salvation that is available and provided to you as a believer. Walk in it by faith, trusting the Lord to do in you what only he can do. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the salvation that you have provided to us in your son. Lord, what an awesome reality, what an awesome gift of grace to be like him, not through trying to be like him, but by receiving from you the gift of his eternal life as our own life, being dead to, severed from everything that we were in the old man Adam. and being joined to him as our life that we might walk in newness of life. What an amazing gift, what an amazing salvation that you've provided. We thank you for it. In Jesus' name, amen.