Death to Sin

Today, if you would Romans chapter
six finally. I have certainly been eager to
get here, even if it didn’t show in the pace with which we have
arrived. And as we begin to look at Romans
six, you will see that it affords no liberties to pick up that
pace. Romans six. It follows on the heels, as you
know, of already five chapters. We saw the brief introduction
and immediately Paul gets into the the overwhelming subject
of sin, and he introduced us to the truth that all have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God. Not only the Gentiles,
which he deals with first, but likewise, the Jews. He closes
out that argument and immediately gets into the great hope, the
great need that all of mankind has already been established
as in desperate need. We are in desperate need of the
righteousness of God. We lack that. We lack the ability
to approach God. We are utterly bankrupt, morally
speaking. And we desperately need the grace
of God to impart the righteousness of God to us. That’s what Paul
introduces in Romans 321. And it courses all the way down
through 521. He’s been dealing with the great subject of salvation,
salvation by way of justification by faith. And now, just as we
had talked about many, many months ago, there is another section
before us, starting also with S. This time we look at sanctification. Having dealt with sin and salvation,
Paul now looks to deal with the great subject of sanctification.
We’ll take the passage. Well, we’ll take the chapter
in its entirety this Lord’s Day only. I want to honor the word
by a full reading of it so that you can see these thoughts and
truths in their context. I know what you’re thinking one
day you’re going to walk in here and I’m going to read all of
Romans just for the purpose of having an income. It actually
has a nice ring to it. But we’ll start with Romans six.
This morning, Romans chapter six, beginning in verse one. What shall we say, then, are
we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never
be. How shall we who died to sin
still live in it? Or do you not know that all of
us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized
into his death? Therefore, we have been buried
with him through baptism into death in order that as Christ
was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we
too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united
with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also
be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old self
was crucified with him, that our body of sin might be done
away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. For
he who has died is freed from sin. Now, if we have died with
Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that
Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Death is no longer master over
him. For the death that he died, he
died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives
to God. Even so, consider yourselves
to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore,
do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey
its lusts and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin
as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God
as those alive from the dead. And your members as instruments
of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not
under law, but under grace? May it never be. Do you not know
that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience,
you are slaves of the one whom you obey? either of sin resulting
in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness. But thanks
be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient
from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed
and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. I’m speaking in human terms because
of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your
members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting
in further lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves
to righteousness, resulting in sanctification. For when you
were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness.
Therefore, what benefit were you then deriving from the things
of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things
is death. But now, having been freed from sin and enslaved to
God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification and
the outcome eternal life for the wages of sin is death. But
the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. And so we turn. We turn the corner and come into
Romans chapter six, where Paul definitely and noticeably introduces
a new subject, a new theme, that of sanctification, even using
that very word in the course of that discussion. If chapter
one through 320 was concerned with sin and subsequently 321
through 521 was concerned with salvation. An equally smooth transition
here is made to the great doctrine of practical holiness. Which
is not imparted as in the case of justification, but is a lifelong
process called sanctification. I appreciated one. Theologians
approach to this whole thing in beginning to try to identify
the difficulty in understanding the relationship, if you will,
between sanctification and justification, he said. For the purposes of
systematic theology and to make God’s work of redemption somewhat
more comprehensible to human minds, we often speak of sanctification
as following justification is not the way you think about it,
that boy, I’m glad I’m justified. And in a few years, I’ll get
around to pursuing sanctification. That’s how some people approach
it. There is, of course, a sense in which it does, that justification
involves what is called a forensic or legal declaration of righteousness
that is immediate, complete and eternal. And so there is, in
a sense, a first priority to justification. But justification
and sanctification are not separate stages in salvation. Rather,
they are different aspects of the unbroken continuum of God’s
divine work of redemption in a believer’s life by which he
not only declares a person righteous, but recreates him to become righteous. Holiness is as much a work of
God in the believer as any other element of redemption. When a
person is redeemed, God not only declares him righteous, but also
begins to develop Christ’s righteousness in him. That’s the process of
sanctification. And if God begins a work in a
believer, this was Paul’s great hope in Philippians one, right?
If Paul has begun a good work in you, he will complete it. And it’s God, not you. It’s God
producing that work of sanctification within us. It’s not dependent
upon us. We must obey, we must be faithful,
but in the final analysis, it’s a work of God from beginning
to end. So chapter six introduces us to this new subject of sanctification,
a transition out of that discussion of justification, peace with
God. to this idea of practical holiness,
personal holiness, godliness on a personal level, not just
as seen by God who we are in Christ, but an actual growing
in grace to the point where we are manifesting Christ likeness. It’s a tall order. Paul’s doctrine of justification
by faith As we shall see, raised and still raises a number of
questions, questions which, if left unanswered, can potentially
lead to serious error. As one said, justification by
faith is incompatible with living in sin. That sounds. Easy, it sounds logically accurate. It is incompatible. With regards
to true justification by faith to live in sin, and yet there
are many who say, if I have been justified, it doesn’t matter
how I live. He goes on to say this in the
two following chapters treat particularly sanctification and
show the way of justification by free grace through faith instead
of affording a license to sin is more favorable to holiness
than any system of justification by works. In other words, he
says it doesn’t flow. We’ll tackle some of those questions
in a moment. I want to take you back to verse
one. Back to verse one of chapter six, I don’t have a really detailed
outline this morning for the first time in a long time. The substance before us, the material
before us is so plain and so simple. It really is for the
purposes of this morning, a two point outline. And one of them
I’ve already provided you. The question is posed. The question
is posed right there in verse one, what should we say then?
Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? Now, there
are two questions there. I’m taking it as one. The question
is posed there, that’s what Paul is doing is presenting this. Hypothetical situation, and we
wish it were hypothetical, we wish it were less common than
it actually is. What it does is indicate and
point to the fact that there were some that were going to
draw some false, improper inferences from what Paul had been teaching.
Paul recognizes that some people will come to these improper conclusions,
wrong ideas, and that those will begin to foment and spread and,
in a sense, undermine the doctrine of justification by faith. And
it’s typical of Paul’s rhetorical style to do this kind of interplay,
these questions. He anticipates the potential
of foolish, even devilish abuse of his doctrine, and he takes
it head on. Rather than wait for someone to bring these arguments,
Paul runs ahead and in a sense sets up a roadblock and says,
look, let’s deal with this now. In essence, he says, OK, the
doctrine of justification by faith, we got OK, we got it,
Paul. So then you’re saying that it doesn’t matter how we live,
right? What should we say, then, are we to continue in sin that
grace might increase? That little word then really
gives us a mighty clue as to Paul’s intent here. Where is
he going? Where is he coming from? How come there is a chapter six? Why is there such a strong transition
here? Why is there such an abrupt change
to the subject matter? The little word then gives us
a clue, and it’s a great clue. Paul is drawing a conclusion.
He’s actually reasoning, as would his enemies. And having heard
what Paul has been saying, he reasons as they would reason. The word then ties us back, particularly
to the statement that Paul makes at the end of chapter five. Verses
20 and 21, just if you have to flip back, flip back. Look at
verses 20 and 21 of chapter five. Where Paul summarized and the
law came in that the transgression might increase, we looked at
all the ways that that was true when the law came in and it literally
came alongside as a helper to sinners to help us to see what
God’s standard was in that sense, it increased. But it also increased
as we saw God’s law for what it was, telling us not to do
something that was displeasing to God. And the sin and the sinful
tendencies welled up in our heart. And in that sense, it increased
as well. We saw a number of ways that it increased, but the law
came in for that very purpose. That’s why God gave the law so
that it would become so grand in front of our faces, we couldn’t
avoid the idea of sin. We knew and we know what sin
is because of the law. The law came in that transgression
might increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all
the more. God was up to the battle. God
was up to the task that if He could only show His children
what sin was, He could show them equally that He was up to the
task and that He could overcome that sin. Verse 21, Grace abounded
all the more that as sin reigned in death and for centuries people
were dying because of sin, even so grace might reign. There’s
about to be a changing of. The guard, there’s about to be
a change of rulers. Whereas sin and death has reigned
and ruled ever since the sin of Adam. Now, by the grace of
God, through the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ, grace
is preparing to reign through righteousness to eternal life
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So given that then that little
word, then having made so bold a statement that Paul had made,
then Then what is the logical conclusion? Paul says, look,
if you take these words 20 and 21, if you take these statements,
you could reasonably argue this point. And Paul wisely anticipates
this and says the question that essentially begins chapter six
comes from the emphasis that he made in chapter five. As one
said, if grace super abounds where sin abounds, if the multiplication
of a transgression serves to exhibit the luster of grace.
Beautiful way to put it, and if the law of Moses came in alongside
in order that the trespass might abound. The logical conclusion
would seem to be, let us sin all the more in order that God
may be glorified in the magnification of his grace. That’s what Paul
says is the logical conclusion. This is, as one said, the antinomian
distortion, it’s Antinomianism is essentially a life of lawlessness,
a life that says, look, we don’t need to live according to a list
of rules and standards, even if it was issued by God himself.
It is a distortion of this doctrine of justification by faith. As Martin Lloyd-Jones put it,
the statements made in verses 20 and 21 of chapter five raised
two special problems at once. It isn’t just one battle that
Paul was waging. He is waging that battle against
antinomianism. But the tendency is to battle
antinomianism. You’ve got to basically uphold
in every point the law, which leads to legalism. Paul is battling
both. Lloyd-Jones says it this way.
It raises two special problems at once, both are connected with
the question of the law. The first difficulty is this,
will not this sweeping statement about grace and the apparent
setting aside of the law encourage people to sin? Is this not the
kind of teaching likely to lead to antinomianism, lawlessness? The opposite is equally problematic,
which is legalism. So that’s what Paul is dealing
with here. When he says, what should we say that are we to
continue in sin? Are you really suggesting, Paul,
that law has been so set aside that we can continue to sin so
that grace will abound all the more? It’s faulty logic, Paul
says. It might sound reasonable to
The average man, the average individual might reason in this
particular manner, but it’s faulty at its core. It is a man who
has not yet submitted, submitted himself to the gospel. That allows
him to so easily manipulate and twist this doctrine of justification
by faith into a rubber stamp for his sin and sinful life. Paul knows Paul knows that his
teaching is open to this. I loved reading this past week
of one encouragement from one faithful pastor that said, really,
this is a test of good preaching. If you have this tendency of
people either wanting to drift into liberty or license, it’s
a it’s a test of good preaching, because that’s where justification
by faith lies right down the middle. It is common. It seems so reasonable to the
average individual. But the most untenable objection
that’s ever advanced to the doctrine of justification by faith is
that it somehow allows people to sin so that this grace that
God has spoken of would grow and abound and flourish. That
objection, that kind of reasoning really comes more from ignorance
about the doctrine of justification by faith and an ignorance of
the nature of what true sanctification is. One pastor said that throughout
church history, some church groups have fallen into the same kind
of error. This is an uncommon. Paul isn’t
saying that this was a first century tendency that boy, we’re
thankful was dealt with way back then. Aren’t we thankful that
Paul wrote this and and closed the book on the whole argument
to the Romans? No, it continues. The argument
continues to foment. Some Christian groups have fallen
into the same kind of error, insisting that conformity to
countless man-made regulations and ceremony is necessary for
true godliness. That’s legalism. The church has
also always been in danger of contamination by false believers
who wickedly use the freedom of the gospel as justification
for sin, and that’s licentiousness. What Paul says is that justification
by faith runs right down the middle path. Are we to continue
in sin that grace might increase what Paul has been clearly focused
on thus far is that God’s grace is a justifying grace. This continuance in sin is quite
another matter. Paul has never said That once
we are justified by faith, we are made perfectly righteous
before God, not practically speaking, we stand in Christ perfectly
righteous before God. But in practical terms, we are
working out our salvation and sometimes it looks ugly, doesn’t
it? We almost have the tendency to
think that it’s all human effort. That somehow we’ve got to sanctify
ourselves in the process. Paul catches us here and he points
out that God justifies us in Christ alone. That we are in
union with Christ already. And that ultimately he is working
out our salvation through this process of sanctification. But
he asked this question point blank. Are we to continue in
sin? Has not the course of our life
been interrupted, has not our sinful tendency, our sinful life
been already interrupted? The answer is yes, of course
it has. If you are in Christ, that life of sin has been punctuated. It’s been interrupted by God
and his grace. The word here to continue, as
one said, carries the idea of a habitual persistence. It is sometimes used of a person’s
purposely living in a certain place and making it a permanent
residence. Does sin have a permanent residence
in your life? What Paul is saying, if that’s
the case, then you have not been justified by God’s grace. If
you have been justified by God’s grace, there will be a path,
there will be a progress in your life toward godliness, practical
in this life godliness. That doesn’t mean that there
aren’t going to be skirmishes. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t
going to be sinful flare-ups. It doesn’t mean that you’re not
going to have these periods of stumbling. It doesn’t mean that
you’re not going to have an episode. A period of time where you are
deeply engaged in battle against the mortification of sin in your
life. But it does mean. It does mean that there’s not
going to be this intentional, willful, sinful pattern that
is ingrained, rutted, established in your life. It’s not going
to be there. The believer, the believer in
Christ, one who has been justified by God’s grace, is going to have
a battle. There are going to be episodes. There are going
to be things against which we battle our entire life. Paul wasn’t talking about those
occasional spurts, failures in our life, but something in which
a professing Christian is fully immersed a lifestyle. Paul, as you know, had been telling
those to whom he was writing about. The riches of God’s grace
and the Jews likely would have been eager to seize upon this
argument that this emphasis on grace would lead to only one
thing, and that is to abandon or to employ rather fully the
law. There have been many, though,
that took the opposite course. One that I read about this past
month, I’d heard his name, but this past month I read about
a monk named Rasputin. Here’s how Rasputin arranged
this doctrine of licentiousness, really. Rasputin
taught and exemplified the doctrine of salvation through repeated
experiences of sin and repentance. He held that as those who sin
most require the most forgiveness, a sinner who continues to sin
with abandon enjoys each time he repents more of God’s forgiving
grace than any ordinary sinner. Some Some of Paul’s own converts
took that same approach, didn’t they? Let us do evil that good
may come. And so it was bad enough that
Paul had these theological opponents misrepresenting the very gospel
of God. But it was worse when his own
converts began to fall into these sinful tendencies and behaving
as though the gospel itself had given them privilege to do this
thing. So it’s not completely hypothetical,
this idea. There have always been people
that insisted that that was a distinct possibility. And that’s what led, as I suggested
a moment ago, other Christians to maintain that the only way
to battle against this idea of antinomianism was to establish
the laws of Moses as the only way out. One pastor said that
Paul would never consider legalism as the remedy for libertinism. When a man has yielded his life
to the risen Christ and the power of his spirit, His inward being
was being radically transformed. A new creation took place. That
man received a new nature, which delighted to produce spontaneously
the fruit of the spirit, those graces which were manifested
in their perfection by Christ Jesus himself. Paul took a completely
different approach. It wasn’t legalism on one hand. He didn’t opt for that to battle
antinomianism on the other. Paul instead charted a course
right down the middle. It’s justification by faith,
he said. So look back again at verse one.
When Paul says, what shall we say then? Are we to continue
in sin that grace might increase? It’s not surprising that Paul
says, may it never be. Some people would translate this
the very idea. No way. I think the King James
has it, God forbid, there’s no God in that text, by the way,
no word God. It is the strongest Greek expression
available. It almost has the idea of that’s
impossible, no way. Perish the thought, as some people
would say. This idea. that the end justifies
the means that grace would somehow be generated by a life of sin
and sinfulness is so contrary to Paul’s thinking, so utterly
abhorrent to his thought that he answers it in the strongest
possible way he can. For a Christian, the idea that
for a Christian to live in sin is not only impermissible, as
one would say, it’s impossible. It’s not only distasteful to
Paul, it’s totally inedible. This idea that a child of God
would voluntarily give sin an opportunity to flourish in his
life so that grace, too, would flourish. One pastor said to
put that question or to raise that matter at all simply shows
a complete failure to understand everything that Paul has been
saying. About justification by faith that such a man has not
only misunderstood justification, he has entirely misunderstood
the doctrine of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. That we
are in Christ, a subject which will take up again next Lord’s
Day. The real trouble. That Paul’s dealing with here
is that with these people, professing to be Christians who don’t even
understand the basic doctrine of justification by faith. They
don’t realize who they are in Christ, they don’t realize their
position, and that’s why. One characterized this entire
chapter is an exposition of the doctrine of our union with Christ. We are in Christ. He’s not just
our friend. We’re not just acquaintances.
We’re not on the same team, as it were. We are literally placed
into Christ. No wonder Paul takes such a strong
reaction to this idea. May it never be. Look again at
verse two. May it never be. And here is
where he begins to give his answer to the question. The question
was posed, are we to continue in sin that grace might increase?
May it never be. Here’s the answer. A reminder
of our death in Christ. May it never be. How shall we
who died to sin still live in it? Died to sin. And you may as well settle in
and get used to that word. Death. This principle, Paul uses
a variety of terms here in Romans six to die, the verb death, the
noun dead, the adjective and uses all of them multiple times,
16 times. Total. And incidentally, that’s
why I’ve left them boldfaced in your bulletin handout. in your diagrams insert, because
I wanted you to see and sense the clear focus in this chapter
is death in a sense. It’s not just necessarily physical
death or mortal mortal bodies and that whole thing. What he’s
talking about is a is an event that took place in time past. We’ll talk about that in a moment.
But I wanted you to see that clear focus on this chapter and
really in chapters five, six and seven of Romans, the subject
is far and away more than any other chapters in Scripture. Only first Corinthians 15 uses
these terms more often in a single chapter. Death of a particular
kind, dying or deadness is a clear focus here in Romans six. And
you say. How should we who died to sin
still live in it? Yeah, that’s right. That’s good.
That’s a good point, Paul. How shall we who died to sin
still live in it? Why, that solves everything. How shall we who died to sin
still live in it? We died to it. We can’t possibly
still be alive to it. On second thought. Wait a minute,
Paul, when did we exactly die to sin? You’d almost hear the
Roman believers, you know, wiggling in their seats on the wooden
pews. In the Church of Rome. Was that
actually part of the deal, Paul, dying to sin? There are a lot of people that
would affirm that on the face of it and then wonder back. Did
my repentance from sin really include all that? Did did the
gospel as it was presented to me, did it include this repudiation
of my sinful lifestyle? Did it really call me to lay
down my life with regards to my sinful habits? Is that truly
part of the gospel? Absolutely, it is. Absolutely,
it is Matthew 10, Matthew 10, 38 and 39. He who does not take
up his cross and cross means death. He who does not take up
his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Dying to
sin is as much a part of the gospel as the free grace of salvation
that is offered there. Matthew 16, verse 24, that Jesus
said to his disciples, if anyone wishes to come after me, he must
deny himself and take up his cross and follow me death again. We must die to sin, we must repent
of that sin, turning our back on it as if it is dead forever. It is a part of the gospel. Jesus continued, for whoever
wishes to save his life will lose it. If that’s not part of
if that’s not tenable to you, if that’s not reasonable to you,
that you leave your life of sin in order to follow the Lord Jesus
Christ, then you just grasp onto your life and in grasping, you
lose it. But whoever loses his life for
my sake will find it. If you say, Lord Jesus, that’s
the path that I want to follow. I do want to repent. I hate my
sin. I want to follow and walk with
you the rest of my life. You just found your life. You
just found your life, not only here and now, you found your
life for eternity. You died to sin. You died to
self. And Jesus says so pointedly here,
for what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and
forfeits his soul? John chapter 12. Jesus said he who loves his life
loses it. If you really love your life,
if you really value living, then you better turn your back on
sin. You better die to sin. He who loves his life, loses
it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to
life eternal. Did you hate your sin? Did you
hate that lifestyle? Did you long to be freed from
it? That is a death to sin. 2 Timothy
2, 11 and 12. It is a trustworthy statement. Paul affirms up front, it is
a trustworthy statement for if we have died with him, we shall
also live with him. If we endure, we shall also reign
with him. If we deny him, he will deny
us. Sobering words. Now, unfortunately, back to the
subject at hand, How shall we who died to sin still live in
it? Unfortunately, some translations are a little bit off. How should one has it? How shall
we that are dead to sin? It’s not that we are dead to
sin, that’s not that that’s not the right translation of the
words, it’s how shall we who died to sin? The apostle uses
a particular tense there, the Aorist tense, that essentially
says it’s something that happened way back then, something that
happened once, then and forever. It has continuing consequences,
but he’s referring to one act, one event. It’s something that
happened at a unique point in history, and it’s a point where
we ceased to be in Adam and we began to be, as one said, in
Christ. It doesn’t mean that we are dead
or that we have died. But that we died with regards
to sin. As one said, it refers to a specific
act in our past history, the act which in its nature was a
dying to sin, it was our accepting of Christ as our savior. That
act involves not only a separation from sin, but deadness to it.
No man can appeal to Christ to be delivered from sin in order
that he may live in it. Deliverance from sin is offered
by Christ and is accepted by the believer is not the mere
deliverance from its penalty. But from its power. We turn from
sin to God when we receive Christ as Savior. It is a contradiction
in terms to say that gratuitous justification is a license to
sin. No wonder Paul says, may it never
be. How shall we who died to sin? Still live in it. Death and life
don’t coexist. We can’t be both at the same
time, dead and living. And that’s the imagery that Paul
projects here. That’s the identity of the believer.
That’s who he is. That’s our reality as Christians. We died to sin. A once for all,
definitive breach with sin that breaks the chain, that breaks
that power. By the grace of God. We died
to sin, we renounced our allegiance. To that sinful tendency of life,
as one pastor said, the person who is alive in Christ has died
to sin, it is inconceivable and self-contradictory to propose
that a believer can henceforth live in the sin from which he
was delivered by death. Unreasonable. That is the nature
of the Christians’ union with Christ, that our living in sin
is not just inconsistent, it’s a contradiction in terms. In
that sense, it’s impossible. It would be like speaking of
a live dead man or a good bad man. Union with Christ, said
one, being the only source of holiness cannot also be the source
of sin. So what Paul does here. That
in one stroke, he deals a blow. To this thinking that had been
proposed of his own doctrine. These ideas that had been proposed
using his own words. One faithful shepherd said that
Paul dealt a death blow to antinomianism And he does so without yielding
an inch of ground to those who would deny that God’s grace is
sufficient for salvation. Under the leadership of the Holy
Spirit, the apostle avoided the extreme of legalism. On the one
hand, and of the libertinism on the other, he would neither
abandon God’s grace to accommodate legalists nor abandon God’s righteousness. to accommodate the libertines. In other words, Paul stayed right
down the middle of the path. Paul upheld the doctrine of justification
by faith, and he said it shall not be tainted neither by legalists
nor by those who want to use this doctrine. Or attempt to
use this doctrine to justify their own simple tendencies.
It’s not going to happen. May it never be. How can those
how shall those who died to sin still live in it? The obvious
answer is they can’t. We’ll pick up next Lord’s Day
in verse three. Which is the remainder of that
argument, the reminder of our death in Christ, where Paul adds,
do you not know? that all of us who have been
baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Have you forgotten that? As one pastor said, for a Christian
to live in sin is impossible because such a man is under the
power of grace. Not only is he out of the power
of sin and the realm of sin, he is under the influence and
the power of Christ. He is in the realm of the mighty
force which Paul personalizes and calls grace and its reign. And because he is under this
influence and power, he cannot continue where he was before.
Grace makes it impossible. If you’re in Christ, you are
not who you once were. And you cannot live in sin. Let’s thank God for that truth,
if it’s true of you. Our merciful God, we humble ourselves
before you. We are overwhelmed by the truth
that Paul presents here. We rejoiced to hear the good
news of justification by faith following on the heels of that
difficult discussion of the sinfulness of humanity. But now, in a sense,
many of us are bewildered. We love the idea of justification
by faith, but we don’t know how to manage it in our own lives.
We see these tendencies, we see these sinful tendencies that
we have. And we know that we are tempted,
it is all too common in this world. With regards to the justification,
the doctrine of justification by faith to use that as a. A
justification of our sinfulness. Lord God, grant us. An examination
by our heart, even of the your own Holy Spirit. That would examine
our hearts and point to us the truth. Did we fall on our knees
of repentance? Did we cry out to you for the
grace of salvation? Did we turn our backs? Is that
a funeral? On that sinful tendency that
was our life. Lord God, if we have. We thank
you and praise you that that was a work of God. And that that
grants us hope for continuing work of God in our lives, the
work of sanctification. And Lord, if there are any in
our midst. We don’t know the Lord Jesus
Christ, you don’t know the way of freedom from sin. And from
its tyranny. Lord God, we prayerfully announced
to them. That there is hope only in the
Lord Jesus Christ for salvation, he has done it all. And it’s
only by our faith in him and in him alone that we could ever
stand before the throne of God. Lord, we pray. That for these,
you would begin a mighty work in their hearts, bring them to
repentance, help them to have their own funeral for sin. To
turn their back upon it and to turn instead. To the Savior who
died. It’s in Jesus name that we pray.
Amen. As we close, if you would take
your bulletin and let’s stand together and sing Knowing You. All I once held dear, built my
life upon, All this time revealed, and more to come. All I once thought gained I have
counted lost, and I’m worthless now compared to this. Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you,
There is no greater thing. You’re my hope, you’re my rest,
you’re my joy, my righteousness, and I love you, Lord. Now my heart’s desire is to know
you more, to be found in you, to know that you’re to possess
my faith, what I could not other, of surpassing you. Knowing you, Jesus Knowing you,
there is no greater love You’re my joy, You’re my grace,
You’re my joy, my righteousness, And I love You, Lord. Oh, to know the power of Your
risen life, And to know You in Your suffering, To become like you In your death,
my Lord So with you to live I never die Knowing you, Jesus Knowing
you there is You’re my rest, You’re my joy,
You’re my righteousness, And I love You, Lord.