As long as I've been preaching, it has not been my practice to publish my sermon notes. There are a lot of reasons for this, maybe the chief being that I can't stand reading other Pastors' blogs out there when they do publish them. YAWN!!
So please forgive me this one exception. I may have gone out of my mind, but I am convinced that you really need to grasp these truths, meditate on them and make them part of you, if you really expect to grow in grace.
Last night's message was titled Four Things You Need to Know to Grow in Grace. The subject was "sanctification," the Christian's practical growth in holiness, his gradual conformity to the image of Christ. The text was the whole of Romans 6, but a few verses in particular.
Specifically, I focused on places where Paul lays stress on certain things that we need to think if we expect to be separated from sin. The battle to be more sanctified day-to-day begins within, in the mind. We have to think like God tells us to think before we can hope to act like He tells us to act.
Here are those four places again, with meager suggestions for how they ought to begin to impact our thought-life.
1. Romans 6:3 "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"
The next couple of verses stress that in our conversion we have been united to Christ. Without this unity, there is no basis for sanctification. His death is our death. His resurrection is our new life.
Hopefully, you recognize that as solid Christian theology. But know this: you will not progress in daily, real-life sanctification until that particular bit of good theology runs through your veins just as surely as plasma.
The person you used to be is dead. That person was crucified with Christ (Galatians 2:20.) This must move from being a confession of faith to becoming the very air you breathe.
2. Romans 6:6 "We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin."
You were a slave to sin. Just as there is a sense in which natural death has the power to "free" a person from a state of slavery, so your death with Christ has freed you from that particular master. You no longer have to serve that old one.
In the same way that Christ walked out of the tomb, proving that death no longer had dominion over him (Romans 6:9) so you have been empowered to walk away from the plantation on which you used to serve.
But none of this will happen if you don't get your mind right, and agree to really think that this is true: Your death with Christ has set you free.
3. Romans 6:11 "So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus."
This is the same sort of language, the language of "imputation," that Paul belabors in chapter 4. It is a matter of what you are willing to write down on your own account balance, in a manner of speaking.
In justification, God has imputed righteousness to you, apart from your works. The perfect righteousness of Christ was laid to your account when you were, in point of fact, a flagrant sinner.
Now, you are commanded to do some reckoning yourself: reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God.
You must do this in the face, in the very teeth, of how it feels sometimes. You must do it in the face of how you perform at times.
You must do it for one reason: God says it is true. You don't do it because that is what it looks like. You don't do it because that's what your experience seems to tell you. But because the Word says it.
If you can't assimilate this truth, make it part of your DNA, kiss your sanctification good-bye.
4. Romans 6:16 "Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey...?"
Only once the above truths are really comprehended, can you make use of this priniciple.
That is, you must understand and believe your position with Christ, your legal standing in the courts of heaven, before you can make the right practical choices and actions for the right reasons.
If all we grasp in this chapter is this verse, this principle, then we will be left with merely a Christianly sort of moralism, where we strive very hard to use our "members" in the right way, outwardly at least. We will find ourselves right back under the law, where every misdeed and each transgression is a proof of alienation from God.
But, if we'll cling to the truths in 1-3 above, and really get them nailed down in our inner being, then when we come to this principle, it is a liberating joy. It becomes the practical principle of our freedom. I don't serve in God's fields of righteousness out of terror, but in thanksgiving for his inward deliverance (Romans 6:17.) The old taskmaster cannot drive me back into his fields, no matter how loud and threatening the crack of his whip. That guy he used to terrify is dead, and I know exactly where he is buried: I have the baptismal certificate to document it.
What a joy now to present my members as instruments of righteousness to a new and gracious Owner.
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