Friday, April 23, 2010

Romans 6:5-14

I thought I would give you a verse that has meant a lot to me. It has to do as to the why we should let the Word of God into our life.

Colossians 3:16 (NIV)
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God.

The word dwell means to take up residence. The Word of God should feel at home in your life. The Word of God or as it says here the Word of Christ should take up residence in a rich way. The Word of Christ should not be cheapened in your life by placing it in the basement of your life. The Word should be given top billing. The result is that we are equipped to help serve other people. It also helps in our worship of our Savior. Here is how it stated in the Message,

Colossians 3:16 (MSG)
16 Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God!

Now on to the book of Romans.

Romans 6:5-14 (NIV)
5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--
7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.
10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

We will camp out here for a bit. In verse six the body of sin is what we are apart from Christ. It is us in our Adamic state. Paul goes back and forth as to what Christ has done and what we are in Him. Paul is teaching us that in Christ we have experienced death, burial, and resurrection. We will see this clearly in Romans chapter 8. In verse 11 of chapter 6 Paul exhorts us to count ourselves as dead to sin and alive to God. We are to reckon it as so in our lives. In other words we are to have faith in Christ and appropriate this truth everyday of our lives. We are to have the audacity to believe that Christ has set us free from sin and act as if it were so. This is where Chapter 8 comes into play again because Paul talks about the Spirit life. We cannot appropriate this truth of dead to sin and alive to God in our own strength.

Let these powerful verses sink in through the weekend and we will pick back up next week.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Romans 6:4-10 (NIV)

I hope you have a great day in the Lord. May God be attentive to your prayers.

Romans 6:4-10 (NIV)
4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--
7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
9 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him.
10 The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

Do you have the victory? I was trained in a school of thought that by God's help and especially by His Spirit's aid a follower of Christ can live above the circumstances of life. This is why Irwin Lutzer writes, " The Spirit’s control will replace sin’s control. His power is greater than the power of all your sin." Hence a question that use to be asked of us is "Do you have the victory." Of course the more you study this question you realize how loaded this question is for the believer. Yet it is a good question to put to ourselves. Here is another way of putting the question, "Am I living free of sin and a life fully committed to God?" Once you understand to some degree the Spirit filled life you have to come to Romans 6:4-10. Paul is saying we can be free of sin. This is not to say we don't sin, but we will be discerning enough to know when we have crossed the line and we will confess that sin. That part of us that wants our way, our wants, desires and die and let the God life live in and through us. We are no longer slaves to sin. Amen.



True triumphs are God’s triumphs over us. His defeats of us are our real victories.

Henry Alford (1810–1871)

Monday, April 19, 2010

Romans 6:1-4

Romans 6:1-4 (NIV)
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

What we are doing is going over the core of the book of Romans. If we are to have victory over sin and live a life fully devoted to Spirit living, then we must understand the truths that are in Romans 5,6, and 8. We have a nagging problem and it is this propensity to go wayward from God. We want to go it alone or find our own way. The Lord is our Shepherd and we must let Him shepherd us. A profound truth is that if you come to know Christ as your savior and Lord then you have died to sin. This means sin no longer has advantage over you. You no longer have to listen to what it says. The language that sin speaks is a foreign language and a follower of Christ no longer knows that language. We are dead to sin. A follower of Christ has been raised to a new life. God wants us to live that new life in Him. The new life is full of possibilities and of transformation. Their is no secret to this new way of living, but there are truths that we must apply to our lives. Here is one of them.

Romans 6:11-14 (NIV)
11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.

We must yield ourselves to the Lord. We must let God have absolute control over our lives in every area at all times. This really comes down to one word and that is obedience to God. Either we our obeying the Lord or we are not obeying the Lord. Are you fully surrender to Lord in every area of your life? Please mediate on this with me for weekend. It is a question I try to ask myself all the time.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Romans 6:1-4

Here we are in chapter six of Romans. Just about all you need to know on how to live out the life of Christ is packed into Romans chapters 5-8.

Romans 6:1-4 (NIV)
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

In these verses Paul is alerting us to a fact of our Christian life and that is we who know the savior are dead to sin. The words dead to sin means sin no longer has advantage over us. This is a truth whether we feel it or not. In theological circles it is known as positional truth. You may not have experienced the truth as of yet, but that does not diminish the fact that it is true. We are no longer in bondage to sin. We can live a life free of sin. Now when I say that I am not, nor does mean perfection. It means that I do not have to practice sin. I can break off from habits that are harmful to myself and to others. The hope we have is that we are free in Christ to become like Christ beginning now and forever more. We are to live a new life. This new life in Christ changes everything for us--I mean everything!! I remember a cartoon where people are studying the Bible and the leader asks the group, "Have you died to sin?" One person said no, but I have felt a little faint at one time. In verse 2 Paul is putting this in the past tense. We died to sin! It is in the past tense. We are to believe and to practice it.



It is the great moment of our lives when we decide that sin must die right out, not be curbed or suppressed or counteracted, but crucified.

Oswald Chambers (1874–1917)

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Romans 5:18-21 (NIV)
18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20 The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Disobedience has brought death to all, but Christ's obedience has made many righteous. The law comes into the equation in order to help people understand that they truly have fallen. Where there is law sin will increase, but again God's grace wins. Wherever sin abounds God's grace abounds even more. This is the age of grace. Grace has always been part of God's plan, but it is in the Christ covenant where grace and truth have been revealed. In the Old Testament we had glimpses into God's grace and mercy. There were times in the O.T. it was if God pulled the curtain back completely to reveal His grace and mercy. The difference is that God has now knocked down the curtain once and for all.We even see it in Christ's teaching before he died on the cross. Think of Christ's teaching on forgiving others in Matthew 18 and Jesus says we are to forgive 7 times 70 not just 7 times. Peter could hardly believe his ears. It was later that Peter was glad it was 7 times 70. Here comes the rub in the next chapter when Paul answers what the believers are thinking in their heads.

Romans 6:1-4 (NIV)
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?
3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Are there people who try and take advantage of God's grace? Yes! Maybe the question should be are there who have taken advantage of God's grace? Yes! Have you taken advantage of God's grace?

We are not to go on sinning. God's grace has brought us to the cross and we have died to sin. Sin no longer has advantage over you or me. God has total access to us and we have total access to God. We are to take advantage of all of God's resources in order to live above sin. Here is quote by A.W. Tozer who was a pastor in Chicago.



Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

A. W. Tozer (1897–1963)

Monday, April 12, 2010

Romans 5:16-21

My hope and prayer for you is that you grow closer to God in every way, every day. Stay with me in the book of Romans!!!



Romans 5:16-21 (NIV)
16 Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.
17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20 The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

How does a person get to heaven? Sunday after the 11:00 o'clock service I had an appointment with a man that had said to me in our previous meeting, "I guess the best way to describe my life is I am lost." This man has no religious background and yet said those words. In my meeting with him I asked him to let me explain how to get to heaven according to the Word of God. I used John 3:16 as the sole basis of our conversation as I have done for years. The gospel is contained in that one verse. He had not had a drink for at least four days because it was his turn to take the children and his body literally shook the whole hour that we met. His mind, however, was not shaking and he got the message that Jesus saves and that he needs Christ. Pray that he will soon surrender his life. One thing that I shared with him that seemed to help is that faith has three components and they are knowledge, understanding and the will. A person needs some knowledge of what they are to believe in, it is not perfect knowledge. The next step they have to have some grasp of what the knowledge implies for their life. The next step then is to submit to the new truth that is surrender their will. He looked at me when I got to the will part and said "that's it isn't it?" His problem, as with most, is he did not want to submit to God. Do you have a 'will' problem?

Friday, April 9, 2010

Romans 5:15-21

Romans 5:15-21 (NIV)
15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
16 Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.
17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18 Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20 The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
21 so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Grace wins! You cannot beat grace. Sin, hell, and the devil cannot beat grace. Your sin cannot beat grace. In the world of winners grace is king. Sin came into the world and wrecked it. However, grace came into the world after it had been wrecked by sin and it still wins. Grace sets the world right. Here is how verse 20 appears in the Message, " All that passing laws against sin did was produce more lawbreakers. But sin didn't, and doesn't, have a chance in competition with the aggressive forgiveness we call grace. When it's sin versus grace, grace wins hands down." Grace reigns over death, unrighteousness, sin, condemnation, and anything else hell can throw at us. Celebrate the God of grace today. Christmas is really about grace-mas. God has revealed His love, mercy, and grace to us in Christ Jesus. Let the God of grace capture your heart again in Christ Jesus.

Grace is an energy; not a mere sentiment; not a mere thought of the Almighty; not even a word of the Almighty. It is as real an energy as the energy of electricity. It is a divine energy; it is the energy of the divine affection rolling in plenteousness toward the shores of human need.

Benjamin Jowett (1817–1893)