SE062809
YOUTUBE
2. WHO I AM WITH GOD
INTRO:
Last week we learned that who I am alone without God is fundamentally broken. But the moment I welcome God’s fixing, saving, powerful activity into my life is the moment I confess that brokenness and sin to Christ. And in that moment I am a Christian. My sin is gone. I’m a member of the Kingdom of God.
So, NOW, who am I WITH GOD?
NOT GUILTY
Well, first, obviously, I’m forgiven. Before God I was condemned – justly earned BTW. But the Scripture agrees that fundamental to my new identity with God is that I’m absolved of sin:
Rom 3:24 Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins.
That’s who I am now – NOT GUILTY.
*When Joren was born Johnna went into labor and this was before the days everyone had cell phones – but I did have one of these labor pagers. And on the day he was due the thing goes off while I’m at work. But I didn’t think it could be, you know, actually happening.
So I allowed myself to get distracted with one more thing to do. About an hour later, I realize, “oh shoot, I’m late, this is important and I need to get home – NOW!” So to make up for one sin, I commit another. I speed home. I mean, I really speed.
I got on Highway 9 and pushed that ’86 Nissan 200 SX hatchback to 97 mph. Do you want to know how I know it was exactly 97 miles an hour? It wasn’t because I looked at my speedometer. No, my speed was measured using a very sophisticated piece of electronic equipment known as a radar gun.
So I explain to the cop, my wife’s in labor, my whole sob story. No mercy. “Explain it to the judge,” he says. Harsh. Great, what chance do I have with a judge? Stern, long robed voice of the LAW?
About 6 hours later, Joren was born. And about a week later, I went to court, with Joren’s birth certificate in hand. I was the last defendant after a busy morning of traffic violators… and I don’t know why, but for whatever reason, the scary judge looked at me, looked the birth certificate, looked at me again, and then said to the clerk:
I’m throwing this out.
Wow! Grace. Amazing – getting something good you don’t deserve. See friends, part of our new identity with God is that we are justified. God looks at all our wrongs, through the birth and death certificate of his Son, Jesus Christ and he says,
“on the basis of HIS merits, I’m throwing this out.”
All true Christians get this. They understand this is part of who they are with God. Not guilty! That’s who I am. Innocent, as if I had never committed the crime, righteous.
TRIPLE THREAT
But there’s a problem: Some of you have reduced Christianity to a single faceted experience, when it was made to be a multi-faceted experience.
It used to be in football that a running back was used for more than running. A good running back would often get a pitch and would pull up and throw down field. And a few good tailbacks could also quick kick – that’s where you kick the ball over the defense’s heads, to try and recover it downfield.
So a running back that could do all that, run, pass or kick, was called a triple threat tailback. But you never hear of such a thing anymore – we’ve reduced that role. Now, they just run the ball.
Well, friends, Jesus Christ, is our triple threat champion but some have quarantined him to a single faceted ministry in their lives – and as a result they do not live out who they really are. We allow Jesus to forgive us. But forgiveness as wonderful as this is, is not all that he came to do.
The Bible says, Jesus saves us not only from the
- the consequences of sin, but also from
- the guilt of sin AND if that weren’t enough
- the power of sin as well!
The Bible says (Heb 7:25), that Jesus is able to save us COMPLETELY –
- not just the eternal consequences of our sin*,
- but the very present guilt* AND
- the seemingly unconquerable power sin has as well.
Reducing Jesus role in their life is why some people who claim to know Christ do not look as saved as God says they are. Let me read you something Paul said about this
GOOD NEWS: THEORY TO REALITY
Rom 6:1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?
This letter to Romans is a sort of A to Z of Christian basic. So by the time we get to this verse in chapter 6, we’ve covered the basics: We’re broken without God, but God’s plan is to make us not guilty.
So the reason Paul mentions this particular question in 6:1, is because it’s what a logical mind will ask, if they’ve followed his argument up to this point. Ok, so there’s grace. But maybe guilt absolution is about the prisoner going free to just offend again. More offenses, more acquittals, God’s mercy looks better with each new etc.
Is that the way it should work with God in the picture? Check this out:
Romans 6:2 By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? … anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
Notice the theme in this verses? Death, dead, dying. Paul keeps the theme going mentioning death, dead, dying or crucifixion 15 times in 7 verses. *Clue: that means something!
Not too long ago, my family reviewed a favorite movie of mine: “What about Bob?” staring Bill Murray. (Not seen it?*) Murray is this paranoid, multi-phobic wreck of a man who innocently pesters his arrogant therapist until the shrink turns crazy.
Late in the movie, the psychiatrist has – ironically – been driven insane because of Bob’s unrelenting harassment, so he ties Bob up and straps a bomb to his neck. Bob, who is totally naïve, worships the doctor and doesn’t believe that he’s about to die. He thinks this is all part of the doctors master plan to cure him. So with the bomb ticking away he nervously says,
So, doc, is this some kind of death therapy?
“Yes, Bob, that’s right, this is death therapy, because I’m going to kill you.”
Well, the end of the story is, Bob lives and is inadvertently cured of all his phobias by this death therapy. Just like that, I want to say,
“friend, before you can live out your new identity with God, you have to undergo some death therapy. The good news is, this death therapy has already been performed on us.
DEATH THERAPY
But some of you don’t know it, which is why you’re still guilty and powerless. Catch what the Scriptures say about this:
- Your old self, your sin nature was crucified with Christ.
- We died, past tense, to sin.
- It was this death that we sealed when we were baptized.
Now friends, this is radical! It describes just how radical a change as been effected in a Christian. We haven’t just had change of worldview, or had our morals slightly rearranged, or had our voting preferences altered, or had a coat of paint put over our language*. Who we used to be, is fundamentally dead!
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
And your baptism as a believer symbolized all this. Do you take that as seriously as you should? In the first century some Jewish/Christian sects carefully prepared people for baptism, then they undressed completely, were placed in water so that their whole body was submerged… then they made a confession of faith in Christ, were instructed in the water, and they came out and were regarded as “new people” by the community.
In fact, in some of these early Christian communities, the new life was so radical that they changed their name, and some teachers even taught that former family relationships were invalid and you were free to marry your sister or mother.
Now for those of you who hesitate to get baptized because you’re worried it might be too weird, this illustration probably isn’t helping you! Don't worry, there no nakedness involved and no marrying of in-laws! I mean to illustrate that the baptism we often take as mere ritual, Christians used to take with the utmost seriousness.
To them they weren’t kidding around. When you became a Christian it was like the person you were, quite literally died.
They understood we were killed in Christ. That is, our old sinful selves that we talked about last week, was annihilated. You see, God HAD to kill the sin nature in you. How else could he dwell inside you by his Spirit? God cannot touch anything unholy. So before he could indwell you, he had to kill you. AW Tozer once said:
“God salvages the individual by liquidating him!”
I love that! He’s saying that when you were baptized, with the pledge of your conscience to Christ, you officially sealed your death warrant and spiritually, your old sinful self was blitzed, annihilated, done away with.
Now, compare this to what you hear Christians say:
- I’ve got to kill my old man
- I’m still fighting with myself
- I’ve got to keep that old man on the cross
Listen, dead men, don’t move, so they don’t jump off of crosses! Your old man, your sinful old self is dead. What this means, is utterly radical. You are not in an internal civil war! There is not a good you and a bad you, waging war trying to live for God.
There is only one you… a new you, because the old you, the sinful you, the rebel you, the sin-dead life you had, is gone. It’s been killed on the cross and your baptism sealed it. Again the bible says it in:
Gal 5:24 Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires.
Friend, listen to me… the Holy Spirit could not come into your heart, until he killed the old you. It is dead. Some of you are not Christians yet, specifically because you have never allowed this death to occur. You may believe some of the beliefs, but friend, a death is required before New Life can take root. Like a seed has to die.
But for those who have so died, know something:
Your sin nature, your sin-dead, sin-loving, sin-obsessed, sin-controlled nature is dead! It doesn’t exist!
SIN PRONE EARTH SUITS
No, here’s where we debate. You’re going to say,
But why then Rick, do I still war on the inside? I’m constantly at war. I want to do the right thing, but I can’t do it… I’m pulled to lie, to lust, to cheapen my life by covering my pain by buying things, to lash out in control and anger, to worry and to fear, and I live in constant defeat! How can you say the old man is dead?!
Seems alive and well to me!
I acknowledge there is a war, but we have misidentified the nature of the war. Your war is not against yourself, the war is against the power of sin which still exists and exerts a powerful pull on our bodies.
You see, your spirit gets changed in a moment of spiritual rebirth by the power of God. But your body is not yet changed. It’s still at the mercy of entropy, both physical and spiritual. It’s going to die, even though God’s marked you to live forever (Jesus, though he die – YET shall he live). Because one day Jesus is going to come back and you’ll get a new body. Then your body will join your spirit in complete renewal. And THEN this war we all feel will be done.
For now, you live in a sin-prone earth suit. Read these verses again:
Rom 6:6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body (soma) of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
Rom 6:12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
Rom 6:13 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.
When the Bible calls it, “the Body of sin”, it doesn’t mean, that your body is inherently sinful. God made the physical world including your body and made it good. But your body is still a part of a fallen world and still subject to decay and death. So the body of sin, means, our sin-prone, decaying, fallen earth suit.
Jesus himself acknowledged that the sin impulse, the power of sin, is a satanically driven power that pulls on our bodies, even though our hearts may be totally new and innocent. Jesus said,
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.
AC3, understand something. God has no plan to put a band-aid on your old life. He has no reconstructive surgery he wants to do, no big diet scheme to put your old sin nature on… No, he just wants to kill it. And he has in fact already done so.
So any Christian ought to say, as convincingly as Paul himself, that we’re really not alive anymore. No, we have been so taken with a new kind of life not our own that we can say:
Gal 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Can this be any clearer? Your old life is dead. You’re not fighting it anymore. Christian, that’s your identity. So your struggle is not with you. Paul acknowledged a struggle, but said, “I’m not really the one doing it, it’s sin living in me.” You’re fighting an outside power, that still yanks on your weakened earth suit. But your life is a borrowed life. Christ’s life.
So now we get to the most practical words in Romans 6. HOW DO WE LIVE OUT THIS LIFE THAT WE ALREADY HAVE?:
- COUNT yourself dead to sin v 11
- DON’T LET sin reign in your body v 12
- PRESENT your body to God v 13
1. COUNT, means “to reckon”, to “act as if”. So you daily remember that your old self is dead. When temptation comes, you pray,
Man, I thank you God that that’s not coming from me, since my sin nature is dead. That must be coming from the power of sin – but I myself am a saint, my heart, the center of my will is good by grace– thank you!
2. DON’T LET SIN REIGN means now we have a choice. See, before we had no choice to let sin REIGN – it just did! We were slaves.
a. 6:17 – thanks be to God, that though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the [gospel, so] you have been set free from sin…
When my family moved into our house, we got two new kittens. And at first we quarantined them upstairs so they could get used to that. Then we eventually removed the barrier so they could explore the whole house. You know what? For more than 2 days, they never came downstairs.
See, they were so used to being caged, that even with the door wide open to them, they didn’t think it was an option. That’s how a lot of Christians are with resisting temptation. We’re in such a habit of thinking that our sin nature is still alive and has all this power over us… but it doesn’t.
We’re actually free… If the old you is dead, then you’re free of it’s power, yes? If you’re married by that person dies, you’re free to marry another, right? Your old vows are null and void. Now, you are free to say yes to God.
3. SO finally, that means you can PRESENT your body – that is, the body of death, your earth suit, which the power of sin can still pull on… present that to God daily.
See, Christians don’t lose the ability to sin, in Christ, but we have lost the slavery to sin… Because the old self; that sin–tied, sin-bound, sin-loving self is gone. We’re free, and the war we fight is no longer hopeless. We fight against a power outside of us, that pulls on a body which will one day be as transformed as our hearts ALREADY ARE.
And it’s Christ in us who brings the fight and the win. At the moment of crisis… Friend, turn it over to him like this:
Christ you are my life, the pull to sin is coming on me, but it’s not me anymore. So be my life. I offer my mind, my arms, my legs, my eyes up to you. Live through this decaying flesh. See, talk, do through them.
Because I no longer live, but you live in me.
