Romans 6:1-7

Jesus offers us grace and forgiveness that far exceeds the magnitude of our sin. More than that, He also offers us a transformed life; a new life that releases us into freedom and gives us the power to change through that same grace. We’re in Romans 6:1-7, the part of the letter where Paul responds to the immense love of God that he talked about in chapter 5. 

Transcript

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Hey, I wanted you to know that Jesus offers us grace and forgiveness that exceeds the magnitude of our sin. More than that, he offers us a transformed life, a new life that releases us into freedom and gives us the power to change. On that happy note, welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am genuinely glad that you've joined us today. We're in Romans chapter six, verses one through seven. It's the part of the letter where Paul responds to the immense love of God that he was just talking about in Romans chapter five. You're invited to go ahead and open up your copy of the scriptures there, and we're going to take in these seven verses together. But before we do anything more, let's pray. Jesus, thank you for this wonderful day that you've given us. God, thank you that you meet us in in ways that we can only imagine sometimes, but it's always the right way. God, thank you for saving us, but thank you that you also change us and desire to continue that process in us. Be with us now. Amen. All right, Romans chapter six, verses one through seven. What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means. We are those who have 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? 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. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Let's take just a couple moments here to pause and pray and listen to what the Lord has for us. If you'd like to pause this podcast, go ahead and do that, and then we'll continue. All right, let's uh make a few observations. This is one of those great little passages that lays out, you know, linearly, and uh and Paul's great Paul's great for that. It's easy to follow. And so I've kind of uh just grouped them uh in three little sections here. We're gonna start with verses one and two. And we're talking about this idea that grace has superabounded. If you uh look at the end of chapter five, and uh if you by the way, if you missed last Thursday's podcast uh on Romans 5, the end of the chapter there, uh go ahead and take that in. If you don't have time, that's fine. I'll only be hurt for a little bit and then I'll get over it, don't worry. Uh but he talks about this idea that that we're where uh sin increased, grace increased all the more. And then we talked about this idea that where the increase there is about this, uh it's abounding, where sin abounded, grace superabounded. And it's just a really cool uh word picture for us. So grace has superabounded. So what do we do in response to that? And Paul is just reminding the Romans and us uh that that that's not an invitation for us just to to keep on sinning to somehow get God to produce more grace. Like if we're thinking anything that resembles that at all, we've kind of missed the point of what grace is all about. And it's sort of like he's giving us this picture of, you know, don't inhabit a rotting corpse. I know that sounds like a little gross and sort of graphic, but but he he kind of says that, right, in verse two, by no means we are those who have died to sin, how can we live in it any longer, right? And there's for me at least, there's this picture of of us um, you know, we've been forgiven and that's that's great, but then for whatever reason, like we just we haven't let that part click yet, maybe, and we kind of keep going back to old behaviors, and it just doesn't make any sense. And and and then it's it's like, well, what's grace all about anyway, right? So the key idea here in verses one and two, at least the one that I came up with, is this the function of grace isn't to cover up sin, it's to heal us from it and to bring us into health. Now let's talk about covering up for a moment. So sometimes in scripture, even, it talks about um God's grace or his forgiveness covers our sin, right? And that's a kind of a different picture, but I'm talking about covering up. Like, like when you're you're sweeping up the dirt in your kitchen. If you just put that in a pile and maybe stick it under a rug, you haven't actually cleaned it, you've just covered it up. Grace doesn't do that. God's forgiveness doesn't function that way. It makes your home or your heart truly clean. And and then the other piece of this, though, is to recognize that it's not just the cleansing moment, it's the power and the ability and the tools and just the supernaturalness of God that comes in and helps us to stay clean, right? And I know that for some of us, the the idea of of living with at least less and less sin in our lives is challenging. We're like, well, aren't I always kind of like in that place where I I need more of God's grace? Well, yeah, maybe in a certain way, but I really believe that what Paul is teaching here and what God does for us is is more than that, right? It's more than just, oh, I'm a dirty, rotten sinner and I need to be forgiven. No, you you were that, maybe, but you're called into something different, and God gives us the power to actually change. That's part of the beauty and the power of grace. I wanted to move us now into verses three and four and just kind of reflecting on that. And in order to do that, I wanted us to understand baptized. That word baptized there, the Greek is baptizo, and uh, and that actually does matter a little bit. It means to be kind of overwhelmed or immersed, but not just like dunked immersed. There's another word that describes that process, and and this is different, it's it's immersed and changed. And in fact, the way that they uh talk about it is it's similar to the idea of a vegetable being immersed and maybe kind of left there for a while in in a brine, right, and changed into a pickle. So it's kind of a funny way of thinking about it, but but when we're baptized into Christ, we're not just washed on the outside, we are, to our very center, changed. We've become something new. We once were this other thing, and now because we're in Christ and we've identified with him and we've been baptized into him, right? Immersed in him, think of it that way, uh, our our nature has been has been absolutely changed, right? And so Paul talks about that. Uh he says we're baptized into his death, right? Immersed into that, which doesn't sound great, but it is actually kind of important. 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 other words, the the death was necessary. That brings us to our key idea for verses three and four. Uh the key idea is this: the the death of the old life is a necessary precursor to living a new life. If for some reason we're trying to manage our own salvation in a way that says, yeah, I was I was pretty all right before, and I still think like that that's still true, then what we're doing is we're robbing ourselves of true transformation and we're hanging on to old things and and we're we're basically living in a way that is kind of rejecting uh the power of change that God has put into us. And so Paul is just saying, look at we've been baptized into his death, and therefore we are also uh, in a sense, baptized into his resurrection. Like we get to die with Christ and be raised back to life in that in that same sense. Uh one of my good friends, uh Mark Klingler, who also serves as a pastor, uh, whenever he baptizes people, he you know, he says, he puts them under and he says, dead to sin, raises them back up alive, uh alive in Christ. And it's just a great uh picture of doing all that. All right, verses five through seven. Uh baptism into Christ means being united with Christ. I wanted to capitalize, yeah, accentuate, maybe emphasize. There we go. I wanted to emphasize the idea of being united with Christ, that that we're identified with him, that who we are has changed. And it doesn't mean that you've lost yourself in some kind of a like a identity crisis kind of a way. In fact, in certain ways, we become more ourselves because of Christ in us, but but we're connected with him. We're not connected with sinful behavior. It means that that those ugly behaviors, the ones that we aren't proud of, those things no longer define us really in any way at all. We've been united with him. Verse 5, in a death like his, we will also certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him, right? Our old self is done, our old self was put to death, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we're no longer slaves to sin, right? We've moved from that bondage into something that's free and good and life-giving. Uh, anyone who has died has been set free from sin, right? So we are people of the resurrection. I want you to remember that. If you've confessed Christ, remember that you are a person of the resurrection. You belong to Christ, which means you have been set free and you've been given this new life. And sometimes we just need to be reminded of that reality, of that truth. Unity with Christ means freedom from sin. All right. I've yakked long enough uh about about this. I want this to be something that that we're able to kind of uh process on our on our own as well as we're kind of doing this here together. Uh so for reflection, I want to leave you with this idea. Do you see grace as permissive or transformative? Now, if you've been paying attention for the last several minutes, you'll be like, oh, it's transformative. But I mean, take it out of this conversation for a moment and just how how do you usually think about it? Because I think when we think about grace as being permissive, that it's it's just the forgiveness piece of it, that it's the thing that we do, you know, like we've done the bad thing and we realize it and we confess it and then we're made clean again. Like, and that's true, and that is good. We we should be thrilled that that's the case. But but but Jesus wants so much more for us than that. So here's the way that I would talk about it. And is it permissive or transformative? It is transformative, right? So if you're struggling with sin, don't stress about it. Don't stop it. Stop stressing about the sin that's present in your life. Confess it, absolutely, and yes, he will forgive you, but I want you to take that next step. Confess it and and right ask for God's grace to bring you to victory, or something that we might call repentance. It's not the repentance part isn't separate from God's grace, right? Sometimes we think that that's true, that the grace is just the part that you know erases the the penalty of of sin. No, the grace is there to help you win. So invite that to take place in your life, whatever that might be for you. Bring that to the Lord and say, God, I I failed again. I don't want to do that. So God, would you give me the strength and the power? Would you use your grace in my life to to continue changing me into this new creation that you've called me to be? Let's pray. God in heaven, thank you for just the the life that is found in the truth of your word. God, for for all of us who might be feeling discouraged because of things that we keep on doing that we wish we wouldn't. God, would you would you speak into that for us? God, would you remind us that you not only are ready to forgive, but you're you're desiring to empower us to be completely new people. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.