Restraining Sin (Part A)

We refuse the authority from hell and its opinions and whatever forces us to go against Christ is a tyrant. That is sin. Christians are not to die to sin but have died to sin in Christ. He settled this.

In practice, yes, we may commit an act, but positionally we're perfect in Christ. This is Cross-reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Romans.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Romans chapter 6 with today's edition of Cross-reference Radio. We will look to cover verses 1 through 14. We'll take the first four verses. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

Certainly not. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father even so, we also should walk in newness of life.

Restraining Sin is the title. He's dealing more with the attitude of sin and the ultimate outcome with the believers. But this is very important, I think, to understanding what's going on in this sixth chapter. If you've not read what comes after chapter 6, chapters 7 and 8, then you might scratch your head a little bit more than you should. But if you know what's coming, all this makes sense.

All of this is now manageable. So, for those of you who are aware of what's in chapters 7 and 8, where Paul talks about the hatred for sin and the blessing of the salvation, then, of course, you have to apply that to the things that appear confusing in this sixth chapter. The workings of the Christian dichotomy, the flesh and the spirit. I'm saddled with these two natures, whether I like it or not. Every single person is. Every born-again believer has two natures.

Let me clarify something I just said. Not everybody has two natures. Those who are not born again have a single nature.

It is an endemic nature linked to Adam and the fall, and that's it. But once you're born again, now you have that Christ-likeness about you, and you have these two natures, and they hate each other, and they're irreconcilable, and you're going to be stuck with them until you get to heaven. A lot of Christians don't want to hear that. They want you to tell them, oh, eventually you're going to be just like Christ in this life, and it's all going to work out.

No, you're not. You're going to fight to the death, so get ready for it. And a lot of good comes out of that, and that's what we're going to be talking about. That old, unregenerate nature to which we are born is the flesh. It is the old nature, not in the sense of age, but in the sense like, well, maybe you move from one place and you live in another place, and you say, that's my old house.

That doesn't have to be old in years. It's just where you once were, and we have a nature, that old nature before we were born again, and that's why it's referred to as the old man. And we were born with a nature that can do nothing God's way. Romans chapter 7, remember I referenced, if you know what's coming, it's going to help understanding what's going on in chapter 6. Romans 7, for I know that in me that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells, for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.

He's not talking hypothetically. He's talking about his experience. Paul read in scripture about sin, and then he experienced it in life. He read in scripture about God's grace and mercy, and then he experienced it when he became a believer. A new nature though, that's what happens when you become a believer. We have a new nature now, not just the Adamic one. The spirit is alive, there's a new man. And so just a quick review, because this is all what's really in this section, the natural, the flesh, the old man, it's the fallen nature given to sin. The spirit regenerated in Christ hates sin, loves the Lord, and it is sinless, that new nature.

Problem is you've still got the old one. Now when a Christian is carnal, that means that they are saved, but they're giving in to that old nature. You know, when you get in the flesh, the things that are wrong about you, they have the upper hand. And we fight these things, we must resist these things, because if we don't resist them, the results are catastrophic. There is no good in the old nature, but there's not enough power in the new to end that fight in this life. We were born again with a nature that can do nothing wrong.

John, his first letter, chapter 3, whoever has been born of God does not sin, for his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin because he has been born of God. He's talking about, see there he's talking about the spiritual man. The spiritual man is perfect before God, washed in the blood.

That's the ideal, that's who I want to be, that's who I'm going to be. And so if we lose sight of these things, you'd say, well John, are you out of your mind? No, he's not, he's perfectly right, he understands the balance, the dichotomy of who we are. Because the Christian, the spiritual side of us, is ashamed of our sin, hates our sin as I've said. Look with me at verse 21, Romans chapter 6.

What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed, for the end of those things is death? Well they weren't ashamed of those things before they were Christians, they might have been socially ashamed, but not in the presence of the one who died for them, who loves them, and the Christian loves him back, the Christ, Jesus Christ. So it's not simply because the act of sin is socially unacceptable, that the Christian experiences shame, but because it's against Jesus, our Lord. We have full understanding that he died for us, we didn't deserve it, and we want to please him, and we find this flesh keeps interfering with pleasing him, the one whom we love more than anyone else. No Christian is ashamed of saying that I love Jesus, or at least I strive to love Jesus more than anyone else.

Is everything right with that? There's something wrong with, well, you know, I do love my kids more, or I do love this more, or I love that more. That, of course, offends the believer because we know that that does not come from heaven. This hatred for sin is a good hate, Romans chapter 12 verse 9. Let love be without hypocrisy, hate what is evil, cling to what is good. And when we think of all the damage, the worst thing that's happened to anyone is sin, and when we think about what it does, we can't stand it.

But the fight is worth fighting because it's just not that simple. It takes those who were once sinners and are now saved to reach those who are still sinners and are not saved. Now we come to verse 1.

What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? No, we are not to sin so that grace can flourish.

He's asking this rhetorical question. He picks up that question-answer format again, and he's referring to his previous statement in what we call chapter 5, where he said, Where sin abounded, grace did much more. Well, if grace did abound more, shall we just continue to sin so that grace can flourish?

Of course not. Some people actually try to pull little stunts like that. Clearly, he condemns any idea of reckless salvation, that sin somehow helps God be kind to us. There's a song I know for some of you might like. It talks about reckless love or reckless grace. There's nothing reckless about God.

That is bad theology baked into a song, and you might like the beat, but it's wrong. Nothing is reckless about the grace that we receive. Hell, it's not grace if it's clumsy and sloppy and doesn't know what it's doing and it's unpredictable. But lurking in the heart of each one of us is the desire to not only sin, but to justify it. 1 Peter chapter 2, For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as a bondservant of Christ, a willing servant of Christ. Paul could never endorse sin because he was spirit-filled.

And you can't either if you're spirit-filled. You know it's wrong, and when you do, you commit it. So it can cause a Christian heavy duty confusion if they don't understand grace. A lot of Christians, they come to Christ and they set the timer.

You have this long to make me perfect. And if I find that I'm still struggling with my sin, they don't say it this way, but this is what they do. If I find that you don't deal with my sin in such and such time, then I'm going to stop going to church.

I'm going to stop believing you. I'm going to go back, and they become apostates. Whereas the righteous say, it's not worth going back.

We have to let him deal with this. Where sin abounded, grace did much more. There is now no condemnation.

And our carnal nature keeps objecting to that. How could you think that you're somehow saved still and you just did this? Well, I don't have to answer you. Christ has already answered, and I'm going to stick with that. And if you meet a sinless Christian, call me, because I'm going to laugh at you.

There's only one who is sinless, and of course that is to Christ. Anyway, if God wanted us to sin, he would have included it in the commandments. You know, thou shall, and all the bad things in there.

But he forbids these things. The New Testament picks it right up. And yet, there's a whole world out there that really could care less. They couldn't care less about Christ.

And this is the big difference. We care. We have a problem with sin. They have a problem with maybe right and wrong morality, but not because of Christ. Now, verse 2, when he says, so going back to verse 1, we need to read that again. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Verse 2, certainly not. How shall we who die to sin live any longer to it? So it's an attitude thing again.

It's an emphatic no. May it never be. Of course we can't live to sin. We're going to sin. But in our heads and our hearts, we know it's wrong. We're not justifying this. And it is disappointing to sit in counsel with a Christian who has committed some sin.

And they want to try to justify it. You have an indefensible position. You're making yourself look like sin doesn't matter for you. And it's also refreshing when another Christian comes in and says, I have offended the Lord.

I have done wrong. And I repent. Oh, man, you can build, you can resume the battle with that Christian. So how shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Well, we never see sin the same way once we surrender to Christ. And by coming to Christ, we declare that sin is harmful and we side against it. We struggle with our sin, one of the most constant, unpleasant experiences of the believer. The born again are dead to sin, but sin is not dead to us. But Christ has dealt with this. And we refuse the authority from hell and its opinions. And whatever forces us to go against Christ is a tyrant. And that is sin.

Christians are not to die to sin but have died to sin. In Christ, he settled this. In practice, yes, we may commit an act, but positionally, we're perfect in Christ.

He's presented us faultless. We are uncondemned by the grace of God. And this is what he meant when he said, you know, we're sin-abounded, grace did much more. Christ overcomes your sin.

That's what it means. You say, why are you repeating these things? Well, ask Paul. He repeats it. Well, why does he repeat it? Because it's not easy for the flesh to understand because the sense of pride wants to be justified.

It wants to say, no, I obeyed. I get a reward for that. Well, obedience does bring reward, but to the humble because God resists the proud. And the humble say, look, I understand my place before the throne of God.

And I am committed to that. If he wants to give me something, that's on him. That's the whole point of casting the crown. Casting out crowns at his feet. Lord, we're not worthy of these things.

I know. And you dented the crown. Now who's going to fix that?

So I'm going to place mine so that it's not damaged. Anyway, Paul believed the doctrine of human responsibility. At no point are we relieved from that.

That's why it's a war. And yet he knew the doctrine of human inability. That's why he's been preaching these things.

Maybe this will help you be a little bit more patient with another Christian. Because we expect more from other Christians. But we don't always get it. Sometimes we do. But sometimes we don't.

And when we don't, we can get in the flesh. I can't believe that guy. You show him kindness and grace and mercy, you give him an opportunity. And that's what they throw back in your faith?

Where does he live? There's a night mission coming up. Well, anyway, suppress the humor because you can just go crazy on that subject. So here we are in conflict. And verse 3 now, Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Now he does not debate baptism. He's talking about salvation. But he is also, he's going to include the metaphor, he's going to use water baptism as metaphor to support everything he is saying. And the first Christians, they weren't confused about baptism. They knew if you believed in Christ, you were to express this. You were to be immersed in water.

And they did. And so he just presents it almost as a matter of fact. Do you not know that as many of us that were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Still, the main thing is entering faith, not water.

And so he's primarily again speaking of conversion and immersion is secondary. Water baptism does symbolize the death of the individual being baptized, not the cleansing. Now the Jews had mikvahs, these little baths all over the second temple, all over that area of the second temple.

And these are little pools where the Jews would go through ritual cleansing. That's what John the Baptist, his baptism was more of a cleansing, a repentance back to Yahweh. But the baptism of the believer is the conscience admitting the sin and receiving the Savior and asking to belong to the Lord.

It is quite a significant gesture that we all can make. And so Paul uses water baptism as metaphor for the believer's new life in Christ. I want to illustrate that in a minute because by this water baptism, we are identifying with Christ's death and his burial and his resurrection. It is an outward event, but what's on the inside is that baptism into the body of Christ has already taken place. Baptism is saying, I am no longer under sin's judgment, but I am under grace. That's what the Christian baptism is saying.

Now this is true of the communion table too. Every Christian should be baptized and every Christian should partake at the Lord's table. Faith and repentance are necessary before both of them. To have faith in Christ and everything that he says about himself and everything he says about man and you, that is faith and repentance, of course, is the recognition that we need to get on his side because we're not there without him. These two must take place before those two rites for them to be genuine. And you can fake it, but you're not faking it before God.

In fact, you're adding to your sin if you are going to tamper with these two rites given to the church. Verse four, I'm going to stay on the baptism a little bit more. Verse four, therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Well to bury is to put out of sight, to make it difficult to reach as a matter of fact. Death breaks the tie between man and his natural life. And this is illustrated, of course, in the water battle. I'm breaking the tie between my flesh, my Adamic life, my natural self, and I'm coming into a different kingdom.

I'm taking on a new citizenship. Salvation creates that eternal tie between man and his God. Now when he wrote to the Colossians, which he hasn't written this letter yet, he writes it later, but he writes to them, he said that we've been buried with him in baptism in which you also were raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead, raised Christ from the dead. So baptism is theology and metaphor and illustration. Through baptism into death, all baptisms are to speak of commitment and death and immersion also, immersion into the faith, symbolized by being immersed in water. Many of you know this, but some may not, that water baptism, it symbolizes the processes. First a believer takes their stand in the water, recognizing that they're in need of something from the hand of God. That water is a foreign element to the nature, something that's foreign, it's outside of itself, and it speaks of death to them as a natural person. Then they are immersed in that water.

That is the symbol of the death. They're put out of sight. They are buried. And finally, from that watery grave, they come up.

They emerge by the power of someone else's arm. You don't baptize yourself. The metaphor is very significant. And then we live on, publicly identified through this act of obedience. So immersion announces the believer's death with Christ. The communion table, the table, proclaims Christ's death for the believer. They're joined.

They are in rhythm with each other. They're very meaningful to us. An unbeliever can go through the gestures of both, but there's nothing happening on the inside. There's no link to God. It's a dead link.

It's a dead end. But in the believer, this is something very special, very powerful. And if you have not been baptized and you believe that Christ Jesus is your Savior, you need to get baptized.

Not because so much of others, but because of you. You go through life knowing, I've been baptized. I've lined up with the sinners. I have stood in the water. I have been submerged, dead to my flesh. And I have emerged just as Christ came out of the empty tomb.

Faith into the water, immersion under the water, and then emergence up from the water. Now here in verse four, he says, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. That word glory, doxa in the Greek, from which we get our English word doxology, which is at the end of the service when the closing song is a doxology. And it is the glory of God. We are being dismissed from his presence as an assembly to his glory and also to his glory. We're heading out with whatever he has invested in us to his glory, to the honor of God.

And it's not supposed to be a casual thing, a typical thing. It's supposed to be a glorious thing. It's supposed to be divine power involved. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit is to be involved in this.

He doesn't have to. There are many places that call themselves churches, have no interest in Jesus Christ or his word, but they assemble and they have their little closing songs. It's all meaningless. It's like without the Holy Spirit, they're arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it's going down.

It's a meaningless exercise. And humanity is filled with such behavior. Even so, he says here at the bottom of verse four, we also should walk in newness of life. Now those who preach greed and lawlessness, you know, God wants you rich and it doesn't matter that you sin, he's died, antinomianism. They have to reject these verses, these type of verses to carry on that way. And if you want to reject the scripture, you will find that the Lord of the scripture will reject you.

It ain't worth it. It's better to get in the fight to deal with guilt when you're guilty and shame when you've done something shameful than to ignore it and let that fire burn beneath the surface to your destruction. Well, I'd rather be immersed in Christ than myself. And of course, my flesh protests that and the fight is on. Verse six, for if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. Well, it is not Christ for me unless I am determined to have Christ formed in me as I sign up. And this begins with the resurrection of Christ and it is finalized with our resurrected bodies. So Wednesday we covered from Isaiah, you know, parts of the millennial kingdom and how it's going to be, that there will be survivors to the great tribulation period that will enter into this thousand year period of Christ reigning on earth from Jerusalem. Well, what about us? What's going to happen with us? Well, we're glorified in our glorified bodies. We're not susceptible to death or physical pain or any other kind. No more sorrow. All that stuff's gone. In fact, in the new Jerusalem, the one that comes down from heaven, there are no bathrooms.

I believe that if we choose to eat, the food will be so perfectly digested, there'll be no waste. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.

We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio. So make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans, here on Cross-Reference Radio.