Set Free from Sin

If we are not set free from the rain of sin, we have no choice but to sin. But knowing that we've been set free from its rain, that that's who we are, liberates us. We are on, as I remember, being taught as a child, we are on the victory side.

The victory side. I like that. Welcome to Renewing Your Mind on this Wednesday.

I'm Lee Webb. Because of what Jesus did for us, you and I are no longer under law, but under grace. So the question is, why do we still struggle with sin? And how exactly has our relationship to sin changed now that we have Christ in us? These are important questions, and we will explore them today with Ligonier teaching fellow, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, as we continue his series, Union with Christ. Now we're continuing our studies on this session on Romans chapter 6 that we began to look at last time. Let me remind you of where we are on the road.

There was a roadmap. You remember, Paul begins with a response that in a sense is pure emotion to the question, will we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? And then he gives his explanation as to why he has responded that way. He understands that he is a Christian believer who has been baptized into Jesus Christ. He has a new identity.

He has been given a new name. He belongs to a new family, and therefore it follows logically and ought to follow spiritually that he lives out the new family lifestyle. He's no longer in Adam, as he had discussed in chapter 5, verses 12 to 21 of Romans. He is now in Jesus Christ.

So there is the emotion of his response. God forbid that someone who is united to Christ would ever think of going on to live in sin. And his explanation, we died in union with Christ.

We've been raised in union with Christ in order that we might walk in newness of life. And now we come to the last three stages on this road, and those are his exposition of what he said, the implication of the teaching he has been giving, and then a closing exhortation to us. So, he begins his exposition in chapter 6 and verse 5. Notice the word, for.

That is to say, here is the position, now let me give you the exposition. Why do we no longer go on living in sin? Answer, because we have been united to Christ in a death like his. In that death, we have died to sin.

But you'll notice that he parses that earlier statement in a very detailed way, and he says three things about us now essentially. The first is this, that the old self, the old man, hopolios anthropos, the former man, the old man was crucified with Christ. Second, that happened in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing or perhaps in your translation, destroyed. And the result of that, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

So, three very interesting statements. Number one, the old man or the old self was crucified with Christ. What does Paul mean by the old man, the old self?

Well, he's thinking back to what he'd said in chapter 5 verses 12 to 21. We were by nature united to Adam, to the old order, to the fallen order, to the sinful order. But now we've been united to the new man, the last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ.

We've been taken out of one family and placed in another family. And what has affected that is that we have been crucified with our Lord Jesus Christ. Remember Galatians chapter 2 verse 20? In union with Jesus Christ, our union with the old man Adam was broken and our union with the new man Jesus Christ is established. The old man, the old order has gone. Now, Paul is not simply talking about the two halves of his life before I became a Christian and now that I am a Christian.

That is included. But he's thinking of that big picture, that big narrative that we spoke about in an earlier session, that we belong either to the old order in Adam or the new order in Christ. And now that we have been united by faith to Jesus Christ, he is able to say that the old man, the old self was crucified with Christ.

Why? What was the effect of that, the function of that? It was that the body of sin might be brought to nothing or in some earlier translations might be destroyed. Now, what does he mean by that? I think myself he is actually talking about the physical body. Later on in chapter 7, you remember, at the end he cries out, who can deliver me from this body of death? What does he mean by body of death? He means his physical body that is dominated by death and will die. So, when he speaks about the body of sin, I think he means this physical body as this physical body outside of Jesus Christ. Before I became a believer in Jesus Christ, this physical body was dominated not only by death, but also by sin. My whole being, including my body, it's not just my mind and my spirit and my emotions, it's my whole person, including my body, that in Adam, in the old order, as part of the world of the old man and the old family, that body was dominated by sin and there was no escape. Paul is very conscious that it takes different forms and different people.

The dominance, the reign of sin in Paul's life looked profoundly religious. In someone else's life, it might look profoundly flagrant, but the reign is still the same. The ruler is still the same. The world is still the same.

The family is still the same. But now that I've been brought out of Adam and I'm united to Jesus Christ, my body is no longer under the dominion of sin. It no longer belongs to that world.

It's no longer under that reign. I'm no longer under the same necessity, the same bondage to sin. And the result is that, therefore, I no longer serve sin. Our old self was crucified with Christ in order that the body under the dominion of sin might be released from that dominion.

It might no longer be fruitful soil for the reign of sin. And the result is that I'm no longer enslaved to sin. Now, as though that were not enough, he now brings in another layer, you'll notice, in verse 7 to explain this. Why is it that the Christian is no longer enslaved to sin? Answer, verse 7, because one who has died, we've died in union with Christ, for one who has died has been, and in the English Standard Version the translation is, set free from sin. Now, I need to press the pause button here because this is actually rather a controverted verse since the language Paul uses here is the language usually associated with justification.

It's a form of the verb dikaiō, that we usually translate, justify. So, what does Paul mean when he says, the one who has died has been, in this translation set free, in other translations, justified from sin? Well, there are commentators, wonderful commentators, who take the view that Paul is saying, because we are justified, we should no longer live under the dominion of sin.

But my own view is he's saying more than that. And I say that for this reason, that this language of being justified from, justified from, justified away from, justified out of, was used in antiquity and actually I think because Scotland has been much influenced by Roman law, was also used in the old days in Scotland of somebody who had been executed. So, you might have gone down to the grass market in Edinburgh in 1717 or thereabouts and you would read a notice that said Sinclair Ferguson was justified at eight o'clock this morning. That did not mean Sinclair Ferguson became a Christian at eight o'clock this morning.

That meant we hanged Sinclair Ferguson at eight o'clock this morning, and therefore, he is now free from all his former obligations. The same thing you find sometimes in antiquity in exactly the same context, and I think that's the atmosphere in which Paul is using the expression here. It's a completely unique expression in the New Testament.

So, we're not able to say, well, he's using it here in the same sense he uses it somewhere else. We've got to try and work out from within the passage, what's the sense here? And the sense seems to me to be this, that we are not going to be able to do this, that we have been set free from sin in order that we might live to God. The whole context here is not actually about our justification, is it? It's about how we've been delivered from the reign of sin.

And I think this is confirmed in several different ways. One is in chapter 6 verse 10, where he says, we have been set free from sin, and there he uses a completely different verb, eleuthera, which is the ordinary verb for setting a slave free. So, he's talking here not about the guilt of sin, but about the reign of sin. We truly are justified, and so we are set free from the guilt of sin.

But here he's saying that there is a double cure in the gospel. We are set free not only from sin's guilt, we are set free from sin's reign. Now, we are not yet set free from sin's presence. And we need to understand that, and Paul does understand it and goes on to talk about it.

But here is a glorious truth. I, as a Christian believer, am no longer under the dominion of sin. I've been set free from it. That's a very important thing for us to know because we continue to sin, don't we? And sometimes when we continue to sin, we are prone to listen to the evil one who says that you're not really free from sin at all.

Indeed, I want to raise a question about your justification. Paul is not saying we are free from the presence of sin. He's saying we're free from the reign of sin, and that's the only reason we are able to deal with the sin in our hearts. If we are not set free from the reign of sin, we have no choice but to sin. But knowing that we've been set free from its reign, that that's who we are liberates us.

We are on, as I remember being taught as a child, we are on the victory side because we're united to our Lord Jesus Christ. Let me use a completely different illustration, but in the same world as the illustration I used in the previous session about being Scottish. Say, I became an American citizen. Say, I became an American citizen. And then out of the blue, I have a letter from Buckingham Palace signed by Elizabeth II, or Elizabeth R as I think she signs herself. Dear Dr. Ferguson, I command you to come back and to serve in the forces here in the United Kingdom. But if I've become an American citizen, I can send my little letter back to her. And especially if I'm no longer a monarchist, I can say, dear Lizzie, I can say, dear Lizzie, it was so nice having you as my sovereign and I loved living under your reign, but I am no longer under your reign.

I am an American. I am no longer under your dominion. You have no authority over me. So, I am not left in the situation of thinking, do I have to serve her or don't I have to serve her?

Do I have to go back or don't I have to go back? No, I understand who I am now. And you can see why Paul ties all this to baptism because it tells us you have been baptized out of the world of Adam, out of the reign of sin into the world of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. You remember how Aaron, when he pronounced the Aaronic benediction, that three-fold blessing that was placed upon the people, God said to him, put my name on them. You ever notice that, you know, ministers often pronounce the Aaronic benediction, the Lord bless you and keep you, etc.? Very rarely in my hearing has anybody said, God has told His servants to put His name upon His people.

You're being named for me. And in the same way we've been named for Jesus Christ, we belong to the kingdom of Jesus Christ, where grace reigns through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, the last words He had written at the end of what we call chapter 5. And now He's exploring this and saying, Christian, do you know who you are? Remember the other session in which we said, you know, what would happen in our church if the person leading the liturgy said, Christian, what do you believe about yourself? And here Paul is saying to us what we believe about ourselves as we're no longer under the dominion of sin, that our bodies now belong to Jesus Christ and are under the reign of grace, have become fruitful soil for the Spirit to produce His own gracious fruit within us. So, He's begun with emotion and then He's given us the explanation, and now He's treated us to this exposition, and this leads, you'll notice, in verse 11 to an implication, and it is extremely important too. Therefore, He says, you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Now again, let me put it negatively. He's not saying, I need to sit in a seat in the morning and say, I'm dead to sin, I'm dead to sin. Oh, I must be dead to sin. No, He's saying you are dead to sin. So, don't think about yourself as though you weren't dead to sin. Don't think about yourself as though you weren't dead to sin. Now, I think many people reading this for the first time will say, but I don't feel very dead to sin.

My friends, that is absolutely irrelevant. You didn't feel that Jesus died for you on the cross. You believed Jesus died for you on the cross because that's what the gospel taught you. He didn't die for you on the cross because you felt that. You've begun to feel that because you know that.

And He's saying something similar here too. And we have this propensity to tell the Bible in certain places that it didn't get it right because that's not the way we feel. And here Paul is saying to us, you need to learn to think this way because you don't naturally think this way. You know, many of us when we became Christians, we were born again, we thought we knew it all. But we hardly knew anything.

We needed to grow in our understanding. And this is why Paul keeps on appealing in this passage, don't you know this? Do you know this? You need to know this in order to reckon it. The verb he uses is an accountancy verb. So, if you're an accountant doing simple sums, I know accountants don't count the way normal human beings count, their own way of counting. But in the early days when you did your books, you tottered up the sums and you did the reckoning. And at the end of the day, the total was the sum of all the other figures. You didn't make them up.

You would be in the local jail if you had made them up. You reckoned you had a hundred dollars in the bank because you had a hundred dollars in the bank. You didn't go to the cashier and say, I reckon I've got a hundred dollars in the bank, give me a hundred dollars. And she said, Paul, you've only got ten cents in the bank.

I'm not giving you a hundred dollars. And Paul is using that accountancy language. He's not saying, make this up about yourself. He's not saying, work yourself up to this. He is not saying, this is true of some Christians, but it's not true of other Christians. He's saying, he's saying, this is the truth, depend upon it.

This is the truth, reckon it to be true because it is true. And when we grasp that, when we grasp that this is the truth about us, then we're ready for Paul to unleash these strong imperatives. You know, it's so important for us to understand that the more we grasp the riches of the grace of God and the gospel, the more ready we are for overwhelmingly powerful and demanding commands and demands. There is a great tendency in the Christian church to think that because there is so much grace in Jesus Christ, there are no commands left.

That's not how it works. What we find here in this passage is that because of the greatness of the grace of God and the gospel, Paul can release upon us the most demanding imperatives imaginable. And so, now he turns into a sergeant major, doesn't he?

A drill sergeant. So, since this is true, don't let sin reign in your body to make you obey its passions. Don't present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness. Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness, for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace.

Now, what's very interesting here is that from Romans chapter 5 into Romans chapter 6, when Paul has spoken about sin, he has used the definite article before it. He has spoken about the sin. And it's almost as though he is personifying it. And here he uses language that almost communicates to us that sin is like a … it's like a person. It's like a slave master who has had us under its dominion. It's like a general in the army.

The word instrument is the same word as the word weapon. In spiritual warfare, he's saying, you've got to use the members of your body as weapons in the warfare of your general Jesus Christ, not general sin. Sin is like an employer who pays wages. And he's going on to say that the wages that sin pays is death. So, in Adam, we're under the dominion of sin. In Adam, we're under the dominion of death.

There is no escape in Adam. There is an inevitability to a sinful lifestyle, no matter how sophisticated it may be. But now that we've been brought into the new family, now that God has put His name upon us, now that we've been baptized into union and communion with Jesus Christ, this body has ceased to be fertile soil given over to farmer sin, and has become fertile soil given over to the farmer, the Holy Spirit who is sowing the seeds of grace in our lives. So, don't let sin reign because you're united to the Lord Jesus Christ. Another helpful illustration to understand our union with Christ.

Our teacher is Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. We have aired three of the messages from his series, Union with Christ, this week here on Renewing Your Mind. But the entire 12-part study is available on DVD for your donation of any amount. You can call us to make your request at 800-435-4343.

You can also go online to renewingyourmind.org. And in advance, let me thank you for your generous donation. We hope today's study has encouraged you to go deeper in your study of God's Word. Maybe there's a special topic you've wanted to learn more about, like Reformed theology, church history, apologetics, or Christian ethics. Let me encourage you to explore Ligonier Connect. That's our online learning tool that takes place in an interactive classroom format. You can study by yourself or with a group. And for a limited time, you can save 50% on your first six months. To learn more and get started, just visit connect.ligonier.org. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow as Dr. Ferguson takes us into the Upper Room Discourse. We'll discover Jesus' heart for His Father and His disciples, and what He longed for in His prayers. That's next time here on Renewing Your Mind.