The Resurrection Makes it Real, Part 2

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. Your confession of faith has to be more than words. It has to be more than a prayer you pray or a ritual you go through, walk in an aisle, pray in a prayer, joining a church, going to a confirmation class, getting baptized. Your confession of faith is surrendering to Christ as Lord, receiving his free offer to save you, and letting him infuse his resurrection power into you. Welcome back to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of Pastor J.D.

Greer. And happy Fourth of July. We hope that you've been enjoying the time with your friends and family today, and we join you in celebrating this great country and all of the freedom that God has blessed us with.

As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. You know, some of us think if we could only see Jesus with our own eyes, like Paul and the apostles did, then we would never have any doubts about our faith. But today, Pastor J.D. shows us that because we have the testimony of Paul and so many others, we actually can see that Jesus is who he said he was. And when we accept that, we find that the resurrection doesn't just change minds about Jesus, it changes lives.

Are you ready for some real fireworks? Let's jump back into Romans chapter six for today's teaching titled, The Resurrection Makes It Real. What is the phrase, died to sin?

What does that actually mean? Well, first let me explain what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that you and I have lost all interest in sin after we become a believer. It doesn't mean that we're slowly moving away from sin. We're slowly dying to it as we mature.

Here's two reasons we know that. First, the word died in this verse, you see, is in past tense. It's not that we're dying, it's not that something that's happening to us, it's something that's already happened. We have died to sin. Secondly, in chapter seven, Paul is going to explain in the next chapter that the Christian can indeed still be tempted by and even seduced by the power of sin. Paul is going to explain, he's like, listen, I'm an apostle and my whole life is wrestling with sins and sometimes they get the better of me because my body, my simple body is always trying to convince me to do a bunch of stuff that I know I shouldn't do and seems like half the time my body wins out over me and I do what I don't want to do. So Paul doesn't mean here that we just lost interest in sin. No, what Paul means is what he explains in the next verse.

He explains it for you. Verse three, do you not know that all of us who've been baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life. Paul says, when you accept Christ, you die to sin in two ways. Here from that verse, first he says, you renounce sin once and for all. You die to sin by renouncing it once and for all. The picture of this Paul says is baptism.

One of the questions we ask you when we baptize you, are you willing to go wherever Jesus tells you to go and do whatever he tells you to do, right? That is called repentance. Repentance means a change of mind.

It means I was going the direction of doing what I wanted to do. I was the Lord of my own life. And now at this point forward, I am going to turn an about face and I'm going to do what Jesus wants me to do.

He is now the Lord of my life. And the picture of that is baptism because then we put you into the water showing you were dying to your old independent way of living and you're being raised to this new life of following Jesus. Again, that is called repentance. It is surrender and it is the essence of conversion. If that didn't happen at your conversion, then your conversion was not legitimate because becoming a Christian does not mean that you go through some ritual or pray some prayer. We got a lot of people that think I pray this little prayer, ask God to let me into heaven and boom, that was it. Listen, praying a prayer and asking God to let you into heaven does not make you a Christian. People in every religion pray and ask God to let them into heaven. Just believing in Jesus, believing that he was the son of God and that he rose from the dead, that doesn't make you a Christian.

We know that because James, again, Jesus's half brother would say in the book that he wrote, he would say even the demons believe, they believe that Jesus rose from the dead and they're more sure of it than you are because they wouldn't happen. But they're not Christians. So just believing in Jesus doesn't make you a Christian. Going to church and getting involved and getting religious doesn't make you a Christian.

Know what makes you a believer is that you surrender, that you have an about face, that you renounce sin. It doesn't mean that God just becomes an influence on you or you become a slightly better person. I remember when I was growing up, a lot of Christians, a lot of zealous Christians before they really, the fish sign got popular and all the other stuff it is now, they put this bumper sticker on their car and said, God is my co-pilot. And my youth pastor was also gonna be like, God ain't your co-pilot. If God's your co-pilot, somebody's in the wrong seat, right? Because God didn't come to be your inboard navigation system just to tell you how to get through a situation or doesn't just come to be your on star to... None of these things have been invented yet when I was a teenager.

I'm just updating it in modern terms. God didn't come to be your on star to help you in the midst of if you have a flat tire. In fact, if you wanna think of your life as a car, basically when Jesus shows up, he's like, hey, you stole my car. And you're like, yes, sir, it's your car. It's not my car. My life is your car. And you get out and you will sit humbly in the back seat and say, okay, where are we going? That's what it means to repent is it means that no longer are you living this way, you are renouncing sin.

Now hear me very clearly. I don't mean that Christians become perfect. Remember I told you in Romans seven, Paul's gonna explain life as a struggle and sometimes you still stumble and fall. But listen, a true believer, Paul says, is somebody who has unequivocally renounced sin and their life proves that. So that's the first way Paul says that we die to sin is we renounce it.

Have you done that? Have you turned over? Have you said, I'm going to forsake what Jesus has forbidden.

Is Jesus, has he ever become the Lord of your life? Second Paul says, saying you're dead to sin means that through Christ's resurrection, he has destroyed the rain, the power, the dominion of sin in your life. When you accepted Christ, Jesus poured the power of his resurrection into your heart. Again, this is pictured in baptism. In baptism, you go under the water showing that your body of sin is dying. And then you're braised up out of the water showing that the resurrection life of Christ is coming into you. And because of that, Paul says, you now have access to Christ's resurrection power over sin. You have the power to be able to begin to change and to begin to have victory over sin. See what the next verse says? Verse five, for if you have been united with him in a death like his, if you've received the forgiveness of God that came from the death of Jesus, you will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. In other words, the resurrection will start to show fruits in your life. Again, when I was growing up, the question everybody asked, and I've made fun of this before, is our question was always, if you died tonight and God said, why should I let you into heaven?

What would you say? That's a good question. And the answer is supposed to be, well, because Jesus died for my sin. But an equally important question is, if you get up tomorrow morning, is your life going to be any different because Jesus has come into your life? Because the gospel is not just about forgiveness that comes through the death of Jesus.

The gospel is also about renewed life that comes from the resurrection of Jesus. By the way, that word united right there is a horticultural term. Paul puts a horticultural term in there. You're like, what is horticulture? Like plants and stuff, you know, that's a really technical definition.

So if you had a plant that died, like the root died, or got some kind of death, got some kind of disease, you could cut the branches off of one bush or tree, and you could graft them into a new tree so that now the life and the health from this living root or this living trunk could now take care of these branches. That's the term Paul uses. He's like, this is what happened when you became a Christian, the dead branches of your sinful life, Jesus grafted them, the spirit grafted them into Christ's living root, and his life begins to flow into your body, and you begin to show that.

So follow the logic here, follow the logic. Paul says, if you renounce sin through your baptism, and if its dominion over you was broken by the power of resurrection, how could you continue willfully to practice it? Again, I'm not saying you won't struggle, but how could you be so captivated by sin that you're still walking toward it, and that is the direction you're going of independence from God. If you willfully continue to practice sin, Paul says that means that either your repentance was insincere, or that God's resurrection powers never actually come into you, either way you wouldn't actually be a true believer. Because Paul says there's just no way, there's just no way for you to encounter something as powerful as the resurrection and stay the same. The way I describe this to teenagers, sometimes I'll say, imagine that you're on the parking lot and you're a little Honda Civic, the battery goes bad.

All right, so you got to jumpstart it, okay? And so the only other vehicle in the parking lot is a big, you know, there's Ford 250, F-250, Super Duty, you know, it's just like nine feet off the ground, and the guy gets out of the car, you know, and you get out of the truck, and he's got his jumper cables, and they're, you know, each of the cables are like four inches thick in diameter, and he hooks it up to his battery, and he's about to hook it up to your battery if you're a little Honda Civic, and you're like, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, we need to make sure that power is flowing through these cables, so you take the positive and the negative nodes and you hook them to your tongue to see if there's power coming through, and you're like, uh-huh, uh-huh, I feel it, there's power, and then you take it and you hook, and that's not the way that story would go down, right? Because we're like, if that happened, then there's no real power coming off that battery, because if you hook that kind of battery up to your tongue, you'd be different. You'd walk different, you'd talk different, you'd smell different. Everything about you would be different, because there's no way to encounter that level of power and stay the same.

Now, Paul, he wouldn't have used a car battery as an illustration, but Paul would have been like, mm-hmm, that's exactly what I'm talking about right there. There's just no way for Jesus's resurrection power to come into you and for you to stay exactly the same. So if you willfully continue to practice sin, that means that you are either insincere in your repentance or God's resurrection power never made contact with your soul, and either way, you're not really a believer. Now, listen, your confession of faith has to be more than words.

It has to be more than a prayer you pray or a ritual you go through, walk in an aisle, pray in a prayer, joining a church, going to a confirmation class, getting baptized, taking communion, whatever it was in your tradition. Your confession of faith is surrendering to Christ as Lord, receiving his free offer to save you and letting him infuse his resurrection power into you. So here's my, I think, very natural question that we have after those five verses.

Have you experienced this power in your life? And does your life prove, does your life prove that the resurrection has come to take up its residence inside you? According to Paul, the resurrection is not just a fact of history past. The resurrection is power in the present. The gospel, he says, it's not just this new way to live. It's not a superior philosophy. It's not a new set of moral regulations. The gospel is about power, actual power that comes into you.

It's not turning over a new leaf. The gospel is about the power of new life. It is about raw, life-changing, heart-starting power. Thanks for listening to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. If you want to know more about this ministry, visit us online at jdgreer.com.

You know what? We appreciate you. Yes, you are listeners. It's an honor for us to be able to be a source of encouragement for you each day. Did you know that these Summit Life broadcasts are only one of the ways that you can keep up with Pastor J.D. 's ministry? There's emails, blog posts, and our entire sermon library. Need I go on? But if you're like me, I spend a lot of time on my phone.

In fact, very little distracts me from my phone. Well, did you know that you can follow Pastor J.D. on social media?

Why not get some biblical wisdom and encouragement as you scroll? Just search for Pastor J.D. Greer on Facebook, at Pastor J.D. Greer on Instagram, and at J.D. Greer on Twitter. Follow along on all your favorite social media platforms and stay up to date with this ministry while also filling up your timeline with encouragement from God's Word. Now let's get back to today's teaching from Pastor J.D.

Greer right here on Summit Life. The center of Christianity is not a new moral code, not a new perspective on life, not a superior way of living. The center of Christianity is an empty tomb that literally changes everything because that empty tomb declares that death has been defeated. Not just death out there. Not just death like one day when you die, but death now has been defeated. The powers of death in you have been defeated. See, that means that guilt in your life has been defeated. It means that injustice has been defeated. Addictions have been defeated. Sorrow has been defeated.

Despair has been defeated. You see, if Jesus raised from the dead, that means guilt does not have the last word in your life because guilt's one of the powers of death. See, it's true that you and I have done things that we probably would regard as shameful. We've done things that we regret.

We've done things the Bible calls sin. And it's true that you're like, man, if you knew everything that I'd done, if you knew every way that I was and how I thought you wouldn't want to be friends with me, you're probably right. And if you knew everything there was to know about my life and everything that went through my head, you probably wouldn't want to be friends with me either. And you definitely wouldn't want to listen to me preach to you. But see, if Jesus raised from the dead, it means that guilt doesn't have the last word in my life or yours because Jesus took my guilt into himself and he put it into the grave. And he came out of that grave three days later and he offered me newness of life and says, if any man is in Christ, he'll be a new creation. At that point, the old has passed away, the new has come, and there is therefore no condemnation for those that are in Christ Jesus. You see, if Jesus raised from the dead, it means that guilt doesn't have the last word because my past doesn't define me. The resurrection of Jesus defines me.

When I think about what is ahead for me in the future, I don't think about the mistakes of my past. I think about his power in the resurrection in the present, and that's available to you. If Jesus raised from the dead, injustice doesn't have the last word.

I realize we live in a world where a lot of bad and unfair things happen, and sometimes people get away with it, and sometimes people have sinned against you and gotten away with it. But you know what the resurrection shows you? It shows you that if the tomb is empty, then God has the last word.

It means that one day God is going to right all wrongs, and one day God will restore to you in eternity all that injustice has taken away. Injustice doesn't have the last word. God has the last word. You see, if Jesus raised from the dead, addictions, they don't have the last word in your life either. I realize I'm talking to some people right now that you just feel overwhelmed.

Drugs, alcohol, pornography, something that just you feel like I can't get away from it, and it's destroyed my life, and maybe it's destroyed your family. The resurrection of Jesus declares to you those don't have the last word because Jesus broke those when he came out of the grave. And I don't mean to imply it's going to be some quick easy pray this little prayer and everything's going to be different. What I mean though is that you can get out of bed tomorrow knowing that there's hope for today because Jesus is raised from the dead, and he's sitting on the throne, and he's ready to offer help to all who will come to him humbly and ask for his help in faith. If Jesus rose from the dead, it means that sorrow doesn't have the last word. I've heard this world described as a veil of tears, where everything in our life that we hold precious eventually escapes our grasp.

Your health, your family, your loved ones. Maybe this year you've walked through the bitter pain of a divorce. Maybe some kind of family tragedy. Maybe it was your parents that got divorced. Maybe it's your own type of health scare.

Maybe you've had that terrible experience of having to walk with a loved one through that year of tragedy where they encounter Alzheimer's disease. And maybe you're just overwhelmed with the sorrow of life. Look, I'm not saying the sorrow is not real.

It is real. I understand if Jesus got out of the grave, sorrow doesn't have the last word because God is showing that one day he will resurrect us to life in a place where he will heal every wound and dry every tear, and he will make all the sad things come untrue. And the joy that consumes us in that moment will outweigh the sorrow that plagues our days. Now the resurrection shows us sorrow doesn't have the last word. The resurrection, Jesus has the last word. If Jesus got out of the grave, that means that despair doesn't have the last word. Maybe one of these things right there is causing you to despair, but the resurrection shows you despair can be a frightful enemy, but Jesus' resurrection overturns all of it. Because as long as Jesus is on the throne, there is hope for tomorrow because your future is as bright as the promises of God.

I love the way a friend of mine says it like this. He says, if you're not dead, God's not done. If Jesus is on the throne and there is breath in your body, then there is hope for you today. And he can overturn despair by coming into the darkness of your season of death and speaking the words of light and life into it. If Jesus rose from the dead, death itself has been defeated. Death has been defeated. Death, isn't death the thing that we're most afraid of?

It's what I was always afraid of growing up. I was always afraid of what's going to happen when I die. You see, the resurrection of Jesus shows me the thing that I feared the most death is not really terrifying at all because God has overturned it to the resurrection. And it shows me that the best is yet to come.

The best is yet to come, whether it's for me or my loved ones. Billy Graham died. I remember when he died, the first thing that popped in my head was something, a statement he had made in a sermon. Years ago, I'd heard, one day you will hear that Billy Graham is dead. I don't you believe it. I'll be more alive than ever.

I will just have changed addresses, experiencing the best. The best death is no longer the terrifying enemy that it was. Death is the passage into the eternal life that God has for us. The resurrection changes everything. The resurrection changes people.

It changes you. How'd you think about the change that it made in Paul? Paul was a bigoted, judgmental, hateful, murderous man. The resurrection turned him into a humble person who would call himself the chief of sinners, who became what he called the bondservant of the church. Peter was a coward who denied Jesus essentially before a middle school girl. The resurrection turned him into the rock on which Jesus built the church. The resurrection turned Peter into somebody who would testify under pain of death, even to the point that he was crucified upside down and he wouldn't deny Jesus.

The resurrection turned him from a weak coward into a victorious, courageous leader. Think about several of the prominent women in the early church. You ever read their stories?

They didn't come from great pasts. Most of them, for example, Mary Magdalene, she had seven demons. One of them was a prostitute. Yet these women, these women with the scandalous past, they become the pillars. They became the strength. They became the beauty of the early church.

You want to know why? Because of the resurrection, their past did not define them anymore. It was the resurrection that defined them. And Paul speaking to us through the corridors of history from 2,000 years ago, looks to us to the lens of Romans 6 and he says, and the resurrection can change you. The resurrection can transform you into the kind of person you have been, into the kind of person Jesus wants you to be.

You are going to be buried with him by baptism into death, baptism just being the symbol, but you're buried with him by baptism into death in order that just like Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. You too. You can walk in the newness of life that's offered to you as a gift. But like I said at the beginning, you got to receive that gift. Nobody can receive it but you.

The gift is only yours if you take it. So maybe as crystal clear as I can in this, okay? What the gospel is. Paul actually gives one of the shortest vessel definitions of it at the end of Romans 6, if your Bible's still open, just glance at the last verse. He says, see, the problem is the wages of sin. Wages means penalty.

The price. The price for sin is death. There's only two ways you can pay that penalty.

The only way is two ways you can pay that wage. You can pay for it yourself, which means you experience death eternally, which means separation from God eternally. Or somebody who loved you more than you could possibly imagine could pay it in your place. And Paul says the gospel is that Jesus Christ came down and lived the life you were supposed to live and then died the death you were condemned to die and offers you this as a gift. And all you can do is receive it. And then when you receive it, the resurrection power is going to come into you and it's going to begin to transform you. Here's the question. Have you received Christ as savior and have you surrendered to him as Lord?

If you've never done it and you want to do it, you can do it like this. You can even use these words. You could use these words, just make sure they come from your heart. Lord Jesus, I believe you died for me. I receive you right now as my savior. I receive the gift of salvation. And I surrender to you as Lord. From this point forward, I follow you. I'm going to ask you in just a minute if you prayed that prayer or if you need to pray that prayer, I'm going to ask you to make a bold step of telling somebody about it and praying with somebody and establishing this.

You see, we don't want this, like I said, to be just this kind of emotional thing. You go through a little prayer, you pray. It's a life-defining moment and you ought to, we want to pray with you about it. We want to make sure your questions are answered.

You say, well, why is this necessary? Well, technically it's not necessary, but it's a moment that you were saying, I'm ready to actually begin this life of following Jesus in earnest. Stop trying to do and accept what Jesus has done. If you've decided that it's time to accept Christ's forgiveness and live for him each day, let us know. We'd love to pray with you and encourage you on your new walk of faith.

Give us a call right now at 866-335-5220. You may recall that in early May, we began a teaching series through the book of Romans and this week we're picking it back up. J.D., can you tell us a little bit about what to expect as we keep working through this series that originally took you more than a year to preach? Yes, as we walk through the book of Romans, we are finding what Martin Luther called the purest gospel and the most important piece in the New Testament. You know, whether you're struggling with knowing where you stand with God or why you have such trouble keeping the commands of God or why you can't seem to find that spiritual power that you've heard so much about, I can tell you from personal experience, the book of Romans is for you. To go along with this series, we want to put in your hands a two-part Bible study that was actually written by one of the greatest influences in my life that we lost just a few weeks ago, the late Pastor Tim Keller.

He loved the book of Romans and he influenced how I approached the book of Romans. And so what an honor for us at Summit Life to be able to attach his Bible study with this. We want to get you the first volume.

Later this year, we'll offer the second one. If you go right now to jdgreer.com, J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R.com, you can see what I mean. In addition to listening to us walk through this book here on Summit Life, you can be studying it on your own or with some friends or family and getting that much more out of it. We'd love to send you this Romans Bible study today with your gift of $35 or more to this ministry. To donate, simply call us at 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220.

Or visit jdgreer.com to give your gift online. This ministry would not be possible without our incredible partners. Your support is essential to our mission and we're so grateful for every contribution. I'm Molly Vidovitch. So glad to have you with us today and be sure to listen Wednesday to Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.