You Were There

That old hymn asked the question were you there when they crucified my Lord and the answer is for the believer yes I was there in the mind of God at that crucifixion were you there when they laid him in a tomb yes were you there when he rose up from the grave yes we were incarcerated because of sin we are liberated because of our Savior we were bound in the kingdom of darkness and we have been set free to live in the kingdom of life Hello and welcome to Wisdom for the Heart.

Today, Stephen Davey begins a six part series called Delivered from the Kingdom of Sin. It comes from Romans chapter 6. Do you remember in the book of Corinthians when Paul reprimanded that church for their inability to receive meaty doctrines?

Well, apparently the church in Rome didn't have that problem. In most of the book of Romans and especially here in Romans 6, Paul dives deep into some rich theological truth. We're going to explore that together as Stephen teaches through this section of God's Word in the days ahead.

This message is called You Were There. Having finished his declaration of justification by faith alone through the grace and effort of the second Adam, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Paul anticipates the next kinds of questions that will come from his readers. In fact, we would probably have the same kinds of questions. Something along the lines of well since we didn't earn our salvation by good works and since we're taught in Romans chapter 5 that even the worst of sinners can be saved in fact the worse the sin the greater the demonstration of God's grace then what would be so bad about sin if it allows God to demonstrate his grace. In other words, if we don't get saved by being good and we can't lose our salvation then by being bad, why not be as bad as we want?

Now Paul will begin to answer these questions by dealing with that first one. Can a believer live in sin? Look at Romans chapter 6 and to refresh our memories let's go back for a little bit of time to verse 1 where Paul writes, all right, what are we going to say? Are we going to continue in sin that grace might increase?

May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Now we spent a great deal of time and I just want to quickly review this morning a number of views related to Paul's phrase. What did he mean when he said we died to sin? Well some believe that Paul meant we died to the allurement of sin.

Is that correct? Well all we'd have to do is poll the audience after the service and ask them is sin still alluring to you as a believer and you would answer yes. That pretty much answers that view. Others argue that Paul means we are supposed to die daily to sin. They take Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 15 and 31 out of context where Paul said I die daily. They take that and attach it to something like Romans chapter 6 and they come up with this doctrine that it's all up to you and you've got to get up every morning and you've got to die if you're ever going to have victory.

The problem is it's focused on us. In addition to that that isn't what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15. The context of that paragraph Paul is actually talking about being willing every day to physically die. He talks about being in danger every single hour of the day in that paragraph. Later on in that paragraph he talks about being willing to fight the beasts in Ephesus.

He's literally saying every day I get up and I have to be willing to physically die. Not what he's talking about in Romans chapter 6. Furthermore Paul in Romans 6 will not talk about something we do every day but something we've already done or something that has already happened to us in the past. Another view is that the believer's sin nature has been eradicated. That is that a person becomes perfected and righteous in righteousness and the sin nature is eradicated and you don't have any problem with sin anymore. Again I think we could poll the audience and ask do you feel like your sin nature has been eradicated or do you still struggle with sin.

And I think the answer would be unanimous. I still struggle with sin. Another view teaches that Christians are supposed to simply renounce sin. They reach a stage in their sanctification where they just reach the point where they can renounce sin and they will never do it again.

Is that working for you. Well haven't we all said Lord I promise this is the last time. And then what happens. We realize again that we're deeply in need of his grace on our behalf. The interpretation that I believe is correct and consistent with the letter of Paul especially in Chapter 6 7 and 8 is that he is talking about a believer dying to the reign of sin. Look up at Chapter 5 verse 21 as sin reigned in death even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. In other words we died to the dominion to the rulership to the power of sin.

We don't have to sin though we do we don't have to we can never blame God when we do. We died to the dominion or power of sin. Now death doesn't mean extinction. It means separation. In fact it's used throughout the New Testament to refer to separation. When Paul says we died to sin he doesn't mean that sin ceases to exist. He simply means that we are now separated to this rule of sin. The power has been broken by the death and burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So we have died to the ruling power of sin.

In fact you could translate the word reign its noun form you could translate it as king or kingdom. We've died to the king of sin. We have been delivered from the kingdom of sin. Paul is going to help us understand what he means by taking us to two places.

He'll take us to a graveyard and then he'll take us to a vineyard. Notice verse 3. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death. Now whenever a word is repeated in the New Testament God is not running out of vocabulary he wants to emphasize something and that word baptized is a critical word that appears twice in that verse. The trouble is it isn't translated for us.

It's transliterated. That is simply they've had the Greek letters exchanged for English letters and they have created an English word that means nothing to us because all we're saying is the Greek word baptizomai or in the English language baptized. We still don't know what it means. What does it mean to be baptized. Well there are two meanings for the word.

One is a literal meaning and the other is a figurative meaning. The literal meaning of the word baptizomai is to immerse or to dip. Some refer to it as being dunked.

Whatever you want to use to remember. That's what the literal meaning of baptizomai is. Therefore to literally baptize someone with water you would literally immerse them. To not immerse them is to not have baptized them. To have not been immersed means you have not been baptized.

That's what the word means. You may have been sprinkled or maybe you had some water poured on you or some touched to your forehead. There are Greek words for sprinkle and pour and they are never ever not even once used in the New Testament reference to a believer being baptized as one who was identifying with Jesus Christ.

Never. It is always the word baptizomai. I can remember as a young seminary student wondering about this issue. In fact I was somewhat sure that you could probably pour or sprinkle or immerse a believer with water. It really didn't matter how. It was an ordinance.

It isn't an issue of heaven or hell. Then I can remember taking my first semester of Greek exegesis and recognizing the consistent use of that verb through every instance, every New Testament passage dealing with a believer and the believer's baptism. I can remember at one point going to the seminary library on the campus of Dallas Seminary and they have 100,000 plus volumes and I remember going to the lexicons and pulling down a pile of lexicons to see if I could find one that would tell me that the literal primary meaning of baptizomai was something other than to immerse. Now lexicons are simply dictionaries of Greek words.

They are non-denominational. You don't have a Baptist lexicon and a Methodist lexicon and a Presbyterian lexicon. You just have a lexicon. Greek words mean what Greek words mean no matter what kind of church you go to. And in every instance it always meant the same thing, to immerse or to dip. Well then you ask, well what do all the Episcopalians and all the Methodists and all the Presbyterians do with this word? Well they choose to apply the word not in its literal sense but only in its figurative sense.

The word literally means to immerse. Figuratively the word can mean to identify with another. In this case it would be to identify with Jesus Christ. So these churches might put a little water on your forehead or sprinkle a little water. They would say then you are identifying figuratively with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We happen to believe and teach that we hold to both the literal meaning and the figurative meaning of the word in the life of the believer. So we literally immerse the believer in water and we then literally are able to experience the full measure of the figurative meaning whereby they actually identify with the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The water becomes an analogy of the grave. A believer is buried into it as Jesus Christ was buried and then praise God we believe in the resurrection. We pull them back up out of the water.

Depending on how much relatives pay we count real slowly and hold them down and then we bring them up. It identifies with the literal death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Any other way is to simply ignore the literal meaning of the word and the depth of the figurative meaning of the word. I have Presbyterian friends, Methodist friends. In fact I've had some interesting debates over the years about this and it isn't an issue that has any kind of saving effect. When those are baptized as we observe on Sunday mornings at times being baptized they are not becoming Christians. They are simply outwardly demonstrating what has already happened inwardly to them. They don't become saved. They identify publicly with Christ through that method, that marking of the disciple telling us I have already been saved.

And it is an issue of quite some debate. I did something about ten years ago that was really mischievous. I haven't done anything mischievous since then. I want you to know. I was at a large Presbyterian church for a training conference in the south. This church is on television coast to coast and it's a beautiful sanctuary. It seats probably five or six thousand people and I remember going in the first time and seeing at the ceiling probably is about 150, 125, 150 feet high and the stage is an ornamental marble and they've got these massive pipes for the pipe organ all over the place. And then over to the side are stairs leading up to a private balcony and up there is this huge pulpit with a canopy over it. It's just absolutely massive and I'm not going to tell you the name of the church so quit trying to guess. At any rate, I was in there with this friend, in fact another member of our church went for training. And we happened to show up one night early and there wasn't anybody else and we were just sort of sitting there in awe, looking around. And then the thought came to my mind.

This is my only chance. I told my friend from church, I said I'm going to go up there and I'm going to climb up the stairs and get into that pulpit. And he said no, don't do it Stephen, don't do it. And I said no, it's okay, you can trust me, I'm your pastor. He wasn't too sure. Then the thought came to my mind, this was the mischievous part, I said when I get up there I'm going to say a word that has never been uttered in this magnificent auditorium. And he said what are you going to say? I said I'm not going to tell you. So I looked around, nobody was there and I slipped up to the stage and up the stairs I climbed up to that massive pulpit and I stood before it and looked around again to make sure and then I said loudly the one word, immersion.

And then I ran downstairs and hopefully no one would kick me out. I don't know why I had to confess that. There are some that avoid the debate entirely by saying that what Paul is saying or talking about in Romans chapter 6 is not water baptism at all but spirit baptism. I believe Paul is probably thinking about both here because both are intricately related.

And the language is so similar. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 13, by one spirit we were all baptized, same verb, we were all immersed into the body of Christ. That happened at salvation. The agency of the Holy Spirit immersed you, baptized you into the body of Christ.

You didn't feel it, see it, taste it, touch it. It was one of those magnificent things that we read about that happened to us. We were immersed into Christ's body.

And the language is similar to Romans 6, 3. We have been baptized into Christ Jesus. I have charismatic friends who would say, you know, have you been baptized by the Holy Spirit? And I would answer absolutely, yes. It is impossible to be a believer and not have been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ. So if anybody should ever ask you, some friend or co-worker, have you been baptized by the Holy Ghost?

Your answer is yes. And then they'll probably say, but I thought you went to Colonial. I say, well, let me explain it to you. You have been. It's impossible to be a believer without having been baptized. You are literally as it were immersed into the body of Christ, not halfway, not a leg, not an arm. All of you went into his body and the mystery of it all is that he came to inhabit us. Without that, we're not saved, redeemed. I think Paul has in mind also the reader's experience of this analogy of water baptism. I think that's his emphasis in verse 4.

Look there. Therefore, we have been buried with him through baptism into death in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Literal baptism, ladies and gentlemen, is a wonderful, in fact, it's a perfect analogy to identification with Christ, which is its figurative meaning. The water, again, identifies the believer just as Christ was in the hands of another when he died.

He was in the hands of his Father. So the one who's being baptized is in the hands of the pastor or elder who is administrating this ordinance. A person is identifying with Christ's burial as he is literally placed under the water, and then he literally identifies with Christ in this great figure or analogy as he is risen, as it were, from the grave by the power of another, just as Jesus Christ was brought back to life through the power of the Father. Now, this certainly wasn't a new concept in Judaism or the world in which Paul lived. When Paul talked about immersion, when he talked about baptism, people had an idea of what he was talking about, only that by the time Paul began to describe what it really meant, it had already been perverted and twisted and ruined, as it were, by the enemy. And so Paul is explaining, as it were, the meaning of this. In Judaism, the rabbis taught that any Gentile who wanted to leave his pagan idolatry and convert to Judaism went through a number of things, and one of those initiations was baptism by immersion.

In fact, they specified how much water was supposed to be in the tank. And after a person was baptized into Judaism, the rabbis would teach that he was a, quote, newborn child. In fact, they held, they believed and taught that if a man had a child after his baptism, even though he may have had older children, that child that he had after baptism was considered his firstborn.

So new was he in life. Obviously, there are kernels of truth, but yet the distortion, which makes this a saving effect, which is not true to Paul's teaching. The Greeks would have also understood the concept as well. Their mystery religions involved this initiatory rite of baptism by immersion. In fact, one Greek whose letters was discovered, going back to the time of Paul, talks about how he underwent, listen to this, quote, I underwent voluntary death and thereby attained my spiritual birthday and I was reborn. Only the enemy can use language that is specifically that of Gospel language and so distorted that by the time you get the Gospel, you can see the confusion that was rampant.

The Phrygian mystery religion had the initiate, after his immersion, the initiate was given milk to drink, symbolizing the fact that he was a newborn, quote, babe, end quote. When the apostle Paul describes the idea of baptism, the concept has already been twisted and counterfeited by the enemy. According to scripture, baptism is not the means of salvation. It is the demonstration of salvation. If the water over here in this tank washed sin away, we'd have to drain it and refill it before anybody new got in there.

It has no even mystical power. This is the demonstration, the outward expression of that which has happened inwardly already. Just as we were in Adam when he sinned, we were also in Christ when he was buried and rose again and thus water baptism becomes that external testimony of that internal transaction that has already occurred. There's a wonderful phrase there that's very challenging and convicting to every believer. We've been raised to walk in what? In newness of life. We've been raised to walk in newness of life. He isn't talking about a new leaf. He's talking about a new life.

In fact, you could render this, you could translate this to walk with a new principle of living, to walk with a new dynamic for life. The believer has not turned over a new leaf. He has been resurrected, as it were, to a new life. Warren Wiersbe was helpful as he illustrated the truth of this with the life of Lazarus in John 11. You remember when Jesus came to Bethany, the two sisters of Lazarus had begged that he come earlier because Lazarus was dying. And Jesus tarried. He waited until Lazarus had been in that tomb for four days.

Why four days? Probably because the rabbis had held to the superstition and were teaching it to the people that the spirit of the deceased hovered over the body for three days hoping to reenter. And Jesus knew that superstition and I think that's why he waited four days so that no one could ever say Lazarus wasn't dead. On the fourth day he came and you remember by the power of his word, he said, Lazarus, come forth. And Lazarus appeared at the doorway of the tomb and he was bound. And you remember the Lord commanded, loose him, let him go.

Why? Let him walk. Let him walk around. And then later in chapter 12 of John you find Lazarus seated at the table with the Lord eating, fellowshipping with Christ. Warren Wiersbe says, do you see it? Dead, raised from the dead, freed to walk about in newness of life and seated with Christ, having fellowship with him. You know, the amazing thing, ladies and gentlemen, about all of this is that we aren't even yet discussing another truth and that is not only has the believer been buried with Christ and resurrected with Christ, he has already ascended with Christ and in the mind of God, our position is that we are already seated with Christ in the heavenlies.

Figure that out. It's an amazing mystery. In the mind of God, we have had our records swept clean. He sees no beginning and end. He sees both beginning and end. He is without time and he sees us already in this state of perfection in Christ, seated, sleeping with him in the heavenlies.

I know we struggle with here now, don't we? That's why we need explanation that he'll give us in chapter 6, 7 and 8. Paul wrote to the Colossians again in chapter 3, since you have been raised with Christ, set your heart on things above for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. You were liberated from the kingdom of sin by death. Death in Christ which also is resurrection in Christ.

So that goes back to the original question. Can a believer live a lifestyle of sin? No, you can't comprehend of this, Paul says. God forbid you have died to the old life. You've been raised with this new principle of life, this new dynamic for living. The true believer doesn't want to go back into a lifestyle of sin any more than Lazarus would have volunteered to go back into the tomb and get all wrapped up. Lazarus, you want to go back in there?

No. So also the believer, when he does sin, finds himself out of place. Turning over a new leaf is like putting makeup on a corpse. It may make it look more alive, but there's no life principle therein. It would be like going out to a dead apple tree in your yard and gluing apples to the limbs.

It might make it look like there's sap flowing through the trunk and into the branches and twigs and leaves to create and produce this fruit, but it's cosmetic. That's the idea of Paul's next illustration. Very quickly I want you to notice he takes you from the graveyard to the vineyard. Look at verse 5. He says, For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall be also, again, implied united with him in the likeness of his resurrection.

The word united is a wonderful word. It's taken right out of the vineyard where the husband would graft into the vine a branch. He'd tie it and it would become part of that and, again, receive a life from the vine. And there are passages of Scripture, of course, that tell us about this being our union with Christ. Paul has in his mind a branch being bound. In Galatians 3 Paul says our union is so close. For all of you who were baptized into Christ, you are also clothed with Christ. He is not only dwelling within us, but he is our clothing.

He is in and around and above and within and beneath and he is all of our life. So close is our identification with Christ that Paul would say that Christ is our clothing. We walk around in this new dynamic of living knowing he is our clothing, as it were. So wherever we go, we take him with us. Could we ever go back into the old lifestyle of sin? No, we have Christ in us, clothing us.

We could never live that kind of life again. We walk about now in newness of life. So what is new? We have a new identity. We have a new destiny. We have a new master. We have a new purpose. We have a new heart. We have a new spirit. We have new battles.

We have a new song. That old hymn asks the question, were you there when they crucified my Lord? And the answer is for the believer, yes, I was there in the mind of God at that crucifixion, in him. Were you there when they laid him in a tomb? Yes. Were you there when he rose up from the grave?

Yes. We say with the Apostle Paul, I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by this principle of faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Galatians 2 20. We were imprisoned because of Adam. We are delivered because of Christ. We were incarcerated because of sin. We are liberated because of our Savior.

We were bound in the kingdom of darkness and sin and we have been set free to live in the kingdom of light. I hope that the truth we've seen from God's word has encouraged you. This was lesson one in a six part series called Delivered from the Kingdom of Sin.

We'll be bringing you the remaining lessons in this series over the next several broadcasts. This is Wisdom for the Heart featuring the Bible teaching ministry of Stephen Davey. In addition to equipping you with these daily Bible lessons, we also have a monthly magazine that will help you grow in your faith and knowledge of God's word. Each issue includes a series of articles to help you dive deep into various topics and issues related to the Christian life.

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