The Doctrine of Sin - The..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Beloved of Christ, I'm going to please invite you to open up your Bibles to the Book of Romans. We're going to be doing our last couple of Bible studies on the doctrine of sin.

And tonight, by God's grace, we are not going to be addressing the sins, because we have finished with that list in Proverbs. But rather, we're going to be addressing a different topic that is going to be focused on Christ. And that is going to be found there in Romans chapter 6. That is actually going to be the portion of the scripture that we are going to be working on in the last couple of Bible studies. which is going to be this one and next week.

We're going to be doing today, I hope, from chapter 6, verse 1 to 11. And then next week, we will be doing verses 12, 13, and 14, which is that section there in Romans chapter 6. So beloved of Christ, let's read together God's word. And then we will ask the Lord to guide us. And we will meditate around this together.

This is the word of God. Where shall we say, then, are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who die to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into 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. For if we have been united with him in a death like this, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like this. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing. so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For no one who has died has been set free.

For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we had died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him, for the dead he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also may consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let no sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but 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. Amen.

That is the reading of God's word. Beloved of Christ, we have been doing now this series for eight times. This is eight, right? at 9th. We've done it for 8th, and this is the 9th time in which we are studying together, beloved, the doctrine of sin.

And our goal with this is that we will grow in understanding of the nature of sin. Not only that we will be able to understand sin, but beyond that, that we will be able to set our minds on Jesus Christ. And understanding the unrighteousness that is within us, we will walk towards the Savior practically. We have gained and done nothing in these Bible studies. If the only thing that we accomplish is that we will just have intellectual ideas of what these sins are, and in our practical lives, we do not have victory over sin.

Nothing has been accomplished if every time that the church comes together to speak about Jesus Christ and to speak about sin and the gospel and salvation, if the things only abide in the mind of the person and we do not move to greater weight of glory in conformity to Christ. So it is a requirement and it is a need for each one of us, not only to come together to pay attention to the words that are preached or taught, but also to come before the Lord in faith to ask him that the things that we hear we may receive them not only in our minds but also in our hearts so that indeed we will not only understand what is a proud look or a lying tongue or feet that run to evil and all of those things but rather that we by desiring Christ we will put those things to death and desire to be more like him through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because before glory arrives, we are in a battle against sin. We are in an active battle against sin. And to put it in the words of the Apostle Paul, there if you go to verse 12, he says, let no sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

Sin, beloved of Christ, has passions. And sin has the possibility of reigning over the life of a person. That's why the apostle is exhorting us, as a commandment given here, Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies. If sin did not have the possibility of reigning or taking us for a period of time, then the apostle will not give us that imperative. He says, let not sin reign in your mortal bodies, that we should not obey its passions.

So it is implicitly given there that the Christian, the one who by grace through faith had been united to Christ, that the Christian is in a battle against sin and that at times and at points because of lack of faith and conformity to Christ, sin can reign over that person and a person can obey the passions or the lust of sin. But as you can see there in that verse 12, the commandment and the imperative that the apostle gives us not to let sin reign in us or not to obey its passions is the result of something that he has said. The statement is given to us in verse 12 together with the word, therefore. Therefore, let not sin reign in your mortal bodies, that you should not obey its lusts, that you should not obey its passions. Therefore, that is that the statement or the imperative or the commandment that has been given by the apostle of the Spirit here is the result of what comes before.

We cannot battle against sin. We cannot understand our fight against sin if we do not understand the things that the Apostle has said before. The imperative, the commandment, the instruction not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies, not to obey its passions or its laws, is the result of the instruction that the Apostle has given us from chapter five and primarily from the beginning of chapter six. So beloved of Christ, as many matters of the life of the Christian, practical life, it is rooted, or better, the success and the power of practical spiritual life is rooted in an understanding of the spiritual matters that are given to us in scripture. your practical life, your practical spiritual life, and the success of it depends on the understanding that you receive, not in your mind, but in your heart, by faith, of what Scripture says about that particular matter.

My people perish because of lack of knowledge. We are to understand all these spiritual things as they are contained in scripture, given to us in scripture, so that we will successfully live our practical spiritual lives. There's no such a thing as a person who is giving very much fruit of Christ's likeness and is walking in the spirit, who does not know the scriptures. There's no such a thing. The spiritual life of a person, practical life of a person, will always be rooted in the instruction of the Word of God.

The Word of God is sufficient not only for faith, but also for obedience. We receive eternal life through the proclamation of the gospel in the Word of God, but we live our lives according to what is written. And understanding the reasons why the Bible calls us to do something is so important that we will not be able to put into practice anything if we have not received by faith that which the Lord gives to us here in scripture. The apostle usually always attaches practical life with the explanation of why that practical thing is important. Just think about what the apostle does in chapter 5, in the beginning here in Romans.

He's speaking about the glory of our salvation, that we have been justified by faith. And from there, he's going to speak to us about our tribulations and our difficulties and how we are to face tribulations and difficulties. So he says, therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access into this grace in which we stand. And then he connects that glorious reality of having peace with God to the glory that is to come. So he says, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

He says all of those things over salvation by faith that we have access to God and we rejoice in the hope of the glory that is to come because of the faith and the peace that we have with God to connect to a present reality of our tribulations. So he continues and he says, and not only that, but we also glory in tribulations. Why? Because tribulations produce perseverance and perseverance produce character and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that was given to us.

the glory of salvation and justification by faith, and the access that we have to God, and the peace that we have with Him, and the glory of the manifestation of God to come, that the Christian is not fearful of it, but rather because of his faith, he's certain and rejoices in the coming of the Lord. All of that is the foundation so that we, in the present time, will face and rejoice in our tribulations. Not only that, he says, but we rejoice in our tribulations. That, to the mind of the fleshly person, is completely nonsense. How is a person going to rejoice and glory in tribulations?

He says, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. None of those are human attributes, but they are spirit-given attributes. I hope that does not disappoint, because the love of the Lord has been poured into our hearts by the Spirit of God. How is a Christian going to understand that through tribulations we are to rejoice? if we do not know these things?

How are we going to understand that in tribulations and in difficulties we have a hope that does not disappoint us? How are we going to know that through tribulations and difficulties we have the love of God being poured into our hearts, shed into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that was given to us, if we do not know those words and we do not receive them by faith? Your practical life is always rooted in your understanding and knowledge of the Scripture, not with your mind, but with faith. And the one that gives fruits of righteousness unto the glory of the Father, according to Philippians chapter 1, or the one that gives fruits of the Spirit, according to Galatians chapter 5, is the one that hears the void of the Savior, receives it by faith, and put it into practice in obedience because he says so. So then he's equipped already, not only to go through tribulations and difficulties, but also for the mission that we have here, which is to battle against sin.

I'm beloved of Christ. It is expected that we will not only fight against sin, but that we will be victorious over sin. The gospel of Christ has not redeemed us unto a state of struggle against sin, in which we are constantly defeated, and we spend the rest of our lives in defeat before sin. It says very clearly here, let not sin have dominion or reign over you or your mortal body, that you should not obey its lusts or its passions. That does not sound to me as a life of defeat of sin or to sin.

It looks and it sounds to me that the power of the gospel is such that the Christian is indeed expected, as the scripture says, that sin will not reign, that we will be able not to allow sin to reign in our mortal bodies, that we should not obey the passions of sin. And I hope that you can see it there very clearly, beloved of Christ. So our mission is not only to take the imperative and then just to call you to fight against sin and then just to put sin to death and to be victorious over sin, but rather just as the apostle explains why suffering is important in chapter 5, that we will understand why is that the Christian has the ability to fight against sin and be victorious from that which the Apostle has given to us in chapter 6 through verse 11. And this is what I want us to do, just to simply put in your heart and in your mind, why? What is the reason?

behind the fact that the Christian is suspected to fight against sin and to be victorious. What is the reason? What is the substance of it? And one may ask, well, I don't really want to know why. Just simply tell me how.

How do I fight sin and how I destroy sin? And the apostle is going to do it. But again, your Christian life requires that you understand the spiritual matters. Because the Lord is the one that knows our soul. He's the one that knows our heart.

He's the one that created us and made us. He knows every spiritual detail of our life. So we are to pay attention to the reasons, because reasons are usually that which empowers the action. just as we don't do the thing just because, but rather we do it because of Jesus Christ. So many of the things that we do in our practical life as Christians are empowered by our understanding of the words of the Savior as they have been given to us here in the Scripture.

So why is the reason that Christians, that if you are in Christ by faith, that if we are united to Him, that we have ears to hear the commandment of the Spirit when he calls us not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies. Not only ears to hear, but that we have been empowered to actually fight against sin and put sin to death. Why is that reason? We're going to answer that question. And the way that we are going to answer that question, beloved of Christ, is first of all, I'm going just to present to you the nature of our enemy.

Who is our enemy in this case? sin. So we need to know our enemy if we are not going to allow him or it to reign over us. We would be very silly to fight against an enemy that we do not know. We will be wasting our time, and we will be spending our resources in a careless way if we do not understand the nature of our sin, not only the definition of it, which I have given to you in the past, Sin is the transgression of the law, and sin is faithlessness.

That is the definition of it. But we are to understand the nature of sin, so that we will understand, in light of the nature of sin, our salvation. And what is our relationship now to this sin, so that we will hear the words of the Savior when he calls us not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies. That is the only thing that I want to do. And by God's grace, if he gives us not only ears to hear, but also strength in the flesh so that we will pay attention to the things that I'm going to say.

So I'm going to present to you scripture and different things so that you will know the nature of sin and then understand our salvation in light of this nature of sin. So then by understanding those two things biblically, we will be able to answer that question from the passage of why Christians? What is the reason that Christians have the ability and the power to put sin to death, or even not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies, that we should not obey its passions or its lusts? That is the only thing that I want us to do together. So try in your mind to pay attention and to stay with me.

as we progress through this. The first thing is that we learn about the nature of sin. And this is something that I have spoken to you in a different place. But it's important that we repeat this here now. The nature of sin.

And we're going to study the nature of sin from the context, actually, all of those points that we're going to be addressing from the context of what the apostle says here in Romans chapter 6. And the first verse that I'm going to call your attention to is chapter 5, verse 12. So in chapter 5, verse 12, The apostle is going to tell us something very important about the nature of sin. And there are three things that I want us just to see from the nature of sin. Three things that I want us to see from the nature of sin now, brothers and sisters.

The Christian life is so simple. And you know, we have spoken about this so many times. The Christian life is so simple, yet so complex. It is so simple because when you come to the Lord with childlike faith and you do what he says, it's utterly simple. You just simply believe what he says.

But because of our flesh and because of our self-centeredness and because of our own strength and our own wisdom in our own ways, the childlike way becomes impossible, becomes so hard and difficult because we always try to do that which the Lord has given to us to do only by faith. We try to do it in our own strength and in our own ability. And we cannot carry the burden of Christ in the flesh. Remember, people are not able to endure the sound doctrine of Christ. Because for the burden of the Lord to be light, to be glorious to the soul, that person had to be brought to the Lord.

Come to me! Come to me! The soul then that comes to the Lord Jesus Christ receives the burden of Christ, which is light. But the one that does not come to Christ and wants to put the things of Christ on his or her shoulders, unbearable in the flesh, and then it becomes impossible. Very important, then, that we see these things that we already know, and I think that most of you may know, that we see them by faith.

Because many of the difficulties that we go through our life, many of the sufferings, difficulties, or depressions, or whatever you want to call them, spiritually speaking, come from mingling, if that is a word, or mixing, these concepts practically. You understand them in your head, but you mix them practically, and then you suffer. And then you're suffering your heart, you're suffering your mind, you're suffering your soul, unnecessarily, just because you're not hearing the words of the Savior with faith. So three characteristics of the sin that is in you, the sin that is in me. three characteristics there in verse 12.

The apostle says, speaking about the moment in which sin came into the world. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, so death is spread to all men because all sin. Now, brothers and sisters, what man is the apostle speaking here? Who is this man through whom sin came into the world? This is Adam going back to the garden.

So he's telling us about the very beginning of sin, right? Here, in the very beginning of sin in the world, we're going to see these three characteristics. And I've mentioned these to some of you in the past. But we're going to remind ourselves of these three characteristics. The first one, we're going to speak about the presence of sin, the presence of sin.

And we can see that in the verse there. It says, therefore, just as sin came into the world. It doesn't say that sin came into Adam and Eve even though they were the ones that disobeyed, right? It says that sin came into the world. And that sin that came into the world came through one man, and that man was Adam.

So we know here that this sin is present in the world. So we see that when a person's sin, or even the presence of sin, is not personal or is not individual, but rather sin coming into the world is a universal condition. When sin enter into the world, indeed enter into the cosmos. It's a cosmic thing what happened when Adam and Eve disobeyed, because creation was submitted to them. And then because of their disobedience, sin entered into the world.

And now creation is groaning, waiting for the manifestation of the children of God, right? Because subjection has been subjected to futility. Because when sin entered through Adam, entered into the world. Sin is present universally. And we see it not only in the word world, but we see it also in the fact that it's spread to some men.

It says it's spread to all men. The presence of sin is universal. The presence of sin is complete in creation. Creation has been taken captive, taken over by the presence of sin. And this is something that we need to remember.

There's no place in creation where there's no sin. There's no atom that has not been infected by sin. There's no place where a person can run and just hide themselves from the presence of sin. If they go to a cave, if they go to a safe box, if they go to a place that is very secure and they remove all things that seem to be wicked, they will have sin inside of them. Not even when you, the Bible calls us to cut our hands and to pluck our eyes.

If you're not in Christ, that does not solve the problem, because you still have sin inside of your heart. You may have lost your hands or your feet or your eyes, but then you will have the problem still inside of you, because the presence of sin is universal. The first thing. The presence of sin. Second thing that you see there in the text now is the power of sin.

That is the ability that sin has. The power of sin. And we are told that when sin came into the world through one man, death through sin, and death spread through all men because all sinned. Beloved of Christ. Sin is not only present in the world as an abstract concept that does not have power.

It's not like an abstract idea that is just there and does not affect or influence the cosmos and people. Sin has a power, and that power is to make people sinners. It says that old sin. everyone subjected to the universal presence of sin ended up in sin. Because sin has the dominating force of making everyone to do what it wants, or he wants, or it wants, or whatever gender sin may have in English.

Sin makes people do what sin wants, and that is that they continually sin. That is the power of sin. Sin has a dominating power. And when I say dominating power, it's like Pharaoh with Israel. The Israelites had no rest.

They had to do everything that Pharaoh wanted them to do. There was no rest. They were in bondage to Pharaoh all the time, just as people, just as we are, apart from Christ, in complete bondage to sin. That is the utterly complete dominating power of sin. How many righteous people are there in the world?

Not one. There's no one who seeks after God. Everyone has filled their mouth with things that are unrighteous and against God. Everyone has taken their own way and deviated from the way of the Lord. Everyone is against the Lord because they are all under the dominating power of sin.

That is the second thing. Sin is present universally. Sin has a power that is dominating. And then the third thing that I want you to see there is the penalty of sin, or the reward for sin. We are told that sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin.

Death is the result of sin. And if you remember a few weeks ago, I said to you that death is a legal instrument of God that He uses to execute His judgment, because death is the penalty of sin. Chapter 6, verse 23, and the verse that we know, it says that the wages of sin is death. The penalty of sin is death. The retribution, the reward of sin is death.

So beloved of Christ, sin is universally present. Sin has a dominating power over everyone. And sin has a penalty. And that penalty is death. And because sin has spread to all people, then death has spread to everyone.

And no one has escaped from death. Now, because this is natural to us, We just simply don't care. But that is unnatural to the design of God. Death means that sin entered into the world and that he executed his judgment upon the sinners, humankind. And death, if you simply think about dying outside of Christ, I don't know if you have thought about this, but just dying, receiving death outside of Christ, this is terrifying and this is fearful.

Those are the characteristics of sin. Now, keep that in your mind. Because when we are going to now understand salvation, we understand salvation in light of those three things. Now, people usually recognize those three elements of the nature of sin, as I have given to you. The presence, the power, and the penalty of sin.

But when it comes to understand your salvation, here's when we mingle the effects of salvation to sin. And then we feel spiritually depressed, or we feel with lack of assurance, we feel with many, many, many, many, many, many things. because we have forgotten that our sins have been cleansed, and what that means. That's what Peter says in 2 Peter 1, verses 8 and 9. That because we have forgotten that we have been cleansed from our sins, we have become so short-sighted, almost to the point of blindness.

And that is that we don't understand our salvation in light of what happens to sin and its nature. That is what we're going to do now. What is our salvation in light of those three characteristics of sin? The first one that I gave you was, what is the first characteristic of sin? The presence of sin.

When a person, by grace, through faith, has been genuinely saved, what happens with the presence of sin? Or better, what happens with the universal, corruptive, corruptive is the word, corruptive presence of sin? What has happened? Does sin remain present in the life of a person fully and universally and completely? So we're speaking about the presence only, not about the power.

So is sin present in your life as a Christian? It is. And you should not doubt this. You should not doubt. Sin is present.

Go to Romans chapter 7 when the apostle is speaking about his life. Romans chapter 7, verse 18. For I know that nothing good dwells in me. He's speaking of his experience as a Christian. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, but that is in my flesh.

For I have the desire to do what is right. but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me." Now, we know that.

But pay attention to this next statement, beloved of Christ. Because sin continues to dwell in you completely. the presence of sin in you is still complete. And we have to acknowledge this, because sometimes people separate the nature of people as the flesh and the spirit, because scripture speaks of the flesh, where our passions and our desires abide. But it's not that scripture is saying you are 50% flesh and you're 50% spirit, and you are made of those two things as separated entities, and then you have 100%.

You're 100% flesh, and you're 100% spirit. All of those united is what makes life. That's what James says in chapter 2, right? That is life, when you have the flesh or the body with the spirit or with the soul. Those two is everything that you are.

Seeing continues to be in us fully and completely, not only in the flesh. but in who we are. That's why the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 7, verse 1, after he has been given us all the promises, he says, and calls us to cleanse ourselves from all wickedness of the flesh and the spirit, bringing holiness to perfection in the fear of the Lord, because both spirit and flesh remain with the presence of sin. Sin will be removed completely. That will be when glory comes.

That's why we have to die and be resurrected with a new body. Because when we are saved, the sin would be removed entirely from us. Then we don't need a new body. But we died so that we will be resurrected with a new body in which sin will not be present anymore. But sin remains present in us.

That is the presence of sin. So that means that when we are saved, the presence of sin does not change, because it's still in us. This is why it's important to distinguish, because now we move to the power of sin. Now, what happens with the power that is now in the Christian, that dwells in the Christian, right? Because it's present in the Christian.

What happens with that power that I had said before that was, what was the characteristic of that power? dominating. That was a dominating power. That sin had the power to rule and to subdue everyone. What happens to that power is that is not dominating anymore.

And that's what we have just simply read there in verse 14. In chapter six, in verse 14, Beloved of Christ, just read it there. It says, For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law, but under grace. And see that in 614, will not have dominion over you. Can a genuine Christian professing Christian, remain in sin, defeated by sin, until the end of the days?

Beloved of Christ, we have to go against scripture just to simply accept that a Christian can go until the end of the days completely defeated by sin. Now, the manifestations of victory over sin are going to be completely different, of course, according to the providence of God. If a person is saved and then that person dies the next second, of course, there's not going to be much change, right? But as providence allows and works in the life of a person, that person, if it's given time before glory, then that person has to bring conformity to the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the purpose of salvation according to the apostle in Romans 8, chapter 8, verse 28, that we will be conformed to the image of the Son.

who is the firstborn among many brothers. That is the purpose of salvation. And going against the scripture practically is going against God. He has given us the scripture to discern. But we have the hope that even though we may be under or defeated temporarily by sin, the promise here is sin will have no dominion over you.

And that is to be taken as a glory and as a grace, as a door, as a rescue, as a promise of God that if God the Father and God the Son and the Spirit dwell in us, that if we have been united to Him, that sin will have no dominion over it. So then the mindset of the Christian is to be defeated by sin and just to gain or win one battle here and there? No! That sin will have no dominion over us. And I'm not saying that we have to become perfect because we are not perfect and we will not obtain sinlessly perfection.

But that we are to put sin to death and that we are to live our lives as if perfection was possible. that we are to live our lives as living without sin was possible, not under the mindset that, yes, sin is in me, and it's OK. Everyone sins. No. Sin will have no dominion over you, not because of who we are, but because this is the promise of the Lord.

So sin remains present in you. But the sin that is in us does not have the dominating power anymore, because now we are not under Pharaoh anymore. We are under the law. Lord, we are not under that which was killing us, but we are under Him. He is the Savior that gives us rest.

He is the one that empowers to defeat the one that is still there, is still present. But we have now the power to defeat that sin. The power is not dominating anymore. Praise God. Right?

Then it comes to the third aspect of sin. What was the third aspect of sin? The result, which is called a penalty. Right? The penalty of sin.

And the penalty of sin is death. That is the glory now of the gospel. Because the presence of the sin, even though it remains in you, universally present in your flesh and in your body, that sin does not have power. When it comes to the penalty of sin, death, that is what the apostle says in verse 20 in chapter 6. speaking and elaborating on these things that I have just mentioned.

He says, for when you were slaves of sin, speaking of the power of sin, right? We understand now that category. For when you were slaves of sin, speaking of the power of sin, you were free in regards to righteousness. That is, we were not in righteousness. Righteousness was over there, and we were away from righteousness.

We were a slave to Pharaoh. The Lord was there. We did not have any relationship to righteousness. But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? What fruit were you obtaining of that?

Only death. It says, for the end of those things is death. Verse 22, but now that you have been set free from sin, is the apostle meaning that you don't have sin? What is he talking about? He's speaking about the power of sin.

Now, if you don't have these categories clear in your mind, then you say, oh, you sin. You are not a Christian, right? Because the Bible says that we do not sin and that we are set free from sin. But what he means is speaking about the dominating power of sin. But now that you have been set free from sin and become slaves of God, you see, he's speaking of relationship, free from sin, now slaves to God.

The fruit you get leads to sanctification. He will not be speaking about sin not being present with you if the goal was sanctification. Sanctified is to die to sin and to be conformed to Christ. And then he says, and it's end eternal life. And now he comes.

For the wages of sin is death. And then he says, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. glorious, but something that we don't understand. It's glorious, but it's something that we don't understand. Because the penalty of sin is death, right?

So one will think that when the Lord is going to deal with our death, he's just simply going to take and remove the debt from us. That he's going to take the penalty of our sins, which is the death. Just as when we have like a speeding fine, right? Like $200 that we have a penalty because we have broken one law. And then we come to court and we have the penalty of the commandment or the law that we have broken, and that is the $200 that we have to pay to the court or to whoever person is receiving the money there.

And then we go and pay, and that is the end. We have paid that penalty. And sometimes we understand the gospel as just simply us going to the court, taking our $200, and then Jesus Christ entering through the court and taking $200, paying the $200 to the person that receives the fine or the money from the fine, and then setting us free. And then we say, glory. Glory to Christ, because he paid for my sins.

Glory to Christ, because the penalty of sin that I had, which is my $200 that I had to pay, now is being taken, and he paid it for me. And we understand it that way. I love it. But what he says there is not that. It's not that just simply the penalty was paid in a quantitatively equal exchange in which we deserve death and our, you know, debt was $200 and then the Lord Jesus Christ came and paid for the $200.

What he says is something completely incredible and contrary to that. It's like if instead of entering into the court with the $200 to be paid, I'm about to pay this to the court person or to the judge. And then the judge says, it's okay, you don't have to pay it. And instead of paying it, I'm going to give you $1,000,000 and this $1,000,000 now is for you and you're going to walk out of the court and everyone is going to stand up clapping, treating you as the best citizen in the city or in town because you keep all the laws. and then you walk out of the court when you walk into the court guilty to pay your fine with one million dollars a greater payment of what you were supposed to pay and now you're walking out of the court plotted by everyone because now you are not in a fictitious or just like a not pretending simple way of they are clapping to you because they consider you to be a person, a good citizen.

But in reality, they stand up and they clap, and they say, this is the best citizen in the city, and he deserves the $1 million, and he's walking out of court, and everyone is clapping. Even that analogy falls completely short because, beloved of Christ, the Lord Jesus and the Lord God of this universe does not only does not give us the death that we deserve but he removes that and he gives us eternal life and not only eternal life but the life that is in Christ Jesus our Lord It's not about me paying the amount of my sins only and then being forgiven for whatever amount of sins I need to pay. That is glorious that I'm forgiven about that. But the glorious thing is that he gives me his life when I deserve death. He gives me the life of His Son that is great in value, that is infinite in value.

So now I'm not only forgiven, I'm blessed. And that is what the Apostle says in Romans chapter 4, that blessed is the one whose sins are not taken into account, but also receives the blessing from the Lord. Because, beloved of Christ, salvation is not only that we are forgiven. Salvation is that we have the life of Jesus Christ. Now, if the Spirit of God does not communicate that to your hearts, because that is the only words that they use, I cannot do anything more than just telling you that your salvation is the life of Jesus Christ.

You deserve to die. And instead of death, They gave you the life of the eternal God, the eternal begotten of the Father, the one whom the Father loved in eternity past. He gave his son so that you will receive not only forgiveness of sins, but that you will receive the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise to the Lord for that, right? Now, for that reason, beloved, our salvation can easily be defined as this, union with Christ.

Our salvation can just be simply defined as union with Christ. Are we justified? Yes, we are justified. Are we being sanctified? Yes, we are being sanctified.

Have we been adopted as children or sons of God? Yes, we have been adopted. Have we been regenerated and given a new heart? Yes, we have. But all of them depend only and ultimately in union with Christ, a union that not started when you believed, a union that started before the foundation of the world.

So if you go to Ephesians, if you go to Ephesians chapter 1, Ephesians chapter one, verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him. Who is the Him? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him. When?

Before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. And then this is more glorious. In love. He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will. In love we were united.

Now, please pay attention to this. Love You have to pay attention to this. Love is that which defines the intra-trinitarian relationships and our choosing before the foundation of the world. Love is that which defines the intra-trinitarian relationships and our choosing before the foundation of the world. Go to 2 John.

The elder to the elect lady and her children whom I love in truth, verse 1. And not only I, but all those who know the truth because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. Pay attention to this. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son. And then the Father's Son is going to be explained.

In what? In truth. and in love. Jesus Christ is the Father's Son in truth and in love. The relationship of the Father and the Son is defined by truth and love.

That's what I have told you, that that is the doctrine of Christ. Truth and love. Just as they relate to each other, just as the Father relates to the Son, just as the Father is the Father of the Son in truth and love, then Christians are to relate to God and to each other in truth and love. Love is the substance of the intra-Trinitarian relationships before even the foundation of the world in which we have been chosen. What was the first emotional, if you want, disposition of God towards his church?

Love. Because that is the bride of the son that was in the loins, spiritually speaking, of Christ. removed from Him, inserted into time and in creation, so that the Lord will manifest the redeeming love to this bride, like the prostitute walked away from the Lord, from the Savior, that when time will come, He will come to rescue her, to bring her back to Him, to His loins, unite her for eternity. future never to be separated. It started in love and ended up in love.

And that is the only explanation that can feel or meet in our minds to say that God has condescended to enter into this world to save you, to save me. There's no other reason. There's absolutely no other reason that I love that goes beyond our comprehension. That is not what I wanted to say. So let's just go to Romans chapter 6 again, please.

union with Christ. Your salvation, beloved, is union with Christ that started when? before the foundation of the world, but a union that was consummated, if you want, that was accomplished, that was achieved by Jesus Christ upon the cross, and that was applied to your soul when you first believed. You were eternally united in Him before the foundation of the world, chosen in Him. But then when the Lord Jesus Christ died upon the cross, you were united to Him in His death.

And when the person believed, the moment that that person believed, that glorious union that abides in the mind of God from eternity past, accomplished by Christ upon the cross, was effectively and sufficiently and divinely applied when the lost person has faith, that person is inserted, baptized into the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, beloved, Still, I have not answered the question. I'm just simply putting those concepts out there so that you will understand what I want to say, because this is the most important thing, actually, that I want to share with you. The question is, why do Christians have the ability or the power, or why are they enabled to fight who? Sin, a sin that is still present in us, a sin that does not have dominating power in us, and a sin whose penalty has been already not paid are removed and exchanged for life.

How or why do we have the ability to fight against that sin and to be victorious over that sin? Answer. Death. Yes. But what is the answer here, brother?

Pay attention to this. Pay attention to the words of the apostle here in chapter 6. What shall we say then? If we have been saved by the abounding grace, which is what he says in chapter 5 in the last verses, if the grace of God abound, he says, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in seeing that grace may abound?

And he says, by no means. How can we, Christians who died to sin, still live in it? Now, this is what you have to pay attention to. Verse 3, he's going to give the explanation why we are not to live in sin, why we who have died with Christ, we who have been united to Christ, are not to live under the power of sin. The answer is given in verse 3.

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ, Jesus, were baptized into his death? You love it. If your mind, if your flesh, if you're tired and for some reason your mind is taking us somewhere else at this point, please make the effort just to listen to these words here. The apostle is going to add to our union with Christ the fact that we have been baptized into Christ Jesus also the fact that we have been baptized into his death he says do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into christ jesus were baptized into his death baptized is to be immersed, and the word is into, immersed into Christ, fully immersed into Christ. He says, do you not know that those who had been, in other words, united, of course the apostle is here using words to speak not only of the spiritual reality of union with Christ, but also the external manifestation of it, which is baptism into Christ.

But spiritually speaking, he says, do you not know that all who had been united into Christ were baptized into or united to his death? So he adds something to our union of Christ that we did not have in eternity past, because he had not died. We had been united to Christ in eternity past in love, but he adds something to our union to him that only happened in time, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ dying. And he says that we are not to live in sin, not only because we're united to Christ, but because we're united to Christ and his death. Be with me, please.

He explains in verse four, and he says this, 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 may walk in newness of life." Pay attention to this. It says, we were buried. Christ died.

We die with him. Christ was resurrected. We are resurrected and raised with him. But this is what you have to understand. Please pay attention to this.

Why do we have the ability to kill sin? Why do we have the ability to put sin to death? Why do we have the ability that when the passions of our flesh are making war within us to be triumphant against all of those, not some of them, all of them? Why do we have that power as Christians? Because The eternal life that we have received is not only the life of Jesus Christ as we, in a sense, had it in the mind of God in eternity past when we were united to him.

But the life that we have received from Christ is the victorious life of Jesus Christ. Keep that statement in your mind, and let me brother explain it, please. We don't have only the life of Christ. We have the victorious life of the Lord Jesus Christ. What is the victory of Christ?

this that he said that he destroyed death but he did not destroy death like two people that are fighting with a sword and then one destroys the other the lord jesus christ allowed dead to defeat him He allowed death to defeat Him. And when He was without life, humanly speaking, because He was not only man, but He was also God, He was powerfully resurrected in newness of life. A life that was not new because it's a new life given to Christ as God, but a victorious life. The life of Christ that He had before the cross, imputed to us, would have not given us the life that we have. It was the resurrected life of Christ that was needed.

Because if there is no resurrection, then we are pity. We are still in our sins. The life that was given to us was a different type of life. Think about Lazarus. Lazarus was alive.

He died. Humanly speaking, not spiritually speaking. He was alive. He died. Then when the Lord came, the Lord Jesus Christ resurrected him.

Lazarus was resurrected into a life that substantially was equal to the life that he had before he died. Right? That's why he died again. He received life. The solution to the problem of death is not life.

He's the victorious life of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that requires the gospel. That requires the cross. Because the Lord Jesus Christ came to give his life to death. And when he died, he killed death because he was God.

The power of death is not only that death kills, but that death holds captive. That's why the lake of fire is eternal. Because once you are killed in the lake of fire, you're taken captive in the lake of fire for eternity. And Christ Jesus who gave his life being God himself. Death did not have the power to keep him there, dead.

But rather, he was partly resurrected by the glory of the Father. And the life that now has is a victorious life. It's a life that has already defeated death. It's a life that has already defeated the penalty of sin. Sin has already been defeated by the life of Christ.

And that is the life that we receive. By grace through faith we receive the life, the victorious life of the Lord Jesus Christ. A life that already knows how to defeat, how to kill sin. A life that has already experienced and is victorious. And a life that is secure.

That's why when we continue reading you understand what I'm saying. It says, for if we have been united in verse 5, For if we have been united with him in a death like this, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like this. Namely, we die with him, we are resurrected with his life, newness of life. Verse six. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, no power anymore, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.

It is there. Verse seven. For one who has died has been set free from sin, to the power of sin. Verse 9. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.

Why? Because He has defeated death already. He has already defeated death. Death no longer has dominion over Him. the same words that are used for us in verse 14 to say that sin will have no dominion over you.

It's rooted in that death no longer has dominion over him. Who is the him? Jesus Christ, for the dead he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you, so you, because you have the life of the victorious, resurrected Christ, so you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. So then he says, I am crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I live, the same apostle. But the life that now I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of Christ, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am crucified with Christ. Never death. I am crucified with Christ.

Death, that is that I died. But then he says, but I live. Why? Because the life that I live, I live in newness of life with a resurrected life of Jesus Christ. He says, the life that now I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me, gave himself for me.

Set your mind on things above. If you have been risen with Christ, set your affections on things above and not on things of the earth. Because the life that you have now is hid with Christ in God. It is in Him. It is His life.

And the only thing that it will take for that life to be taken is for God to die. And you know what? You know that that is impossible. Because the life that the Christian has is the life of not only of God, the incarnated God, who gave himself to be defeated under his enemy. But surprisingly, surprisingly, God is, this is God, this is not a man, resurrected to destroy death, all the attributes and powers of death, completely annihilated and taken by the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And then he says, come to me. Come to me from the outermost part of the earth. Come to me, this message of salvation. It is not that I'm just going to pay your fine. I'm going to give myself for you.

It is not that I'm just going to make you free from this debt that you have. It is not only that I'm going to give you religion or this or that. I'm going to give you my life. I'm going to make myself in you and your heart and your words and your thoughts. I'm going to form myself in you because I loved you, I chose you, and I'm going to keep my promise until the end.

And the only thing that the heart of the Christian will say is just praise God for that. Right? Amen.