lesson 21a
Romans 6:7-11 · Mike Doyle · Oct 14, 2018
Romans (2018-21), No. 38
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261912271112

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So we are in lesson 20. By the way, lesson 21 questions I think are back there. We probably won't get to that today. But we are in Romans chapter 6, so that when we were talking about in verse 4, Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father.

We should also walk in newness of life." And the question was, what is newness of life? So we know that the Lord Jesus died instead of us and took the judgment that was due us. We also know that we as believers were identified with his person and his work. And we are, maybe the best way to say it, we are a co-participant in all that Christ did regarding not only sins that I committed, but the sin nature. And the way that we got united to him is that we were baptized, that we were placed into him by the Holy Spirit at the point at which he died. Death meaning separation. All that Christ has accomplished in his relationship to sin is also accomplished by us in Christ.

One of the most important things to keep in mind as we go forward is that this work on the cross is forever done. It's never to be repeated and it's satisfied the righteous demands of God against the old man. It satisfied the righteousness of God against the old man and it opened the door for you and I to be able to walk in a walk that was pleasing to Christ. So Christ is resurrected and we've gotten down to this point.

What was he resurrected to? It's kind of a tricky question, but not really. It being the first fruit to a new creation? Okay. He was resurrected to a new creation. Now it's hard for us as you look around. There has been a new creation in existence on this earth for 2,000 years, but you don't ever see it. Have you ever seen it? Seriously, think about it. Have you ever seen it? You don't see it because this new creation is not in the physical realm yet, it's the spiritual realm and the Lord Jesus being raised from the dead is the new creation but he's in the heavenlies and we are the first fruits of the new creation.

Do you know what a first fruit is from the Old Testament? The feast of the first fruits, what does that entail? Well they brought the first part of the harvest and the first part of the harvest was offered to God and in essence what they were saying is that this is the first part and the whole rest of the harvest is going to be just like this. So we're the first fruits, Christ is the first fruits so we're just like him and all those who belong to him from until the rapture will be just like him. That's the point. So positionally we're just like him. Now, don't we see the fruit in others? Other believers? Yeah, we see the life of Christ. Sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes we do.

I was going to ask the same question because one of the things that got me thinking about Jesus really being something real is my dad got saved. And he was always never a hugging kind of a guy and that kind of stuff. He got saved and he talked and when he saw me after a long time he just had like tears that started running down his eyes. I mean it was something changed.

So... That's a great question. Talk a little bit about how would that newness of life be manifested in us? Yeah, but I mean in terms of practical shoe leather. I can't walk around expounding every time you stop I'm quoting scripture at you, that's not, you know. But you may apply it in your life and others see that. Or it may be applied by the spirit in my life, put it that way. And what does that look like? I go to that Bible study and how the hell gave it this life. He would like I would bring all these things up about Jehovah's Witnesses. It seems that what you're saying isn't true. And he said, you know what? And I think you're learning a lot. out of here. You know how he was? There was something real about him, Christian wise.

So I would say this, that there's a, when you, we're on Tuesday night, Wednesday night we're studying the book of James, and we just started it, but we're eventually going to get to those verses about You tell me that your righteousness is because of your faith, I'll show you my righteousness by my works. What's he talking about? He's talking about the manifestation of his righteousness not before God, because you can't see that, but before men. See that? So James is saying, look, I'm a righteous man positionally in Christ, and the only way you know it is that if I function in a righteous manner before you, that you see it. That's what Mike's talking about.

Yeah, you see peace in the midst of a storm. Yeah, and so what do you see? You see what is known as the fruit of the Spirit. The very life of the Lord Jesus. I was reading this little booklet that you gave out. Oh yeah. And this is what he says about newness of life.

That means a believer should possess a new mind, a new heart, new desires, new ambitions, new pursuits, new joys, a new peace, a new power, a new victory. In fact, all things are become new. And he says, the flesh ceases its dominion. The believer is no longer debtor to the flesh. that is no longer under any obligation to serve sin. I'm doing the Lord's Table today and that's exactly what I'm doing. Pardon? I'm doing the Lord's Table today and the talk I'm going to give is exactly what that's about.

So when we talk about newness, does that mean that our behavior has been modified and now We're politically correct and we do everything with a smile. And we have gone to class and reformed who I am and personality. Isn't it Christ working through us? Zumbiatis says renewal, not simply an experience similar to the past, but a qualitatively different one. Qualitatively different.

You have to recognize that when the Lord Jesus was raised from the dead he was an entirely new kind of human being. Even different than he was before he was crucified. Because now we have this whole new thing called resurrected life. This is a man in the Lord Jesus Christ who was made sin for us and because he was made sin he was condemned and he died. He's separated from all of that, which included the world system, all of it that he was in before. And now that he's raised, we call it a new creation, but it's an entirely new existence. Totally new. Where Christ goes, we go. In kind and quality.

Now, like I said before, you don't see it, you know, except in the life of those that belong to him. And it includes little tiny things like an increased conditional freedom from sin. Because before, would you say that the Old Testament saints were progressively being freed from sin? I don't think so. They were going at it. They got their sins covered, but there wasn't any freedom.

Would you say that we have in a brand new sense, new leadership? Or maybe a new headship? Yeah, we do. Who is Christ himself? Would you say that we are partakers of an inheritance? And that's new inheritance, not anything Jewish, not anything promised to anybody before the resurrection. This is all brand new.

Would you say that you're blessed, completed in the past with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus? Would you say that that's true? Yes. Absolutely it's true. Would you say that you are justified forever before a holy God? Yes. Absolutely. Would you say that your citizenship has changed from being an earthly citizen to being a heavenly one? Absolutely. I mean the list can go on for pages about what is new. They are all positional truths. Yes they are. I was thinking of new history too.

An entirely new history. We have talked about that a lot. Everybody's history in Adam goes back to the creation of Adam. Once you're baptized into Christ, separated from Adam, resurrected in Christ, how far back does your history go? Christ is landslain from the foundations of eternity. God said, I knew you in Christ before the foundations of eternity.

How can he say that? Because you're in Christ. That's how he can say it. He couldn't say that about somebody in Adam. Is that why the Old Testament becomes so real to us? I don't understand. Well, Christ was revealed in the New Testament, or Old Testament. But this newness we're talking about has never been, because Paul continually talks about the mystery, and James talks about the mystery, and Peter talks about the mystery. What's a mystery in a biblical sense? It's something that was never revealed before. This resurrection life is brand new, and nobody in the Old Testament ever saw it.

As a matter of fact, it says in Hebrews that even the prophets could prophesy, but they couldn't get it. They didn't get it. They didn't own it. But Christ did. But you know, it's interesting. You watch how Christ lives, even up to the time of his resurrection, there's no hint. of newness of life. The first time I think you get a hint of it is when he meets Mary at the grave and he says to her and the King James, don't touch me because I have not gone to my father and been glorified. What's he saying to her really? He's saying you've identified with me as the Jewish Messiah on the earth and you've seen me crucified, buried and now you see me resurrected but there's another step here I'm going to be glorified and when I'm glorified that's going to be what you need to identify with me, heavenliness.

That's the newness. Who's the first person that ever thought about heavenliness? Who's the very first one that ever saw that? It's Stephen. He's the first one. The second one was the Apostle Paul because when he was saved it was a glorified Christ in the heavenlies that appeared to him. There's the change. When I said citizenship changed from the earth to the heaven, once Paul enters on the scene, he starts from heaven. He isn't like the other twelve guys, apostles who are working their way through the Jewish system.

Paul starts up here because this is what newness is. He begins to reveal in all of his writings the perspective from here. Old Testament doesn't do that. Gospels don't do that. Acts does it because Acts talks about James or talks about Stephen and talks about Paul. That's how new it is. It's so new that nobody knew. One thing I would like to share things that kind of light bulbs for me.

The word justification, you know, it's kind of a strange word. But what you guys said, that means that God himself declares me to be righteous forever. I am righteous now and I will be for all eternity. And I was always trying to do things to be the best I could. We were talking about that on Wednesday. It was really cool and James of all places. Let me find it quickly.

It was just one of those little tiny half verses that you look at and you think, oh my goodness. What verse was it, do you remember Donna? It's James 1.17. This is after he's gone through a bunch of verses where he says about how you're tempted to sin with the dangling of the bait and all of that.

And then he says, then every good gift and every perfect gift is from above. new creation, right? And comes down from the father of lights. Here's the part, with whom there's no variation or shadow of turning. So God declares you righteous. You're declared righteous by a God who cannot vary and cannot, there's no shadow of a turning. Is that cool? Yeah, so this new resurrected life, the guarantee of that life is him, not me. And he never changes.

When he makes a pronouncement, you're righteous, all of the creatures of hell can come against you. It's too late. That's what everybody strong used to say. Well, Doyle, it's too late for you, buddy. So when Christ rose from the dead, he entered into a new sphere of existence that the universe had never seen before.

When on earth he was God manifested in the flesh, but now he is God manifest in a resurrection body of infinite perfection and glory, Revelation 1.12. So newness of life is an entirely new creation.

That's what it boils down to. And one of the things that we as believers that would benefit us in terms of our being able to rest in Christ is to find out what this new creation is all about. And it's in all of Paul's epistles and Peter, James, and John. It's throughout the epistles. So question eight was what does the fact of being in newness of life qualify us for? What do you qualify for?

Heaven. Okay. What is heaven by the way? Is it a place with clouds and harps and stuff? What is it? Think about what heaven is. What is heaven? It's a person born of God. Yeah, that's the most important part. The great thing about heaven is being with Him wherever He is. You see that? I have been and you have been recreated in Christ to such a degree that we're going to hang with Him on His level for all eternity no matter where He is. Because he is heaven. The Lord Jesus is the new creation. He is heaven.

So just being with him, that's all we need. We don't need anything else. We're blessed with every spiritual blessing. Every one of them. Now imagine what it's going to be like if you were sitting in front of, I don't even think in front of, just say you're sitting across from Christ. And you are exactly like him. Same life, same everything.

What do you get by being that kind of a creature? The greatest thing you get is the ability to communicate and respond at his level. And who is he? What's the basic core character of God himself? It's love. So here I am and here you are with Christ face to face and he's loving us to his capacity, which is unlimited, and guess what?

I get to respond in kind. You know, I don't do 60%. I do just in kind. Why? Because I have the same life. Exactly the same life. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit existed through all eternity before they ever created anything. Did they start to create because they were dissatisfied or needed more? No, they were totally satisfied with each other. We will be in that loop. Totally satisfied with them. And them totally satisfied with us.

How cool is that? That's what heaven is. That's what I think it is anyway. The Father and Son and Holy Spirit wanting to reveal themselves to us. They do. And in order for them to do that, they have to recreate us in Christ so we can appreciate who they are.

Because in Adam, there's no appreciation. especially fallen Adam. So you have a complete disposition of the former existence and the first Adam has been accomplished. It has been terminated by co-crucifixion, co-burial and co-resurrection. Note that walking presupposes the possession of life to do the walking. In other words, you can't walk in newness of life unless you've got the life to do it with. You see that? I can't fake that and I can't imitate it. I've either got the life or I can't. My dog can't talk English to me because he doesn't have the life to do it. I appreciate you Mike because you really get excited about these positional truths. When you think about how can you not get excited about what God has, the grace that God has offered us is just over the top.

Like Neal says, we are one with the risen Christ and we will be united in likeness Really? Do you believe? Yeah. I mean, people say, well, you've got to walk by faith. Well, there's a good one. How about believing that? And some of these other little things, you know? What just ran through my mind is, as a believer, we're no longer vulnerable. Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. You know, in the flesh, you're vulnerable, you're spiritually vulnerable while we walk around here. But what God has determined has removed that from us. He does. We're no longer vulnerable. And you know what's cool about how he did it? He completed it all. You know what I mean? He completed this new creation in existence, this new resurrected life. Everything is already done.

He never now, like in all the Old Testament, he would look to man and say, now here's what you need to do to be righteous before me. And it would even be faith. or whatever it might be. I'm thinking God went well, I tried everything else, I might as well do it all myself and then just offer it to him for free. So when I walk around and my position can't be touched, but I still have a condition as long as I'm on the earth and I still commit sins, but God was so gracious that we aren't vulnerable in terms of that position.

Nothing can change that. And when we begin to start to enter into that, and that new life begins to come forward, we are protected. We are not vulnerable to sin. We can actually walk away from it. Hal always talked about the ultimate would be that God would be glorified.

Yeah. And what a scenario for that, right? Oh, perfect. Yeah. So the first question I ask is how does this newness of life look? It's walking around glorifying to God. He's the one that determines it. So it's not just a mere manner of living It's a new kind and a new quality of very existence. That's what it is.

So verse 5 tells us that we were united to Christ in His death, so now what is to happen? We have been united to Him in the likeness of His death certainly. We shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection for, if, or since we have been planted together together in the likeness of His death, we shall be now and forever also in the likeness of His resurrection. So those that are saved are already united to Christ by being baptized by the Spirit into Him. We are united to Him.

Which places us in a position that is beyond the judgment of sin. Do you see that? We are beyond being judged for sin. So when we go to God as believers and confess our sins, what are we really doing? We're agreeing about what? About this. Hey, I really have been placed beyond judgment, but I've been acting like this isn't true. I haven't been walking by faith. And so therefore I have lost my fellowship with you. It doesn't affect my position. In essence I'm saying to you, here's what I did and I'm agreeing that you're right and I'm wrong. What am I doing? I'm exercising faith. See that?

So we're assured that as certain as we shared in Christ's death, we absolutely will share in his resurrection. So now we're starting to talk about life. How does it work? Well, we start with the source of life. Like I said, you can't walk around in newness of life if you don't have newness of life. We are therefore free to enter into the experience of eternal power and victory in Christ's resurrection. That's what you're talking about.

We're free to do that. A non-believer is not free from sin, which means he's not free to walk in newness of life. He's still a slave. See that? We're free to do this. It's interesting how God takes care of this so that he can put us in a position where we, by faith, exercising our wills, oh yeah, I can do this now. I couldn't do this before, but I can do it now. Put another way, we have entrance into a new creation.

You can look in Ephesians 2.4-6 or Colossians 3.1-4, Colossians 3 says, since you have been risen with Christ, is that a fact? I'm risen with Christ. Okay? I've got the fact. What do I do about that? Seek those things which are above where Christ sits at the right hand of God. The question is always in my mind, what are the things? The things are Him. The freedom we have as resurrected with Christ, there are astounding things that we, by faith, can just believe and enter into.

I'm thinking about what Donna says about being vulnerable. If we are out of fellowship, We're vulnerable. We're vulnerable. Yes, we are. From a conditional standpoint. Right, exactly. Not positionally, but conditionally. Yeah, that's right. And it's interesting how I think sometimes the Lord will bring a trial in our life to expose our vulnerability in the flesh so that he can teach us, no matter what the circumstances are, to rest by faith in him.

So then, you know, it's like My son just got back from Lake Powell and they were doing some sort of water scheme where they sit on a chair and it's got a fin under the water and as you go fast it lifts you up out of the water. It's like us. We walk by faith, it lifts us up out of the water. We're above.

So to be in Christ, which is our position, and that of all who are saved, we participate in all that Christ has done, all that he is, and all that he will ever be. Lots of us love to talk about what he's done, and we are participating in that. We aren't as familiar with what he is, and we certainly aren't as familiar with what he will ever be, is also true of us. It is to have died in his death, to have been buried in his burial, and to have been raised in his resurrection, to have ascended in his ascension, and to be seated with him now, because we are in him, in glory. Isn't that something? To be joined, I think I got this from Newell, to be joined with the risen Christ, and therefore daily, hourly, to walk is a wonder not conceived by many of us, but it is a blessed portion of all believers. Isn't that cool?

We shall be is only necessarily future from the standpoint of union with Him in His death, not just a physical reference. Resurrection life is developed from now on in us. That's what spiritual growth is about. It's the development of resurrected life in our existence. Question 10. Question 10 has to do with verse 6.

Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin. What do we know? This particular know is to get to know, come into the knowledge of, become acquainted with the facts. We come to know our old man was crucified and that's by faith, that God's testimony is true, it's fact.

It's fact. Miles used to say that all the time, that it was coming to know. You already know it. I mean, you see it and read it and you say, oh, okay. I may not fully understand that my old man was crucified, but it's a growing understanding of the fullness of what's really there. Like he says, becoming acquainted with these facts. Yeah. It doesn't happen overnight, I don't think. That's exactly right. Paraphrasing, knowing this because we are getting to know this are discriminating apprehension effects.

So you know, have you ever met believers in your life where you go up to them and say, how's it going? And they say, I'm trying to die to self. I've met guys that say that, or people that say that to me, and I say, well, my Bible says you already died. But I may not have a full embryo. Well, I was introduced to this verse when I was about six weeks as a Christian. And the guy said, read verse six and tell me what you think it says. So I read it, and I said, it looks like I might have died. He said, you did. I said, so what will you do with that? He said, well just believe God about that. And he'll expand it so you...

Well, you know, 40 years later I'm still learning about this co-crucifixion. How exhausted, expansive it is. And that I really am free from all that I was in Adam. I don't look any different. Knowing that our old man, which is heiress passive, was done to me, crucified with him, for the divine purpose as stated before, that the body of sin might be destroyed." We'll talk about destroyed. But sin's power and the means of expression may be a no. So, positioning I've been co-crucified with him, when did it happen? 2,000 years ago. That's right, I was there 2,000 years ago and so were you. the time and place when he was crucified.

The passage follows the statement of individual transfer of federal headship from the first Adam to the last Adam. That's the cool thing. Once you leave Adam and into Christ, it isn't that, oh, gee, I'm free to do whatever I want. No, I got a new head now. And it's the resurrected, glorified Christ. Now, here's the cool part.

Adam begat a son in his own likeness, didn't he? Everybody that came from Adam was a sinner. This son of Adam and all sins were according to Adam, right? Now do you think that changes? It's interesting, Donna and I had John and Donna was convinced that when he was born that he was the one kid outside of Christ that was born without a sin nature. Guess what happened? Because he had a man's heart, he had a man's feelings, he had a man's taste, he had desires, wisdom, will, all apart from God. And that showed up well before he was two.

So the first Adam is perpetuated in every believer, right? We all were an Adam, but we were judged in the crucifixion of Christ. That's pretty cool. that we were judged? We were judged guilty. We were judged deserving crucifixion. Because not only did we commit sins, but we were a sinner.

Let me ask you this question. Are you a sinner? Think about what I'm asking you. Are you a sinner? I was. You was. What about now? But by saying that, no, I'm not a sinner anymore, doesn't mean you don't commit sins. Because all I have to do is stop abiding by faith in Christ and go back to the old man, guess what? And we think of sins as a bunch of bad stuff, but sometimes we live in neutral. No, we don't. Adam continually, 24-7 sins. You know why? Because he's not a man of faith.

So if you're abiding in the flesh, you might be abiding in the good flesh, but guess what? You're still sinning, but you're functioning in a manner that isn't consistent with who God says you are. You're not a sinner. He judged you as a sinner, and what did he do? He crucified you with Christ. That's what he did. So does that tie back to what you were saying about we will pass sin? Because we died? Well, when we die we move out of the realm of sin. Because the old creation is a sinful creation. We moved out of that into a new resurrection creation.

There isn't any sin over here. It's like, I was working with a guy who was an alcoholic. I said, now I'm trying to explain identification to him. I said, you've got to understand that in Adam over here you're an alcoholic. There's no question about it. But in Christ you're not. He said, why wouldn't I be? I said, because Christ isn't an alcoholic, that's why. Because I am whatever he is. So then you would say, since he's not a sinner, we're not a sinner. That's right. But how come we still sin? Because I slide back by faith, back into my Adam. You still have that sin nature. That's right.

And like James says, here comes the bait. See now, the great thing about James is that he presupposes that you are abiding in Christ. And so the temptation is to get you out of Christ. So what comes? Here comes the temptation. And the bait is in front of you. And it's all designed to get you to leave your walking in Christ. And it's an allurement to the flesh.

Right? And somebody makes you angry and you want to respond, or whatever it might be. And the minute you do that, you say, okay, I'm going there. I'm taking the bait. Like James says, what happens? A conception takes place. And what is that conception? It's sin. And then there's a birth. And what happens when the birth comes along? Death. Separation. Conditional separation. Did I sin by abiding in Adam? I still have that nature in me? Yeah. Was that sin taken care of on the cross? Sure. Was I taken care of on the cross? Sure was. So the deal is, if I confess, then what does the Spirit do? He restores me back here. See? That doesn't give me an excuse to sin. As a matter of fact, how shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Great logic. How should I live any longer? I died to it.

But if I'm not really sure, and I'm not resting by faith, I'm so vulnerable to the temptation that comes to the flesh. I have a subtle question. When you were saying, if you move out of Christ, you do these things, we don't ever really were in him forever. But from my perspective, I begin to value the allurement to the flesh to be satisfied rather than what I value by being in Christ. And that's why this is a growing understanding, a growing knowledge of what really happened with my death, burial and resurrection.

That's why I think that the real issue is Philippians 3.10, that I may know him. The more that I know Christ, the less vulnerable I am to fleshly temptations. Because He becomes increasingly more valuable to me. You know, I used to wonder, in my life, is there ever going to be a time when I value Christ more than I value me?

The answer is yes. That's what the Spirit is about. And if I value him more than I value me, then when the temptation comes to satisfy the flesh, I think, well, I'm not going there. So the last question, I actually have two pages of notes on. And it's simple.

Who and what is the old man? It's who we were in Adam, from Adam. Now, would you say the old man and the sin nature are the same thing? I would say no. I would say the old man has a sin nature. That's part of what the makeup of that man is. Because old man in the Greek is anthropos, which means man, and some of the translations say old self, and I don't like the word self. I think it should be man. Because it's an entire man, Adam.

And that seems to be different from the flesh. Can you talk about the flesh? Is there a distinction between the old man and the flesh? Yeah, man became flesh. What is the flesh in that context? It's a propensity to sin, isn't it? It's a propensity... In the body. It manifested through the body. Right. Yeah.

Doesn't it seem like we have a lot of things marshaled against us? I mean, we have this body that hasn't been redeemed and it's a sinning magnet. Man, that's all it wants to do. If Christ is before us, who can be against us? That's right. So we think that my body needs to be satisfied. No, it doesn't. Well, my sin nature needs to be satisfied. No, it doesn't. Well, my old man needs to be satisfied. No, it doesn't. But the next verse says that we who have been justified are freed from the body of the sin. The sin. Sin nature. Principle sin.

That doesn't mean that my body is going to stop. No. But we have freedom. That's the thing we have. If there's any person on the planet that has free will, you know who it is? It's a Christian. A non-believer doesn't have free will. He's a slave to sin. I'm free not to be a slave, but I'm not free to live in the middle. I'm either going to be controlled by sin or by Christ. But the reason that we're free is because we have the ability to believe, or because we believe what the Lord has done. The facts, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.

So, the word old here means archaic. It isn't to be old and worn out. There are two words in Greek which mean old. I am not going to say them. Which means old in the point of time and the other means old in the point of use. The second is used here defined as old in the sense that it is more or less worn out. It describes something that is worn out, useless, fit to be put on the scrap pile, to be discarded. Thus the old man here refers to that, and he uses the word person, and I don't like that.

The believer was, before he was saved, totally depraved, unregenerate, lacking the life of God. That's what Wyss says. How interesting. And then two other things I was going to talk about was the body of sin, what is that? and then talk about what does it mean to be destroyed. But I think all of you kind of know that it really doesn't mean that it's annihilated. It means it's just put out of effective use. Malloy, because he was an electrical engineer, said take an offline.

So I suppose, Father, how we thank you for your word. We thank you for all that you've accomplished on our behalf, not only for us, but to us. And that we, if we were to ask of anything, that we may be able to walk more and more in newness of life. And we pray in your son's precious name. Amen.