Union with Christ applied, pt. 1
Romans 6:5-10 · Mike Doyle · Sep 10, 2023
Romans (2022-25), No. 040
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261932385015

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

Well, I was sitting here listening to Jim, and a thought hit me, which we'll probably talk some more about in the next 40 minutes or so. But every believer really has a clear understanding of what Christ did for them, for them, for them. But not all believers understand what God did to them, what did He do to us?

And that's what Romans 6 is really all about. It's about, we spent a lot of time in 5 discussing the two Adams, Adam number 1 and the second last, the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. Well what 6 tells us and shows us is how did God take me and you and take us out of Adam and put us in Christ. How did he do that? What are the mechanics and how he did that? And that's really what we're going to talk about.

And a lot of times I must admit that as you study Romans 6, it sails right over our head because we always think in terms of what has God done for me? rather than what he's done to me. So in verse six, last week, we talked about knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him. In order that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer serve sin. So you have to look at that verse and you say, well, what do we know? Well, the word know there is in the present tense, which means I'm getting to know this. I'm growing in this understanding. I'm becoming a discriminating apprehender of the facts. And what is the fact that I'm learning and growing in?

That my old man was crucified. I just don't hear that once and say, oh yeah, no problem, I got that down. No, it takes a while to understand. And that's, for you Greek geeks, that's eris path. That means it's done and somebody else did it to me. So, I also find out that this old man that I have been identified with, Adam, I was crucified when he was crucified. Really? I'm still standing here. I look in the mirror. I look the same. I don't remember being crucified.

But the purpose of God is to take us out of Adam and put us in Christ. That the body of sin might be destroyed, or maybe put it another way, that the power of the expression through your body and my body would stop. Because how do you sin? You sin with your body, right? Your body does the sinning. So the purpose of God is to stop your body from sinning more and more all the time, and He does that by including us in the death of Christ, and then resurrecting us.

So it's the manifestation of sins is with my body. That's how I do my singing. And you know what? I'm pretty good at it. So are you. I've probably told you this before, and it always gets a bit of a chuckle. When my son was born, we were so excited to have him. My wife Donna said, she didn't say this, but I know she thought that he was the second man born without a sin nature. Guess what happened?

He proved her wrong. Because he did have one of those sin natures, and he had a body that expressed sin. And sin's power and means of expression is under these circumstances of Romans 6, will be annulled, will be put out of business. That your body no longer will be the vehicle through which Your body no longer will be the vehicle through which the expression of sin is done.

Now, in slide 2, I took a page out of Newell's Romans that was kind of interesting. He says, note the repeated declaration in the 6th chapter of the actual identification with Christ and His death. Notice how many times he talks about death. We who died to sin, verse 2. Verse 3, we were baptized into His death. Verse 4, we were buried with Him through baptism into death. 5, because we became united with Him in the likeness of His death. 6, our old man was crucified with Him. 7, that He that has died is freed or justified from sin. 8, we died with Christ. And then he's going to say, Roger will tell us next week, reckon yourself indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God. So how many times does God have to tell a believer, you died?

Especially when we're just sitting there and nothing has changed. I still sleep at night. I still get up in the morning. I still work. When I cut myself, I still bleed. What does God mean? God means, I crucified you with my Son. Now, that's not a feeling. It's not an emotion. It's a federal fact. It's a fact that God says, I'm telling you.

Colossians 2.20, if you died from the religious principles of the world, did you? Well, you say I did.

Colossians 3.3, for you died, aorist tense, completed fact. and your life is hid with Christ and God. Is that true? Well, it's not going to be true unless I feel it. No, it's true whether you feel it or not. It's also true whether you believe it or not. It's also true if you don't even know it. Don't even know it. So the fact is used as a picture concerning the manifestation of sin. The body is not destroyed. But sin's power and the means of the expression is to be annulled.

So positional truth. We talk a lot about positional truth and I got thinking this week, we got to talk more about positional truth. There are truths in God's word, especially in Paul's epistles. Miles Stanford said that all spiritual life, all spiritual life and growth is based upon the principle of position. It can be summed up in one word. The word is source.

When I say to you, well, you were crucified with Christ, would you say that's a positional truth? Is it true of me? Yes, it's a positional truth. I don't even, I mean, it's exciting news when you start to enter into it, but It's a position that I have in Christ, whether I accept it, know it, or not. And all I have to do is look at the source of where it came from to get my arms around it.

Co-crucifixion with Him happened at the same time and the same place where Christ was crucified. So there's another question that your natural mind is going to say to you, well, I didn't exist in 35 AD or whenever Christ was crucified. Yeah, you did. In the mind of God, He put you in Christ at that point and crucified you.

So it follows a positional statement of the individual's transfer a federal headship from Adam the first to the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. These are the mechanics of how he did it. The first Adam, as we've studied quite a few weeks on this, he fathered a son that was exactly like him. You know, there's this little principle in Genesis that talks about that God put in play that like begets like.

If you're a dog, you beget dogs. If you're a cat, you beget cats. If you're a bird, you beget birds. And I don't care what evolutionists tell you, like begets like. Well, if you're a sinner, you're going to beget a sinner. The sons of Adam and all since him were just like Adam. They were sinners. They had this thing called the sin nature. And along with that, they had the characteristics of Adam, which is sin, sin, sin. And they also had a dying body that manifested the sin nature all the time. So the first Adam, as maintained in the believer, was judged in the crucifixion of Christ. The old man, and we'll talk a little bit more about the old man, with the fallen nature, all that we were in Adam, we received from Adam, was crucified with Christ.

That's really good news for us. Really good news. That that happened to us. Possess of Adam's now new natural mind, I'm sorry, possess of Adam's now their own natural mind and thoughts of heart and feelings and tastes and desires and will, all of that is apart from God and Adam, all of it.

And God condemned it at the cross, and thank God He did. So co-crucifixion is not only of great importance to us, but it is supreme importance on God's side of the ledger, because it makes it possible for a true divine deliverance from the power of sin in the old man. It makes it possible.

So who is this old man? Old means old in point of use. Trench says old in the sense that it is more or less worn out. Those of you who are older, which is everybody except three people, recognize what being worn out's all about. It describes something that's worn out, it's useless, it's fit to be put on the scrap heap, to be discarded.

Man, in this verse, is the word anthropos, and it deals with a generic racial term which is used for the male individual at times, but it also has the idea of all mankind, all from Adam. And when speaking of the human race, as a collection of individuals that includes men and women. Thus the old man here refers to that entire man, Adam, who the believer was before he was saved, totally depraved, unregenerate, and lacking the life of God.

The next term that we need to deal with is the term the body of sin. What is it? Well, it can mean a couple things, but I think here, when it talks about body, the word is soma, which means the human body. So the human body, and the word sin, therefore, in the singular, we're not talking about your acts of sins. We're talking about the principle, the thing, sin itself. The word sin is therefore to the believer's physical body before salvation. possessed by and dominated and controlled by the sinful nature.

Now, you know, we all look at mankind and we want to, they're good guys and bad guys, they're successful people and unsuccessful, and we want to judge everybody based on whatever the world says they ought to be judged on. But God says, Well, there are two races of men on the earth. You know what they are? Saved and lost. That's it. No Jew, no Gentile, no Republicans, no Democrats. You're either saved or you're lost. And that sort of cuts it very sharply.

So when God's Word talks about the word destroyed, keter geho, What it really means is that what co-crucifixion is designed to do is make your body that's really good at sinning, shift it into neutral, make it inactive, make it inoperative to sin. All the believer was in Adam before he was saved was crucified with Christ. True statement. Why? In order that the physical body which before salvation was dominated by your evil sin nature, might be put out of business as a producer of sin.

So God has a two-fold message here. I'm going to take this human body, and by the way, as we get farther on in Romans, he's got some plans for your now dying human body. But right now, his whole agenda with co-crucifying us with Christ is to get the power of sin not to control your body.

As we said last week, I'm now in a position where I don't have to sin. Before I was saved, I couldn't make that statement. I probably was so blind that I didn't even know, but when the sin nature said, do this, I did it. I didn't have to think twice about it. I just did it. And I didn't even think about it, whether it was sin or not.

So, Reese's translation says, knowing this, that our old man, that man we were before we were saved, was crucified with him. In order that our physical body, which at that time was dominated by the sinful nature, might be rendered inoperative in that respect, namely that of being controlled by the sin nature, in order that no longer are we rendering ourselves as slaves habitually obeying the sin nature.

It's interesting. Rhee says that the idea in this verse that we no longer serve sin implies an obligation on our part. Yeah, it does. You know what it is? We have to believe God about what He's done. And this is not feelings, emotion, warm fuzzies. It's not that. God says it, and that's good enough. And then He makes this incredible statement in verse 7.

He says, For he that is dead is freed from sin. So if you are reading through Romans 6 and you look at these verses and you say, wow, this says I died, but I don't feel dead. I don't look dead. But God says I am. One of the benefits of that is that if I did die, I'm freed from the thing sin. It's transliterated I'm justified, I'm declared righteous, I'm acquitted from sin, the principle of sin. They who have once died to sin, as we have in Christ, now stand free from its legal claims.

Question, what's your reaction to this statement? It is the consciousness of being sinful that keeps back sinners from that glorious life that Paul lived. This brings up a whole interesting point. If I'm conscious of the fact that I'm sinning, that somehow keeps me from moving forward into this incredible life that God has called me to live.

But if I find out that I was crucified, buried, and resurrected, What am I free to do? Go live that life. Newell said this, he says, there's no more difficult task requiring the attention of a believer that is assigned to the believer. It is a stupendous thing, this matter of taking note of and keeping in mind what goes so completely against your consciousness that our old man was crucified. Those words are addressed to faith and faith only. Emotions, feelings deny them. To them, it's foolishness. You can't really sit down quietly with your own thoughts and base your Christian barometer on how you feel about being crucified. You just need to sit down and read God's Word and take Him for His Word. You said it, that's good enough for me. Paul says, does Paul show any sense of bondage to sin before God? It's always been curious to me. He doesn't. He's never walking around under that cloud. Oh, I'm a poor sinner. He says, positionally from God's point of view, the old man has been set aside. And you can't charge anything against a dead man.

He's justified. God has totally broken sin's dominion over us and annulled its power totally. Can we distinguish between being justified from sins, from the guilt that we have from what we did? And can we distinguish between that and being justified from the sin itself? Yes, we can. because we were included in the cross. When you think about Paul, he knew two things. He was justified from all guilt by the blood of Christ. He also knew that he was justified, cleared from the sin itself, and therefore, though walking in an yet unredeemed body, he was holy heavenly in his standing and his life and his relations with God. because he knew this information. The conscious presence of sin in us should remind us that we are in Christ. No thoughts of condemnation because we died to it and are looking forward to our redeemed bodies. So, if you ask the question, so what is our relationship to sin?

I've been justified from sin and it does not mean sinless perfection. You know, I haven't been around a lot of bodies of believers since I've been a believer, but I've been around you guys a lot and none of you are sinlessly perfect. Because I'm not sinlessly perfect. But something utterly different and infinitely beyond that. It is different in that it does not refer to the experience of deliverance from sin, but to a passing beyond in death with Christ on the cross, the whole sphere where the former relationship with sin existed. I'm not in that sphere anymore, and neither are you.

We are justified, accounted holy, righteous with respect to the thing sin itself. This is therefore is infinitely beyond the state, any state, wherever, whatever the experience. It is newly established relationship to sin with the saints have become, they died with Christ, in which they stand in Christ as he is towards sin. What is Christ? How does Christ look at sin?

He's done with it. They are fit, I love this verse, they are fit to be the partakers of the inheritance of the saints and light. Maybe you say it this way. I ask this question a lot sometimes of people that want to argue this point. I say, if I'm standing outside the presence of God and I'm a forgiven sinner, Do I have a right to go in and sit down and talk to God? The answer, no, I don't. Why not? Because I'm still a sinner, forgiven or otherwise.

What Romans 6 tells us, we've been taken out of the realm of sin. God does not look at us as a sinner anymore. He looks at us only in Christ. Only in Christ. We've been justified or separated from sin. Paul rejoiced indeed and have a most blessed experience, but they do not say sin is gone from their flesh.

I have a body and I have a sin nature still resident within me, but that they have died, are declared righteous from it, that they are cleared before God and all condemnation because of sin's presence in this unredeemed body and delivered from all sins, former rights and bondage over me. So, question. Do I need to spend my life crucifying the old man in order to be practically free from its influence? The answer is obviously no. I don't have the power to do it.

But God has already done it on the cross. So now in verse 80 he says, now if or since we be dead with Christ, since that's a fact, we believe we shall also live with him. So God didn't crucify us and just leave us there, like the Catholics put Christ on the cross and never take him off. There is as much certainty for the life in Him as there is for death in Him. When this verse says, since we died with Christ, it's almost like the writer, Paul, just took it for granted that he died.

Why do you think Paul uses in Timothy and 1 Thessalonians, he never talks about a believer dying. He always talks about them going to sleep. Why do you think he does that? Because from his perspective and the Word's perspective, you already did die. So you can't do it twice. You just go to sleep and go to another place.

We go on to expectations of a blessed life in Christ. Listen to Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. I'm still living. And the life I now live, though, I live how? By the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Interesting future. We shall also live with him as in the future tense. And it's used here referring not to what is to happen hereafter as much as what is the certain consequence of our union with Christ. This life has begun at the resurrection, and it's not completed yet, but it will be. So, Paul says if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.

J.B. Stoney, I read this the other day, and he titled it, What Gives Me Relief? He said, I believe that I'm dead with Him. I'm not dead in myself, for I find sin springing up. But I say, I am dead with Christ, and I am dead in His life. I have the life of the one with whom I died. It is really the simplest thing in the world. If you look at it as Scripture does, that I have the life of the one in whom I died. I was identified with Christ when He died. But that didn't end His existence. He was buried and then He was resurrected. Well, I'm connected to Him now. I'm united to Him. When He rose, what had happened to you and me? We rose. We now have His life. Resurrected life.

If you were dead to yourself, you could not be alive. If you were dead to yourself, you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be sitting in this pew. But you are dead with Christ. And there's nothing against you because He that is dead is freed from sin. Yeah. Assurance. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Death no longer has mastery over him.

Weiss says that Romans 6 is the mechanics, as I talked about earlier, of a spirit-filled life. What do you think he meant by that? The key word in Romans 6 is machinery or mechanics. Here we have the mechanics of a Spirit-filled life. Here's how it happens and here's where it happens.

These verses give us mechanics as to how God separated us from Adam and united us to Christ. We see the inner workings of the machinery set up by God and brings into being when He saves a sinner. I don't know of one single Christian that when they were saved knew these facts. All they knew is they acquired heaven for eternity and Christ was their personal Savior, something done for them. This is talking about at that same time what God did to them The power of the indwelling sin broken and the divine nature implanted, they don't know anything about that yet.

When we get to Romans 8, we'll see the dynamics of what a spirit-filled life really looks like. There we have the Holy Spirit mentioned all through the chapter, the source and power and the operator of the spiritual machinery in the inner being of the believer. So this verse gives us the mechanics of how God separated us from one Adam and united us to the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. Verse 9 says, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again.

So how does a believer get free from the principle of sin? You may know this information, but you're not free. Well, Paul has brought out a couple of major facts. When God saves a sinner, He separates him from the indwelling sin nature like we've talked about. Which separation is so effective that the believer is now not compelled to sin anymore? He doesn't have to.

He has been permanently delivered from the power of sin, when at the same time that sin nature is left in him as long as he lives here on the earth. And the second thing is, he has imparted a divine nature to the believer, a whole new life, which gives the believer both a desire and the power to do the will of God. You know, without the life of Christ in you, you don't have any desire to be pleasing to God.

Stoney made an interesting comment I read years ago. He said, we have to realize that when we were saved, that one of the things that God imparted to us in His life was a taste for the things of God. You know as well as I do, if you were saved, later on in life that your taste changed pretty quickly. Things that you just thought were so nerdy now become part of what you really admire.

So we have a twofold result from this major surgical operation that God performs in the inner being of the sinner when the sinner places his trust in the Savior. The two major things again are the disengagement from the evil sin nature, separation from it, no longer compelled to obey it, and given the life of the Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrected life, which is the most powerful life ever. It took more power to raise Christ from the dead than it did to create the universe. More how-to's. I don't know what the title is paid, so I said more how-to's. God has imparted to the believer the divine nature.

And 1 Peter 1.4, For by those He granted us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that was in the world by desire.

In Philippians 2.12, Paul says, So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not in my presence only, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God. What does He do? He works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure. If you carry this out to the ultimate conclusion, your own salvation, for God is the one who is constantly putting forth the energy in you, giving you both the desire and the power to do his pleasure.

That's what you get with resurrected life. So, some questions. What would be the consequences if we didn't die with Christ? I listed two. We couldn't be living with Him risen, and we'd still be stuck in Adam. How many times did Christ die? One time. And am I not to do my own dying? We talked about that. No. I'm to be conformed to His death.

How long does the believer receive his spiritual life from the Lord Jesus? You get it till next Thursday or the next time you sin. As long as Christ lives, you live. Paul says he died once and for all and that death over him never again can exercise Lordship. Therefore, the believer will be sustained in spiritual life for time and eternity since Christ is his life. Did the sin nature die? Answer, Christ, you got to get this straight, because there are a lot of people that say that the sin nature died. It didn't. You died to it. It's still active. It's still in that unredeemed body. But you have been separated from it. It's not dead. You're dead to it. You're separated from it. You do not have to obey it anymore.

So, what do we know from verse 9? The principle justifies that we believe of verse 8. Here, Paul speaks of Christ's death to the sin nature of the individual. It was used of God to break the power of indwelling sin in the believer's life. That our present spiritual participation in Christ's risen life will continue forever. God has raised Christ out from the dead ones. And guess where you were when that happened? You were in Him. He'll never die again. He's totally out of the realm of death. He's totally out from under the realm of death.

So you have to ask, my last question is, did death have mastery over Christ? Did it? My answer is that sin never had dominion over Christ, and death could have had no dominion except that your sin and my sin was transferred to Him. And once that happens, therefore the wages had a brief dominion over Him.

But now that's ended forever, because we are in Him also forever. Therefore, death with its dominion is for the believer forever passed away. It's gone. Verse 10, For the death that he died, he died unto sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives unto God. And this came out of Newell, and I thought it was really good.

He says, don't change God's word unto. And if you look at this verse, it says he died unto sin. Do not confuse this passage with those other scriptures that declare Christ died for our sins. For this great revelation, Romans 6.10, Christ died unto sin. There is here, of course, no thought of compensation of guilt. He's not paying your guilty sin penalty here. That belongs to Romans chapters 3, 4, and 5. Here the sole question is one of relationship, not of compensation. Christ is seen dying to sin, not for it.

So, so far now, we've covered 10 verses. And these probably, at least up to this point, and maybe beyond this point, the 10 most important verses you're going to find in God's Word. Because when you find out that God separated you from the very thing sin itself by having you included in the cross of Christ, it changes your whole perspective on how you view your Christian life.

I stand and you stand in the position of permanent relationship of freedom to the sin nature. And I don't need to obey it anymore. And second, I have a divine nature which has been imparted to me, which has given both the desire and the power to serve God. But more than that, a statement in Genesis is fulfilled. God says, the end of all flesh has come before me, when He was talking about the flood of Noah.

But there are some fleshly people that survived that. If you're a believer, you were crucified with Christ. Your flesh didn't survive that. I'm not better than I was, but more, I have the life of Christ with whom I have died. I'm not better in myself, it's Him.

There's more. The Holy Spirit has given me the enjoyment of that new life. which I now have received, and have received it from the one who I died on the cross with." And I had another slide, but I read this morning in the Hungry Heart, and I thought, boy, this probably said it better than I could have ever said it. The title of the Hungry Heart this morning was, Birth, Savior, Growth, Spirit. I'll read two paragraphs.

Many think that because of faith they are cleared from everything before God through the cross, and therefore by faith they are clear of everything in themselves. But that is the error of holiness by faith. Do you get that part after what we've just talked about? I'm free of everything, and as he says, cleared of everything, not of myself, in Christ.

The object or position is that we are clear before the Father. The subjective or the condition is that we are cleared from ourselves by the growth ministry of the Holy Spirit. You know that old saying, we found the enemy within the camp. Guess who it is? It's me. I'm the problem.

But God makes sure through that cross that I'm not going to be the problem going forward. This is the paragraph I wanted you to think about as we close. As you and I, by faith, in the positional facts, realize that you and I are in the Father's presence, and you will not try to depend upon any sense of His presence. You know His presence because you know that your position in the Christian life is a life of faith in the facts.

Nothing else. That the Father forces you to live by faith so as to draw you into His presence. Not you, by sense, trying to draw Him into your presence. See the difference? The Spirit of God is always drawing us into the presence of the Father in Christ. And we try so hard to get Him to come in and be in our presence. No, that's not the way He works. He wants us to be there. That's why He included us in the cross. So let's close.

Dear Father, how we thank You. Boy, the work You've done to us on the cross of Your Son, the Lord Jesus. It takes a while, I guess, for us to grow into the understanding that You desire our company and You've made it possible by placing us in Christ. But You put us in Him when He died. We died when he was buried, we were buried, and when he arose, we rose to newness of life. And that life is the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus, which gives us the privilege to enter in and be with you for all eternity. We thank you, Father. We pray in your Son's precious name. Amen.