The Believers' Reckoning
Romans 6:9-11 · Roger Henderson · Sep 24, 2023
Romans (2022-25), No. 042
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926193246213

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

Well, good morning. Well, with Mike and Donna gone, and with Courtney and Ingrid gone, and let's see, you might be feeling, I'm glad to see you guys made it. It's wonderful. We were thinking it might be kind of sparse, but we're, it's good. It's still good. Well, in case you, I want to hold you in suspense.

Wayne, you know, Rock of Ages, I haven't sung that in years, but, and I actually, I remember maybe 20 years ago, 25 years ago, when I first understood about the fact that we our identification with Christ that song was pointed out to me and so I pointed out a couple weeks ago and so the thing that Wayne was referring to in the first stanza it says let the water and the blood from thy from thy side which flowed be a sin and here's the key the double cure save from wrath and make me pure The idea here is that you the first you're saved from the penalty of sin That's a wrath and you're made me pure you're saved from the power of sin, and we're starting in Romans chapter 6 We're all about talking about the power of sin the power of sin in the believers life And that's what and that's not a you know. It's an ongoing process your entire Christian life you never You'll never cease from Here on this on this earth never ceased from that pursuit of As the Lord directs you with over the power of sin, okay, so let's talk about that a bit today, so I labeled this the believers reckoning and I want to go back and You know kind of connect it up and the best way to connect it up is is looking at back at least so at least a verse 9 actually we have to verse 8 which is good and But in verse 9 it talks about knowing something. Knowing two things, right? That Christ is never to die again.

That's number one. And that death no longer has mastery over him. And then that kind of leads into this flow, which we start in 10. So based upon that, that death no longer has mastery over Christ. Four, the death he died. He died, for the death he died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. And then we have another connective, even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

So it all kind of flows together there, and that's why I wanted to do that. So we're going to go back and look a little bit at chapter 10, verse 10. And we did it last week, but I'm going to make it a little bit more in detail this time. Okay. We start off with a connective back in verse 9c, knowing the death no longer has mastery over him.

And these pictures I put up, maybe you're kind of wondering, well, how did I, you know, I just was up late one night and got bored, and so I'll draw some bubbles and write scripture verses inside of them. Well, where they come from, the genesis of that is actually If you're able to look at the, and this is our brother Hal Malloy's great dream. Hal came to me, I work with him at my work.

He came to me one day and said, Roger, you know, I can diagram God's word in the original language. He was just so, he was so pumped, as we'd say, that he was so excited that he could do that. I can diagram that. And you saw that. People that have been here, they saw how I was excited about that. So he'd get his diagrams up. He'd put them up. He'd say, is that too complicated for you guys? And he'd look at everybody and they'd say, oh, I don't know how this is going to.

So this is one step up from that. I tried to take the idea of that. And this first one is not really diagrammed, but the next one will be. So some of the genesis for these bubble charts is that is one step up from the diagram to make it a little more understandable. So that's my little explanation about that. So here we go.

So we're going to know this knowing that death no longer has mastery over him. So here's a connective. For death that he died, he died to, and it's in the different articles there, the sin, the sin nature, once for all. But in contrast, the life he lives He lives to God. And so we see that we have death and life and that's presented in so many ways in Scripture. Death begets life in so many different ways and this is talking about a death that we need to understand and believe that's happened to us in terms of our sin nature. It happened and Christ accomplished that for us and that's what this verse is talking about. So a couple things you can say Christ died to the sin nature for all believers. We see that in the verse. Christ lives his life to God. Actually, I have the Father in there, but in a sense, Christ lives to all of God. All of God is one essence. Three persons, one essence. But he lives his life to God. And he said, well, it's like himself, right? He lives his life to the totality of God.

If you remember, he would say in several places, he'd say, I don't speak on my own initiative. He says, he was so strong, I can't say anything that I don't see that the Father is saying the same thing. I don't say one word, not one thing, I say is not in total harmony with what God is doing. So he's saying God is one.

His essence is one. And I'm speaking for that oneness. That's how I'm kind of taking that. Okay, so let's kind of go a little bit deeper here. So there are four facts that were presented in this verse. And the four kind of connects it up. As I mentioned from verse 9, the last part of 9, it connects it up.

Death no longer has mastery over him. So it's four in the sense of so forth in the sense of so he died so if we look at the if we look at the the verb tense here we'll see that it's it's a fact Christ died and its aorist tense it speaks of an event you know that was an event Christ died he died on the cross an event it's a fact it's reality and Christ did it remember he said Don't you know no one takes my life. I give my life up. He gave no one took his life He gave his spirit up so Christ Was actively involved in his own death Okay, so that's fact one and number two He died to the sin nature once for all So and it's the same verb tense the event tense is reality and he did it and Christ's death had the following effects on the sin nature.

This is a little bit ahead of ourselves here, but we get to chapter 8, we're going to see He condemned the sin nature in the flesh. And then if we look back to 6.6, we'll see that He cut us loose from the sin nature. You could say He took it offline. He broke our union and servitude to it. So you're going to see we're going to talk a lot about This disconnection from our sin nature expressed in many different word pictures today. He did it once for all believers. So that talks about the death part. So now we come to the life part.

The life that he lives. So Christ is living. In his present tense, he's continually living. And he's eternal. He will continue to live forever. And it's a fact and reality. And we talked about this in Sunday School this morning a little bit. He is life. He defines life. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. He is true life. He is reality. There's no other life outside of Jesus Christ.

People think they have life. Well, I have a good life. And maybe you do. I'm thankful you do have a good life. But Jesus Christ claims that He is life and that coming to know Him, you will have life as well. which is just a marvelous, marvelous, marvelous thing. Okay, number four. He not only is life, he lives his life. So how does he live his life? I just mentioned this before. He lives his life, and it's the same tense again. It's present, indicative, active, continually living his life.

He's totally occupied. This is this idea of essence again. He's totally occupied with God, with his essence. He's totally occupied with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are totally occupied with one another. And that's his life. And he's totally occupied with glorifying God.

And then for the previous verses we saw, in our relationship to that, it says you are baptized or you're placed into, immersed into this living union with Christ. So that that which is true of Christ of him is also true of you and we call that our position That's who we are.

That's who we are in Christ, right and then so now we're on the precipice here with verse 11 of getting down to the nitty-gritty as they say or the Well, the shoe leather meets the road. We're going to see well, what does that? Knowing those wonderful facts about ourself. What does that tell us about how we conduct our lives or how we conduct our Christian walk. And we're going to see that the first part of that starts in verse 11. The first instruction or command that we have is in verse 11. So we're prepping ourselves, if you will, for that wonderful verse. Okay, so I wanted to just kind of backtrack just for a second to make sure that we didn't, I'm sure you're probably not confused, but just in case, and that's about the double cure too, there's two aspects.

So we receive Christ and we walk with Christ, right? And there's one verse I've always just loved. It's just a very short little verse, and here it is, that kind of connects those two. Therefore, as you receive Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him. Pretty short, right? So I always like to say, and I say it to myself, okay, how did you receive Christ Jesus the Lord?

Okay, pretty, pretty, pretty, Straightforward question well By faith right by faith in who Christ is his person and his work on Calvary his work on the cross Now, how do you walk? How do I walk the Christian life? This is a special walk. Do I do special walk? Is that how I do it? For you on zoom. I guess I zoom to see it too. I guess I forgot about that. Okay, so you can see that silly walk I just did but how do you know walk is a it's a synonym or a The concept of your conduct.

How do you conduct your life in Christ? Well, we're learning that in Romans 6, and we're going to learn it in verse 11. And it's basically this. By faith, counting upon, or the King James says, reckoning upon, yourselves to be dead to the sin nature, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. That's how you walk. And you say, that almost sounds too simple.

But the thing is, we're to do that, that's not a one-time event. We're to do that all the time, 24-7. I was kind of thinking, you know, we're told to pray without ceasing. Well, this is another one along that line. This is something the Lord has told us, and He says, you know, it's more than just in your best interest. This is what it's all about.

As you conduct your Christian life, you're constantly Remembering that you died to your sin nature and so you say why do I have to do that? Well, have you ever? We all have we have encounters with our sin nature all the time Now some people deny they have a sin nature. They say well, I'm You know some and some denominations basically save that they say well, I you know, it's gone poof. It's gone But if you're honest with yourself, you have a sin nature and you're dealing with it all the time and it's this battle right Galatians talks about that the battle between the you know, the spirit and the flesh. So this is what, this is God's instruction to us. By faith counting upon yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Okay, so now let's get into the nitty-gritty of the verse here. So now I'm going to go back to my overview chart, the bubble chart, and this is based on Hal's, Hal would be proud of me. Lindy sometimes, she's not here today, she says, Roger, Hal would be proud of you. Wow, he'd be proud of me? That's kind of special.

But he just, you know, once he connected up, understanding how to diagram God's word, it opened up a whole new Vista if you will on looking how to look at God's Word how to examine God's Word how to focus on God's Word So here's kind of a one step up from that even so And that's the idea in the same manner back and even so what we saw in verse 10 So here's the first statement You is in the Greek but not brought forth in the English.

You consider, I put reckon in there just so you would consider and reckon are the same word. Consider or reckon yourselves. And we have those two modifiers to that. Two additional statements about that. So that's the main statement. You consider or reckon yourselves in two ways.

First of all, on the one hand, and this kind of came out of, and Roy mentioned it this morning a little bit in Sunday School, Kenneth Wiest, his marvelous translation he he puts the idea on the one hand and on the other hand in between these two statements I think it really helps and I think I'm not exactly sure how he did that because the original Greek doesn't at least in my when I see the Greek text it doesn't show that but I use his translation in in this diagram here so you say you consider yourselves or reckon yourselves on the one hand to be dead to the sin or the sin nature then but on the other hand to be alive to God in Christ Jesus a pretty simple pretty simple straightforward sentence you got a main clause or main statement and two things that modify it on the one hand and on the other hand on one hand you're dead to the sin nature but on the other hand you're alive to God in Christ Jesus just a beautiful beautiful beautiful verse and and this is this is the first time in this section in Romans actually the first time in the book of Romans that that Paul has asked us to do something he wants us to do these two things to consider or reckon these two things so a couple things you can say looking back to verse 10 Christ died to the sin nature for all believers we saw it back in verse 10 Believers are to reckon to be dead to the sin nature Christ accomplish it you believe it, okay?

Christ lives his life to God Christ did it Believers are to reckon to be alive to God in Christ Jesus So in that wonderful our Savior accomplished it and we're asked to believe it. That's that's a simple pattern That's that's a pattern you can say for all of Scripture. I God accomplishes it and He asks us to believe it. No more, no less.

Okay, so now we're going to go in word by word and see if there are other things we can learn from this as well. But this is kind of the big overview picture. Okay, so now here we go. Even so, so this is the idea of referring to what preceded. You consider is to consider or reckon or calculate And King James renders it Reckon.

And it's funny, I listen to people talk about this verse so much, I sometimes will say the verse and put Reckon in there when the numerical standard doesn't have it in there. I'll say, even so, Reckon, wait a minute, it doesn't say that. It says consider. So you kind of grow up with certain translations, and Reckon just kind of sticks in my head.

So I'm going to use that quite a bit. And most of the people I reference are going to use it as well. OK. So once again, verb tense is important. It's present. Continuous action. Keep on doing it 24-7. So you can write this down in the front of your Bible. Keep on doing this. Keep on reckoning. Imperative. This is God's will. He's not unsure of this. This is His will. And He wants you to perform it.

So I got this is dr. Weiss here you be constantly counting upon the fact. That's how he brings that across You'd be constantly counting upon the fact and the facts are what follow To reckon something to a person means to count something as true of someone of someone so we're counting What God did for us as true of ourselves? He said he separated us if he separate if God separates you you're separated right you say I believe that and and you and You base your life and your actions upon that, and that's kind of critical to see. And here's a few little phrases or things you kind of pick up from Merriman and from Malloy, both. A couple of things you could say, you could put it up, put it down as true, rather than saying reckon, you could say put it down as true, put it down as so, put it down as fact.

Now, the reason I'm kind of repeating this multiple times, and we're going to repeat this probably another ten times at least before I finish, by various people, is to kind of get it in your head. This disconnection from the sin nature is so important to understand. It's pretty simple to understand, but maybe hard to live out, if you'd say it. So different words hopefully help us to understand that.

So actually and people pointed out and I think I haven't I didn't do the full deep dive on this but It could be it's an accounting term. I believe or you know, I may be in the Greek Manuscripts people who would reconcile things so you can think of yourself as being a good Reconciler you like your reconcile your checkbook if you like to do that. I never was able to do a very good job in that I don't know why I was thankful when computers came along I'm old enough to have gone, you know went through that time period when you did it by hand and then you my mom this is kind of off the wall thing my mom back when I was at home she would she would reconcile her checkbook and then she'd call the bank and tell them they made a mistake or she'd write them most times she was right but she was you know she was just kind of a little she was she was certain she was right that you made a mistake in my checking account you gotta so she reconciled her checkbook So I think the Lord would have us be good accountants about reckoning.

Okay, let's go on. Consider yourselves. So we're considering ourselves, every believer, and that's the object of the verb, and so it receives the action, it receives the reckoning, the results of that reckoning. So it's literally you reckon yourselves.

You count as true yourselves. since Christ has accomplished this on your behalf you are to believe these truths about yourself okay alright so let's go on to the other part okay so the first truth he asked us is to be dead to the sin nature on the one hand so this is we're counting upon or reckoning upon this fact that you're dead to the sin nature and the verb here is amy the state in which something continuously exists we're dead or separated from the sin nature so we reckon that we are permanently separated from that nature and this is important we're not reckoning that the sin nature is dead right? you saw last week I showed you one of Hal's pictures here and you know the Bible teaches that we have Once you become a believer, you have two natures.

You have Christ's life, His very nature, and you still have your old nature from Adam, your sin nature. And there's a battle going on between those two. There's actually a battle going on, more precisely, between the Spirit of God and your sin nature.

Okay. You're to reckon your relationship to the sin nature is dead, not the sin nature being dead. So you're reckoning that it's separated. And so you say, you reckon by believing. It's faith. Reckoning is faith. You believe it's dead by the facts. You're not wishing it to be dead. Merriman has this, you're not wishing it to be dead, but believing that it's so, because God has said it. I think that's important too. Some people, well, I wish I could be free of the things I do. I do things I'm not proud of. Christians say sometimes, I do things I'm not proud of.

And I wish I wish that could be different well God has given you the information to count upon to make it to make that different Okay now the second part the contrasting truth But to be alive to God in Christ Jesus on the other hand Again, we have and it's implied here.

It's implied. It's not in the text, but it's implied to be alive to God Alive, to be alive, living. Living ones, we have it here, living ones with respect to God. Our life, our life is only in Christ Jesus. And the verse you go to for that is this wonderful verse in Galatians, the last, the be part of that. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. Christ is living out His life through us.

And our part of that equation is, that's an operation of faith. We're to have faith in what He's doing, trusting what He's doing, believing what He said about us. That's how we're to conduct our life. So we reckon that we are permanently alive to God in Christ Jesus.

So there you have it. That's basically, I've gone through verse 11. It's almost, well it's too short. It actually is a pretty short verse. So now I want to share, I want to take a couple of routes here. I want to look at, actually, Kenneth Weiss, besides his New Testament translation, has some commentaries, and one of his better commentaries is on, it's actually part of a four-volume set, is on Romans, and he has a few things to say. He's going to repeat some things, and some things I don't exactly agree with, but I'm going to present them, and think about them. Then I'm actually going to share Dr. Chaffer, Louis Ferry Chaffer, And he has some comments.

And then the third thing I'm going to do is to talk about kind of an example. How do we put this reckoning in shoe leather? Is there anywhere in scripture that shows us how do we put reckoning in shoe leather? That'll be the third thing. So let's talk about Dr. Wiest here first. Okay. So this is Wiest on the dual aspect of our reckoning.

First, regarding the sin nature. Here Paul is exhorting the saints, saints plural, to live a life in accordance with God's Word. They should take into account the fact that they are dead to the sin nature, to sin the nature. They have been, he uses the word disengaged. Here's another way to think of it, disengaged from the evil nature.

It has no power over them anymore. They are, this is good, a term I hadn't heard in years, they are scot-free from it. He wrote in the 40s. Maybe 30s, 40s. They're scot-free. I haven't heard that term. Actually, the one I looked up on their phone, I've forgotten exactly. It doesn't come from Scotland. I thought it might come from Scotland. It has a different origin. But they're scot-free from it.

You can say point-blank no to it. The thing I think, my slight disagreement with Dr. Weiss here is the fact that It's still there, and you still can give it power. You still can hang out with your sin nature. He's not real crisp on that, and that's my only comment on that.

Okay, so now here's on the second part. Second, with regards to being alive to God, take into account or reckon the fact that they are alive to God. The divine nature, Christ's life has been imparted with the result that the nature, Christ's life, gives them both the desire and the power to regulate their lives in accordance with the Word of God. So all that's good stuff. Okay, so that's Kenneth Weiss' comments and he has many more. This is the ones I thought applied to what we're talking about today. Okay, so listen, I kind of want my final thought thing too. Anyway, this is from Chafer. Chafer is good. He's really very crisp here, very accurate, I thought.

The sin nature, though still alive, so still alive and active, I like that, still alive and active, has been judged by Christ's death unto it. And because of that judgment, which has no experimental place in the history of the Christian. So what I think he's saying there is that you can't look to a to at that time in my life I trusted Christ some people if their children maybe didn't exactly know when it was but many people I can I can look to to a time in my life when I trusted Christ so that's why I say there's no there's no experimental you learn about who you are in Christ you learn about the power of the sin nature you learn about and you learn about that as you study scripture the Holy Spirit is of the otherwise active sin nature. The believer's part is to reckon. To reckon is to count on what is true of one's complete identification with Christ. His crucifixion, His death, His burial, and His resurrection.

I thought that was all very, very crisp to the point we see that we have two natures. There's a struggle there and the part where to reckon on that. Okay, so now, So now we come to, so I chose this verse. Actually, I didn't choose this verse. This verse, our brother Hal, I've been talking a lot about Hal today, but he had many charts I really liked and many overheads I really liked. This is one of my favorites. Actually, we had this, actually, Andrew taught this back last year. I don't know, he taught this recently.

How does reckoning fit in to the temptations we have in life? Because James is going to present a scenario here of a temptation and what can happen when we're tempted and drawn away from Christ. So here we go. So I'll just read it first. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. And the word lust can be translated desire. So you're being You're being tempted and you're being carried away enticed by your own your own desires your own sin nature Then verse 15 says then when lust has conceived or the desire has been conceived It gives birth to sin when sin is accomplished it brings forth death so a pretty pretty graphic picture so you guys most people know I've seen this chart before and So here we go.

Hal looks at it as a stair step down. So here's the stair step. The first, the top of the stair step, here you are, you're out on the road, beautiful day, sun shining, you're driving along, you're abiding in Christ, and something happens. Okay? Something happens. And this verse kind of describes it. Okay?

First of all, he's defining the source. The source of this is your lust or your sin nature. It's out from your sin nature. So the first two things you see is that you're drawn away or carried away, the verse says, and you're enticed. And the word entice is the idea, it's lure, it's like bait. Bait is hanging out there, like for the fish. You hang the bait out there. David knows about this. I've been down with the fishing there. Put some bait out there and it looks attractive.

Well, this is really interesting. At this point, it's only temptation. Verse 14 is only about temptation. You're being tempted. So this is the place, and our brother Hal, he kind of put it in here. He says, well, this is the place, this is where I should be reckoning. This is the grounds of reckoning. Here I am, I'm being drawn away or enticed or lured, and what am I to do about that?

I'm to say, hey, I'm dead to that. I don't need to go there. In fact, actually Hal one time said, Roger, you know, sometimes I say to myself, I'm dead to that. I don't need to go there. I don't need to do that. I thought that's actually pretty cool advice. Now you could carry that to the extreme. You could be going around every day saying, I'm dead to that. Your wife's saying, what are you saying? I'm dead to that. I'm dead. You could make it into a law. No. Just like with prayer, right? You don't necessarily verbalize every prayer, but you talk to the Lord. So I see it in the same picture.

You're saying, you know, I don't have to go there. Yeah, that guy cut me off, and he did bad things, and he was terrible, or someone said something to me, or in my case, I go to the restaurant, and the server doesn't see this in the right place, and I give it a look, or I say, well, last week we could sit over there, and you put me over here, and I don't like over here. And the employee looks at me and says, Roger? I go, okay, okay.

So we all have So this is the area. I'll call it the region of reckoning. Verse 14 talks about this region. I'm being drawn away or enticed. But what happens when we go beyond that? And it's not a pretty picture. Sin is not a pretty picture. Verse 15 talks about that. So what happens? We take the bait. Grab the bait like the fish. Gotcha. Actually, it's the the idea.

It's actually the idea of conception and actually the word is actually that in the in the original It's a pregnancy and as we know once conception occurs I'm sorry, you know You know Lord willing without without man interfering. There's going to be a birth and that's what the and that's what the verse says The birth is sin. So this taking of the bait the lust is conceived gives forth a birth and the birth is sin and And there's a death that occurs. And this is not physical death, obviously, otherwise we all wouldn't be here. Myself included. This is separation. This is out of fellowship.

So here's the place where sin has occurred. And here's the place where confession is appropriate. And then the last point here is that we've gone from abiding in Christ up here to abiding in the flesh. So that's that picture that our brother Hal tries to show. He has a switch, which some don't like, but it's the idea you've gone from abiding with Christ to abiding in the flesh. But the one cool, one of the many cool things about this verse, our dear brother Bud, Bud Tracy, we had many interesting discussions with him. He talked about confession, and it's appropriate.

Confession is appropriate, but reckoning Would you rather reckon yourself dead and avoid the sin? Or would you rather just go the whole thing and have to confess it to the Lord? Well, to my mind, I'd rather just reckon it. I'd rather just be up there and reckon it and say, OK, Lord, I don't have to go there. Yeah, they were bad to me or whatever it was, but I'm OK with that because I love, you know, rather than maybe speaking back to them or whatever it might be and then having to confess that. But we had some really dear discussions with Bud, and I'm not sure we ever really convinced him that reckoning was a good path, but he listened to us, at least.

That was cool. So anyway, I think that's about it. A lot of cool things to draw from this. Hopefully that was helpful. So this is where, in my mind, the place of reckoning is before you take the bait, before you succumb to that sin, or whatever it might be. And it's pretty graphically illustrated in this picture.

So next week actually Mike's gonna carry on next week with talking more about reckoning So I think that's it for today. Okay, dear Heavenly Father. We just thank you Lord. Thank you so much for your marvelous word Thank you for the clarity of it. Thank you for how you you tell us That were to count upon what you've accomplished for us on Calvary. We thank you so much in Christ's name. Amen. I