What Am I Expected to Do With his Information?
Romans 6:11-13 · Mike Doyle · Oct 1, 2023
Romans (2022-25), No. 043
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261932512400

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

Good morning. Jim's right. We're in a place in God's Word where if it's not understood, we're not going to grow. It's that simple. Even Newell, and I didn't quote it or write it down, said someplace in his commentary that God tells us in the first 10 verses of Romans 6 some exciting facts about who we are, who the Lord Jesus is, and what happened to us. But he never says do anything about it until he gets to verse 11. And so 11 is a key verse because it changes from what God is doing to how we should respond. So what I did was, I wrote out, and I'm going to read, because somehow these verses change people's lives, especially when it comes to the struggle we all have with sin and the power of sin and the sin nature. So he says, What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Good question. Answer may it never be. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? First time he says that in Romans.

We died to sin. Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Therefore, We have been buried with him through baptism into death, so that, as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we also might walk in newness of life. For if we became united with him in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him. in order that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we should no longer be slaves to sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now, if you have died with Christ, we believe that you also will live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, He never is to die again. Death no longer has mastery over Him. For in the death that he died, he died to sin once and for all, but in life that he lives, he lives to God."

So I read that two, three, four, five, twenty times, and finally this question comes to mind, what am I expected to do with this information? God just didn't tell me that and not have me respond. He's looking for a response. And the response really is the verses that we're going to talk about today. The first response, and Roger covered it the last couple of weeks. Even so, reckon yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. That's the first thing we're to do. We're to reckon.

So reckon is a interesting word, but it's designed and built around how God puts spiritual principles together. And if you're a student of God's Word, you'll see these principles everywhere. The great source of spiritual information, Webster's Dictionary. Oh, Courtney quotes from it.

I think I can. No. A principle is the law of nature or a method in which the thing operates. It does it the same way every time. So there are all kinds of principles in every kind of field of study. There are biblical principles. God operates based on principles.

And there's three principles that we need to sort of gather up and understand as we go forward in Romans 6. One is the principle of knowledge. I have to spend time to find out what's going on. Verses 1 through 10, the principle of knowledge. And then the next principle is the principle of faith or reckoning. I reckon upon the truths that I've learned, that I've been taught.

And then the last principle, which is one that's very seldom talked about in Christian circles, the principle of time. I have to become aware of the fact that this adventure, this track, this journey that I'm on, this process of spiritual growth that will totally free me from the dominion of sin is going to take a lifetime. If any of you are totally free from sin, call Roger and I will happily give you the keys to the church. It's just one of those things that isn't going to be totally complete until we regard as being or to count true.

It calls upon us to count upon the truths of our identification with Christ. We were in Him when He died, when He was buried, and when He was resurrected. It means I'm firmly assured of and I'm settled and count upon the truth that is made known to us. That's what we do.

I'm sure. I'm absolutely sure. So, really faith becomes a rest thing. If I'm absolutely confident that I live at a certain address, then I don't have any trouble going home. If I'm absolutely sure that the people I love love me back, then I'm not anxious about that. I just accept it. And I enjoy it. It's the same way with the Lord.

He has us sitting at rest about who we are in Christ. And I think that we have an enemy out there who is always accusing us and causing us trouble. And until we understand about identification and rest, we are firmly assured and settled on the facts that our Father has placed us in, we won't have peace. You have to be persuaded. Miles Stanford in None But the Hungry Heart from one of the days this week, He said, there will be no standing against the enemy's accusations until we are firmly assured of and settled in the fact that our father is at peace with us because of our living union with his beloved son. And this alone will give us peace with our father.

I went through some verses, a footnote that Newell did in his his commentary on Romans, and he talks about reckoning is a favorite word of Paul's. And reckoning is used 19 times and 16 times of it, 16 times it's used in the book of Romans. The Greek word logizimae might be called a court word. In other words, a judge makes a ruling, or it might be called accounting word. It comes from the accounting department. We've added up all the numbers and here's the sum.

Paul uses it as a courtroom word as to God's action in accounting the believer righteous. God accounts us righteous. In this sense, it's used 11 times in Romans 4 alone that God reckons and it's done. And in 2, 4, 6, 8, 11 verses use this word reckon in just chapter 4. The word is used to express man's belief and consequential attitude as a result of illustrated in Romans 14. To him that reckons anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Why? Because he reckoned it to be so. Here we repeat the expression of belief and of an attitude and view of the belief is included in this word.

There are lots of things that we reckon upon in our life that are maybe true and maybe not true. You know, every time you get on an airplane, you reckon the thing's going to take off and land. Every time you get in your car, you reckon that you're going to arrive at your destination without an accident. So we have attitudes about the things that we reckon upon. In 611, Paul says, reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin. The belief of the fact and the attitude and view of the belief are both involved in the word reckon.

So I'm identified with Christ. I'm identified with those facts in the Word which reveal we're in union with Him, and only because He said so. Christ, in His death to sin, and our subsequent recreation and resurrection. So if we were standing there at the grave of Christ and looking down into the tomb, what did we see? We're told that we're not told to die to sin.

Why? Because Christ is already dead. You see that? There's lots of believers that I have conversation with that are all the time trying to be dead to sin. Well, the Lord Jesus wasn't in the tomb trying to be dead. He was dead. If He's dead, then I'm dead. He's dead to sin, then I'm dead to sin. Because we are in Christ, we died to sin. The key is because I'm in Him. I don't have to make it so. It is so in Christ. We are dead to it in his death, and we reckon it to be so. We live based on what we believe. So the question, this is a question for all of you.

Have you ever looked at God and asked him, did I really die on the cross of your son? You ever done that? Father, did I really die? Because when I look in the mirror, I see the old self-life just rocking and rolling. And you said I died. I think it's beneficial to every one of us to go to God and ask Him this question. Did I really die on the cross of your Son? Did I really do that? I'm standing here thinking I'm alive, asking a question about already being dead.

And the reason it's such a problem with us is because the sin nature didn't die. I died to it. In other words, I used to use this example, and I always thought it was a good one. My mom loved to play bridge. And we played bridge with her a lot. So when the Lord took her home, I couldn't go down to the funeral home, shuffling the cards and say, Mom, it's your deal. Why not? She's dead. She left the planet. She's not here. She's not going to deal. Her body's there, but she's not there. So when Christ died on the cross, He left sin. I and you left sin. And you know what? We're such feeling emotional people, especially in our age. If you watch TV at all, news or sports, what's the first question a commentator asks somebody about an incident or a tragedy or a victory? How do you feel about it?

Well, you know, I'm waiting for the guy or the woman that says, well, I'm not a person of feeling. I'm a person that thinks logically, and I have no feelings about it at all. It happened. I won, you know. But we are stuck with feelings. Is it okay not to live as though I'm dead to sins because I feel like it? No, it's not. Because feelings doesn't have anything to do with faith.

So, to reckon myself dead unto sin and alive unto God, I'm fully assured and settled on those facts. I have to be sure. I'm not dead to sin through prayers and struggling. I don't struggle and I don't pray and pray and pray that I'm dead to sin. I am dead. Not dead to sin because of my feelings or my consciousness.

I mean, I sin so often that I'm really conscious of it. I told this story in Sunday school. We were shopping yesterday and we were scheduled to be at a birthday party and I came out of the store. We came out of the store and about two feet from the car it hit me that I had locked the keys in the car.

There was no demonstration that I was dead to sin over the next five minutes. None whatsoever. But I am. But I am. So, AAA saved me. No. But in the death unto sin which Christ went through on the cross, and which we shared in that life, which he now lives, we live with him, in him.

So, important for us to just settle down on the facts. So if I spend my life concentrating upon experience rather than truth, what am I courting? What's going to be the result? I'm going to be defeated. If I spend my life based on how I feel in the Christian life, I'm going to be defeated.

At this point, many believers begin to waver in their hope and expectation of freedom from the old life and abundant growth in the new, because they don't feel it. They don't have any euphoria about it like they used to have when they first found out about it. Their confidence in the truths of identification, they begin to wane. or I like the word drift. How many defeated Christians have exclaimed, I tried Romans 6, but reckoning doesn't work for me. I tried it and it doesn't work for me.

All outside the realm of spirit taught and spirit ministered identification truths results in a compound failure and bondage. Paul said to the Galatians, having begun in the Spirit, are you made perfect or mature in the flesh? You're trying to accomplish something that God has already accomplished. Why are you doing that? So consequently, the Holy Spirit has allowed us to fail. It's okay to fail in a Christian life. After an eager beginning, it applies the principle of need in every phase of our advance.

You realize, of course, that trials are really blessings. It took me a while to understand, and Roger talks about it a lot, why Hal Malloy got so excited when you called him up and said, I have a trial, and he would go, hallelujah. because he knew what the trial would do. The trial would take me out of this doubt and out of this feeling and emotion based environment, Christian environment I lived in, and maybe settle me down a little bit. It would produce a patience in me or a tried character in me that I didn't have before. And the Spirit of God is about that business.

The calculated failure is used to cause us to move beyond the early infant enthusiasm of either salvation or coming into understanding the growth truths to a place where we have to dig in and settle down upon the explicit truth of the Word. You know, we think all the time, well, you should read your Bible and you should study. That's not my job. The Spirit of God is going to make us hungry. so that we want to find out. We can't get out of it. We're always thinking, oh, I've got to go find out about this issue and that issue. Or he has me in a position where I have to be ready.

Before we can grow in any aspect of truth, we must be established in the knowledge of it. What do you think we do Sunday school for? And Bible studies during the week. That's why we're done. so that we can have the knowledge of what's true from God based on His principles.

In every area of our spiritual development, it's one thing to begin on a new plateau, but it's quite another through faith and patience to inherit the promises. Miles Stanford said that. I want to live in those truths. I want to inherit those promises. I don't just want them to be conversation. and it creates a need and almost a desperation.

We grasp a truth, but our initial knowledge is insufficient to enable us to persevere in it. To cause the truth to take hold of us and become a living part of our life, the Holy Spirit removes the token experience from us, but the knowledge of the truth is retained. Interesting that he would do something like that, because we want that feeling to last forever. But he wants us to live by faith, not feelings. So this means that we are to be established in the truth so that we can grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. The first taste of the identification awakens a heart hunger. Hunger for us is a heart hunger for its practical fulfillment.

I follow after. If that I may apprehend that for which also I was apprehended of Jesus Christ. I begin to wonder about what do those verses mean to me personally and intimately? I follow. I'm growing in grace. But I have to recognize that there's time involved here.

I'm not going to read it on Tuesday and be spiritually mature on Friday. That's not going to happen. Because when you think about it, I and you, and I think this verse is coming up, we are delivered to the truth. That's different than, I'm going to apprehend the truth and I'm going to make it happen. No, I got delivered to it. It's who I am.

The grace of God, the God of all grace who has called us unto His eternal glory by Jesus Christ, after you have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish and strengthen and settle you. If I know that is the way He works, then I'm not too upset about trials. I know He brought them. I know that there isn't a single thing that goes on in my life that is not fostered by Him. Not a single thing.

But I am quite surprised. It must be the Lord for Phil. I am quite surprised when I begin to realize how much suffering there is in reckoning. When I start to reckon that I have been crucified with Christ, that entails suffering because I can't just say it. It's got to be part of who I am. So what happens here?

Enter the Comforter. The Holy Spirit comes in, even the Holy Spirit that Christ promised, and He shall teach you all things, the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit. Don't, and it's interesting, the Lord Jesus named the Holy Spirit the Comforter. Why? Because we need a Comforter. This process of being delivered unto death is not comfortable. So we need a comforter. It's perfect for the Holy Spirit to be called the comforter.

There's a dual truth upon which the Spirit has us reckon, in which He makes experience in our lives. We count upon having died to sin, which means I'm always delivered unto death, is the outworking of the position of death. I did die, and it's going to be worked out in my life. My relationship to the sin nature is going to be worked out. That's going to be painful. On the other side, I can count on being alive unto God in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit Himself is the one who causes Jesus to be manifest in my mortal person.

So, I think that the Holy Spirit is a key, key part in all of our growth. Our needs cause us to long for and expect immediate emancipation. newness of life as a result of our reckoning. To a degree, the Spirit responds to this expectation during the early part of understanding it with identification. But He brings us into a process of growth.

We're given a glimpse of the glory and reality of the truth reckoned upon. But we're taken by God's proper. processings taken into the processing so that the truth may be as real in us as it is to us. I am the truth I'm talked about. If I'm going to tell you about identification, it's got to be what I am. So the path of the cross is the path of growth.

Our failures we learn that what self is, and thereby we hate the natural Adamic man. How many times have you seen or been told, you have to hate your old man, and here's how you do it. The Spirit of God, that's one of His jobs. He shows you and shows me what that old Adam is, and how he's an enslaver, and he's sin, and he's just despicable. And we begin to see, oh, in me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing. I hate that.

Then it is that we're taught to glory in the cross. We're glad that we were crucified with Christ, which freed us from the old life, and the old life's influence as the grip and lure of the world. God forbid that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by whom the world is crucified to me and I and to the world. The cross is the great separator. So reckoning is the only means of escaping the entanglements of sin of my sin and my sin nature and the world. It takes this separation of the cross and our abiding in Christ. That's got to happen.

In all the vital work of the Holy Spirit in the body of Christ, His intention and purpose is to glorify the Son in the individual believer. What God is about is to have us so freed from sin and so walking in the resurrected life of Christ that Christ is glorified. He is, not you, Him. He shall glorify me, for He shall take of mine and shall declare it unto you. Think about this. The glorified Lord Jesus Christ and who He is and what He's done Because we are in Him and He is our life, He will be glorified through just the way we function on a daily basis. How is He glorified in the redeemed sinners?

Our new birth means that each one of us is a new creation, a new creation in Christ, at which time the Comforter enters our spirit to abide forever, John 14. Spirit to spirit joined. We are partakers of the divine nature. At birth, we are babes in Christ.

But as we grow in him, we develop the likeness of life, thus glorifying his son. The birthday party we were at yesterday was a one year old. And both Donna and I remarked on how much of the characteristics that one-year-old emits his parents, especially his dad. You watch him and you say, boy, I see his dad in him.

The Lord Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, is creating an environment where people can say, I see the Lord Jesus in you. I see Him. The Holy Spirit receives the life of Christ and He brings Him into our regenerated spirit. Our new birth means that each one of us, for that life is developed within, He reveals to us the Lord Jesus in the Word. So I spend time in God's Word because that's where I learn and where I've gotten hungry to go in and find out. And accordingly, feeding on Him in the Scriptures under the illumination of the Holy Spirit of truth, the new life in Christ grows and is made visible in our mortal bodies.

To me that is such a miracle. I live in a dead body and God is going to manifest the Lord Jesus Christ through that body. Boy. We grow in him and we allow the Holy Spirit to show him to us. Which leads to my favorite verse in the Bible is that we all with open face beholding as in a mirror or a glass the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord. your and my beholding of God's glory in his word, in his word. And we see it. It has a transforming effect so that the manifestation of who Christ is begins to show up in my life, in your life.

While finding out about ourselves and the old man, which is the painful part, we are to be especially aware that we are in the Lord Jesus. So both of these things are going on at the same time. While the Spirit must cause us suffering in the crucifixion of the self-life, He does comfort us in our growth in a new life. Because there are times when we struggle because we are not sure that we're making any progress. But gradually as we grow, there is less and less works of the flesh, evident and more and more in the fruit of the Spirit manifested in our daily walk. The comfort there is the faithful work of the comforter.

In the natural realm of things, use this as an example, I'm sure you've heard this before, that a worm is changed into a butterfly. a different creature, but the same order of life. Now, what's different between that and who you and I are? In the spiritual realm, a believer is reborn a totally, totally new creation in Christ Jesus. We're not the same as they would say The same order of life, it's a whole new order of life, is the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus, who is God. Therefore, we should yield ourselves unto God as those that are alive unto the dead. So, finally get to verse 12. Therefore, don't let sin reign in your mortal bodies, let you obey it in its lusts.

You know, one of the greatest words in the Bible is therefore. And you know, one of the questions that you ask people that gives them a smile is, what's the therefore therefore? It's based on everything that went before. Here's the results. And here's the way things go. Therefore, you don't let sin reign any longer. Why? Because of everything we've just learned. I don't have to. So the believers directed to reject this reigning of sin, which would involve our obeying the desires of the body.

Yesterday at Dakar, I lost sight of that. Maybe it's the best way to say it. Now, to what does the word it refer to? Notice the word it, its desires or its lusts. The word it is a really interesting word because some say, well, it refers to the sin nature. Or does it refer to your body? Which one is it?

Well, in my studies, what I found out was that It doesn't necessarily refer to the sin nature because the sin nature is an intangible, invisible entity. It cannot be watched. I can't sit back and watch my sin nature. It's an unseen enemy whose tactics cannot be observed and therefore can't be guarded against.

But I can keep watch over the members of my body. what my eye is looking at, what my ears are listening to, what my mind thinks about a certain thing, and where my feet carry me. I can't keep thoughts from coming into my mind, but I can do something with them when they get there.

So therefore, Remember, the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, shall teach me all things. Keep that important as you look back. Teaching. The dual truth upon which the Spirit has us reckon is that which He makes experiential in our lives. Remember that the Holy Spirit's the one that makes this experiential. It's not you making it experiential to yourself by some whipped up emotion. He makes it real.

We count upon being dead unto sin. We're always delivered unto death as the outworking of the position of death. He's doing that. We hate the old man. We count upon being alive unto God in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit causes the life also of Jesus to be made manifest in our mortal life. Some believers just try so hard to make that verse come true.

And yet, it's not his job. It's the Spirit's job. So, I can now say, don't let sin reign. Don't let it reign in your mortal body so that you bay its desires. We've learned that to reckon, we need the Holy Spirit as our comforter more than ever. We can't reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin without experiencing deep inner crucifixion. of the cross as it's applied to the self-life.

That's a hard thing. Reckoning is the only means of escaping this entanglement of my sin nature in this world. It takes the separation of the cross and the abiding in Christ. But when it comes to the application of these stupendous facts, it's real simple. Don't let sin reign. Another question is to ask God, can I do that? And that's the question that comes right after. Did I really die? Was I really buried? Was I really resurrected? Can I not let sin reign? Someone says to me, well, if I'm dead to it, how can it still reign? Don't go on presenting your members of your body to sin as instruments of righteousness.

You know, it's an eye-opener when you realize that every sin that I ever committed, I agreed about it. I agreed to do it. I wanted to do it. I gave my assent. But I was a slave. But now, I can take the members of my body and I can present them to God. But here's the caveat. As those alive from the dead. And your members as instruments of righteousness.

The verb here is against present imperative. It means stop yielding your members as instruments of sin. Stop doing that. Because you don't have to. but presenting your bodily members unto sin for sin's use, or present them to God as instruments of righteousness. Let me back up. I'm to stop presenting my body's members to sin for sin's use.

I recognize that they are instruments of unrighteousness, and as Jim said, they're really instruments of combat and war. The saint, counting upon the fact that he has been disengaged from the evil nature, does two things. He refuses to allow it to reign as king in his life. He doesn't have to anymore. And he stops putting his members at his disposal to be used as weapons of unrighteousness. He just stops.

Now, what's God's way? I present yourself unto God as those that are alive from the dead. You know, what if I presented myself that you heard me say this, or you read it someplace and said, well, all I really need to do is present myself to God. And I'm not a believer. Does that work? No, because what do you have to have? What's the credential you have to have to be presenting?

Alive from among the dead ones. If you don't have that, your presenting is just another act of the sin nature. You have to understand that presenting yourself to God is as someone who is alive from the dead. who has died with Christ, who was buried with Him, and now has risen with Him.

And that new life is so new that this is one of the criterias of it. So two things about the word present. I'll talk about what present means. First, it has a meaning here. It does not, in chapter 6, signify consecration. but it signifies taking an attitude in accordance with the facts. In other words, I present because I can.

Here's a good, some of you were in the military, it's a great military term. If I was stationed like in Camp Lejeune, and the order comes down at four o'clock, there'll be a formation of your company in front of the first sergeant's office, four o'clock. Where do you think I'm going to be at four o'clock? I'm going to be in front of there with the rest of the guys, presenting myself. He's got something he wants to tell us, or he's got some direction he wants to go, whatever.

But I willfully took myself there and presented myself. Okay, you said come, here I am. And second, the command to present ourselves to God is in the Aorist tense, which indicates a definite entering upon an attitude of presenting yourself as risen ones to God.

You know, when you say, back to the military term, when I was in the Marine Corps, I'd never had to decide if I was still a Marine or not. I had this goofy looking uniform on. I knew I was a Marine. I had a haircut that was about that long. I knew I was a Marine. I didn't have to say it every day. I don't have to say from an Aristotelian standpoint that I'm alive unto God, because I am. Every single minute of every single day, I'm alive.

So in closing, I would desire with these verses that you read them over and over and over again. And as we go on now in terms of God telling us, here's things that are consistent with the position that we've laid out to you in the first 10 verses of Romans 6. And based on that, layout of truth. Here's how you need to respond. And it is starting a new life over. It really is.

It isn't that it's way more than God saved me and I don't have any awareness that I still I'm just the same old person that God said, I'm going to save you. But now he tells me, in the process of saving you, I crucified you. I buried you and I resurrected you in my Son, and now you're a new creature. And these new creatures in Christ function different, and they're free.

They're free. Let's pray. Father, how we thank you for your grace. How we thank you for what you've told us. is the freedom of being in Christ and a freedom to walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the desires of the flesh. We thank you. We pray in your Son's precious name, Amen.