Christ Live in Us, Romans 6:1-3 Union With Christ. Intro and Explained.
Romans 6:1-3 · Mike Doyle · Oct 19, 2025
Christ's Life in Us, No. 07
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926194116332

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

Let's take a moment with the Lord. If there's anything between you and him, it's a good time to fix it, and then we'll start. It's been a really interesting week in studying these verses because, oh, how do I say this? I think for us as believers, These may be the most important verses that God would have us understand for the Christian life. So I want to do a little setup here.

When you read the book of Romans, but the book of Romans is, for those of you who have been to college, your freshman year you always take what are known as 100 courses. There are survey courses, you know, English 101, Chemistry 101, Math 101. It's all the basic stuff. Well, that's what Romans is. Romans is basic Christianity. And so Paul is very careful to lay out the Christian life from an earthly standpoint, you'll notice that you won't find verses in Romans that talk about heavenly things. It's all about humanity on the earth and those who were saved. So when you look at Romans and you divide it up a little bit, you find that in the first five chapters, the whole discussion is justification. Now, if you look at the three hymns we sang this morning, they're all about justification.

They're all about the fact that Christ died for my sins, he paid the penalty for me. When you get to chapter six, which is what we're starting today, through chapter eight, we're gonna talk about sanctification. Now, those are 25 cent words that we like to throw around and we really know what they mean. So let's divide them up.

Romans 5, justification. In other words, I have a righteousness, I'm justified before a holy God because of Christ's work on the cross and my believing and God declares me righteous. Romans 6 is going to start talking about, well, how do you take that justification and make it practical? How does it work out in your life? Justification is a one-time act. Happens one time when you believed. Romans 6, sanctification goes on our whole Christian life, constantly.

Justification was done for us. Sanctification is gonna be done in us. That's a really important issue. We were declared righteous. And now in just sanctification, we will be made righteous. He will make our existence, our walk, our living life on the planet righteous. We'll start to act like what we already are.

And justification freed us from all the guilt of our sins. and the penalty, everything that had to do with your being a sinner and the guilt that you've accrued because you probably committed more than two or three sins in your life. But when you get to chapter six, the freedom is from the power of the sin nature, and that's what we'll talk about today.

So what you see is Maybe put it this way. How does Romans 6, 7, and 8 relate to each other? How do you put these chapters together? Because they're different, but they all come together. Romans 6 is the mechanics. How did God do what he wanted to do from the standpoint of not only declare me righteous, but how's he going to make me righteous? And the thing that entered my mind is it's like building a motor, an engineer would design it. He has in his mind what it's going to look like, puts it down on a piece of paper and draws a schematic.

When you get to Romans 8, let's do Romans 7 first, or Romans 8. Romans 8 is after you've The design is in place. Romans 8 is everything running smoothly. It's the Christian life laid out. And Romans 7 is the monkey wrench. The monkey wrench, it's like sand in the crank case. It doesn't run so good. So I found some pictures that might help us.

How did God build the motor? How did he make me righteous? That's a 1950 Chevy's motor. I guess it's OK in 1950. It's a basic motor. But how is he going to get me from this to this? How is he going to take what he's designed? And you could say the old motor is Adam. It's life. And the new jet engine is the resurrected life of the Lord Jesus. How's he gonna get me there? The mechanics of the spiritual life is really what chapter six, one through 10 is. This is how he did it.

So, Romans seven though, you end up with an engine that looks like this. It's, Romans 7 is the monkey wrench. Anything that has to do with a Christian life that's self-dependent, which when dropped into the inner workings of the machinery, stops it from working. Some of you guys know a lot more about motors than I do. But it prevents the Holy Spirit from giving the believer victory over the sinful nature and producing his own fruit. So Romans 7, when we get to that, is a really interesting chapter because after God lays out for us, this is my design, this is what I've done, Romans 7 comes along and says, well, what about the law? And the law turns out to be, and he's already said it in five, the law turns out to be the mucking wrench. If I have to do anything out of my self-effort, in my Christian life to make myself more acceptable to God, it ruins the engine. It ruins God's design.

Because that engine is designed to run on one fuel. You know what it is? The Holy Spirit and grace. That's how it works. Anything other than that that. Messes it up. You know, those of you who have. The diesel engines and put gasoline in a diesel car. It's a problem and vice versa. So. When we get the first. 6, one. Paul starts out with a great question.

And I'm I'm I Okay, so we have, what shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might abound? So you have to sort of think about what do you say, what shall we say then about what? You ever ask yourselves that question? I read this first, what is he talking about? What shall I say about what?

What shall I say about the message of grace? And Jim read it. When I find out that the law came in, that the transgression might increase, and like Jim said, gee, I think it's gonna decrease, but it doesn't, it increases, and where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. And that as sin reigned, and last week we talked about what it means to reign, overall rule, In death, even so, grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So when he says, what are we going to say about that? How do you maneuver that in your mind? Because I'm pretty familiar with Romans 5, 20 and 21. I understand about the law. I understand about that sin reigns. Especially if you came to Christ later in life, you know about reigning sin. You don't know anything about grace. You have no concept of grace. And not only that, that this reigning is righteousness, God's righteousness with a life eternal in Christ Jesus.

How is that going to happen? So, logical question. Paul, what do you mean here? Are you telling me that God is willing to forgive a person's sins as often as he commits them? Answer, yeah, that's what I'm saying. Well then, if grace is to increase every time I sin, then I probably ought to sin more. That's how the natural man thinks. Wouldn't you come to that conclusion? I would. I would think, hey, that's a good deal.

We'll sin more. The problem we have is that Romans 6 says, are we to continue in sin so that grace might increase? So he's put these two questions together. What are we going to say about 20 and 21, which has to do with the second half of verse 1 in chapter 6? What are we going to say about that? Let's consider the implications of the question.

If, he's talking about sin here, and we all know, when I was teaching the kids Sunday school downstairs, the way we would demonstrate sin, we would say, well, the Greek word is hamartia, and it means missing the mark. And let's demonstrate missing the mark. So we would take these matchsticks, take the end of it off, put a pin in the end, and put fins on the back of it. And we'd put a poster up on the side of the wall. And we would say to them, all right, you stand close to the wall and throw the pin. And see if you can get it to hit the target. And they can't. Every kid can do it. So then you keep backing them up. And so by the time you get them up here and the target's down there, none of them can get there. And that's the point we're trying to make.

You can't be righteous by trying as hard as you can to deal with sin. So the first thing is, you got to settle what the word sin means. It means a lot more than just missing the mark. And that's what Romans 6 takes on. Does it here refer to sin as an abstraction?

Just bad stuff. You know, I'm sure all non-believers operate on the principle of good and bad, good and evil. I'm doing enough good stuff so that it'll outweigh the bad stuff, so that when I get to the pearly gates, Peter's gonna say, okay, you come in. Just an abstraction about sin.

Or, when we're talking about sin here, are we talking about the fact that it's all the stuff that I've done in my whole life. all the sins that I committed. And with some of us, it's a big, huge pile. Some of us, the pile's not so big. And we really like to not think about our sins, but the Lord wants us to confess them. And are we really talking in this verse about the acts of sinning, or are we talking about a totally depraved nature? that we have inside of us. Which one of those three?

So quickly, does it refer to sin as an abstract? No, it doesn't. Does it refer to all the acts of sin committed by the believer? No, it doesn't. Now, right here is a very interesting point because justification takes care of all the acts. Sanctification Or the totally depraved sin nature in him? Answer, yeah.

That's what we're gonna tackle. We're going after, in Romans 6, what God did about that sin nature. He's already taken care of the penalty and the consequences of your sins. The three hymns we sang this morning, that's what they sing about. So as we go forward now, and I'll show you here in a second, Maybe it's a little redundant to you, but I think it'll help us to understand that what we're dealing with here is a nature, the sin nature that we got from Adam in the garden. Roger talked about from one man came this sin nature, and with that sin nature came death. Every human being is born with this. And they're separated from God because they have it before they ever act.

We went to a, we went to a, a baby shower yesterday. And I'm sitting here thinking in this, this, this is a daughter of a friend and she's going to have the baby in about six weeks. So she's way out here. You know, that baby is born dead to God. That baby's coming from Adam. It's going to show up on the planet with a sin nature.

Does it deserve salvation? What about if it gets to two or three years old and the Lord takes the baby home? never had a chance or doesn't have an understanding about sin nature or anything like that. What does God do? Well, I happen to think that God, I used to think really strictly that you had to be old enough to reach the age of reason so you can make a decision about who Jesus Christ was. But then I was taught, I remember thinking that the work of the cross was so complete that God can save anybody any way he wants. Now, I'm an adult and there's only one way for me. I don't know what he's going to do with a three-year-old, but a two-year-old or a three-year-old has this in nature. Every one of us has it. And that's the condemning thing. And that's the thing that Paul is going to deal with in a Christian's life as we go forward. Okay? Now, So he says, what shall we say?

Are we to continue in, and I added, the sin nature that grace might abound? And you may say to me, oh, well, that isn't what that word sin means all through, all through Romans 6. I'll show you in a minute that it does. Paraphrasing, shall we continue habitually to sustain the same relationship to the sin nature that we sustained before we were saved? That's the question.

Should I deal with sin the same way? Our relationship was most pleasant. By the way, did any of you ever commit a sin you didn't want to commit? Didn't you like them all? I did. I liked every one of them. A relationship that's most pleasant, a relationship in which we fully yielded to and dependent upon the sin nature and all as a habit of my life.

Everything I did before, everything you did before you were saved was in response to sin reigning unto death. You never did anything spiritual, never. because of this sin nature, okay? So Paul says in verse two, may it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

So it's interesting if, I was reading something that the King James translators couldn't understand what this may ganetto really means. And what it means is that it's a primary verb. It means to come into being. In other words, may it never be means it shouldn't even ever exist. This should not even be a question. This is not even approaching the issue. Should I sin? so that grace could reign? That's not a legitimate question.

Because if you're not saved, you're totally under the control of the sin nature. And you're sinning all the time. And you might be a good guy, a good person, but you're a sinner. And you have this sin nature, and as long as you have this sin nature, God condemned it on the cross. And you want to get away from it if you can. We're talking here reference to the sin nature. Now, I think I have to prove to you that what's in this Romans 6 is really the sin nature and not the sins.

How shall we who died still live in it? How is it possible? The point being, it's not possible. Paul's not asking a question for information, but he's rather presenting a rhetorical question designed to declare the impossibility of such a thing. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? How is that possible?

So every one of you who's a believer, you were crucified with Christ and you have been separated from that sin nature. Now that's true of you whether you know it whether you believe it, whether you act on it or not. It's true of you. So the question is really appropriate to you.

How shall you, who died to sin, still live any longer in it? It isn't stop doing bad things. It's how can you, you who don't live in the sin nature anymore, how come you keep acting like you do? You see that? That make sense? I wanted to point out something, and I have a chart for it. That's one reason why I wanted you to open your Bibles.

If you look at the verses in chapter 6 that talk about sin, there are 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16 verses There are 16 verses out of 23 that refer and use the word sin. Every single one of them has a definite article in front of the word sin, as an example.

One says, how shall we then, are we to continue in the sin that grace may abound? Verse two, may it never be, how shall we who died to the sin live any longer in it? Verse six, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of the sin, on and on, he who has died is freed from the sin.

Here's the importance of that. the word the in front of the word sin makes it a noun and it refers to that thing in you that's the cause of your sin. And when you go back to chapter five at the end, it says that you're connected to that sin, nature, and you can't get away from it. So if God's purpose is that grace and righteousness are gonna reign through Jesus Christ. He's got a problem. How is he gonna separate you and me from that sin nature? And so when you're reading your Bibles and you're studying chapter six, every time you see the word sin, put T-H-E in front of it, the sin nature, because that's what it's talking about.

And it's important, I think, for us to understand that, and I will say to you, that most believers never hear about this. Never hear about this principle. In the reform environment, you're going to be told that your sins are paid for, but now you have to work hard to make sure you get saved in the end. They never even address the issue of a sin nature. There's no such thing to them. So it's important. One more thing I'll insert here. When we get down to verse 15, he's gonna ask another question, same kind of question. He's gonna say, what then?

Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? May it never be. And again, shall we be subject to the sin nature because we're not under law, we're under grace? So all the way through, when you study Romans 6, every time you see sin, it means the sin nature. The last verse, 23 says, for the wages of the sin nature is death. but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So in building this motor that I mentioned, God has to do something about this sin nature. And so in doing that, he has to bring the believer into a position where the sin nature is not the controlling factor. How does he do it? How does he do it?

Well, when Jesus was on the cross and paying the penalty for your sins, he died alone because he was the only one worthy to pay that penalty. But when he was on the cross, when it comes to dealing with the sin nature, you died with him. The Lord Jesus was made the thing, the sin for us and in us. So he takes us what he does and he took up all the human beings that would believe in him. And he, the father did this and he put them in Christ so that when Christ was made sin, what happened? He died. And you died and I died. That's how He freed us.

There's only one way out of the sin nature, and you've got to die out of it. You have to die out of it. It's the only way you get free. Now, Christians are dead to sin. Just what does that mean? Sin here, as we've established, is the sin nature. We're dead to the sinful sin nature, whether you know it or not.

Our dead is a second eris, which means you did die. You're not trying to die. You're not working hard to be free from sin. You already did die. That's what that second eris means. You did die. You were separated in Christ from that sin nature. And death means one thing. It means separation.

When my mom died, I used to tell this to people all the time, my mom's body is down in the funeral home. I can't go down there. My mom and I used to love to play cards and shuffle the deck and say, okay, mom's your deal. Why not? She's not there. She's not there.

So when you died, you got separated from that sin nature. Now, it's still in you, it's still active, but you do not have to obey it anymore. Before that, you had to. Now, you may think, oh no, yeah, you did. You did. Now, physical death is separation of a person from his body.

Spiritual death is a separation of a person from God. So when the Holy Spirit baptizes you into Christ, and that's the verse we'll talk about next week, you're united with him at the point in which he dies now. How shall we who died to sin ever live in it anymore? In other words, if that really happened, if I really died in Christ to the sin nature, why am I living in it?

Point is, I don't have to. That's the message. I don't have to respond to the sin nature anymore. And the reason is, is because I died to it. It doesn't mean it went anywhere. It's still in you. And it's still wanting you to pay attention and wanting you to be involved with it. But what does it mean for a Christian to be dead to sin? Those who died, the tense and Greek verb is eris, which denotes it's not a condition.

It's a past fact. If you've never known this before, which most of you probably do know, this is true of you. You are not connected, united to the sin nature anymore. You're separated from it. It never refers to an act as going on or prolonged. It happened one time. When Christ died, you died with him. You're separated. I mean, is that good news? It's great news. It's the only answer that we could possibly come up with.

How can I ever stop sinning? As a young Christian, I got to that point where I thought, you know what? As a Christian, I sin way too much. Lord, did you do something? I mean, this is dying for my sins is terrific, but there's got to be more than this because sin is really powerful.

And he said, Oh yeah, let me show you Romans chapter six. I'll explain it to you. He accomplished separation between the believer and the sinful nature, which is a permanent one. a once and for all disengagement of the person from this evil sin nature, once and for all. This surgical operation is never repeated, because it's already true. Why would he repeat it? So far as God is concerned, he has so thoroughly done his work that the separation is permanent. But because of the frailty of men, the Christian at infrequent times and intervals, he does yield to the sin nature.

It's there, but the point is God has so constructed, constituted him that he doesn't need to do it. You don't have to. When you're not in Christ and you don't know about this principle, You almost have to sin when it shows up. And you put holy water on it, and you do all this excusing, but it's the sin nature controlling you. That's really what's going on. But now, if I know this fact, and I believe it, and I rest in it, I don't have to go there. I don't. And then he follows it up with verse three.

He says, Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ, into Christ Jesus, have been baptized into his death? And there's a lot of information about baptism out there and what it means. You can forget it. The one thing you have to separate in your mind is that baptism has nothing to do with water. Baptism, this definition, introduction or placing of a person or a thing into a new environment and into union with something else so as to alter its condition or your condition or its relationship from its previous environment or condition. Kenneth Weiss. So let's make it simple. When the Holy Spirit baptized you into Christ, what did he do? He took you and he put you in Christ. And we'll find out next week, he did it at the point when Jesus died.

I didn't go and you didn't go into Christ when he was giving the Sermon on the Mount, or even when he was suffering in the garden. At the point in which he died is when you went in. And I went in, and why? Because he went into this thing, sin itself. He went there, and you went with him. And the Father rose him out of there, and guess where you were? You came out with him. What does that mean? I'm separated. So I don't have to sin anymore. I don't. I used to have to. It took me a while to figure out, how do I stop?

It's the act of God introducing a believing sinner into vital union with the Lord Jesus. I don't think we appreciate how close we are in union with the resurrected, glorified Christ, and how much your life has to do with his life, starting with his death. And that's what Romans 6 will tell us as we go forward. Now, I've already said, at what point in Christ's earthly existence were you put into him? You were placed in Christ when he died. Why then? Why is that important?

Because We might share in his death that thus comes into benefits that identification with him. You hear us talk about identification truths all the time, because it's like, it's a buzzword around here. It's Holly Hill speak, right? And we talk about position, condition, identification. This is what identification is.

I was so united to Christ, so identified with him, that when he was separated from sin, because he was made the thing sin for us, he took all of our sin natures with him and us as part of the salvation package he gives us when we believe. Every single person who comes to Christ, this is true of them, and most Christians don't know it. And I have often wondered, how can you possibly become increasingly free from sinning if you don't know this information. The reason I say that, we're supposed to live by faith. Faith in the facts. This is a fact. This is a fact of every one of us. Everybody who has trouble with sinning, this is the solution to it. I don't have to. I don't have to do this anymore. So what does this accomplish in God's plan? This, by the way, this is all God's plan, which means it's all being done to us. Back in 21, what did he say? That sin reigned in death, but God said, I want grace to reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

That's what I'm going to do. And so what 6 does is it tells us how he did it. We're placed in a whole new environment in Christ Jesus, a whole new life. The old one, the first Adam, in whom was our federal head, where we were made sinners, came under condemnation. That's what happened. If he wants grace to reign, so I said in the beginning, the mechanics of how he's going to do it is what Romans 6 is all about. He's saying to us, let me show you how I did it.

In our new environment in Christ, what do we have? We have righteousness, we have life, our condition, has changed from that of a sinner to that of a saint. You know, Verne Peterman used to love to say to you, you guys all realize you're saints, don't you? Do you realize you're a saint? And you know, a saint can't have a sin nature. Ever think about that? A saint can't have a sin nature. So you've been separated so that you can be one of the called out ones.

I didn't know whether I was going to talk about this or not, but I think I will. If you look at the overall plan of God and what he's doing from sending Christ to deal with the sin issue all the way to what we talked about a month or so ago of the mystery. Remember what we talked about with the mystery? What's the mystery? that God had determined in eternity that he was gonna call out a people and he was gonna make them the bride of his son. That's the end game. The end game is that everybody in this room will be at the wedding feast of the lamb as the bride. And in order to qualify to be the bride, this is where it starts.

He has to, God, in order to bring that bride perfectly clean and perfectly white and righteous and glorified, this is where it starts. He's got to deal with his sin nature. He's got to deal with his forgiveness of sins first, but then he's got to deal with the nature because nobody that's going to be in the bride can have a sin nature.

So this is how he dealt with it. So if you understand the end game, so to speak, you can understand why it starts here and why it goes to there. Because by the time we get there, you're going to have the very righteousness of Christ conditionally, not just your position. You're going to be just like him. And how did he do it? This is how he started. This is what he did.

So next week, There's 11 verses, 10 verses in Romans chapter six, and they all deal with this one issue. And William Newell makes a great comment about this. He says, when you read Romans chapter six, Paul says, I want you just to sit down and I want you to listen to what I'm gonna tell you in these first 10 verses. Don't do anything but listen.

And then when I get to 11, I'll tell you what I want you to do about it. So we're at the point where we're just learning what God has done and how he did it and how permanent it is. So next week we'll do 4, 5, 6, and 7. And then Roger will get to pick it up as we move towards 11. And then he'll say what he wants us to do when we get all this information gathered. So let's close.

Father, how we thank you for your work. We thank you for your son. I pray that every one of us will understand and rest in the fact that I have, they have all been separated from that one thing, that sin nature that has prevented you from glorifying yourself through us and now you can. And as we look forward to the future, we recognize that what you have in store for us You had to prepare us for, and we're so thankful for that. We're so thankful for the Lord Jesus, our life, and all that he's done. We pray in his name, amen.