Law & Grace - Romans 6:1-10 Baptized into Christ - Part 2
Romans 6:1-10 · Vern Peterman · Aug 19, 2012
Law & Grace, No. 78
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926324434018

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

The truth, however, is that the word in which we stand is a form that says we have been made to stand, so we didn't get there by our determining to stand, but by God's placing us there. And secondly, that that standing is permanent with ongoing results on into the future. So we have been made to stand permanently in grace.

Grace is the atmosphere we breathe, totally pure grace, not grace and a little bit of law. We drink, as we've used the analogy, from the Niagara Falls of grace. An inadequate analogy in its extreme because Niagara Falls, as great as it is, is limited. But it starts to get the idea across.

Secondly, in the end of Romans chapter 5, the last couple of verses, it says that the law increases sin. Many Christians are inclined, and even pastors teach, that you need a lot of grace and then you throw in some law there on top of it to help grace. Grace doesn't need any help. What the law will do, as we saw looking at this passage, the law will help sin. It does not help grace. You don't need some different mixture of law and grace.

We also saw in Romans 5.20 and 21 that though the sin nature did abound, grace super abounded. And then we also saw as we started into the passage that Randy read for us this morning here, Paul begins in this after saying, what shall we say then? And I put this in a paraphrase form, should we put the sin nature in gear in order to increase grace? If the sin nature abounds and grace super abounds, well then that sounds like by logic, that we should put the sin nature in gear so that grace will superabound. Well, he says, not so much. And we'll see why here in a bit.

One of the other things that came out of this passage is we see the terms baptized into, united with, and with are means of expressing an identification with Christ. An identification with Christ in His death, with Him in His burial, and with His resurrection. These are all free expressions of our being joined to Christ in order to share a spiritual identity. It's simply put in other passages as in Christ. And so we share a spiritual identity with Christ, not just something like, but an identity with him. this baptized into is something we explained.

It was understood by people of the time, we think of baptism often just in terms of water baptism, but it was used for the cloth dyeing industry when you dip cloth in to have it colored a different color. It was used in the sword making industry when they would take a sword that had been fashioned and now ready to be hardened heated to white-hot, and then plunged into a vat of cold water to case-harden the sword." Those were the understandings of the word baptized, and so when Paul would use this baptized into Christ, they would have those physical pictures in their minds. The idea is being immersed and has the implication of being immersed and being radically changed by that immersion, just like the cloth was dyed red or purple, just like the sword was case hardened as a result of being plunged into the vat of water.

Another principle that we brought out last time was death is separation. There's a tendency to think of death as either an annihilation or a termination or just an inability to respond. But the picture here, death is separation, because it's dead too, is the emphasis here, and especially in this passage. We have been separated from, and this passage makes this point, the sin nature, and we have also been separated from the law and the world, and other passages bring that forward. And so the sin nature separation, which is also called, the sin nature as it's operating through the body is called the flesh.

You'll see Paul write it that way in Romans and especially in Galatians chapter 5. We've been separated from it. Does the sin nature stop existing? No. It doesn't terminate its existence. We've been spiritually separated from it. We've been separated from the law.

And by the way, that law is not just the law of Moses. It's any law, whether God-given or man-made. The principle of law would be a way to state it. Any law, whether God-given or man-made. Let's give a for instance. Was Adam under law or under grace when He and Eve were in the garden under law. Just one. Don't eat from that tree. Just one law. Did he keep it? Not so much.

So that is a principle of law. Any set of rules that those rules define righteousness, that's law. Thirdly, the world system. And oftentimes these things go together, don't they? They cooperate. We're separated from the sin nature, from law, in any principle of law, and from the world system. Knowing is also an important part of this passage. Verse 3, 6, and 9 all talk about knowing. Do you not know?

And the implication, if we look at Romans 7.1 being, the implication is, and of course you do, and then verses 6 and verses 9. Often the translations have simply knowing, but the underlying Greek there has the idea since you know or because you know.

Knowing tells us a few different things. One of them, we can know with certainty. Knowing is stated three times here. We can know something with certainty. There are those who will say you can't know anything with certainty. What does the Bible mean? Who knows? This definitely says you do know. You can know.

The next thing is knowing is to impact our lives. It's not just head knowledge. It's not just packing our brains full of biblical information. It's not simply spiritual data. It's to impact our lives. And the third thing, knowing is about relationships, and not just relationships between people, but relationships to these various entities, the sin nature, the law, the world, and to Christ. Now, we have a spiritual anatomy, and that's what we'll be covering here this morning in great part.

We used to be constructed a certain way and have relationships a certain way before we believed. And now that we have believed, we are constructed differently. Not because we did anything other than believe. God made all the changes. The changes in our spiritual anatomy come because we believed and God is the one who accomplished all these changes. It's not because of our efforts. It's not because we earned it. It's not because we're in the process of making this change. God did it from the moment we believed. We didn't realize it.

As a matter of fact, one of the truths that we see as we study God's Word is we're always, for the rest of our lives, catching up to what God has already done. We're spending the rest of our lives catching up to what God has already done, learning about it, growing into it. Okay, here's the diagram that you have in the middle of page two on your handout here, and we'll be kind of surveying that diagram and going through it piece by piece. The first distinction there is on the left-hand side are those in Adam. This is the unbeliever. The unbeliever is who you were before you believed. On the right side is the representation of those in Christ. This is the believer.

And it's crystal clear and distinct. There isn't anybody who's straddling the line here. Nobody halfway. And also, you do not go back and forth. You don't slip back and forth. I'm in Adam today. Up, up, up. Do it. Over here. No. I'm back over. No. None of that. It's a one-way, one-time, from in Adam to in Christ.

Now, the unbeliever is in Adam. The believer is in Christ. And that is 100%. You're either 100% in Adam or you're 100% in Christ. The unbeliever is spiritually in Adam, sharing an identity with him. We were, as unbelievers, identified with Adam, and having Adam as his head. The believer is spiritually in Christ 100%, sharing an identity with Christ, and having Christ as his head. So each one, Adam and Christ, The unbeliever is sharing an identity and having as a head, Adam. The believer is sharing an identity with Christ and having as his head, Christ. The unbeliever was born into Adam, physically and spiritually, with Adam as his head. The believer is born again into Christ. By being made into Christ, you are born again into Christ with Christ as your head.

Now one of the things we want to cover real carefully, because we've used the term unbeliever and believer, what is it we're talking about believing? I just want to be real clear on that without making assumptions. You're going to see these terms unbeliever and believer in here. I don't want anybody to miss out on what I'm talking about.

What one must believe in order to be saved, in order to be in Christ, is that Christ the Son of God died for your sins and was buried and rose again. Do you believe that? If you believe that, you're saved and you are in Christ. God does the placing of you in Christ. Our part is simply to believe what God has done. Is that clear? That's very important. So we don't want to just say believer and unbeliever and leave that with a question mark. So the question is, do you believe it? The one who believes it has eternal life.

Now we have this distinction, in Adam the old man, and that's a term we see in this passage and we'll see it in other passages, is all of who you were in Adam. It's not simply the sin nature, which we're going to address that shortly, but it's also Adam's history. The unbeliever shares in Adam's history. As Adam took of the fruit he was not to take of and eat, as Adam took of that, we share Adam's history before we believe. The old man is all of who you were in Adam, the mindset of Adam, the master of the sin nature.

In Christ, There is the new man, all of who we are, present tense, in Christ. We now no longer have Adam's history. We have a new spiritual history and we can spend the rest of our lives growing into that new spiritual history that we were identified with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. That's the new spiritual history that we have. We also have a new mind. 1 Corinthians chapter 2, we have the mind of Christ. We also have the new master, Christ, expressed in the new nature.

So the old man is all of who we were in Adam, including his fallen history. We shared in that. We identified with it. His fallen mind, the mindset, His master the sin nature. I think that's the theme song for the old man as I did it my way right a Theme song for the old man as I did it my way Here if we look at Romans 6, 6 expanded and explained, you have this on page 3 of your handout, I believe.

Our old man, all of who we were in Adam, was crucified with him in order that our body of sin might be made powerless. Some of the translations have done away, and I think that's not quite clear. It's made powerless. It is not to be done away with or gone, but simply to be made so there's no longer the monarch, the dictator. so that we would no longer be slaves to the sin nature.

Ephesians 4.22, and we'll put an emphasis here, you have already put off concerning your former conduct, the old man, all of who you were in Adam. You've already done it. Some of the translations again are not clear there.

It sounds like you've got something to do rather than talking about what God did And Colossians 3.9, and you have already put off the old man, all of who you were in Adam with his deeds.

The new man is all of who we are, present tense, in Christ, including his history, that we've been crucified, buried, raised, ascended, and seated. And Romans 6 focuses on the first three, crucified, buried, and raised, with Christ, with him. So we share his history, his mind, we have the mind of Christ, 1 Corinthians 2, as well as the new master and having a new nature. Now, the next thing we put on there is the sin nature and the new nature. The old man was ruled absolutely, totally and completely, no other choice, by the sin nature. Everything that the old man, the person of the unbeliever, does is ruled by the sin nature. The nature of something dictates how it thinks and behaves.

You do not expect, when you look in the backyard and you look at the tree out there, you do not expect to see a crocodile hopping from limb to limb and chirping, right? And making nests and sitting on the eggs up in the tree. You do not expect that. Why? Because that's not a crocodile's nature.

And so the sin nature behaves and thinks a certain way and it has no other choice but to do so. But it absolutely dictates every single behavior of the unbeliever. The unbeliever thinks that he or she is making choices. All the choices are within the sin nature. All of them.

Because the sin nature is an absolute monarch, rules as a dictator the life of the unbeliever. The believer has a new nature, which is Christ's nature. The sin nature is an inclination to think and act. The inclination of the sin nature to think and act, independent of God, is absolute.

It doesn't have some inclination and some not. It is completely inclined to do life on its own. The old man, all of who we were in Adam, has a sin nature that is fixed to this fallen body. It's stuck to this thing. It's associated and held on to this thing.

The new nature of the believer, which is Christ's nature, always thinks and acts from the life of God. The new man, all of who we were in Christ, has a new nature. It is Christ's. The inclination to think and act is based upon Christ himself. So now, we have this separated from and joined to phenomenon.

The separated from and joined to, for those in Adam, they are separated from, or dead to, would be another way to put it biblically, dead to Christ. The unbeliever is dead to Christ. Is Christ dead? No. He is dead in relationship to Christ, separated from Christ. The unbeliever is certainly not joined to Christ. The unbeliever is joined to the law, and by that we mean the principle of law, whether it's God-given or man-made.

The law is there to condemn them. If they were Jewish, they're connected to the law of Moses. If they are not, there is still the law of their own standard of morality. This is the teaching of Romans 2. The world, the world system, and the sin nature.

Those three things the unbeliever is joined to. They're stuck to and joined to them. The believer, on the other hand, is separated because of co-crucifixion with Christ. The unbeliever is separated, dead in relationship to the principle of law. And by that, again, it is any law-based system as a standard for righteousness. whether it is God-given or man-made. You're entirely separated from the law. A lot of Christians will say, yeah, well, we just have to follow the ten. Oh, excuse me, except for the one about the Sabbath, we don't do that one. But we have to add the one about the tithing, right? And a few others.

No. Any law at all. No law. Zip. None. We are separated. What happened when Christ died on the cross? He separated us from any principle of law. The world, the world system, the world out there that is prone to force you into its mold. We've been separated from the world. Does the world go away? No. The world system is still out there and it's going strong, at least right now.

It will be ended when Christ comes again. That will be the end of the world system when Christ comes again. And the sin nature... Now, does the sin nature go away? No, and we're going to talk about that in a minute. Sin nature doesn't go away, but we are separated from it.

And we'll talk about what that means. We have been joined, Romans 7, 4, we have been joined to Christ. Joined to Him. Here we have a diagram that we showed last time and we'll go to it again because I think it's a helpful illustration. What Romans 6 tells us particularly is we start off as unbelievers joined to the sin nature and separated from Christ. That's how we begin as an unbeliever. Formerly, that was your standing. Joined to the sin nature, separated from Christ.

When we believe, and again we talked earlier about what that belief is, that belief is in the gospel, that Christ the Son of God died for your sins and was buried and rose again. When we believe that, our old man then is co-crucified with Christ. So that's what we mean here by this cross picture. the identification with Christ continues into the burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating in the heavenlies. So once having believed, the believers then joined to Christ and separated from the sin nature.

So those positions then reverse. Separated from the sin nature. When I believed, God acted. God did this identification here, not us. It's not our efforts. The old man was crucified and I died in relationship to, that's what this died to means, I died in relationship to the sin nature, the law, and the world. Those three things. So the believer is placed into and joined to Christ.

By the way, does that have a timer on it? An expiration date? Were you joined to Christ and that's good until about the end of this year and then you start? No. There is no expiration date on that being joined to Christ. You are joined to Christ forever. Forever. There is no reversal. There is no slipping back.

Finally, I have this term called a continuing person. And that's not a term you'll find in scripture, but what we will find is that scripture does talk about all the little components of this continuing person. So let's talk about that. Once we were taken out of Adam and placed into Christ, our position in him does not change. I right now am not in the process of being more in Christ. or less.

It doesn't vary. I am 100% in Christ from the time I believe it's entirely God's accomplishment and it is total. That's not changing. There's no variation in that. It can't be lost. It can't be reversed. I'd like to have somebody show me some verse where it says you are now unseated in the heavenlies. You are now unidentified with Christ. There isn't any such verse, right? The new man remains the new man, the same. The new nature remains the new nature. None of that changes. Our position, who we are in Christ, and who He is in us does not vary. Nobody is ever uncrucified or unseated from Christ. But as we look at this continuing person here, Here's an example. Here's the Apostle Paul, Acts 22. And by the way, he says something very similar in Acts 26.

He's speaking before the Sanhedrin. He says, but it happened that I was on my way. I, Paul the unbeliever, was on my way. And so he can say, I was. So that's the part of him that continues from when he was an unbeliever. He can refer to that and say, I. That's this continuing person here. Paul wrote to Timothy, and he wrote about when he was an unbeliever. He says, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor, yet I was shown mercy.

He has been radically spiritually changed from the time he believed, but he can still refer to himself as, I was and I did. This continuing person from the time when we didn't believe to when we believe, includes one's unique identity. And that identity, that unique identity of you will not be lost, by the way, even on into eternity. The book of Revelation talks about giving you a new name known only to you and the Lord. Isn't that interesting? That there will be a special relationship between you and Him that will be unique. And so that unique identity concept is continued on into eternity.

You don't just somehow blend into the spiritual mass and lose your identity. You now have an earthly history. All of us, even as believers, can say, well, I did this, I went there, I did this, and this happened to me, and I did this other thing. We can tell our personal history. Spiritually, however, we have a new history in Christ. But in this body, on this earth, we have an earthly history. We have an earthly character.

If you're a person who doesn't happen to like broccoli before you believe, odds are you probably won't get that change because you believe. If you happen to be an accountant before you believe, probably you're going to be an accountant after you believe. Hopefully a more honest one.

Anyway, and we have these bodies. We have these bodies and if the body has a certain characteristic before we believe, the body will continue after we believe. And I'm glad we're going to get new ones. Right now, we have changes that are taking place spiritually by God's design and intent. There are processes in place that are changing our spiritual continuing person.

Our new nature isn't changing. The new man isn't changing. Our position in Christ isn't changing. Christ in us is not changing. But we are being changed. It's this continuing person, spiritually, that's being changed. It's being conformed to the image of his son. Being conformed to the character of the new man and the new nature.

Being transformed in the image of his son, 2 Corinthians 3.18. Being sanctified. as a process, being set apart and made holy, growing and maturing. These are changing processes that take place in the believer over time. Now those are the processes.

The reality is all those things will be brought forward in a quick time when we go to be with the Lord. We will get a body transformed into a new one. That will be an instantaneous change. We will go to be with the Lord and while we might be growing and maturing and being set apart and sanctified and being transformed into the image of his son, there will be an instantaneous final change to who we are in this continuing person. 1 Corinthians 15, 51 through 53, and you have this on page four of your handout, says, Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed. in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed."

1 John 3.2 describes our ultimate conformity and transformation into the image of Christ. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, We will be like him because we will see him just as he is. There will be no longer this slow change and transformation, no longer a maturing process, no longer will you be conformed gradually to the image of his son.

There will be an instantaneous completion of these processes. So processes now, as long as we're here, a radical change then. These will all be brought to completion, change in body, a new body. And as time goes on, I'm more and more glad for that. A new body, but also these processes that are going on now, being conformed, transformed, sanctified, growing, maturing, will be brought to their completion at that time. Now, this is a very important point here.

We've saved it towards the last. It is connected to this body that we have the sin nature. You might wonder why God doesn't just take the sin nature out of the way. So that, boy, then Christians wouldn't struggle with that, right? Guess what? He'd have to kill you. Because this body has attached to it a sin nature. And when we get a new body, it won't have it.

It won't have the sin nature attached to it. But right now, that's why God doesn't just take it out of the way. Completely. He doesn't say that for Christians, we're just going to get rid of that sin nature. You're not going to have a sin nature issue at all. No. He can't do that until He gives us a new body.

This body has a sin nature attached to it. The sin nature is not eradicated from the believer, as some teach. And by the way, that teaching has been made more and more popular only since the end of World War II. That's when the teaching really got ingrained that believers don't have a sin nature.

It is put offline like a deposed monarch. We used the example a couple weeks ago of Idi Amin. He was still around until 2003, living in Saudi Arabia, no longer over Uganda. But he was a deposed monarch. The same thing with Ferdinand Marcos. He was booted out of the Philippines, so no longer in charge. Was he around? Yes, still alive, but not in charge.

Same thing with the Sin Nature. The Sin Nature is a deposed monarch. The Sin Nature, as this diagram shows here, is attached to the physical human body we were born with. And it will be entirely removed when we get a new body. When these bodies are replaced.

But not until then. But God has taken the sin nature offline. It's no longer in a position of being the absolute monarch. It no longer has to call the shots. And the sin nature, one way to put it is the sin nature is terminal. Sin nature is terminal. All this being said, we're laying this out so we can deal with the sin nature biblically, that's next week's passage, and live to God who accomplished these changes.

God does not intend that we try to be a good Christian. God does not want you to say, I'm going to decide to do the right things and I'm going to decide not to do the wrong things. God does not want you to do that. God does not want you to try to be a good Christian. He doesn't want you to make the right decisions. That's not the primary priority.

What God does say is that He wants you to walk in fellowship with Him. That's the choice. That's the decision. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that you are pleased with your son. It is your son that we've been placed in. It is your son who has been placed in us. And we thank you. You have accomplished this. It is not our doing at all. We didn't even merit it in any way. It is all by grace. We give you thanks in Jesus' name. Amen.