Transformed! (Romans 6:1-2)

Grace can be twisted into a cover story, and it usually sounds spiritual. Someone sins, gets caught, and then demands comfort without confession, repair, or change. We start there with a gut level moment: a man admits serious sin and then bristles when the pastor asks what repentance would actually look like. “I came to hear grace” becomes the warning sign, because it reveals how easy it is to treat forgiveness like a hall pass.

From there we walk straight into Romans 6 and Paul’s blunt question: should we keep practicing sin because grace increases? We take that head on and name the threat for what it is: antinomianism, turning the grace of God into a license. Then we slow down and explain what it means to be “dead to sin.” Temptation still shouts, but sin no longer reigns. The pirate captain illustration makes the point simple: the old master can bark orders, intimidate, and threaten, yet he is no longer the captain.

We also get painfully practical about Christian identity and sanctification. If we belong to the King, why would we go back and make ourselves at home in the old house? We talk about fighting temptation in the mind, replacing the image quickly, and letting the cost of Calvary reshape what we want. A final story about accountability and profanity lands the motive shift: grace changes us most when we remember who paid, not when we obsess over our own willpower.

If you care about holiness, repentance, and the real power of the gospel, this one will press on tender places. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs clarity on grace, and leave a review with your answer: do you live like you have freedom to sin or freedom from sin?

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Transcript

You Belong To The King

SPEAKER_00 0:32

You belong to the king. Why would you ever seek to see how much of the gutter you could gravel in? The growing believer understands the vileness of sin and the vileness of his nature, and he hates the smell and the taste and the touch of sin. And you hear yourself as you are a true believer growing in Jesus Christ more and more saying, I can't do that. And when you're asked why, the only thing you can think of is, I'm a Christian. I don't say that anymore. Why? Well, I just can't do that. I can't embrace that vocabulary because I'm a Christian. A young man called his pastor late at night and asked if he would meet him. The next morning, they made arrangements to meet at a restaurant for breakfast. They settled into a restaurant booth, and the young man told the pastor his bad news. A recent business trip he had taken with a female co-worker had led to sin. He had seen it coming, but had failed to protect himself and what could happen, and now it had happened. The man asked the pastor, What do I do now? Before the pastor responded, he couldn't help but think of this man's young wife and their expectant child and the little children they already had and how their lives would be so terribly affected by his sin. He wanted this man to do the thinking for himself, and so he said, I'll tell you what I want to do here. Let me just ask you some questions and don't answer them yet, just listen to them and then we'll talk him through. He asked the man, had he prayed and asked God's forgiveness? Had he confessed his sin to the woman and told her that nothing like that would ever happen again, had he confessed his sin to his wife and asked for forgiveness, would he be willing to have an HIV test before jeopardizing the health of his wife and the child she was expecting? Long silence followed those questions until finally the young businessman pushed his breakfast plate away and he leaned back in his restaurant booth, folded his arms, and said, I didn't come to hear these kinds of questions. I came to hear grace. You disappoint me, Pastor. Antinomianism, or the belief that sin doesn't matter, because the grace of God is available, is one of the greatest threats, even to the true believer who desires to live a holy life. Antinomians join churches, they sing in choirs, they volunteer in Sunday school classes, but their lives are no different from the world. They dress, they talk, they purchase, they joke, they work, they all play with the same impulses and motivations of the unbeliever. The greater the influence they exert on any one church and the church at large, the more like the world the church becomes. These are people who believe that grace is an excuse for sin. The mainline churches of America are, as one author noted recently, rampant with antinomianism. Jude, dealing with this situation back in his generation, just years after the Lord Jesus Himself ascended to the Father and sent the Holy Spirit, wrote a stern letter because they were already struggling with this problem. He said to them, for certain people have crept into the church, those who were beforehand marked out for condemnation. That is, they're unbelievers. Ungodly people, listen to this, who have turned the grace of God into a license to sin. Sin doesn't matter because grace is available. Have you had that thought? Have you thought, well, I know what I'm doing is sinful, and if it wasn't for the grace of God, I'd be in real trouble. Well, on the one hand, you'd be right. We are all sinful. And if it were not for the grace of God, we would all be in trouble. But on the other hand, you are dangerously in error. I'll show you why. What I want to do today is simply ask and answer one question. And then I am praying that God, by his spirit, will ambush your heart so that you cannot hide any longer, that the reality of who you are will be revealed to you today. Here's the question. Is the presence of grace an excuse for the practice of sin in your life? Let me ask it again. Is the presence of grace an excuse for the practice of sin in your life? That happens to be the same question that was asked nearly 2,000 years ago. It isn't a new question because every generation needs to ask it. If you take your Bibles and turn to Romans chapter 6, you'll find the question asked by the Apostle Paul. Romans chapter 6, verse 1. If you think we're finished with chapter 5, don't get too excited. The question is recorded. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? What shall we say then? You could paraphrase this to simply read, what are we going to say about this truth? Obviously, this does draw us back into verse 20 of chapter 5. This is the truth that He's just delivered. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. That as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. What are we going to say about this? One sin piled upon another, yet grace is higher still. Sin draws higher and still higher, and yet grace still overwhelms it. What are we going to say about that? Paul knew that that would be their question, and so he basically said it for them. What shall we say then? What's our response to this truth? Would you suggest that we are to continue in sin so that grace might increase? Ladies and gentlemen, he is battling the error of antinomianism. Since God is glorified by the expression of his attributes, and since one of his attributes is grace, and since his grace is demonstrated when we sin, then let's sin like maniacs so that the grace of God will be revealed and God's attributes will truly be magnified. Let's give God an opportunity to show his grace by sinning. You say, I don't think like that. What about the thought? I know this is sinful. God will forgive me because that's God's job to be forgiving. Have you ever thought, I know I'm sinning, but isn't God great? I know I shouldn't be seeing this or saying that or doing this or planning that, but hey, God is a God of grace. Isn't that great? I ask you again, does the presence of grace excuse your practice of sin? Do you believe that Christianity has given you freedom to sin or freedom from sin? But isn't that what Paul implied? Sin grows great, but grace grows greater than all our sin? Don't we sing that? Are we singing hymns of heresy? What are you going to say about this? Paul asks in Romans 6.1. Are we going to continue in sin? The word to continue means to practice, to abide, to cherish, to stay in sin. Are we going to cherish sin that grace might increase? That is, that grace might be seen to be the magnificent attribute of God that it is. And what is his response? Verse 2, may it never be. You could render it perish the thought. God forbid, the King James Version. Certainly not, the English Bible. By no means the NIV. What a ghastly thought, John Phillips translates it. Don't you even think about it. That's my mother's translation. Paul goes on, how shall we who died to sin still live in it? I believe he's basically asking or reminding the believer of three things. And I want to rephrase his question into the form of three questions. Here they are. Have you forgotten what's happened to you? Second. Have you forgotten who you are? Third. Have you forgotten where you belong? Paul asks, have you forgotten what's happened to you? Notice verse 2. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Have you forgotten you've died to sin? He uses the expression of death throughout this chapter. Verse 3, we were baptized into his death. Verse 4, we were buried with him through baptism into death. Verse 5, we became united with him in the likeness of his death. Verse 7, for he who has died is free. Verse 8, now if we have died with Christ, verse 11, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, over and over again. We can't get much deader than he describes us here. But what does that mean? We died to sin. We still struggle with sin, don't we? How can we struggle with something that we're dead to? Well, there are four different errors, I believe, that have been taught that have in some way hindered the walk of holy pursuit. And I'm gonna spend very little time on these four, but I want to give you a fifth view that I think is right. Number one is the view of people who teach that what he's saying here is that we died to the allurement of sin. Well, this is simply easy to prove wrong. All you have to do is read Paul's letters, where he writes to believers who are both converted and tempted to sin. The second view is found in those who teach that what Paul is saying here is that we're supposed to die on a daily basis to sin. Certainly the holiness movement is taught this. They believe in these moments of crucifying self, which is the secret to victorious Christian living. The problem is the starting point is wrong. It's with man instead of with God. And in addition to that, the image is wrong. The one thing you cannot do is crucify yourself. Paul is not saying here that what we ought to do is die every day. What he says is we're already dead. Just as we all sinned in Adam, past tense, Eris tense, speaking of a past event, so also we have died in Christ, Eris tense, something happened in the past, one time for all time. When Adam sinned as the head of our race, we sinned in him, and we've already explored that. Now he says, when Christ died on the cross, we died in him, our representative of this new race that you get into by faith. So it isn't something that you do daily. It isn't the effort of man, it is something God has done by placing you in Christ. It's something that has already been accomplished. Another view is that the believer's sin nature has been eradicated. This is the belief that somehow you'll reach a state of perfection. Tragedy of this view is that it confuses the believer's perfection, which is imputed to his account, and Christ's perfection, which he has inerrated. It also ignores the many promises that when we sin we can go to God. If we confess our sin. He's writing to believers in 1 John, not unbelievers, if we confess our sin. He's faithful in just to what? Forgive us of our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Another view is that the Christian dies to sin by simply renouncing it. You have a special moment in your life, maybe some special experience where you reach a special point in your spiritual journey and you just simply renounce sin. You simply say, I'm not going to sin anymore. I feel for those who say that because the next day, or maybe a week later, they're going to prove to themselves the renouncing it isn't sufficient. Again, that is a man-centered view and not a God-centered view. The fifth view that I believe is consistent with this letter is that the believer died, and you might write into the margin by that verse these words, the believer died to the rain of sin. You go back to verse 21 again of chapter 5. Here's the context. As sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. In other words, we died to the reign of sin in Christ, the head of our new race. The word reign comes from a Greek word that actually gives us the word kingdom. You could translate it power, kingdom, control. The reign of sin is what controls a person before they come to Jesus Christ. The reign of grace is that which controls the person once they have believed in Christ. You are no longer a member of the kingdom of sin. You are now a member of the kingdom of Christ. You can imagine these two reigns this way. Imagine for a moment that you've been captured by a pirate captain of a ship, and you're on the ship, and you, along with other captives, are commanded by that evil captain to do his bidding. He treats you like an animal. He tells you to do all sorts of things that you find despicable and harsh and hard. And you work so hard under his command. But finally, your country sends out another ship to engage that pirate ship in battle. And your country's ship conquers the pirate ship, and a new commanding officer is placed in charge, and he takes that evil captain and he chains him below deck. On the way back, as you sail back to your country, that captain from below is shouting out orders to you. He is intimidating you. He is threatening you. He is telling you what to do. But now you can obey him if you want to. But you don't have to. He's no longer the captain. You don't have to follow his orders any longer. Paul wrote to the Colossians and he said, He has delivered us from the power of darkness, the right of darkness's reign, and delivered us over into the kingdom of the Son by His love. Let me put it to you this way. On the basis of this text, then to say that you must sin denies the truth of grace. To say that you will never sin denies the need for grace. To say that you no longer have to sin is to understand the power of grace. Don't forget what's happened to you, Paul says. Paul goes on to ask, secondly, have you forgotten who you are? Look at verse 2 again. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? The English reader misses the emphasis of Paul. He's literally saying, How shall we, being who we are, still live in sin? How can you, a Christian, live in, cherish, embrace, practice a life of sin? Have you forgotten who you are? You belong to the king. Why would you ever seek to see how much of the gutter you can gravel in? The growing believer understands the vileness of sin and the vileness of his nature, and he hates the smell and the taste and the touch of sin. And you hear yourself as you are a true believer growing in Jesus Christ, more and more saying, I can't do that. And when you're asked why, the only thing you can think of is, I'm a Christian. I don't say that anymore. Why? Well, I just can't do that. I can't embrace that vocabulary because I'm a Christian. Have you ever said to your kids, like I have, don't let that dog lick you on your face. You have no idea where that dog's been. You ever said that to your kids? Kids don't quite connect the dots. Younger kids. Our dog loves yucky stuff. You'd think that the dog of a preacher would have better sense, but it's not true. Just this week, it got loose in the pasture behind just off our backyard where the horses graze throughout the day, and sure enough, she goes and she finds a pile of old manure, and she rolls in it. She rolls in it. She's having a great time. And then she runs back over underneath the fence to be petted by us. My dog has a serious, serious problem. Somebody a few weeks ago asked me, Do our pets go to heaven? I sure hope mine doesn't. She'll stink the whole place up. Besides that, she's not a Christian. I'm pretty sure of that. She's a dog. Dog? Dogs do that kind of stuff. The anatomian lives like a dog, lives in sin, revels in sin. Will defend sin to you. If you ever ask him or her, even though you're sitting in the same Sunday school class or out of the parking lot, how can you do that? Well, they would say, Well, what do you mean? How can I do that? Who are you to judge? They defend their sin and they revel in their sin and they would say, I'm disappointed in you for ever asking me why I would do something like that. If you are not true believers, they are deceived. Have you forgotten what happened to you? Have you forgotten who you are? The third question bound up in this phrase would be this Have you forgotten where you belong? How shall we who died in sin live there? We don't belong there. And the one who believes they belong there reveals they haven't died to sin in Christ. Eugene Peterson paraphrased this verse in the message wonderfully well. He says it this way. If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Do you not realize we packed up and left there for good? Don't keep a change of clothes back there in the old house. Don't keep any furniture there so that when you go back, it's comfortable. It won't be to the believer. You've packed up and left. But you know, so often we think that we will keep from sinning as long as we remember all of these things. We remember what it will cost us. If we remember the consequences of sin. What about keeping from sin because of what it did to Jesus Christ? What about keeping from sin as an act of gratitude for the one who gave everything for us? We don't say how much sin can I get by with, but oh, what my sin, what my sin costs my Savior. John Piper addressed this perspective recently when he wrote about resisting temptation. He said we need to mount a violent counteract with our mind. As soon as a sinful image, a lustful thought or impulse, a selfish impulse enters our mind, we need to say in the first two seconds, get out of my head. Then the real battle begins. Because sin it begins in the mind. The absolute necessity is to get the image and the impulse out of our mind. How? Get a counter image, he says, into your mind. It must be an image that is so powerful that the other image just cannot survive. He said, The next time a thought comes into your mind that's sinful, lustful, selfish. Use all of your mental power to see the lacerated back of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thirty-nine lashes left little flesh intact. He heaves with his breath up and down against the rough vertical beam of the cross. Each breath puts splinters into his lacerated flesh. The Lord gasps. From time to time he screams out with intolerable pain. He tries to pull away from the wood and the massive spikes rip through his wrist into the nerve endings, and he screams with the agony and pushes up with his feet to give some relief to his wrists. But the bones and nerves in his pierced feet crush against each other with anguish, and he cries out again. There is no relief. His throat is raw from screaming and pain and with his deep thirst. He loses his breath and thinks he is suffocating, and suddenly his body involuntarily gasps for air, and all the injuries unite in pain. Torment, he throws his head back in desperation, only to hit one of the thorns perpendicular against the crossbeam and drive it a half an inch into his skull. His voice reaches a soprano pitch of pain, and sobs break over his pain-wracked body as every cry brings more and more pain. Now, Piper said, I am not thinking that sinful thought anymore. I am at Calvary. Understanding grace, ladies and gentlemen, does not mean you go out and sin all you can. Understanding grace means you really never want to sin again because of what it costs the Savior. The one who says, I'm gonna sin and I'm gonna be like the world, and I'm gonna be as close to the edge, and I'm gonna do all the things I want to do and say all the things I want to say, and dress like I want to dress and plan like I want to plan and live for me, myself, and I knows nothing. Nothing of grace. The Ananomian simply hides behind his religiosity and his facade, his mask, but in his heart he knows he is not genuine and real. But the Spirit of God is the only one who can pull the mask off and bring to life this consciousness that is dead to sin. Only the Spirit of God can bring about the miracle of an awakened conscience to sin. It is the goodness of God for those of us who understand grace, though, and struggle with sin that leads us continually, daily, to repentance. Is it not? We understand when we say the grace of God is so great. There was a fellow in a church that I read about who struggled with profanity. He had gotten saved later in life and had this habit and he wanted to break it. He hated it and knew it offended the Lord and his own testimony. He didn't know what to do, and so he called a brother in the church and said, Look, let's just begin meeting weekly and let's set up some accountability. And I'll tell you what, let's do. He said, I'll put in five dollars into the offering plate for every one time that I used a curse word. His partner said, Okay, that sounds good to me, and we'll pray about it, and I'll be praying God will just help you this week. And so that man did his best. And he came to church the next Sunday and put$100 in the offering plate. I failed. They talked about it and they prayed together, and he said, I'm gonna do better this week. And so that week he tried and he came in and he said, Hey, it's it's less, but I still have to put$55 in the offering plate. The next week it went back up. The fourth week it was again even higher, and then the fifth week it was a little lower, and he struggled like that until finally he came to his friend and he said, I'm gonna be bankrupt if we keep up this plan. Pastors like this kind of plan, by the way, but he said, I'm gonna be bankrupt. And his friend had a thought from the Lord. He said, I'll tell you what, I'm gonna reverse everything we've been trying. And his friend said, What do you mean? He said, Well, I'm not gonna tell you. You just come next Sunday and I'll show you. He said, When you come next Sunday, I want to explain to you the meaning of grace. The next Sunday arrived, and this man walked into church. His head was low. He had evidently had a real struggle all week. His friend met him in the lobby and said, How did it go? And he said, It didn't go well at all. And he said, Well, here's what we're gonna do. He said, I have prepared one of my own checks. I've written my name here and the date, and I've made it out to the church, and all you have to do is fill in the amount. See, this will cost, but it's gonna cost me now. And I'm gonna demonstrate to you the grace of God. Oh, his friend protested, I can't do that. I can't spend your money like that. No, no, no. We're gonna do it this way. And so he he filled in the amount,$65 to put it in the plate. The next week he came in and filled out a check again after much protesting, but it was much lower. It was$25. Third week. No need to fill out the check anymore. What happened? The motive for living a holy life was not based on what it meant to him, but what it meant to Christ. And those who know they have died in Christ, and Christ has done what he has done for them. As they grow in grace, they do not forget what happened to them. They do not forget what they are, they do not forget where they belong. There's nothing more powerful to living a holy life than the amazing grace of God. You belong, my friends, by faith, not in this first kingdom, whose reign is sin under Adam. But you belong to the second kingdom, this greater everlasting kingdom, the reign of grace for Jesus Christ, our Lord.