Topic: You must believe you are dead to sin
Reading: Romans 6:8-11
Introduction and Overview
Contained in these words today is one of the most difficult things with which many Christians struggle. It is the recognition and understanding that they are dead to sin and that they are no longer sinners.
In the past few studies I have looked at the aspect of freedom from sin, and while we can look at that subject in a dispassionate, intellectual or academic sense, it is not until we live in it that it becomes a truth and a reality.
This is what these scriptures today are explaining and encouraging each of us to do. They describe the need to move out of the intellectual understanding of the knowledge of freedom from sin, and into the practice of knowing that you are set free from sin.
Key points from reading:
- We have died with Christ so that we can live with Him
- The death of Christ he died was to take away our sin, and we receive His death as a gift so that we can be freed from sin.
- To receive this gift of freedom and release from sin we need to change how we think.
Discussion:
- Scripture: Romans 6:8
- When we are baptised into the death of Jesus, we take on His death as our own. We receive His death as if it were our own through the gift and the grace of God. He allows us to receive Christ’s death as our own so that He can release us from sin.
- And the reason why God has given us this gift through His grace, is so that we can live with Him. While we are sinners we cannot live with God. God does not sin and sin cannot exist in His presence. So, if we are to live with Him, we must have our sins taken away. This is what He has done for us through offering His Son as the perfect sacrifice for sin.
- And since we have died to this world through Christ, we move from the kingdom of the world and into God’s kingdom. We are dead to this world, but alive to God in Jesus Christ as new creations and citizens of the Kingdom of God. And all of this depends upon our faith. We must believe these things.
- Scripture: Romans 6:9
- Jesus didn’t just die. If that were true then He would be no different to the rest of mankind.
- But Jesus is different because when He died, He was able to re-take His life because He had never sinned. Death is the penalty we receive for sinning in this life. But Christ never sinned and so the penalty of death was not appropriate and it could not hold Him. Death had no power over Him and so He could be resurrected and take His life again.
- And because of the gift of God’s grace, we too are able to enter the life that Jesus received after His resurrection and we too can live with Him, freed from sin.
- Scripture: Romans 6:10
- It is clear in this scripture, that the purpose of His death was to die for our sins. He died to remove the sins of those who believe and have faith in Him and in the working of God through Him.
- We note also that His sacrifice was not like the blood and animal sacrifices made under the law. Those sacrifices happened repeatedly to cover the sins of the people under the law. But Jesus died just once. He died for all people, but His sacrifice occurred only once, not over and over again.
- This concept is not well understood by many Christians today. You hear many people saying that when they sin, they “Cover themselves with the blood of Jesus.” In essence what they are doing is to use the blood of Jesus as a repeated sacrifice, like the animal sacrifices under the law.
- And that is wrong (Read Hebrews 9:25-26). Jesus died ONCE for ALL, as the scripture says. He died once and we accept His sacrifice once. When we believe that we have died with Him in baptism, we accept His death as sacrifice for our sins and are set free from sin. We are also set free from the law because the law is binding on a person only while they are alive (Read Romans 7:1).
- So, when we accept the sacrifice of Jesus for the removal of our sins, we only need to do it once. But we must truly believe that we are set free from sin, that we have died with Him, and the we now live with Him in service and obedience to God, as He does.
- Scripture: Romans 6:11
- This is the key scripture in understanding this freedom from sin that we receive in Jesus Christ through entering His death in baptism. This is the core of the faith teaching that this freedom relies upon.
- It is how you THINK that is the key. It is what you believe in your heart and mind that provides this freedom. As the scripture says, “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
- You must “consider yourselves dead to sin.” This is how you must think about all of this.
- No longer think of yourself as a sinner. Think of yourself as having died with Christ, been buried with Christ, and are now alive with Christ seated at the right hand of God, free from sin and free from the law. This is how you must consider, thin and believe about where you stand right now.
- You are no longer a sinner because Christ has set you free. You are no longer able to sin because sin is the breaking of the law or lawlessness (Read 1 John 3:4) and you have died to the law through the death of Christ (Read Romans 7:1). And when you believe this with every part of your being, then God can begin the work of transformation to change you into the image of His Son, Jesus Christ, and this is the work of the Holy Spirit. Believe it because that is what this scripture is telling you to do.
Key Takeaways:
- Jesus died once for the sins of all mankind and we can take His death as our own to become set free from sin.
- As we died with Him we also live with Him. Jesus only died once and we need to believe that in that one act we are set free from all sin, as well as the law.
- The key to this freedom and release from sin is faith and how we think. We are called to consider ourselves dead to sin, and alive to God in Jesus Christ. This is how we are too think and what we are to believe.
Prayer Points
- Pray and ask the Lord to show you the truth of these things, that you are indeed freed from sin and that you are no longer a sinner.
- Pray and recognise that even though you will make mistakes and are not perfect in yourself, God has already taken away those sins and failures in Jesus Christ because His death was for all sins, past, present, or future.
- Pray and thank the Lord God for this because even though we are not yet perfect, He is working on us when we believe we are free from sin in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit is working in us to bring us to perfection in the image of Jesus Christ (Read: 2 Corinthians 3:17-18).