©1999 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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12/12/99
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Freedom From Sin Cont.
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Romans 6:11
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12/12/99 Free From Sin Cont.
We are going to return today
to a passage we began studying last week.
The passage is found in Romans 6,
but it will help us to take a few minutes
to bring us up to speed with where we've
been
and how we got there.
We are now in our third month
on a series we are calling Freedom in Christ.
The study began with a statement Christ makes in
John 8:32 where He says,
"... and you shall know the truth, and the
truth shall make you free."
From that statement we have moved ahead in our
study to see
that when we come to Christ
our union with Him brings us freedom in
two major areas:
1. Freedom from the Law,
and 2. Freedom from sin.
We spent several weeks looking at the first of those
two,
freedom from the Law,
and then last week we moved on
to the second area of freedom,
freedom from Sin.
And last week we spent most of our time
in several verses in Romans 6,
verses in which Paul talks to us
about where freedom from sin comes from,
and how it becomes a growing reality in our
lives.
In Romans 6:11-13 we saw Paul calling us to live
lives free from sin.
He said,
Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.
Rom. 6:12 ¶ Therefore do not let sin reign
in your mortal body so that you obey its
lusts,
Rom. 6:13 and do not go on presenting the
members of your body to sin as instruments
of unrighteousness; but present yourselves
to God as those alive from the dead, and
your members as instruments of
righteousness to God.
Now, in our study last week
we zipped through those three verses pretty fast
so that we could get to verse 14
and the concept that it contains.
In that 14th verse
Paul went on to reveal to us how
the power of sin can be broken in our lives.
He said,
Rom. 6:14 For sin shall not be master over
you, for you are not under law but under
grace.
We did not have time
to look closely at what that meant,
but we did establish a sort of beachhead for
our study
by recognizing that Paul was telling us
that in those areas of our lives
where sin continues to dominate,
that sin domination exists
because we have not yet understood
the true nature of God's grace
sufficiently to break the power of that
sin.
Now, we have a lot more work we need to do with
that verse,
but as we move back into this study
I want to back up first of all
to those three verses we ran through so
quickly last week.
We talked last week
about the crucial link between how we think
and how we act.
... and you shall know the truth, and the
truth shall make you free.
...And do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of
your mind...
There are a lot of positive thinking philosophies
floating around the world today.
"Change your mind, change your life."
"Anything is possible if only you believe."
"Think positive - be positive."
"I'm OK, you're OK."
There is an element of truth
behind all such philosophies.
The way we think
really does have a dramatic effect
on the way we act,
and if we change our thinking patterns
it will bring changes to our performance.
But there is a dramatic difference
between what God offers the Christian
in the way of changed thinking
and what the world offers.
All the changed thinking systems offered to us by the
world around us
begin with changing our thinking
so that we can then experience changed
performance,
resulting in our becoming a new, or
different, or better person.
Changed thinking
changes performance
which changes who we are.
And the motivation for changed thinking
is the promise of the changed life that will
follow.
But that is exactly the opposite
of what God offers the Christian.
With God and the Christian
it is not:
changed thinking
bringing changed performance
resulting in changed identity,
but rather it is
changed identity
providing the basis for changed thinking
resulting in change behavior.
Let me try it again.
The world says change your thinking
so that you can become a new person.
God says to the Christian,
"I have already recreated you and made you a
new person,
now let Me teach you how to think
in a way that is consistent with who you really are."
John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to
them He gave the right to become children
of God, even to those who believe in His
name...
2 Cor. 5:17 Therefore if anyone is in
Christ, he is a new creature; the old things
passed away; behold, new things have
come.
If we wanted to take the time
we could spend the rest of the morning,
and the rest of the month
tracing through statement after statement
throughout the New Testament
presenting the truth,
the certainty,
the eternal fact that those of us who
enter into Christ
have been recreated into new beings
by the sovereign work of God
as a result of our faith in Christ.
Now, to our minds, of course,
this just doesn't seem to be possible.
Forgiveness we can understand.
But becoming a new person we cannot.
The truth is, there seems to be so much evidence to
the contrary.
We still fight many of the same temptations,
we still see the same stupid responses
blasting out of us at times,
we still wrestle with fears,
and with confusion,
and with doubts about ourselves
and about our God.
So how in the world could we be a new creation?
But the truth is...
the TRUTH is we are.
And God's entire blueprint for bringing freedom
from sin into our lives
is constructed upon this truth - we are now new
creations in Christ,
sons and daughters of God,
brothers and sisters of Christ,
having already died to our former
life,
and been resurrected to a new eternal life in
Christ.
Now, I bring all of this up at this point in our study
because I want us to return to some statements
we covered too quickly last week,
beginning with Paul's statement in Romans
6:11.
Paul says:
Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.
There is a word in this verse
we need to look at more closely
before this statement will make sense to us.
It is the word "consider".
It is used numerous times throughout the New
Testament,
but whenever it is used
to describe our relationship with a statement
of Christian doctrine
it carries with it unique meaning -
it describes an active process
in which we choose to wrestle with the concept,
to focus on it,
to stay with it mentally
until we see that it is true.
EX.
A few years ago a fascinating type of art work
became popular.
For a while there were displays of these things in
many of the shopping malls.
I've also seen books of them for sale,
and they've even turned up in the comics section
of the Sunday paper.
When you first look at the paper
on which this art appears
it looks like a mass of unrelated colored dots
and lines.
It's meaningless in the way our eye normally
focuses on an object.
But if you continue to stare at the painting,
and then force your eyes out of focus,
as if you were looking at something a long
distance away,
when you suddenly hit the right focal
distance,
what appeared to have been
just a mass of meaningless blobs of color
suddenly becomes this amazing 3
dimensional world containing depth,
and perspective,
and detail of landscapes,
and faces, and creatures so real
you feel as if you could reach out
and touch them.
If you have ever seen one of those pictures,
and have been successful in forcing your eyes
to view it in a way
that allows you to see that normally
unseeable world,
that is the best example I can offer you
of what is involved in this word "consider".
When Paul says,
Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus...
he is calling us to focus on this truth
until what seemed to be absurdity
suddenly become the true reality.
So how in the world do we do that?
I can remember the first time I ever saw on of those
pictures I just described to you,
I mean REALLY saw it.
I remember the frustration of the person at the
display
as he tried to help me see
what I could not yet see.
I remember him describing for me
the picture I was suppose to be seeing.
There was a phase in that discovery process
in which the only thing that kept me continuing
to stare at the blobs of color
was the patient, confident encouragement of
this other person
assuring me that there really was
something there,
something I could not yet see,
but something that was very
much worth seeing.
The Word of God used by the Spirit of God
serves that same kind of role in our lives
when it comes to understanding our freedom
from sin.
Do you remember last week I told you
that we should allow passages like this
to make us angry.
We should allow ourselves to fight with them,
to be able to say to ourselves
and to our God,
"I DON'T SEE IT! If it's there,
if it's true, I don't see it."
Now let me see if I can help us
make some practical sense out of this.
If as a Christian
we find ourselves still fighting
with some areas in our lives
in which sin continues to have mastery
over us,
I can tell you two huge lies
that we are currently accepting
as absolute truth in our lives.
#1. We believe our sin is consistent with who we
really are -
it fits with our perception of our true identity.
We would maybe say it this way to ourselves:
"This is who I am. It is not who I want to be,
it's certainly not who my God wants me to be,
it may not be who I will be in the future,
but the fact is, it's who I am right now."
And #2, we believe that our sin
is necessary in order for our needs to be met.
Now, we may wholeheartedly admit it is sin.
We may even feel a tremendous sense of shame
and regret that it is a part of our life.
But because we believe
that it provides the only way for certain needs in
our lives to be met,
we find ourselves helpless to break its
power.
You know what that is?
That is us staring at the two-dimensional sheet
of paper covered with meaningless blobs and lines
of color,
believing it is the true reality.
And then, into that blindness,
and the lies it breeds,
comes the voice of our God.
He says, "You are my holy one,
freed forever from sin,
My chosen ambassador,
and My eternal friend."
And we say, "Yes Lord, I know I should be. And I
will try harder. I promise."
And He says, "My child, I did not say you should
be My holy one.
I said you ARE.
I did not say you should be freed from sin.
I said you have been already."
And we respond by saying,
"Oh I get it, Lord! When you see me through the
blood of Christ,
then you do not see my sins,
so then because of Christ I am seen as
holy."
And He responds to us,
"My child, read My Word. I did not say that I see
you as holy. I said you ARE holy.
2 Cor. 5:21 He made Him who knew no
sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might
become the righteousness of God in Him.
1 Pet. 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a
royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people
for God's own possession, that you may
proclaim the excellencies of Him who has
called you out of darkness into His
marvelous light;"
Our God says to us,
"My child, more than 60 times in My Word I have
called you my Holy Ones.
I do not say you should be My Holy Ones,
I said you are.
I have recreated you at the deepest level of your
being.
I have giving you a new identity,
and created a new heart within you."
And we respond:
"But then, Lord - why do I still sin? If I am a new
creation,
why does sin still have such mastery over me?"
And the beginning of the answer to that question is
simply this:
we sin because we do not believe we are who
God says we are.
Remember the first of those two lies I mentioned a
few minutes ago,
those two lies that exist in all those Christians
who continue to live in bondage to sin?
#1. We believe our sin is consistent with who we
really are -
it fits with our perception of our true identity.
As long as that lie remains in place within us
we will continue to live under the mastery of our
sin.
Only when we can look at ourselves
and affirm the truth,
saying to ourselves,
"I am not who I once was.
I am not the tacky little creature
who once spent his life
scrounging in the gutters,
digging through other people's left
overs,
looking for scraps of love,
and significance,
and acceptance.
I am no longer the helpless emotional orphan I once
was,
clinging desperately to my own inadequate
abilities to meet my needs
in any way I can.
I am now a holy one of God Himself,
His son,
His priest,
His dwelling place,
His joy and His delight.
This sinful behavior -
this bitterness,
this lust,
this self-centeredness,
this obsession with things...
this is now completely inconsistent with my true
identity. I once clung to these things,
hoping they would ease my pain,
and give me purpose,
and make me feel important and loved.
But through my Lord Jesus Christ
I have become a new creation.
And sinful behavior is so completely inconsistent
who I really am."
Rom. 6:11 Even so consider yourselves to
be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ
Jesus.
And the power of sin
will only begin to be broken
when you can at last hear and accept the
truth.
Now, that is certainly not the whole picture,
but it is the beginning.
As long as we believe our sinful behavior
fits with who we really are
that sin will continue to have full reign in
our lives.
Only when we hear the voice of our God
telling us about who we have become in Christ,
and accept the truth of our new identity,
will we be able to say to our sin,
"This is not who I am! I am God's holy one..."
only then will we begin to build within us
the foundation that will break the power
of evil in our lives.