Dead To Sin, Alive in Christ

                                                 Dead To Sin, Alive In Christ
 
Romans 6:1-10
6 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? 3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.
 
Let me ask you a question this afternoon. What impact has Easter had on your life? The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most history-making, earth-shaking, life-transforming, and eternity-changing truth ever. If the resurrection of Jesus Christ has not made a permanent change in you and your life, this afternoon we need to reexamine ourselves and to understand what it means to have and live the resurrected life offered by the risen Lord Jesus Christ. The resurrected life begins with death, death on the cross upon which the Son of God was crucified.
 
The resurrected life must begin at the foot of the Cross. Before we came to Christ, sin had a choke hold on our lives and we could do nothing but to serve it as obedient slaves. YES…before Jesus, we were slaves to sin. Through the death and resurrection of Christ, however…we gain the power to live for God.
 
Let us look at the death of Christ. This should still be fresh since we just celebrated good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. Do we fully understand the work of Christ upon the cross? Man, woman and child, in disobedience to the command of God, sinned and fell from the state of innocence and is under the sentence of death, spiritual death & eternal death. Man, woman and child, is separated from God and under the bondage of sin’s chains.
 
Romans 3:10-12
10 As it is written:
“There is none righteous, no, not one; 11 There is none who understands;
There is none who seeks after God. 12 They have all turned aside;
They have together become unprofitable; There is none who does good, no, not one.”
 
 
This sin nature was passed on to every person since the creation of Adam and Eve. That means you and I were born with this sin nature and were spiritually dead, being separated from God, not only by the inheritance of Adam’s sin but also by our own willful choices to sin and therefore falling short of God’s standard of righteousness, we were all under the sentence of eternal separation from God.
 
God’s Word tells us that “God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses”, sent the sinless, spotless Lamb of God, Jesus Christ to take all our sin, every one of them, upon Himself. All our sin was imputed to Him.
 
Isaiah 53:6
All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, everyone, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
 
All our sin was imputed to Christ. God then poured out His wrath against sin on the son of God, Jesus Christ, let’s let that sink in. Gods anger, Gods wrath against sin…your sins and mine, were poured out on His only Son as payment, propitiating or appeasing His wrath, satisfying His holy, righteous demands against sin.
 
God took out His wrath on Christ instead of on sinners. (You and I) Now anyone who will place their faith and trust in Jesus Christ as personal Savior from sin will receive the forgiveness of sins, and the wrath of God will never again come down upon that one because Christ bore God's wrath on every believer's behalf. Why? Christ satisfied the holy, righteous demands of God against sin. Now, through the death of Christ, a holy God and sinful men can meet, and God can have fellowship with men, women and child.
 
In order for this to be permanent, the sinner has to die. YES!!! That is what our opening verses meant. The price of entry into the resurrected life is His death, but the process of living the resurrected life is our death. There can be no resurrection without death. Death always precedes resurrection... if we want to experience resurrection in our own life, we must die.
 
From our opening text we read…
 
Romans 6:6
6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.
 
Likewise, you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. “Our old man” is crucified with Christ when we were baptized “into the Body of Christ” when we place our faith and trust in Jesus Christ as our personal Savior from sin.
 
This is what Paul meant when he said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Everybody should be familiar with that verse by now. After all, it was in our camping shirts last year. Every believer that has put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, has been crucified with Him! Living the resurrected life means being crucified, dead to self and dead to sin and walking in the newness of life through faith in Christ.
 
Through the shed blood of Jesus Christ in His death on the cross…
 
Ephesians 1:7
7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.
 
Neither Satan or sin, could hold the Son of God in its grip as He defeated the enemies of our souls by raising Him from the dead. The resurrected life finds its power in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul declares in…
 
1 Corinthians 15:17
17 And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!
 
That is why the resurrection is very important. The physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is essential to the truth and power of the gospel. There is no Christianity without HIS resurrection!
 
Justification is the act of God removing the guilt and penalty of sin from a sinner who places their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness, in Whom that believer stands a righteous person before God’s law for time and eternity. This is all made possible by and based upon the satisfactory propitiation which Jesus Christ offered on the Cross as the complete payment of the penalty for sin and secured in His resurrection.
 
It is because of this justification that we can now walk in the newness of life. Living the resurrected life is living a transformed life. Now listen…I know that many feel the burden, the doubt, whether they have been saved or not. And why wouldn’t they feel that way. Some doubt their salvation because of the lack of spiritual gift. (speaking in tongues, prophesy and so on) Some don’t feel that their good enough. Many are being condemned by the lies and false teachings that has been going around for centuries. Your salvation and mine, is by Gods grace alone.
 
 
Sin’s penalty paid for, sin’s chains broken, we have new life in Christ. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, then your life is defined by and in the resurrection of Christ. You are now a new creation. I am not saying we’re now perfect, NO!!! and we will never be as long as we are still in the flesh. But because of Jesus sacrificed, we stand perfect before God, because God sees His Son when He looks at you and me.
 
Let me show you our former selves before Christ…
 
1 Corinthians 6:9-11
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
 
If God has removed these things in your life, you have been made new, then you are in a good place. You have no need to doubt whether you are saved or not. “But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” Stop listening to the lies of the enemy and start believing in the One that saved you.
 
The resurrection gives us the assurance that Jesus will transform our lives every day. We live empowered by the indwelling Holy Spirit Who enables us to live changed lives. Paul refers to this as “the power of the resurrection.”
 
Before you die with Christ, to self and find new life in Christ, the Bible says that you are the slave of sin, but when you come to Christ you are set free to become an instrument of righteousness and are no longer bound to sin and self. Christ becomes your life.
 
In Conclusion:
 
Living the resurrected life in submission to Christ results in a fruitful life. Having new life in the resurrected Christ means living life daily, walking with Jesus. It means focusing on the risen Lord and not on ourselves. When we live for Him and not for ourselves, we will bear fruit and be productive for Him.
 
Please listen…Do you love Jesus? If you saved, then the answer is YES! Do you have a hunger to know more about Jesus? If you are saved, then the answer is YES! Do you battle with sin daily? If you are saved, then the answer is YES!!! Has your life changed since Christ came into your life? If you have been saved, then the answer is YES!!!
 
Romans 5:6-8
6 For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.