DOES THE GOSPEL ALLOW MEN TO BE UNHOLY AND CONTINIUE TO ABIDE IN SIN?
SHOULD SAINTS SIN? OR
HOW SHOULD SAINTS LIVE IN VIEW OF Romans 6:1-14?
HOW ARE SAINTS TO VIEW THE DEATH OF SIN AND ALIVE WITH CHRIST
JESUS CHRIST CAME TO DIE THAT WE MIGHT DIE TO SIN AND LIVE TO RIGHTEOUSNESS[i]
Charles e. Whisnant, March 27, 2011 #45.69
GOD FORBID3361. HOW SHALL WE, THAT ARE DEAD TO SIN, LIVE ANY LONGER THEREIN?
The transliteration of the Romans 6:2 is:
NOT MAY IT BE WHO WE DIED TO THE SIN HOW STILL SHALL WE LIVE IN IT?[i]
INTRODU CTION
· In every age there have been those who have criticized the doctrine of justification by faith on the grounds that it logically leads to sin. “If all the believer’s sins have already been paid for, if he has already been credited with perfect righteousness, if his good works will not help save him—if all this is true,” ask the antagonist; “then why worry about sin?” :”why try to do good? Why strive to live a righteous life”
Romans 6 is going to give us that answer.
ANSWER: PAUL is going to SHOW how unreasonable the proposition of verse 1 really is, Paul answers the question with another, “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?”
Paul says to the question “Can we continue to sin that grace may abound?” Paul says:
- LET IT NOT BE.
- FAR BE IT FROM.
- PERISH THE THOUGHT.
· NO WAY.· MAY IT NEVER BE.· NO NO NO.· YOU CAN NOT CONTINUE IN SIN.· DOESN’T ALLOW YOU THAT.· IT IS NOT POSSIBLE.
NOW WE WANT TO KNOW WHY NOT?
- Barnhouse: “Holiness starts where justification leaves off or finishes, and if holiness does not start we have the right to suspect that justification never started either..” And he is right.
- John Murray has said: The question really needs to be answered. I agree. Far too many people believe in a salvation experience that does not have to show righteousness or sanctification. In our pop culture today preachers are watering down the means whereby God will bring people to a saving knowledge of Himself.
· People who are genuinely saved and they see those who make a profession of faith live in a world of sin, see their life as a embarrassment or disgrace. They want to believe they are saved, but they know in their minds that there has been no really change in their life. Some want to believe they were saved, but at some point they have lost their salvation. Others believe they have “backslide”. In other words they are still saved but have just fallen from the grace of God for a while.
If I were to ask the average person in the pew in the average church today, HOW DID YOU BECOME A CHRISTIAN AND WHAT DO YOU BELIEVE THE RESULT WILL BE IN YOUR LIFE? You ask the average person who says they are a “Christian” when they were saved, and what has been their progress since they became a “Christian” and you will most likely learn they have not made in progress.
So understanding this chapter and knowing what Paul is saying there is uttermost important. Paul makes this statement: ‘WE WHO DIED TO SIN, HOW SHALL WE LIVE IN IT.”
· I am afraid that the average person in the pew would have little understanding of what it means to have died to sin.
Therefore Paul felt it was needed to deal with the subject set before us.
In my style of teaching, I am trying to go from verse to verse, and sometimes that takes awhile and sometimes it overlaps into the other verses.
THE OVER ALL POINT THAT PAUL IS MAKING:
- A person who has been born again, how can that person continue in sin, and Paul said it cannot be.
- SO WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE DOCTRINE OF GRACE, WE NEED TO UNDERSTAND THIS MATTER OF SIN. We need to understand this matter of THE BELIEVER’S DEATH TO SIN[ii] We tend to look at the SIN as an action rather than a fact.
- Paul want to show that SIN has been dealt with and is no longer an issue in the believers life.
· Paul has shown this doctrine of SALVATION in Romans 3:15-5:21 . If we can understand this matter of salvation we shall understand that God through Jesus Christ as accomplished the victory over SIN.
Here is what Paul is hoping to established in this chapter:
- DEATH AND LIFE CANNOT COEXISIT. WE CANNOT BE DEAD AND LIVING with respect to the same thing at the same time.
[i] READING FROM THE GREEK IN THE COMPLETE BIBLICAL LIBRARY
[ii] In Romans 6:2,7 and 11, it stated that believers have died to sin: ‘we who died to sin” vs 2; “he who has died is freed from sin” vs 7 and “you must consider yourselves dead to sin” v. 11. These expressions means that believers, through their identification with Christ, are dead to the GUILT of sin..
They are viewed by God as if they themselves died in the death of Christ and suffered the full penalty of sin’s guilt. Sin can no longer make any legal claim on them; thus, they are dead to it----free from its condemnation.
That a believer are not dead to the influence or power of sin in their lives is proved both by the Bible (Romans 7:14-25) and Christian experience.
As Robert Haldane points out the meaning of the phrase
· “dead to sin” is often extended to included “death to the power of sin, to which it has not the smallest reference. (so says Robert.) ????
· It exclusively indicates the justification of believers, and their freedom from the guilt of sin, having no allusion to their sanctification, which however, as the Apostsle immediately proceeds to prove, necessarily follows.
Smeation, in commenting on this praise in Romans 6:2
· “we died to sin,” observes that “It frequently occurs in the Pauline epistles in different forms, and uniformly alludes not to an inward deliverance from sin, but to the Christian’s objective relation, or to his personal standing before God in the vicarious work of Christ; it means that we are legally dead to sin in Christ.
Romans: An interpretive outline: by David Steele and Curtis Thomas
My copy was in 1972
(This is not the full notes/outline of the lesson I past out Sunday.
