HOW TO LIVE NOT BEING CONTROLLED BY SIN

HOW TO LIVE NOT BEING CONTROLLED BY SIN

ROMANS 6:5

Charles e. Whisnant, April 10 2011  45.71

FOR IF¹⁴⁸⁷ WE HAVE BEEN PLANTED TOGETHER⁴⁸⁵⁴ IN THE LIKENESS³⁶⁶⁷ OF HIS DEATH²²⁸⁸,WE SHALL BE ALSO IN THE LIKENESS OF HIS RESURRECTION ³⁸⁶

Vs. 5  FOR IF:  

·       In view of the fact that we have been justified by faith and if we have been separated from the indwelling sinful nature and it’s so complete or effective that the believer is not compelled to sin anymore (we may sin but now it is a choice). The believer has in actuality been permanently delivered from the power of sin. And secondly,  God at the same time imparted the divine nature (“newness of life”) which gives the believer both the desire and the power to do God’s will.

Paul is going to begin to explain how “newness of life” comes about and how we become a new kind of person in every aspect of our life.  Whereas before, we had this Adamic nature, but now it has been broken and we have a new relationship with Christ.

We have been planted together^4858[i]

·       Grown together. 

Have become united with:  Here speaking of intimate union + growing up or springing  up together.  When we were fused together with Christ, there is a grafting process.  Here we as a believer have been grafted into the life of Christ.  We share in the life of Christ, just as a limb grafted into a tree shares the life of the tree.

·       The life of Christ is now our life. We are now “united with” Christ, His resurrection life flows into us and we continue to grow with Him into spiritual maturity. The process is called or known as sanctification.

·       “Born within us” there is this sense of oneness with Christ. There is this close relationship with Christ.

With⁴⁸⁶²

·       A preposition speaks of intimacy.  Closeness.  The two thieves on the Cross. The first thief experienced intimate union with Christ (spiritually) while the other thief experienced only proximity to Christ.

You take this coming together with, we are not only together with one another, but we are so mixed in that nobody can tell the difference one from the other.  We can’t get apart from each other. Once they are put together than cannot be taken apart again.  Illustration making biscuits (Charity) You can have all the ingredients laid out on wax paper, they are separated. But put them altogether, bake them, and you cannot separate those ingredients out again.

Once we have been united with Christ and planted into His death and have been fused into his resurrection, and have been raised from the dead with Him into the newness of life, we cannot go back and live as if we are still in ADAM.

Once John 15:5 we have been planted together into Christ, the branch has been grafted into the tree, we are together.

·       You have this new life planted in us. Jesus Christ is our life, He is LORD.

·       So why do we still sin?  Good question, why do we?

WHERE IS WHAT HAPPENS.  Planted together:  means to grow up together with and pictures the believer in living, vital union, growing up with Christ.  When we place our faith in Jesus Christ, God places us into Christ on the Cross, to share His death, burial and resurrection.

HOW CLOSE ARE YOU TO JESUS?

IN THIS LIKENESS ³⁶⁶⁷[ii]

·       To make like = complete, identification, assimilation, not simulation.

·       Meaning shape, resemblance.   Two men may resemble one another even though they are in no way related to one another.

OF HIS DEATH²²⁸⁸

·       The believer undergoes a death like His.  It can only be like His because His death was the only death that paid the full price of redemption and fully satisfied the Father’s righteous demand.  We only become identified with Christ in His death. We can’t be saved without becoming holy.

WE SHALL BE¹⁵¹⁰ ALSO IN THE LIKENESS OF HIS RESURRECTION:

WE SHALL ²³⁵ 

·       Or Certainly:  In fact in addition to the likeness of his death, we are in likeness of His resurrection.

·       (“in the likeness of”) is not found in the original Greek text but is added by the translators who felt this was the meaning implied by the context.

RESURRECTION ³⁸⁶

·       Means to stand:  literally means “to stand again” or “to cause to stand again.”  Here in this context it means a spiritual resurrection.

·       When the believer is raised to newness of life, by virtue flowing from Christ, into Whom he is engrafted. Colossians 3:1-3.

We have “received the reconciliation” that we may now walk, not away from God, as if released from a prison, but with God, as His children in His Son. Because we are justified, we are to be holy, separated from sin, separated to God; not as a mere indication that our faith is real, and that therefore we are legally safe, but because we were justified for this very purpose, that we might be holy. ...The grapes upon a vine are not merely a living token that the tree is a vine and is alive; they are the product for which the vine exists. It is a thing not to be thought of that the sinner should accept justification-and live to himself. It is a moral contradiction of the very deepest kind, and cannot be entertained without betraying an initial error in the man’s whole spiritual creed. [iii]

James Boice,
Paul’s “method” of sanctification is biblical doctrine. That is, to live as Christians we must know what God has done to us in making us Christians.
We must know what has happened, and the only way we can know what has happened is to know the Bible.
Then, because we know what God has done to us, we are to go on with God, acting on the basis of what has been done for us and in us.
We can express it this way: We cannot go back to being what we were before. We are new creatures in Christ. And if we are new creatures in Christ, the only thing we can do is get on with living the Christian life.
In other words, there is no way for us to go but forward…..This has nothing to do with either method or an experience. It has everything to do with knowing and living by the sufficient Word of God.
Is it not true that one reason we see such immature and even sinful behavior among Christians today is that they have not really been taught what God has done to them and for them when he saved them? Aren’t our churches immature precisely because the pastors are not teaching Bible doctrines? ¹

¹ James Montgomery Boice, Whatever Happened to the Gospel of Grace: Rediscovering the Doctrines That Shook the World (Wheaton: Crossway, 2001) pp. 80,81

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[i] Planted together    4854

1. born together with, of joint origin
1. connate, congenital, innate, implanted by birth or nature
2. grown together, united with
3. kindred

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[ii] Likeness

that which has been made after the likeness of something

1. a figure, image, likeness, representation
2. likeness i.e. resemblance, such as amounts almost to equality or identity

              

[iii] Handley Moule:  Comm on Romans