One day, an out-of-work man knocks on the door of a home in an upper-class neighborhood. The lady of the house answers. “Pardon me Ma’am; I’m out of work and looking for any odd jobs that people need done. I’m very handy with everything from repairs to yard work, to painting…”
“Painting?” the woman jumped in.
“Oh, yes, Ma’am! I’m a very careful painter,” the man replied, his face brightening at the realization she could provide him some work.
“I’ll tell you what. My husband just bought some green paint last week to paint the porch out back with, but we haven’t had any time. If you can do a good job, then you can paint it before he gets home and surprise him.
“Now, do a particularly good job and paint the trimmings white also, and I’ll pay you an extra bonus.”
“Oh yes, Ma’am, I’ll do an excellent job!” He was told the paints were also around back in the garage.
A few hours later, the man returns to the door.
“That was quick, did you do a good job?” the woman inquires.
“Oh yes Ma’am, two coats! But there’s something you should know,” the man says.
“That’s not a Porsche, that’s a Mercedes!”
Paul Paints Pictures for us In Romans 6
In Romans 6 Paul is painting a picture, a picture of the present that is based on the past. In verse 5 the painting is of two scenes:
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united (planted as one) with him in a resurrection like his.
1. The first painting is of our being united with Christ in His death.
Because of that fact, we see a painting of the future-our resurrection with Jesus! The reality paints the future! Because we KNOW we have died with Christ, we KNOW we shall be resurrected just like Him!
Paul is picturing our union with all that is Jesus Christ. Everything He experienced, we experience by faith. But Paul wants to drive this picture home to the reality of our daily living, not just our future eternity.
2.In verse 6 He pictures a truly unbelievable truth…
We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.
Paul says that our old man, our old ‘Adamic’ self, was actually crucified with Christ, with the result being that we are no longer in bondage to sin. Paul says our fleshly body of sin is rendered powerless, brought to nothing, put out of business, unemployed.
This truth transcends our ‘fleshly’ comprehension. This truth runs contrary to our real-life experience. Sin is very much alive, and something that most of us tolerate, deal with, cope with, resent, you name it, we do it when it comes to this sin nature that plagues our Christian walk. Even Jesus told his disciples that when they pray they should say “Father, forgive our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Jesus even acknowledged that we should daily ask forgiveness of our trespasses.
Paul wants to drive this truth further into our hearts and into our daily walk! He paints a beautiful picture of the reality of our New Life in Christ in verse 7:
For one who has died has been set free from sin.
Set free is (dedikaiōtai)-perfect passive indicative of dikaioō, a word we have seen before in Romans 5. It’s the word we translate “justified”. The word means that because of the blood of Jesus and our faith in what He did, God can declare us righteous. He doesn’t just overlook our sins, He declares there is no sin, we are Holy and Righteous just as God is Holy and Righteous. As Paul wrote in Romans 5:1:
Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Our faith in the finished work of Christ on our behalf places us before God as sinless and Holy as He is. Why, because we are placed ‘in Christ’ (we are planted as one), His Holy and Righteous Son. Christ’s righteousness becomes our righteousness!
A. Paul wants us to realize that if by faith, we can believe that the blood of Jesus covers our past sins, and our New Birth makes us justified before God,
B. then by faith, our death with Christ justifies us (makes us righteous) and thereby frees us from this sin nature!
- By faith we are brought into a new birth,
- By faith we are brought into a new walk, a walk that is freed from the power of sin!
One painting is of the crucified Christ, shedding His blood upon our sins, and making us white as snow. The other painting shows our “old man” hanging with Christ on the cross, and our New man walking free from the chains of sin as we walk hand in hand with our risen Savior!
This is what Paul paints in verse 8:
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
A cartoon read – “Well, I haven’t actually DIED to sin, but I did feel kind of faint once.”
This is not speaking of our life after death with Jesus. This is talking about our lives right now! If this is true, then this will be the reality. If your old man is dead, your new life will be entirely with Jesus Christ. There are no ifs ands or buts.
The Christian walk is not a fleshly or a self-willed walk. Our walk with Christ is to be totally with and by and through the means of Jesus Christ!
PUT ON THE NEW SELF
The believer’s new life imparted to him at the moment of believing is the life of Jesus Christ. We don’t get a piece of Him, we receive His Life!
We live by means of Him. We get every bit of our spiritual life from Jesus Christ!
Paul is not speaking of fellowship with Jesus, he is not speaking of our eternity with Jesus. He is speaking of our LIFE, our LIVING!
If God paints a picture of our eternal life with Him through the Blood of Jesus, why can’t we see the painting of our Living as Jesus because we were crucified with Jesus on the Cross?
Why do we doubt the truth that we have been freed from the power of sin? Why do we doubt that our body (of sin) is unemployed, powerless? Why do we doubt that our old man is really dead?
It is as if Paul is reading our minds as He writes verses 9-12:
9 We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.
Today we will look at Romans 6:7-12 and will seek to understand the first two steps of deliverance from sin. We will look at Knowing and then we will look at reckoning (or counting upon), and then we will look at the practical way this works in our daily walk.
1. KNOWING THIS
In verse six we read: knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with him.
Knowing is from the greek word “ginosko” which is objective knowledge. The knowledge you learn at school, who the President’s have been, facts about the Civil War, Vietnam War. If someone is acquanted with someone, they know that person
The other word for knowing is “oida”, which is knowledge of a more personal, intimate nature. It is an inward consciousness. It is intuitive knowledge not necessarily known from external sources. You have a gut feeling about someone. A Mom has an intuition about a hurting child.
- John 8:55 illustrates: But you have not known (ginosko) him. I know (oida) him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word.
- John 13:7 illustrates: Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest (ginosko) not now; but thou shalt understand (oida) hereafter.
- Hebrews 8: 11: And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know (ginosko) the Lord,’ for they shall all know (oida) me, from the least of them to the greatest.
In Romans 6 verse nine, we find another Knowing, but this time it is from “oida”, meaning an intimate, personal knowledge.
Paul writes that we know personally, intuitively, that Jesus is rasied from the dead, and therefore He will never die again. We know within that Jesus conquered death!
So what we must know personally and intuitively, is that if Jesus conquered death by His resurrection, He also conquered sin by His death! So verse 11 says, when you know this personally, you will know and see that your old man is dead to sin. The King James says you must reckon, others count, others consider.
So, living the new life starts with:
- Knowing that He died to set us free from sin.
- Knowing that our old self was nailed to the cross w/Him.
- Knowing that just as Jesus rose from the dead & will live forever, we have been raised to a new life in him that has no end.
- Knowing that we live no longer by the tyranny of sin.
Bottom line: Once we know in our heart of hearts (as revealed by the Holy Spirit) that our old man was crucified with Jesus and buried with Him, then we must count on our old man being kept dead to sin. We reckon the old man dead!
The Four Steps of Deliverance
Last week I mentioned there were four steps of deliverance from sin. These are in our Journey in Romans 6, 7 and 8.
- Knowing
- Reckoning
- Presenting ourselves to God
- Walking in the Spirit
Here is the connection between believing and knowing. When you read the Word of God, you have a choice: believe or not believe.
“but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” John 20:31
Once you believe, by faith in Jesus Christ, you inwardly KNOW you have eternal life. No matter the doubts, no matter the feelings, no matter what the Devil says, you KNOW Jesus is your Lord and Savior.
“These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” 1 John 5:13
Believing becomes KNOWING! KNOWING turns into a life – long Believing Jesus Christ.
You don’t leave Jesus at the Cross. You don’t get up from the altar and walk away in your own strength. Your NEW LIFE is Jesus Christ! Your daily walk is a daily walk of BELIEVING JESUS!
Our Belief in the Blood of Jesus results in our KNOWING we are justified before God.
Our Belief in our crucifixion with Jesus Christ results in our KNOWING that our old man is dead to sin, and that we are (JUSTIFIED) freed from the power of sin.
Both Paul and John knew this truth:
- I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. Galatians 2:-20
- For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3
- We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him. We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. 1 John 5:18-20
When our belief in Romans 6:6 becomes the inward knowing of Romans 6:9, we are ready to go to the second aspect of deliverance form sin, from verse 11:
2. Count on this (Reckon)
NIV: In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Romans 6:11
KJV: Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:11
Phillips: In the same way look upon yourselves as dead to the appeal and power of sin but alive and sensitive to the call of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:1
ESV: So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Romans 6:11
The point is, that if we believe that our salvation is because Jesus is alive, and since He is alive in God, then we must see ourselves as alive in God as well. God would not have us alive in Him if we were still under the power of sin! We are alive in God, and sin has no power over God! Therefore sin has no power over us, because we died to sin and are now alive IN GOD!
How Does Reckoning Work? Reckoning Is Faith In Action!
“You Count Upon Something”
- This doesn’t just happen! – It is something the believer can & must do daily.
- Christ’s’ death & resurrection has altered their position & they should live in accordance w/the new reality.
- He doesn’t say that sin is dead! But that we are to count ourselves as dead to it!
Faith accepts God’s fact. Faith is always founded upon the past. Hope relates to the future. Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for. Because we have faith in what God did in the past, we can have hope in the future.
Jesus said this about faith:
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Mark 11:24
Faith believes God has already done it! If you pray hoping God will do something, that is not faith! Faith always relates to the past, that God has already done something. If you say God can, God may, God will, God must, you do not have faith. Faith always says GOD HAS DONE IT!
So when do we have faith in our crucifixion? Not when you say God can, God will, God must crucify me. You have faith in what God has done when you exclaim “Praise God I am crucified!”
Reckoning makes real that which you accept by faith! Because I believe I am crucified with Christ, I am now count myself dead to sin!
The Two greatest facts in history are:
- All Our Sins Are Dealt With By The Blood
- We Ourselves Are Dealt With By The Cross
Barriers to Reckoning
- Doubt of the divine facts
The devil comes to us and says, there is something stirring inside you. How can you say you are dead to sin? God deals directly with our sins by blotting them out with the blood of Jesus. But God deals with our sin nature in an indirect way. He doesn’t remove the sin nature, he doesn’t remove this sinful flesh, he simply kills the go between, our “old self.”
We don’t have victory over sin, wed on’t overcome our sin, only Christ has done that. What we do have is the power to be delivered from sin. That power is by reckoning what God has done in the past as true in our present.
Our daily choice is what facts to count on and live by: the facts of our daily experiences or the mightier fact that we are “IN CHRIST” and our old man is crucified in Him.
What facts are you placing your faith in?
Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for, the vidence of things unseen! How do you substantiate something? We substantiate things everyday.
I hold up a white towel. It is already white, but my eyes look at it and communicate with my brain to substantiate that it is white. Now if the socks are navy blue I may have to go outside in the sunlight to substantiate that they are not black, but indeed are navy blue.
You cannot substantiate divine things with your fleshly sight or touch.There is only one way to substantiate the invisible things of God – by faith. Faith makes the real things (even though they be invisible) of God become real in my experience!
Faith substantiates to me the things of Christ!
To faith, God’s Word is true, to a doubting mind not illumined by the Holy Spirit, it is not true, but a lie!
Whatever contradicts the truth of God’s Word we are to regard as a lie of the devil.
The devil will work overtime to convince you that you are not dead to sin, and that God’s Word is a lie. Reckoning is done not based on experience but on the basis of what God says!
- 2 Cor 5:7 for we walk by faith, not by (appearances) sight.
Fact, Faith and Experience are walking on top of a wall. Fact walked steadily on, turning neither to the right or the left, and never looking behind. Faith followed, and all went well as long as he kept his eyes focused upon Fact.; but as soon as he became concerned about Experience and turned to see how he was getting on, he lost his balance and tumbled off the wall, taking Experience with him.
The same thing happened to Peter. As long as he focused on the fact that Jesus Christ was walking on the water, he was fine. When he started to feel the wind and the waves, he took his eyes off the fact of Jesus Christ and let the experience of the wind blow him over into the water. That is why Jesus said, “O ye of little faith!”
3. Let the Knowing be Applied by Counting
God doesn’t remove the sin nature that we inherit from Adam. He doesn’t remove our flesh. God removes the intermediary, the catalyst, our old man. If we do not know this, if we do not reckon this, then we will attempt to handle our sin nature in the wrong ways.
We Focus on sin nature
If we focus our attention on the sin nature, or the devil, or evil, or whatever we want to call it, we will constantly trying to resist sin in our own strength. Our focus on trying to resist sin will just further enslave us to it. It like trying to break a bad habit; the more you try to quit or overcome, the more you end up doing it. So your guilt emotions run back and forth between saying you’re sorry to doing the sin, and at some point you either give up trying to quit, or you get hardened and say well that’s just me, why fight it?
Either way, sin wins. The sin nature cannot be overcome. That is not God’s way!
We Focus on the Flesh
Some people focus their attention on the flesh. These are the folks who set up a system of rules. These are your “legalistic” Christians. These are the ones who don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t dance, don’t chew and who don’t go with girls that do. Their constant attention is upon conquering the desires of the flesh. These are the Christians who see their walk as a struggle between the black dog and the white dog.
This is not God’s way either. Either way of fighting sin will produce failure, defeat, legalism, pride, a fleshly walk. If you overcome a sin or a bad habit, then you say look what I did. You may throw in a “by the grace of God”, but inwardly you are thinking “I beat this!”
So for most Christians who walk in the flesh, the Christian life is one of constant battles with what you think you must do to be a Christian.
You force yourself to do this or that, read your Bible, go to church, maybe even get on your knees once in a while and pray. You are not living the Christian life. You are not living the LIFE that Jesus died to give you. You are doing the best that you can to look like a Christian.
God neither eradicates the root of sin within nor suppresses the body without!
We Focus on Christ
- What is true of Christ is to be true of us.
The divine principle is that God has done the work in Christ and not in us as individuals. The all-inclusive death and the all-inclusive resurrection of God’s Son were accomplished fully without us in the first place.
The history of Christ is to become the experience of the Christian. We have no spiritual experience apart from Him. We were crucified with Him, we were quickened, raised, and set by God in the heavenlies “in Him” and we are complete “in Him” (Rom 6:6, Eph 2:5,6; Col 2:10)
God purposed to include us in Christ.
To think you can experience anything of God apart from Him is wrong, and self-focused. Your spiritual experience is only entering into His history and His experience.
At a couple of points in my life I felt that I died to my old man. The experience I had gone through was earth-shattering, stripping me of any self-esteem, of any dreams, any self-respect. On a couple different occasions my world came to an end. Through God’s grace I accepted what God was doing and died to what I wanted. I willingly accepted my execution. But my spiritual experience was not unique to me. God had simply brought me to a point where I shared what Christ had already done.
None of us can boast in our experiences, because we have simply entered into what Christ has already done.
Even our salvation is not given to us apart from what He has done in Christ.
“He that hath the Son has life”
Your spiritual growth, your spiritual walk, your spiritual deliverance from sin, nothing is yours alone. It is all as you enter into what Christ has already done!
Since salvation has crucified our old man, sin is annulled, it has no power over our old man, and therefore, the body of sin is unemployed. We have a new King reigning in our body, the Grace of Jesus Christ:
Romans 5:21 (ESV) so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
When you are born again, the Holy Spirit places a NEW KING on the throne of your heart and life. King Jesus comes into your life, removes the power of the old self, and brings you new life in HIM!
- Doe Jesus always stay on our throne? No, He does not !By our choice!
- Does He want to always be on your throne? Yes He Does! And we will see from His Word how this can be possible!
A floor lamp is connected to a wall outlet. The light is possible because of the electricity that flows from the outlet up through the cord into the light bulb. Just so, a sinner has this old man, this nature of Adam that is under the domination of Sin. Remove the old man, and Sin no longer has a conduit to appeal to the man’s flesh! When a new believer understands that the old man is truly dead, that he has been crucified on the cross, it presents an entirely NEW WAY of praying when faced with the temptation of sin!
Our prayers should confess confidence in the fact that the old man is dead, that he was crucified and buried, and that now we are in Christ.
Is your every breath an expression of the fact that your new life is totally dependent upon Jesus Christ? Or do you depend upon this dead old man, have you got him on life support and are dragging him around with you?
The Christian walk is not a weekend with some guy named Bernie. You are dead. The old man is dead. Now everything you have is in Jesus Christ! Every spiritual experience He has experienced. He has already overcome sin, and if you die to the old man, whatever He has experienced will be your experience.
You simply believe. Let your faith in what He has accomplished rule your walk. Don’t walk by sight. If you do, you will allow your experiences to dictate what you believe. You’ll be like the scientist that sees the fossils, sees the rock strata, and conclude that God could not have made the world in six day.
But God said He did. Who will you believe? Will you place your faith in the facts as God has stated them, or will you walk by sight?
Faith in the facts becomes the substantiating of the unseen.
As you believe what God has said, you will see that indeed, that sin that always bothered you, all of a sudden, it has no effect upon you. You simply saw that Christ had already overcome it. You entered into the experience of Jesus Christ. By faith, you substantiated that what is unseen is definitely true.
You first knew it, then you really knew it, then you counted on it! He is faithful!
God’s way is to get us weaker and weaker until we finally see that Jesus has put our old man to death on the cross. God delivers us from sin, not by strengthening our old man but by crucifying him; not by helping him do anything but by removing him from the scene of action.
For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh— Philippians 3:3
That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. 1 Corinthians 1:29-31
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Corinthians 12:9
Do you want the power of Christ in your life? Do you want to experience deliverance from sin? Count on what He has already done for you. There can be no confidence in your flesh or your abilities. There can only be a counting upon His strength. In fact, glory in your weaknesses, and know His power!
Your old man is dead. This you must come to know deep in your heart and spirit. Once you see it, then count on it, and by faith enter into the spiritual victories that have already been won by Jesus Christ. His life must be your life. Your life is dead. Jesus lives in your stead!
Loving the Word with the MudPreacher 