[0:00] If you've got a Bible with you, you can turn to the New Testament, to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 6.
[0:30] Romans chapter 6, and we're going to read from verses 1 through to verse 14.
[0:41] This is the Apostle Paul writing, and he says, What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means. We are those who have died to sin. How can we live in it any longer?
[0:56] Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
[1:13] For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with.
[1:26] That we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.
[1:37] For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God.
[1:49] In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
[2:01] Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. And offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.
[2:14] For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray, let's ask for God's help as we study this, this morning.
[2:28] Our gracious God, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the truth of your word. We thank you for the way in which our minds and our hearts are renewed by your word. And so we ask for that special mercy this morning. We ask that as we study Romans, you would teach us.
[2:43] We ask that you would change us. That you would show us your son Jesus and we would be changed by what we see. Let your spirit work in our hearts, Father, we pray.
[2:54] And we ask this for Christ's sake and his glory. Amen. I should have listened to the noise of this old building rattling and that.
[3:04] I should have maybe preached on Jonah and the storm or something this morning. But that's not what you've got. We're in Romans chapter 6 this morning. Now the good news, it was good news on Sunday last week.
[3:18] And the good news is that it's still good news this week. And the good news is that Jesus is alive. Jesus is alive. That's what we celebrated last Sunday. In fact, we celebrate it every single Sunday. If you're wondering, one of the reasons why the early Christians changed their day of worship from the Sabbath, the Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath to the Sunday, was because it was the day that the Lord rose on and then made subsequent resurrection appearances on Sundays, on the first day of the week.
[3:42] And so that's one of the reasons we worship on Sunday. So every day is Easter Sunday in that sense. Jesus is alive. We celebrated that reality. One man in history beat death.
[3:53] The Apostle Paul brings out the significance of this for us in the book of 1 Corinthians in chapter 15. He says, Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
[4:08] For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. So in Christ all are made alive.
[4:20] That passage we just read, Romans 6. Paul tells us this, Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
[4:32] There's this common theme in Paul's writings as he reflects on the significance of the resurrection. The theme is this, because Jesus is alive, we Christians who are united to Him by faith are now alive to new life.
[4:46] Because Jesus is alive, we Christians are now alive to new life. Now, we often use the resurrection as an occasion to talk about the historical bodily resurrection of Jesus. And what that means for us Christians that we too will be bodily resurrected from death.
[5:01] And that's a really, really important part of the resurrection. It's why we make a big deal, for example, of the historicity of the resurrection that actually happened in history. Jesus, it's not a nice story we tell each other, but that Jesus actually did die, was dead, was buried, did come to life three days later, was resurrected.
[5:21] But there's also, so that's the one reason. Jesus died, He rose bodily, we're going to rise bodily one day. It's great news. But there's also a sense in which, because of the resurrection, we're also raised to new life now, in the present, like right now as in sitting here.
[5:39] Jesus is alive, so we should truly be alive to God in the way that we live and have our being now. But I know that a lot of Christians who conceptually believe in the resurrection, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, don't feel particularly alive.
[5:57] A lot of Christians are confused by their own behavior, their own habits and ways, in light of what they think being Christians is all about, in light of the resurrection, what they know to be true. And it's a very disturbing, it's a very confusing experience.
[6:12] Because a lot of Christians know something of the gospel, that's why they're Christians, that God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, has saved them from their sin. So they're like, okay, I get that part, that's like Christianity 101, if you were in Sunday school as a kid, you learned that.
[6:25] When the Sunday school teacher said, why did Jesus die and rise again? You said, well, to save us from our sin. And the teacher went, tick, well done. So then you have this really bewildering experience, because sin seems to still be such a powerful and present reality in your life.
[6:45] After having come to faith in the risen Jesus, who's died to save you from your sin. But the sin stuff is still here. And the Bible is pretty broad-based in terms of its definition of sin.
[6:58] So in the Bible, sin is really any thought or action or motive or desire or attitude that exists in an individual that is contrary to the will of God.
[7:10] In fact, the Bible even goes so far as to not just define sin in terms of active disobedience to God's will, in thought and in deed, but even as a failure to do God's will.
[7:22] So what we might traditionally call sins of omission. Failing to do good when the good opportunity is afforded you. Sin corrupts every single part of us. Even the good things that we do.
[7:35] That's been the historic orthodox understanding of sin in Christian theology for 2,000 years and even before that in the Old Testament. And so what I want to do for you this morning is I want to talk about the experience of the Christian when it comes to what to make of ongoing indwelling sin in your life.
[7:55] Jesus is alive. Jesus is alive. But why do I feel so dead inside? How do you make sense of that? How does it work?
[8:05] Why do we still sin? Why isn't that resurrection life being fully realized in me? And to answer that question we're going to be in this passage. Romans 6 verse 1 to 14.
[8:16] So you can keep your Bibles open there. It's a place where the Apostle Paul is dealing with objections to the notion of grace. The idea that we are saved not through what we do but purely through God's gracious work on his part.
[8:34] Our faith in his gracious work in the death and the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. So three points here. Number one, Paul looks at an objection to grace.
[8:46] Then he makes an argument from grace. And then he shows us an outworking of grace. So he deals with the objection to grace. He makes an argument from grace. And then he looks at the outworking of grace.
[8:57] And we'll see that the resurrection, resurrection life is key to all of these three. Here's the first one, the objection to grace. Look down verse 1, first two verses.
[9:10] What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means. We are those who have died to sin.
[9:20] How can we live in it any longer? Now in the book of Romans, in the preceding chapters, Paul has made a very powerful argument up until this point. That salvation is by grace.
[9:31] It's God's love, his forgiveness. It comes to us not on the basis of our own merit or performance, but simply on the basis of grace. An undeserved gift. Now this then raises some objections.
[9:44] And so Paul almost preempts what he expects his readers to think here. People are thinking and they're reading this. He's imagining people are going to read this and they're going to think, Well, if grace covers over my sin and this grace is so big and this grace is so powerful and no matter how often or how badly I sin, this grace just kind of increases even more.
[10:01] If that's what grace is like, why can't I just keep on sinning? Grace will cover it after all. And actually God will then be shown to be even more gracious because I will provide him more opportunities to be gracious through my sin.
[10:14] I'm so kind. I do God a favor. I give him opportunities to display his grace through my many sins. And Paul goes, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. By no means. That is not on your life. No.
[10:27] Now just pause here for a second on the objection before we look at the argument in detail here. On face value, just reading it there in your English Bibles, it looks like this argument is advanced by the sort of person who is looking to just keep living whatever lifestyle they have and have Jesus at the same time.
[10:46] I want to add Jesus and I want to just keep on living exactly the way I'm living without any sort of obligation upon me. I want the salvation stuff and I want to live as I please. They love the idea of grace, of God forgiving them, of God saving them, but they don't want to have that grace place any sort of obligations upon them in terms of how they live their life.
[11:06] If you came to faith as a teen or in primary school and you like to kind of push the boundaries back then, you might have gone through that exact process at some point.
[11:20] So I remember having a variation of this conversation with my Sunday school teacher when I was around about 10, 11 years old, over and over again. I would basically say something like, so God saves by grace, right?
[11:35] Teacher would say, right? Because she's a good teacher. And I said, that means nothing I do or don't do affects whether or not I get God's grace, right? She said, right?
[11:45] So in one sense, my behavior is inconsequential, right? And then she'd go, well, sort of, I suppose, right? So I can do like a whole lot of naughty stuff like putting stinkberries in my neighbor's car.
[11:59] I actually did that. And still be a Christian, right? And at that point she'd go, well, and get really confused and try and figure out how she got into this conversation in the first place.
[12:11] Now, it seems like that's the sort of person who would come up with an objection like this. It's a person what theologians have traditionally called antinomians.
[12:23] The word nomos means law, so this is anti-God's law, anti-God's moral commandments. You'd think an antinomian is the kind of person who's going to make this sort of an argument.
[12:35] I just want to keep on sinning, right? Grace will just increase and be multiplied. But it's equally possible, actually, that this objection would be raised by legalists, too. These are people who are looking at what Paul has said about radical free grace, salvation by faith alone.
[12:49] They've looked at all of this that Paul has said in the first five chapters of the book, and they've gone, no, Paul. This free grace stuff is just giving license for people to sin.
[13:01] You are just making it too easy for people to sin here. Salvation cannot be this way. Now, I think in contemporary culture, we often get legalists wrong. Because we look at any person who seems vaguely interested in keeping God's laws, and we call that a legalist in our progressive culture.
[13:18] But that is not a legalist. That's a very bad definition of what a legalist is. A legalist is not somebody who is concerned about being holy, who is someone who is concerned about following God's moral commands.
[13:30] A legalist is someone who looks at God's law to save them. That is a legalist. They look at God's moral commands, and they say, by obeying these commands, I can find salvation.
[13:46] If I follow the rules, God will accept me. That's a legalist. The licentious person says God's law is irrelevant. The legalist says God's law justifies me. Paul says, actually, you're both wrong.
[14:00] You're both wrong. And then he provides an argument from grace to tackle this objection to grace. See, whether you are a legalist or an antinomian, we all, I think, object to biblical grace at some point.
[14:19] It's a natural response to biblical grace. We object. The grace of God is just so radical, it's so countercultural, that we will constantly look for ways to actually sidestep it in our faith.
[14:30] Even if you sit here and say, I love grace, you will actually, wherever you are on the spectrum, we'll figure out ways to sidestep grace in your life. We'll sidestep it by living in ways that are radically inconsistent with the grace of God on the one hand.
[14:43] That's what the antinomian does. Or we'll sidestep it by looking to our deeds, our works, to kind of just supplement grace in our attempts of self-salvation.
[14:55] It's like, thank you, Jesus, for saving me, but I'm just going to do this other good stuff just to make sure I've filled up my account enough over here to make sure I'm really, really saved. In both cases, what we've done there is we've essentially objected to biblical grace.
[15:10] That I am saved purely through faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus, not through anything I do or don't do. So what is Paul's argument then for those of us who would sidestep grace?
[15:25] Well, here's the argument from grace, the second point. Have a look. Have a look at verse 2 again. So it starts in verse 2. He says, by no means in response to this objection. We are those who have died to sin.
[15:37] How can we live in it any longer? Well, don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
[15:55] For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
[16:10] Because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again.
[16:22] Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So a lot of repetition there in that section.
[16:35] It's very much kind of Paul's ancient rhetorical style, by argues. But there's actually really one sustained argument behind all of that repetition. And the argument is basically this.
[16:48] Christ died to sin and was raised to life. Christians then, who are united to Christ in faith, have also died to sin and they will be raised to life.
[17:01] That's the argument. It's a simple argument. Let me say it again. Christ died to sin and was raised to life. Christians then, who are united to Christ in faith, have also died to sin and they will be raised to life.
[17:14] Two simple parts to Paul's argument. His comeback to those who would say, well, it doesn't really matter if I just keep on sinning because, well, grace will increase. He says, hey, that can't be the case.
[17:28] Because if we're in Christ, do you realize that we've died to sin? Also, if we're in Christ, do you realize that you're alive now to righteousness in God?
[17:40] You see, something fundamental has changed when you, by grace, through faith, came to Jesus. Something very objective changed.
[17:53] It's in verse 6 in our passage. For we know that our old self was crucified with Christ so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
[18:09] We died. We died. Past tense. Before you have any sort of resurrection, there's got to be death, right?
[18:20] You've got to die before you can be resurrected. We died to sin. Past tense. That is, it already happened. Paul is not, in this case, here, talking about ongoing dying to sin.
[18:31] He talks about it in other places. He's talking about something that happened when you believed. When you believed in Jesus. You died to sin. Your old self was crucified.
[18:43] So why not keep on sinning? Well, because you're no longer a slave, he says to that anymore. You died to it. Something fundamental has changed in you as a result of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, when the Bible says that you died to sin, well, what does it mean?
[18:59] I'll tell you what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean that you automatically just stop sinning. It doesn't mean that you stop struggling with sin and with temptation.
[19:11] And we know this because Paul is going to later urge his readers who have believed in the gospel towards holy living, which he wouldn't have to do if this was just kind of a mechanical process.
[19:24] So what does it mean that we've died to sin? Well, the clue is in the result of that death. Paul says because you died to sin, you are no longer slaves to sin.
[19:37] He says you're free. You're free now. In other words, before coming to Christ, you were not free in some sense. There is some sense in which you were captive before you came to Christ.
[19:49] You see, the reality of the person who has not come to Christ is that they are not free to not sin. You get that? The person who hasn't received grace is not free to not sin.
[20:05] In the book of Romans, Paul, he repeatedly talks about sin as this tyrannical slave master. It rules you.
[20:15] It dictates who you are and what you do. Before and without Christ, all of us are slaves to that sin. We are not free to not sin.
[20:27] We are only free to sin. See, that's because sin is not just the kind of odd, bad thing that you do.
[20:38] Even the motives, though. Even the impulses behind the good things that you do do. And so without Christ, none of us then are free to not sin.
[20:49] But, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, when God regenerated you by grace, you suddenly were at that point granted power and motivation to begin to resist sin.
[21:05] To not live subject to it constantly. But to say no to it. Because of Jesus Christ. That's what it means to be dead to sin.
[21:19] To have died to sin. Now, do you know that about yourself? If you're sitting here as a believer this morning, do you know that about yourself? We cannot talk about living resurrection life if you don't first understand the death that you have undergone.
[21:38] Do you know that a supernatural activity has taken place within you? In other parts of the Bible, it's described as the believer being given a new heart or a new identity.
[21:49] Do you know that? Do you know that you are truly in Jesus Christ? Do you know that something objective took place inside of you when you came to faith? A lot of Christians don't know that. They live in a very defeatist way towards their sin.
[22:06] They struggle with sin, which we all do. But the response to that struggle is, I have no power to defeat this sin. I'm trapped. I have no power to defeat this sin.
[22:19] And so they remain enslaved. They fail to see that objectively they have died to sin and God has given them a new heart and a new approach to struggling with sin.
[22:30] And so they remain enslaved. Let me give you an illustration of this in our country's history. For 30 years, we have been free from the legislation of apartheid.
[22:45] That is, there are no apartheid laws in our country anymore. There are no formal laws that entrench white supremacy and black inferiority. But, when I go to a petrol station and the person attending to my car is black, I would hazard to guess upwards of 50% of the time that black petrol attendant will refer to me as boss.
[23:14] Right? See the white people nodding their heads? I also, at the same time, sit in multiple white conversations at dinner tables or at braes, other functions, and repeatedly hear white folk scapegoating black folk when discussing the social ills present in our country.
[23:31] I heard that exact conversation this week while I was at a predominantly white campsite on the East Coast. So 30 years after apartheid, apartheid, apartheid, apartheid's American, hey, we're apartheid.
[23:47] 30 years after apartheid, and blacks are still living with an inferiority complex. Some blacks are still living with an inferiority complex, and some whites are still living with a superiority complex.
[24:00] Even though, objectively, apartheid was ended. The legislation was fundamentally rewritten. Our lives are not taking their cue from the objective ending of apartheid.
[24:14] We're taking our cue from a bunch of other things, and as a result, we remain enslaved to apartheid, whites and blacks. Now, many of us live our Christian life the same way.
[24:26] We have objectively died to sin, but we continue to live enslaved to it. Discounting the fundamental change that God has brought about in us through Christ by His Spirit.
[24:41] And if you are a Christian this morning, you've got to know who you really are. Do you know who you really are? Do you know what has been done for you, in you, through God's grace?
[25:01] If you do, then you will know why grace is not a license for sin. But rather, it's an incredibly powerful motivation for holy living, for fighting sin, for resisting temptation.
[25:15] And then Paul, he goes on the positive here. He doesn't just point out that you died to sin with Christ. He points out that you are now alive with Christ to God.
[25:28] Christ was raised from death. You, one day, will be raised from death if you trusted Him. And so while you might live in a body that decays, and it gets old, and it dies, in reality, you are actually more alive than you've ever, ever been.
[25:42] So live like somebody who is truly alive, Paul says. Live for God. I was having a conversation with my wife this week about whether or not people are still using hashtags on social media, or whether it's become...
[25:58] Like, there was a while back when you wanted to get your social media post up the rankings. You would just, like, put a million hashtags on your post and hope that one of them would get picked up by an algorithm and you become YouTube famous or whatever it is, or Instagram famous.
[26:15] But then we were saying, I wonder, do people still do that? Are hashtags still a big thing? Are they fading? One hashtag that I used to, as a grumpy old cynical Christian, used to look at and go, I really wish Christians wouldn't do this.
[26:26] But one hashtag that really kind of irked me was when Christians on their social media posts, and maybe some of you have done this, so you can come and repent afterwards. I'll take confessions up front afterwards. But some Christians put YOLO.
[26:37] Now, you know what YOLO is, right? You only live once. YOLO. Hashtag YOLO. Or life is so short, so make the most of it. Really used to irk me because I think that sort of attitude, and I say this a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but that sort of attitude is completely antithetical to the Christian teaching of new life in Christ.
[26:56] It's the exact opposite. You see, YOLO comes along and says, make your life as fulfilling as you can now because the seconds are ticking down until it's all over. I think that sort of approach has got to make one supremely selfish.
[27:12] Even the good things that you will do in your life at that point are done to the end of fulfilling yourself, making the most of your life. YOLO, you only live once. But the Bible comes along and says, your life will be fulfilled completely when you at the end of your life are raised with Christ.
[27:34] You will be completely fulfilled in God's holy presence, and you will come to understand in that moment just how beautiful, how thrilling, and how satisfying holiness actually is.
[27:49] And so if that is your future, if that is where you're going, well then live for it now. Live consistently with it now. Live in holiness and obedience to God, in service of God's people and other people.
[28:01] Why? Because if you are united with Christ, you will be raised to that. There is no clock ticking down on your satisfaction and fulfillment where that's all going to kind of come to an end.
[28:16] There is only a clock that is ticking down towards that moment of full realization of the full satisfaction and fulfillment that you will have in your resurrected life with Christ.
[28:27] Why wait to get there before you start experiencing it now? Start the journey now.
[28:39] Be alive now. You will be most fully alive. Then we'll start living alive now in Christ Jesus. Christ died to sin and was raised to life.
[28:51] Christians then who are united to Christ in faith have died to sin and they will be raised to life. That's Paul's argument from grace. Now here's the outworking of grace.
[29:05] Look down at verse 11. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
[29:19] Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and offer every part of yourself to Him as an instrument of righteousness.
[29:31] For sin shall no longer be your master because you are not under law, but under grace. Paul says you've got to factor this in what he's just talked about now.
[29:41] You've got to factor this in, this reality into your life and stop sinning. He's not calling for perfection. We know that's not possible, but he is calling for progress here. Progress.
[29:53] You should be getting better and better over time at not sinning. Listen, if you don't think that the Christian life is a massive fight and struggle with sin from now until when Jesus comes back, then you've probably got a very distorted view of Christianity.
[30:12] In fact, if you're in one level, this is not discounting all the joy and the kind of upside of Christianity, but at one level, if your day-to-day experience is not one of wrestling against sin, fighting off temptation, putting to death negative impulses and thoughts and desires, submitting yourself to God's law, then you might not, if you're not wrestling, you might not actually be embracing historical biblical Christianity.
[30:37] Now, it all starts with you counting yourself dead to sin and alive to God. It starts with a mental reckoning. There is something that is objectively true about you, like we've just seen, as a result of grace.
[30:52] It happened in history past, in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You need to start telling your heart that it's true. Like, wake up, heart. This is true. This is real life.
[31:03] This is reality. Because the struggle's hard. The struggle is messy. It's brutal. And so, when you're up to your eyeballs in that struggle, you can then begin to doubt that you actually are saved, that you actually did die to sin, that you actually have been given new resurrection life.
[31:19] And so, Paul says, count yourselves dead to sin and now alive. That is, reckon yourself dead to sin and now alive. Speak to yourself, he's saying. Have a conversation with your heart.
[31:30] Sit down and say, this is reality, Stephen. You are not a sinner. You are dead to sin and you are alive to Christ. I'm old enough to remember when video memes were not prevalent and all over the place all the time.
[31:48] And so, like, to get a little, like, funny video was, like, quite a big thing. You would actually pass it around in emails or stuff like that because you couldn't, and they were, like, in tiny little GIF formats because that was how big the file had to be to pass it around.
[32:00] You couldn't just, like, send them like you do now. But one of the funniest videos that I saw early on, and I really was in hysterics after watching this, was a trust fall gone wrong. You know what a trust fall is, right?
[32:12] So a trust fall is where you stand like this, basically, and you close your eyes, put your hands like this, and a person stands behind you, and then you just trust them and you fall back into their arms.
[32:23] I think people, like, used to do this at youth camps and all sorts of stuff like that. You do a trust fall like that. And there's one video that was back in the early days of a trust fall gone wrong where I think it was a father and a daughter or something, and he's standing behind, and he's saying, okay, close your eyes, put your arms together, get ready, and fall.
[32:37] And she falls forward, not understanding how the trust fall process works. And I was in hysterics after watching that. I thought it was hilarious. But what happens, what happens when you actually do a trust fall the right way?
[32:53] You close your eyes, and you consciously reckon to yourself in that moment, you have that conversation with yourself, that mental conversation, that the person standing behind you is trustworthy and will actually catch you and save you from harm.
[33:08] That's what you do. You do that even though multiple other signals and impulses are coming at your brain saying, don't fall back, don't fall back, this is stupid, don't fall back.
[33:22] You, at that point, reckon with your mind that you are safe to fall back over and against those other impulses, and so you fall back. Paul's saying the same thing here.
[33:34] He's saying, go there mentally. Reckon with your mind that you are dead to sin and alive to God, even though temptations and other desires and impulses are trying to dissuade you of that objective truth.
[33:45] Count yourself dead to sin and alive to God. Because it's an objective truth. Something actually happened when you believe.
[33:56] This is not just you kind of willing yourself against sin. It is based on concrete reality. That's actually why the trust fall analogy is not a perfect analogy because you're still trusting in a fallible, weak human being to catch you.
[34:13] And you're hoping, future, that he will catch you. It's a future expectation. It's not a perfect analogy because with grace we have something so much bigger.
[34:25] So much better. We have the infallible, powerful Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, saving us in history past.
[34:36] The tense makes all the difference here. He died, he was crucified, he was raised to life. We're not sitting here wondering if he's going to save us in the future. We've already seen him save us in the past.
[34:49] We've already seen the nails. We've already seen the tears. We've already seen the cries. We've already seen the spear go into his side. We've seen the thorns in his brow.
[35:01] We've seen him bow his head. We've seen him die. And more than that, we've already seen the empty tomb. We've already seen the stone rolled away.
[35:14] We've already seen the angel saying he's not here. He has risen like he said. We've already seen the resurrected Messiah holding out his hands to doubting Thomas so that Thomas can touch the scars and know that he is saved.
[35:31] Christ died for us. If you are united to him by faith, then you too have died to sin. Tell yourself that.
[35:44] Tell your heart that in the face of raging temptation, in the face of deep struggle, as the opportunity to sin presents itself, tell your heart that you have died with Christ and you need no longer sin.
[36:02] And then more than that, tell yourself that you're alive. Tell yourself that you are alive, that you will one day be raised with Christ. He is alive, and so you will be alive.
[36:16] And then now go out and give yourself to holiness and to obeying living, to sacrificial life. Offer yourself to the cause of righteousness. I want to close with these words from the Valley of Vision collection of prayers.
[36:33] I marvel that thou shouldst become incarnate, be crucified, dead, and buried.
[36:44] The sepulcher calls forth my adoring wonder, for it is empty and thou art risen. The fourfold gospel attests it. The living witnesses prove it.
[36:55] My heart's experience knows it. Give me to die with thee that I may rise to new life. For I wish to be as dead and buried to sin, to selfishness, to the world, that I might not hear the voice of the charmer and might be delivered from his lusts.
[37:14] Let me reckon my old life dead because of crucifixion and never feed it as a living thing. Help me to be a holy, happy person, free from every wrong desire, from everything contrary to thy mind.
[37:29] grant me more and more of the resurrection life. May it rule me. May I walk in its power and be strengthened through its influence. Let's pray.
[37:44] Our gracious God, we want to thank you so much for the grace that comes to us through our Lord Jesus Christ, that through his death we are made dead to sin.
[37:57] and through his resurrection we are made alive to holiness and righteousness. Father, help us to believe this truth this morning.
[38:08] Help us to believe this objective reality and help us to mentally reckon these truths about us in the face of sin and the face of temptation.
[38:19] We know that your spirit is at work taking these truths and embedding them in our hearts and so we pray that you would help us to do this, Lord. So that these truths will not just be things we know about ourselves but will be things that we feel and experience in the day-to-day that we are truly dead to sin and alive to Christ.
[38:38] Father, I pray for any person here who is still dead in their sin, who has never repented and said, Lord, I'm not living your way and I need to trust in this gospel.
[38:48] I pray that they would come to faith this morning. I pray that they would know faith, they would know grace, they would repent and trust in you. For the rest of us, Lord, help us to keep fighting the good fight, to offer our bodies as instruments for holiness, for righteousness, change and transform by what Jesus has done for us.
[39:08] We ask this all for Christ's sake and for his glory. Amen.