The sermon, 'Three Principles for the Rise and Progress of the Soul,' delivered by Scott Brown, explores the themes of conversion, union with Christ, and the transformative power of the Gospel. Drawing from Romans 6:1-14, the speaker discusses critical elements like baptism, resurrection, and the believer's new life in Christ. He emphasizes the importance of understanding one's union with Christ, which is marked by being buried in baptism, united in resurrection, and crucified for freedom from sin. Conversion is portrayed as a pivotal moment that changes everything in a believer's life, breaking the power of sin and initiating a journey of progressive sanctification. The sermon also addresses the tension between grace and the need for obedience, urging believers to reject sin and live in righteousness. Through this transformation, believers are called to recognize their new identity in Christ and to walk in a manner worthy of their redemption, maintaining unity with the body of Christ and embracing the work of sanctification.

Let's read God's Word. Romans chapter 6, 1-14. What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not.

How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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. For if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection, 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. For he who has died has been freed from sin.

Now if we die with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death that He died, He died to save once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, that you should obey it in its lusts, and do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.

For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this passage that we can stand so firm upon. Thank you that we do not have to be bound by sin anymore because of the death of your son Jesus. Lord we just pray that you would bring to us what our hearts need to hear from you today. Speak through Scott as he presents your word.

Thank you for this time. In your name, Amen. It's such a privilege to be able to speak about this passage of Scripture here, because it breathes every part of it, of the power of conversion, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ in the soul of a person who's been justified by faith and has received all these things that are listed here. Conversion is a beautiful thing. I recall my own conversion.

I recall very well the early days of my own conversion and the effects, the personal effects, the emotional effects, the lifestyle effects of my own conversion. There was a conversion that took place in the in the 18th century. A man was clearly a recipient of the grace of God. Some of you are aware of the courageous and persevering labors of William Wilberforce, who was responsible for that long fight in England to end, to abolish the slave trade. And there's, maybe you've seen this new movie out on his life called Amazing Grace, and it documents this perseverance.

But one thing I love about the movie is that it documents this conversion and there's this very tender, beautiful scene of this conversion. I don't know if you've seen it, but I love that scene. And one of the things that is clear in this film is that everything that happened from that day forward in his life, this great perseverance, this great battle that he was engaged in, went right back to one moment in his life and that was his conversion to the Lord Jesus Christ and one of the one of the books that influenced William Wilberforce in his early early life as a believer was the book by Philip Dodridge the rise in the progress of the soul And this book title would be a good title for this sermon, which is why in your outline you see the title, The Rise and the Principles for the Rise and Progress of the Soul. Because This passage is about the rise and the progress of the soul and the principles that surround how a person's soul makes progress. And it brings us to a wonderful appeal to the only forces available for the rise and the progress of the soul.

This displays so many beautiful things. It's hard for me to know where to begin and end. But this passage of Scripture is so beautiful to me because it speaks of the glory of the body of Christ. It speaks of what happens when one is converted. It speaks of the power that's there that unleashes a springtime that never ends.

Think of it for a moment, all of you who have been converted. Think of what you were like before your conversion. Look at your life right now and compare and contrast. Isn't it dramatic? No, you were not made perfect.

But there was something let loose in your soul that has changed everything. It's changed every relationship. It's changed your patterns of living. It's changed so many things. This is the power of the Gospel on a person's life.

And what a beautiful thing it is. I dread to think where I would be today had I not been converted in my teen years? Oh my, I shudder to consider the thoughts that I had and the friends that I had and the things that I was bent on doing and where I would be today As you extend them out year after year, for a decade and two decades and three decades, what happens with the accumulated powers of sin and turning away from God and not having the knowledge of God in your mind? Well, God comes, He works mightily in conversion, He transforms, and then with this day spring that He sets loose in a person's life, He beautifies His people. You know, He's in the process of beautifying us.

Sometimes we're not all that beautiful, but He is beautifying us. The prophet Malachi says of us, he says, �They shall be mine. They are my jewels. They are my jewels. And on that great day I will spare them.

As a father spares his own son. And so here we are this morning. We are the recipients of conversion. We're the recipients of the grace of God. There has been unleashed in us something that would cause the rise and the progress of our souls.

That's what this passage of Scripture is about. So now, there are three sections in this passage that I want you to see the way that this thing flows. By the way, there really are two main thoughts in chapter 6. 1-14 covers the first, which I'm calling the rise and the progress of the soul, but we'll get into that. Secondly, what does it mean to be a slave of God?

Who's the songwriter that said, you've got to serve somebody. You may serve the devil, you may serve the Lord, but you've got to serve somebody. Nobody on this planet is not a slave. You are either a slave to sin or you're a slave to God. The end of chapter 6, from 15 on to the end, explains what it means to be a slave to God.

And God has called us all into slavery, into bondage and servitude, but it's a sweet bondage. It's a bondage of progress, it's a bondage of light, It's a bondage in which God Almighty alone can say of us, these are my jewels. These are my jewels. That's what kind of slavery it is. Okay, so let's look at what's here.

First, verses one and two. Finding the right response to the abounding grace of God. What should we say then? Should we continue in sin? That grace should abound?

Absolutely not. That's the stupidest idea in the world. So it's, what do you do with grace? Do you throw out every requirement of God? Do you throw out the law of God?

Absolutely not. We don't do that. And then that's confirmed at the end. The second section is, I'm just describing it by no well, what your union with Christ really means. What does it mean?

And there are all these wonderful terms that will help you understand what your salvation is all about. You might think of your salvation using a lot of words, but here we have four particular words, many more than just four, but we're going to camp heavily on that we were buried with Him in baptism, and that we were united with Him in His resurrection, that we were crucified with Him for our freedom, and that we died so that we might have life. We died with Him. This section is about our union with Christ. Something happened at our conversion.

We were unified with Christ. We were made one with Him. Something happened. Spring broke out is what happened. And there was life that began to grow in us so that there would be the progress of our souls.

And then the last section, take heed the warnings for right behavior. And here Paul issues an appeal for right behavior. And he calls us to lay aside anything that would be sin for us and to walk in a particular way. And he says, therefore don't let sin rain in your mortal body, you should obey its lusts. Okay, so that's, you see how that goes?

Chap verses 1 and 2 is an appeal to understand what Joachim Grace is all about. The second part talks about our union with Christ, all the things that have happened from verses 3 through 11, and then 12 to the end is a final appeal to holiness. And these three things are critical for the rise and the progress of our souls. Okay, let's dive into the text. First, find the right response to abounding grace, verses 1 and 2.

Look at that with me. What shall we say then? Should we continue in sin and grace should show down? Certainly not. How can we who die to sin no longer live any longer in it.

Well, Paul is answering a question that's on the minds of the hearers because he's just talked about the abounding grace. He's just said in chapter 5 that grace reigns like a throne. Grace is reigning in the life of the believer well what does that mean does that mean that we don't have to does that mean that we can throw the law of God out does that mean that we can live just according to the meditations of our own consciences well we certainly do need our conscience but we need far more than that. And yes, God has forgiven us, but that doesn't mean that we can live any way we desire according to the trajectory that sounds good to us. So how do we live in grace without throwing off all government?

And the false conclusion is that with the grace of God means that the Word of God is diminished and he's fighting against that thought among his heirs. You know, a good teacher will anticipate the questions that are in people's minds. And that's what we see Paul doing. Some people are very good at that, but Paul is absolutely off the charts in his ability to anticipate the questions that pop up in people's minds as he's speaking. See, Paul was accused of teaching like sensuousness.

It was slanderously reported that he was teaching that grace, grace, live however you want. People were saying that that's what he was teaching, but he wasn't teaching that at all. So he's constantly coming back around saying, no, this is what I meant. This is what I didn't mean. And so he's clarifying that here in this passage.

Now it says here that we who died don't live any longer in it. Now, there are people who use this whole passage of scripture to teach the doctrine of sinless perfection, that when you are saved, your body of sin is done away with, and now you are before God sinless and you actually are sinless. So you need to claim your sinlessness. Now, I want to give you four or five reasons here why this passage of scripture is not teaching the doctor of sinless perfection. First of all, there's a difference between living in sin and being sinless.

He says in verse 2, how should we who died to sin any longer live in it? So in verse 2, Paul is not saying that we never sin. He's saying that we don't live, he says we don't live in it as a settled practice. That we're moving away from sin. We're not perfect in all of this.

Verses 6 and verse 14 says, we are no longer slaves to sin. Some people say, well, that means that sin is not a category for you. What this means is that We may sin, but we're not slaves in the same sense that we were slaves of sin before our conversion. He's talking about what conversion does, what unity with Christ does to the soul, and how it causes its rise and its progress. And there's a difference between sin having dominion over you and you being sinless there's a difference here's a third in verses 11 through 13 he says do not let sin reign in your mortal body this is not this just tells us that we don't have sinless perfection.

That sin actually can reign if we're operating poorly. There's a difference between sin reigning over you and sin being present in you and The difference is you ought to be obvious to all of us. Well, here's another one turn to the next chapter chapter 7 Paul speaks of the battle Against sin and in his own life where he says, he concludes, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death. Well, the sin was aflicking at that moment when he was writing it after his conversion. And so, we are forgiven, we are acquitted, we have a position before God where the wrath of God has been propitiated.

He has made peace with us and we've been justified by a judicial work of penal justification. The work has been done. We are sinless in one sense, but God's plan is not so simple as that with us. We have been justified that there is still an ongoing war with sin. There is a progressive sanctification process that is implied in all these verses that are here.

Sinful patterns are being purged, we walk less and less in the sins of our old life. We are being urged in this passage to put to death the deeds of the body through the work of the Holy Spirit. And it's because of these things that have happened that we can grow closer and closer and we can advance, we can be holy as He is holy, advancing day by day in this process of sanctification. It's the upward call of God. What's being said here is that when one is crucified, he's raised from the dead, that new life begins to bud, that there's a springtime of life that begins to flow and fruit bearing begins.

And there is this beautiful growth that's spoken of here in this passage of scripture. So the first thing is, understand that there's a right response to abounding grace, and that response is not to live in sin, but to reject it, but to identify sins, to identify areas that we've fallen in, and to make progress in our souls. One of the prayers opening here this morning was a prayer that we would shed any sins that have caused any broken relationships. That was an appropriate prayer, because we are not sinless in that area at all. And so this passage of scripture speaks though of the potentialities and the realities that have come upon us as a result of our conversion.

So now that Paul has appealed to a right response to grace, then he moves to this next section, which I think is so wonderful. It speaks of our union with Christ. You have that? It speaks of our union with Christ. And he is calling for us to have right knowledge about that union.

The word know or believe occurs four times in this section. He wants us to know something. He wants us to just stop. Now my experience is that as you grow as a believer, it's easy to forget this. It's easy to forget the implications of this union that was struck between you and the Lord at your conversion.

Hey, something happened to you and I at our conversion, and we shouldn't forget it. And so he wants us to know. He wants us to remember. Now, my prayer that as we read through this and talk of it, that somehow God would give us a new awareness of what happened in our conversion. And this happened even to the littlest one and the oldest one among us.

And we must not forget what happened as we were unified with the Lord Jesus Christ at our conversion. We baptized a number of people in the last year or two here, and some of you children. Now I just want you to know that when you were baptized, This is what happened here. The things that we're going to speak of are things that took place in real time for you and they are, they have a promise to bear fruit in your life year after year. Don't forget it.

You oldies, don't forget it either. I'm just realizing that I have not been reminding, I just have not been aware in my own thinking about this for an awfully long time. So I'm convicted about it myself. So what Paul does here is he itemizes many of the things that happened at our conversion. And he uses many beautiful words in here.

And we're just going to camp on this. Now, just by way of summary, what all this means is that when you were converted everything became different. That old powers were broken. That there was a law of sin and death upon us. And that power was broken.

And this thing happened in the past tense. One of the men in our Bible study pointed out on Tuesday that most of the words here, most of the big-ticket critical words in this section are passive. You know, you don't crucify yourself, you don't resurrect yourself, you don't baptize yourself. You are. You are crucified, you are baptized, you are resurrected.

These are things that God did. He did them beyond your own power. At your conversion, God did something in your heart that broke the power of sin forever. Isn't that wonderful? He broke it.

He broke the power of sin. You know, I can see evidences of that everywhere. And what a blessing it is to know that God has brought together a people in which he would break the power of sin. They wouldn't be perfect, but they would begin to continue to bud and continue to bear fruit all life long until the day that he takes them home. Isn't that an absolutely wonderful thing?

We are so privileged by God to have this a part of us, that he would grace us with such a blessing to have given us the ability to begin to grow and change. I'm just so grateful for this. God has killed the old man in us in a particular way. Now I want to identify what I'm going to call four powerful forces that are at work in each of us as a result of our conversion. Four powerful forces.

One, you were buried with Him in baptism, verses 3 and 4. You were buried with Him in baptism. Now, this was something that happened spiritually, it happened in your heart when you repented. You were buried in baptism. And then you were baptized physically.

You went and you gave a physical demonstration of what had already happened in your heart when you were baptized. And in physical baptism, there's a burying. You go down under the water, you're buried with Him in baptism, and you're washed clean by the washing of this water and you come out and you're raised up to new life. When we baptize people sometimes we say, I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit and I raise you up to new life. Now, that's figurative because the raising up has already happened.

The the burying has already happened. But notice here you were baptized into Christ. Notice the word into and then look at verse 4. You were buried with Him. Remember at the beginning when I was talking some introductory language about this passage scripture, I said that this is about unity, it's about our union with God.

Notice how the language here of unity, it was with him. We were buried with him in baptism. We went down with him. We were buried in the tomb with him. And that's the idea.

When we were converted, that happened spiritually in our hearts. And it broke a power over us. It was like an electromagnetic shock. And it broke something. It just absolutely changed everything in our souls.

So that this eternal springtime could break forth. This day spring has come and what a marvelous thing this is. So we were buried with him in baptism. Baptism signifies the death and the burial and the resurrection of Christ, and the way that believers are dead and buried and resurrected as well. This is the language of union with Christ.

When you were converted, you were buried with him and you were raised up with him. Now, there's a Complete identification and unity with Christ. Now I want you to see something in this text that we need to pay attention to. Look at the word as. As Christ, you see that?

As Christ, it's verse 4, middle of verse 4. As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so, as just as Christ, This is how we know that there is a unity with the Lord Jesus Christ. As just as Christ, even so, us, we are collected up in His death and in his resurrection, so that we might walk in newness of life. So Paul's words as, in verse 4 in the middle of it, and even so are markers to help us understand the nature of our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul illustrates this union in a number of different ways all throughout his writings.

In his letter to the Colossians Church in Colossians 3.3. He said, for you died, you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Isn't that interesting? There's this language of union. You died right alongside with Christ.

And in His death, you were hidden in His death. You were hidden in the cleft of the rock so that sin would pass right by you, that the holiness and the glory of God would not put you to death because of the sins that are residing in your mind and in your body. You are hidden with Christ in God. Isn't that amazing? Think of your sins and think of the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is surrounding you. He is hiding you from the wrath of God. Literally, you are in the bosom of the Lord Jesus Christ as he protects you from sin. Isn't that absolutely wonderful? In John 14, the Lord Jesus says, because I live, You will live also.

Because I live, you will live also. That's this unity with the Lord Jesus Christ. You would think that it would be, you will live because you're pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, because you're doing well, because you have conquered these things. You will live because you're doing well. No?

Uh-uh. No. That's not it at all. Because I live, you will live also. You know, the Lord Jesus Christ has no respect for persons.

He has no desire to preserve any of our pride and any of our accomplishments at all. He destroys our reputations on the cross and then he hides us from the wrath of God. That's what's done for us. In Galatians 3, Paul gives a really interesting word picture to describe this, to help us understand sort of the depth of this union that has come to us. He says, for as many as you were baptized into Christ, have put on Christ.

You have put on Christ. Again, you have this idea of this cloak. This cloak. Christ, the cloak, has been thrown upon you. It's almost the same idea of being hidden.

It seems like Paul wants to give us so many different kinds of illustrations to show us what happened to us at our conversion. But Christ has been put on us in our conversion. It's a beautiful word picture. Matthew 3.11, we learn of the power of this baptism. In the words of John the Baptist, he said, Indeed I baptize you with water unto repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not even worthy to carry.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Isn't that amazing? In this baptism, you were buried with Him in baptism. He hid you. He hid you.

He clothed you. But He also was a baptism of fire. It was something of might. There was power, something I don't even know how to explain. What is a baptism by fire?

That would be an interesting sermon. I think we should do that someday. But this baptism isn't just this gentle clothing of one. It's not just of hiding one from the wrath of God. It's also a baptism of fire.

Something dramatic is happening here in this baptism. In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul shows us that the unity that we have with Him also extends beyond our unity personally with Christ, but that our unity is extended to one another. He says, For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, we are being many, we are one body in Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink of one Spirit. So here the image is, in this burying of baptism, something else happened.

We were unified with members of the body of Christ. So it was a two-fold unification that took place in this baptism that he's speaking of here. You were buried with him in baptism and all of your brothers and sisters were also there, buried with you under the ground, covered up, down under the water, all of us together as one family experiencing the exact same thing, a burial, a death, a crucifixion. You were crucified with me. You were buried with me.

You were covered. You were hidden with me, with Christ in God. All of us together. This all happened somehow? Did it happen simultaneously in God's mind?

Possibly. I think you can make an argument for that for another day. But you know, honestly, there's something that happened that instantaneously unified us to the Lord Jesus Christ, inextricably connecting us to Him forever, and then also to one another, inextricably forever. These are not temporary relationships we have here. These are forever relationships.

And here it says that we have been baptized into one body no matter what kind of people we are, Jews or Greeks, whatever. And it says we were also made to drink into one spirit. We're going to celebrate this in just a little while in our communion service, where we're going to drink together. And we're going to eat together of the body and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a picture of what's happened to us.

Isn't it amazing? So we were baptized into his death. We were buried with Him through baptism into death, just as Christ, again, just as Christ was raised from the dead, by the glory of the Father, even so we should walk in newness of life. So, after this baptism by the Holy Spirit, everything changed. You experienced a burial and a transformation that took place.

And so, you know, this, this, What happened to us is not part of some psychological mind game, where we pretend things that are not. It's an acknowledgement of something that took place in space and time. Justification by faith happened at a particular time in our lives and we were declared guiltless forever we were baptized into his death We went down to the grave with Him and we were raised up to new life. So the first powerful force at work in us is the power of our baptism with Him. The second is found in verse 5.

The second powerful force is that we were united with Him in resurrection. Not only did we find ourselves buried with Him and buried with one another. Isn't that amazing to think about that? We were also raised up together with him and with one another in the body of Christ. Verse five, for if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection." So the word here, united, united together in the likeness of his death.

It's a botanical word. It has to do with grafting in of a plant, making the two connected. I was out on the hill the other day, and I saw a big tree. And there was a vine that had grown up the side of the tree, but it actually, over time, had grown into the tree. So they were actually now growing together.

If you would cut one out you would have to cut the other the way that it was. And there's this unification, this grafting in, making two things into one. And this is our destiny. We have been conformed into his image and the Lord Jesus Christ in order to be resurrected had to die now he was really dead he actually died okay three days he was dead The body of the Lord Jesus Christ was actually dead, dead as a doornail for three days. And then through this miracle of the resurrection, he was raised up to new life.

The doctrine of the resurrection is everywhere in the Apostles' teaching regarding the preaching of the gospel. The doctrine of the resurrection should always be core of what we do when we're speaking to unbelievers about what Christ has done for them. When we were studying the book of Hebrews, We spent some time considering the last few verses of that book. It's the prayer. Now, may the God of peace, who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, make you complete for every good work, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight.

It's God in the power of the resurrection, which is the source of our being made complete. No resurrection, no completeness. And it's, you know, there's so many books about, you know, personal improvement and, you know, going and getting your best life now. These things are absolutely impossible apart from the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus Christ. You don't get these by reading books about self-improvement.

You get them by the power of the resurrection. It's the only way you can get them. So we were united with Him in His resurrection. So our story is bound up in his story. We have no hope without him.

We have security in his resurrection, and he has guaranteed it. It's interesting, this whole idea of being united with Him in resurrection. It's interesting, in Ephesians 4, we are commanded not to make unity happen or to gain it by force, but to preserve the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. In his death and in his resurrection, we are united together as one people. We preserve that unity that we have together as people by what we do.

We can preserve it or we can harm it, at least on a surface level. We can never harm or break the spiritual connection that we have with all believers around this world. And so we should constantly try as best we can to repair any of those breaches on the surface that are taking place. We are one. We will live eternally, even with those who are disconnected from us today.

And there are many encouragements to heal those wounds that have been made. There's a third force that works in you. You were crucified for freedom, verses 6 and 7, 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 to sin, for he who has died has been freed from sin. So our death and our resurrection sets us free. We're no longer slaves.

And that is the purpose of the resurrection, I mean of the crucifixion, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin. Again, in this crucifixion, something dramatic happened, didn't it? Think of the crucifixion. Think of the terrors of the crucifixion. It was this crucifixion that made us able to be free from sin.

Christ took our wounds on the cross, the wounds that we deserved for our sins, And it was that that set us free and so that we should no longer be slaves to sin. So the slavery has been broken. I don't believe the sin has been broken. I believe the slavery has been broken. That something has happened, something remarkable that's happened in our conversion, that has given us a new victory over sin that we never had before.

Not a perfect victory over it, but it was a new victory and something, a grip upon our neck of the devil was broken. His hand was knocked off and we were free to move out again. This was a dramatic thing. Often, Often it takes something dramatic to do something wonderful. And that's what happened on the cross.

And then there's a fourth powerful force at work in us. And that is that you died so that you might have life. You died so that you might have life. Now if we died with Christ, again you have this language of unity, don't you? It's in almost every sentence in this section.

It's you with Christ. It's our only hope. Your unity with Christ is the only true asset you have in this whole world. And he speaks of it here again. If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him.

We died and we live, that's the idea. And it's unity with Him in that life. Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more, death no longer has dominion over us. Death no longer has dominion over us. Something has been broken.

And in verse 10 it says, for the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God. So this shows us what happens when we're justified. We share in his life, and there's this new force at work in us. He gives life to the mortal body so that out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water so that you can experience what Jesus said in John 10, I came that they might have life and they might have it more abundantly, more abundantly. Something has been broken and a crack, a crack for abundance to flow in.

And the crack just keeps getting bigger and bigger and turns into a torrent that finally takes you to heaven at the end of your days. This is why we can be like the one in Psalm 1, he shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water and bringing forth fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. This is what has happened. Something has started in us that has expanded. This is what the Kingdom of Heaven does.

It's like a mustard seed. It's like leaven. It grows. And it takes over one thing at a time, year by year. This is the beauty of the Kingdom of Heaven.

In John 5, The Lord Jesus speaks of this gift of life that comes from the Father and to the Son and then to the Sons, Sons and Daughters. He says, For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them. Even so, the Son gives life to whom he will." The Son gives life in a moment of time, and he keeps on giving it day after day. Most assuredly, I say that he who hears my word and believes in me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment but has passed from death into life. Most assuredly I say to you the hour is coming and now is when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself, and he has given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for the Hour is coming in which all those who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth and those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of condemnation. So there is life in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's a resurrection unto life for newness. Now for newness of life there has to be death.

And so that's what this is all about. The life comes from the death. Now, in verse 11, there's a word, likewise. Do you see that? Likewise you also.

Likewise you also. Wreck in yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ. Now what does that mean? Does that mean that you're going to play a mind game saying I have no sin? Absolutely not.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Nobody's experience either represents that. So what does it mean? Here's what I believe it means. That if believers are crucified and baptized and resurrected, then they should think of themselves that way.

They should reckon themselves that way. Not that they're perfect, but that the power of death has been broken in them and they are being raised up to new life. There is a rise and a progress of the soul. As believers should know that something has been broken. We need to remind ourselves of that here this morning.

That the power of death has been broken and that there is a new powerful force working in us, something old has been replaced with something new. So Paul has been explaining here in this section many of the details of our oneness with Christ. That Christ is caught up in his life, he's caught us up in his death, he's caught us up in all of his redemptive work, and he's broken the power of sin against us so that we would be able to bear fruit. And so this takes us to the last section. Right behavior.

Walk in a manner worthy of your redemption, a manner that's consistent with your redemption. This is not just a speculative faith, This is not just a faith in name only. This is not something that's empty of works. It's not something that's empty of real life. It means it's a faith that does something.

It's not a faith that just passively says, I've been crucified with Christ. It's also a faith that gets up and takes action. It's a vigorous faith that actually wages war against certain things and nurtures other things. And that's what this next section is about. I love the way Holy Scripture teaches us because it's real.

It makes so much sense in real life. You know many religions are into denial, denying that you're even there. You know You can be a Christian science and you're not even there. You can be a Hindu and believe that some phantom spiritual thing is going on. No, it's not that way at all.

This is real life And the Bible describes life as it really is. So he says, now, therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body. Obviously, we don't have sinless perfection, because there's still sin there that we should stop letting it reign in us, that you should obey its lusts. So I want to just point out a number of things that are here. First of all there's a command to disobey the lusts of the body.

There's a command to disobey the lusts of the body. Do not obey its lusts. The flash will come up and say do this, get gratification here. No, disobey. Disobey that lust rising up within you.

Secondly, there's a command. The command is to present the members of your body as instruments to righteousness, not instruments of unrighteousness. And he's using language that our bodies are like machines, they're like instruments. I was thinking about all the different machines around that we operate. And they do a certain thing with our bodies like that too.

We have a function. We are instruments of righteousness. And we have hands and feet and eyes and you know what are the what are the ends what what are the the parts of your body what are the members of your body here's where they are and this is why I think it's so critical here what do you give your eyes to what gets what gets eye time what gets your time what gets mind time where are your feet walking that's what he's saying you say yes the power of sin has been broken, but there are things that you must do to increase the glory of God in your life. So this is a command to present the members of your body not as instruments of unrighteousness but as instruments of righteousness. And then There's a conclusion to embrace in verse 14.

For sin shall not have dominion over you. For you are not under the law, but under grace. For you are not under the law, but under grace. Now, This is obviously not a call to say, oh, how I despise thy law. This does not mean that we can go about saying the law of the Lord is inadequate.

No, that's not what this is saying at all. This affirms that the law of the Lord is perfect. This affirms that we should love the law of God. That's not what he's saying here at all. How do we relate to the law?

This says you're not under law but under grace. What does that mean? What does it mean not to be under law but to be under grace? I can't say any better than Spurgeon. Let me just quote him.

Not under the law means that we are not trying to be saved by obedience to the law. We do not pretend to earn eternal life by merit, nor hope to claim anything of the Lord as due to us for our good works. We do not expect to earn a reward, neither are we flogged to duty by dread of punishment. We are under grace, that is to say, we are treated on the principle of mercy and love, and not on that of justice and desert. Freely, of His own undeserved favor, God has forgiven us for Christ's sake.

He has rewarded us with favor, not because we deserved it, but simply because He willed to do so according to that ancient declaration, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. Many people read that verse, you're not under law and under grace to mean that the law has nothing to say. That is the wrong idea that's communicated here. You can't even understand the rest of this passage. You can't understand chapter seven without understanding that there are laws of God that need to be obeyed.

So it doesn't mean that you're now out from under it. But it means that your salvation is not secured by your obedience to the law. Your salvation is secured by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. You've been buried with him in baptism. You've been crucified.

You've been raised from the dead by his power. He has hidden you in the rock. He has covered you over so that the wrath of God would pass by. That's what it means not to be under the law. You're not under the condemnation of the law.

You will not be sent to hell by violating the law because the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ has diverted it. Has diverted it. So the rise and the progress of the soul, What a wonderful theme that we have here before us. And the rise comes when we resist the voice that says, let's sin so that grace will abound. The rise and the progress of the soul comes when we know that Christ has baptized us into his death, he has crucified us, and he has raised us up to new life.

The progress of the soul comes when we cease presenting the members of our bodies to sin. And so here we find ourselves before a text of Scripture that tells us that we have been unified with Christ, that Our salvation is based on His death, burial and resurrection, not on our own merits at all. And that when we were buried with Him, when we were all together, all of us who are converted in this room, we were all buried in this great catacomb together when we were buried we were justified by faith alone and we were made one with Christ forever and no one can snatch us out of his hand and we were also made one with one another forever, for we have been baptized into one body through the Lord Jesus Christ. And here now this morning, the Lord Jesus Christ is always as he always has, cleaving to his people. He is the shepherd of his sheep.

And what a blessing it is to be in his family with a life secured by his own blood. Would you pray with me? Lord, thank you for this reminder of what you have done and all of the blessings that come from your great work towards sinners. How do you deal with all these sinners in this world, Lord? And you've shown us here what you would do with the sinner.

Praise you, Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you, Almighty God, and thank you, Holy Spirit, for all of your great work toward our salvation in Jesus name Amen amen okay so Thoughts? More? More, more, more. Things that have been done on our behalf, they're things that we never could have done with the active things that were in Jordan.

I think the summary of that is that being freed from sin is something we can never do to ourselves. And then the active things were called to us based on the passive things that have already been done to us. There would be no point talking about the active things if the passive things had not already been done to us, but they have been done to us. And so, in the same way that Abraham, God made a declaration about Abraham, that when we look at the record, we can debate whether it's true or not. God credited righteousness to Abraham because of his faith.

We see all manner of things in Abraham's life that we can poke holes in. But God reckoned him as righteous because of his faith. And I think there's a similar thing that we're called to here, reckoning ourselves dead to sin, not because we have a righteousness of our own, but because God has made a declaration that's true, and therefore we're called to be active felons like putting ourselves in. And I think Hebrews 12.1 is a good articulation of that, where the writer of Hebrews says this, Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us." So the author of Hebrews is acknowledging that sin still has an entangling effect. It easily entangles us, but that we do have a power to lay this aside that we never would have had before Christ saved us.

And then the last comment that I'd like to say, lest we hear these things and get the wrong idea, is that we should always keep in our minds the nature of the holiness of God. The holiness of God is unapproachable by us in any way. We can never approach his holiness. We'll always be radically different, no matter how much progress we make in our own souls over the course of a lifetime, we will not approach the holiness of God, which is why Isaiah, who was a righteous man by human standards, when he's in the presence of God says, Woe is me, for I am undone, and I am a man of uncleanness, and I live among the people of uncleanness. So there is progressive sanctification, praise the Lord, but it will not cause us to approach the whole of the work of God.

There will be no room for hostility, no matter how much progress we make. Amen. I wanted to give you an illustration I was thinking of when we were talking over these things. Imagine that somebody, due to whatever conditions, ended up selling themselves into slavery. So they were under bondage to this cruel master and they were living in the same house with this master and because of the fact that they were slaves, they had to listen to this individual.

Their relationship to this master, this cruel master, was one of a servant. Now, another person comes along and pays the price that that slave owed to that master. Okay? So now that individual's relationship to the master has changed. Yet the man still remains in that house.

So now the man's relationship, although it has changed, he is still present in the house with that evil master, but he no longer identifies himself with that evil master. Instead, he constantly keeps that evil master in his eyes, distrusts him, and tries to stay as far away from that evil master as he possibly can, waiting for the time where he can leave that house. And that is my view essentially of our relationship to the flesh or the old man. We were in the same house with our flesh under bondage due to sin. And Christ came and died on the cross and paid that bondage price so that our relationship with our flesh has changed.

We are no longer bound under servant to master obligation to that flesh. But it doesn't change the fact that in proximity our flesh is still near to us. But we shouldn't live under the idea that we are still slaves to this Master, and in fact it gives us all the more reason to be wary of the flesh and look at every opportunity that that evil Master wants to again bring us into bondage. We need to live aware of the presence of this evil master and increase our hope looking for the day in which we can leave that house and leave that proximity. And I think that corresponds really well with the language here in verse 12.

You know, do not obey its lusts. Don't obey that old master. And yeah, that's great. When you ask about the proper response to grace, I remind you of somebody who said about I can remind you of somebody's question about why a person should reflect on the scriptures that Jesus ever left. Jesus ever laughed or...

And the interval motion says that the response to God has to be felt with the heart. And the only possible response to this grace should be praise. Praise the emotions of the heart. Amen. Yeah, how do you respond, if you didn't hear this, How do you respond emotionally to grace?

There should be an emotional response. Jorge summarized that with the word praise. Amen. Yes. A couple of interesting things that I noticed just going through this whole, actually from chapter 6 through 8, there's just a handful, but it's not treated carefully, it's not read in the full counsel of God.

It is easy to come away with a couple of parishes, right? We know that the Council of Doric, which labels the teachings of Arminius to be heretical, one of those points was that you could lose your salvation. So even in the first verse, and then if you look at verse 15, we can see where that might come from. Because the question is, what shall we say then? Shall we continue to sin that grace may have done.

Verse 15 says what then shall we shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace. I think part of the issue there was if we with this teaching if we don't teach loss of salvation it's going to just result in a lascivious lifestyle, just whatever you want to do. But the reality is, we've been given an appetite. If we are united in Christ, we have to give an appetite. So we don't have an appetite for the sin.

One of the other things I saw also, and clearly in scripture we see in Ephesians 2, 5, and 6, we see in Colossians 2, 12, Colossians 3, 1, all through scripture that there is a current with the resurrection we are raised with Christ presently there is a present sense of that but if you look at verse 5 and also verse 8 I think Paul is also drawing out a future resurrection as well where it says for if we have been united together in the likeness of his death, certainly we shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. Now if we die with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. So while Paul is also affirming that there is a present sense of a resurrection, there is also a future sense. And if you look at 1 Timothy, the end of 1 Timothy 1, I think 19 and 20, he talks about two men, Hymenaeus and then later on 2 Timothy, I think it's Philetus, and they were rejecting a bodily resurrection. They thought, they said that the retchion was already in the past, and that the only retchion was already in the past.

This would lead to the heretical teaching, what we would call the name Manichaeanism, or asceticism, where we think that everything, because the body has these lusts and we're fighting, we have this war against the body, that everything about our body is evil and that we should cast away, which leads to some strange practices, castration, mutilation, all these things because the body is evil. But we must remember that there was a bodily resurrection with Christ and we will also have a bodily resurrection. So that would be a teaching that would stray from the scripture. So I noticed that Paul was also drawing out there's a shall be, there's a future sense of a resurrection in your patient. Yeah.

Thank you, Steve. It is with our actions that we can do it. But we cannot simply live a monastic life, because that would not conduce to anything. He calls it in the introduction, it is called the monastic error. For the monastic mistake, it has to take the mind as a whole, consider the soul and mind and heart, and take those affections that replace one's name and place them totally in God.

That's the introduction to the general school. And I find it very helpful. Okay, are we finished? Yes. Just real quick, something that goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, is just to remind you here that it's hammered over and over again that we need to be aware of our sin and stop sinning not because of our relationship to man, not because of our relationship to anybody else that we know, but because of our relationship to Christ and His resurrection.

It's entirely due to our relationship with God. And I was glad that you brought up the psalm that you did because, again, our sin is only to God. And that's the only point that matters really, is our sin is a broken relationship I don't know if the gentleman can address the nature of sinning against one another. I've seen those sins where it says I've sinned against you and you alone. So I guess I'm confused about how that works with how we still have sinned against someone else.

Sure, yeah, of course, both are true. Ultimately, all sin is a sin against God. Any sin against man is always a sin against God. We never just sin against man, ever. It's a dual affair.

I think that's how you understand it. There definitely are sins. We can easily sin against one another. And there are regulations for how to handle that. What do we do in situations like that?

What does the sinner do and what is the one sinned against do? And scripture is full of commands for those kinds of things. So yes, because the sin is against God doesn't exclude a sin against man. Because every sin against man is a sin against God does that make sense yes The reason it's a sin for me to do adultery is the wife of God said that that's a sin. The reason it's a sin for me to murder the God said that's a sin.

The reason it's a sin for me to treat my brother poorly is because God said that that was a sin. So that's just why it's a secret. He is the ultimate source of right and wrong, of law, of good and evil, of what is good and what is evil. So that's why everything is a sin. We, you know, we like, we like to, We actually like to think that there are two different things, there are sins against God.

James says, out of the same mouth come blessing and cursing. With it you bless your God and Father, and with it you curse men who have been made in the slum military of God. We're even capable of blessing God out of one side of our mouth and sinning against men out of the other, which is a sin against God. We have this, the simultaneity about our nature and the hypocrisy about us is so deep and amazing to consider, but I think styles as well, you know, It's the law of God that tells us when we've sinned against man and therefore against God. Okay, anybody else?

Thanks for watching!