In the sermon titled 'Dead to Sin,' Pastor Steve Hopkins explores the Apostle Paul's teachings in Romans chapter 6. He emphasizes the concept of being 'dead to sin' through union with Christ, explaining that believers are spiritually united with Christ in His death and resurrection. This union means believers have died with Christ to sin's condemning and enslaving power and are alive to God. The sermon refutes the idea that Christians are free from sin's influence completely, noting that sin remains a struggle, but believers now have divine power to resist and overcome sin. Pastor Hopkins also discusses the doctrine of imputation, explaining how Christ's death was made possible by the imputation of human sin to Him, allowing Him to bear its penalty. The sermon calls on believers to reckon or consider themselves as truly free from sin's dominion and to live in the newness of life granted by their union with Christ. It stresses the importance of recognizing and believing this reality as it empowers Christian living and spiritual growth.

Welcome back to Burnet Bible Church. Join us this week as Pastor Hopkins continues his sermon series through the Book of Romans. Good morning again. If you would turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Romans, where again we'll be picking up with chapter 6, verses 8 through 11. If you would stand with me for the reading of the Word of the Lord.

Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more. Death has no more dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died unto sin once. But in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, our Lord." Let's pray.

Our Father, glorious, almighty God, we praise you, God, we worship you this morning, and we come before you humbly, God, once again asking that you might be pleased, Lord, to illuminate the text before us and give us understanding, and that you might, God, through the power of your Holy Spirit help us to to understand your word Oh God and nourish us thereby And conform us thereby more into the image of your son for we ask it in his holy name. Amen Let's be seated. So as we pick up with verse 8 of Paul's epistle to the Romans this morning, we read, Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. And I want to direct your attention in these first few moments back to the beginning where we began with all of this, back to the beginning of chapter 6 where we first heard the apostle using this kind of language, where he speaks of us as being dead. In verse 2, you'll remember he asked a question.

He said, how shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein? And I said at that time, to be dead to sin, that is to have died to sin, is to be in union with Christ in His death. Obviously can't mean some of the things that have been proposed out there, you know, that, well, it means that we're dead to any influence of sin in our life. Well, we know that that's not true. Volumes of Scripture speak against that notion.

Or that we're dead to sin as though we can't sin. You know, that of course contradicts volumes of Scripture and contradicts, you know, 1 John where, you know, John tells us if any man says he has no sin, he's a liar, and the truth is not in him. But to have died to sin is to be in union with Christ in His death, which every one of us is, who is in union with Christ by faith. By virtue of our union with Jesus Christ, we who believe on the name of Christ died when Christ died. When He died, we died.

And not only that, we were buried with Christ when He was buried. And when He rose, we were raised with Him. And everything that we've read in chapter 6 has been really in light of this reality of our union with Christ. And so as we pick up with verse 8 this morning, the same reality of our union with Christ in His death and in His resurrection continues to be stressed. And the apostle is taking it somewhere.

He's taking us somewhere with this, and it will really be evident when we get to verse 11 where he has been taking us. But verse 8 says, now if we be dead, here's the word again, now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. And the reality is this. The reality is that if we are in union with Christ by faith, if you're truly a believer, You're truly in Christ, in union with Him by faith. Then in fact, we died with Him when He died on that cross 2, 000 years ago, and we rose with Him when He was resurrected from the dead.

In a spiritual sense, we died with Him and we were raised with Him. Now, every one of us who are in union with Christ through faith in Him will one day be raised from the dead. We have that teaching throughout Scripture. These corruptible, these mortal bodies are going to put on incorruption and immortality, and one day we're going to live with Christ forever. But that's not where the emphasis lies in what the apostle is teaching here in this text.

He's talking about a life that begins now. He's talking about a life that begins now. We died with Him And we rose with Him. We died with Him, and if we died with Him, we will also live with Him, not only in eternity, but right now. We are participants right now in the risen life of Christ.

We are participants in His death And we are participants in His resurrected life not only after we're resurrected from the dead and we're in heaven, but right now Christ is living in His people and His life is being lived through His people right now. Galatians chapter 2 verse 20, The Apostle Paul says here, I am crucified with Christ, same thing, nevertheless I live. Yet not I, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh I live, so he's alive, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. We are participants right now in the risen life of Christ.

If you're a believer, You will one day be raised by Christ, but you're right now living in Him and He in you and Him through you. And that's been the case ever since the day He raised you. He raised you from spiritual death to spiritual life by the power of His Spirit. Of course, this is only true of those who are in Christ. Those who are not in Christ remain in the camp of the spiritually dead.

They remain in the camp of the spiritually dead. And one of the things that identifies those who are spiritually dead is they don't really have any interest in the things of God. They may at one time, You know, profess Christ and go to church and try to do the Christian thing, but they don't really have an interest in the things of God. They're spiritually dead. They didn't die with Christ.

They weren't raised with Christ. They didn't go under when He went under. They didn't come up when He came up. They're spiritually dead in trespasses and sins. And they will one day experience what's called the second death, which is the lake of fire, which very few people talk about anymore.

But verse 9 goes on to say, knowing that Christ being raised from the dead, dieeth no more, death hath no more dominion over him. We being in Christ, what is true of Him is true of us. He being raised from the dead will never die again and we, when we are raised by the same power that raised Christ from the dead, will never die. The same will be true of us. And it's true of us right now in regards, as I said, to the second death, the lake of fire, which no one who is in union with Christ will ever experience.

If you're in union with Christ by faith, you will never experience what the unbeliever, the false prophet, you know, Antichrist, Satan himself will experience for all eternity. You will never experience the second death. But our text is telling us that Christ died and He dies no more. He died once and He dies no more. And I want you to remember from our teaching on the doctrine of imputation that Jesus could never have died for our sins had our sins not been imputed to Him.

You can't die, death is the wages of sin. You can't die unless either you're a sinner who's sinned before God, then you're already there, Or unless in Christ's case, who never sinned, our sins were imputed to Him. It's the only way He could die. The only way that He could die, the only way that death could have dominion over Him is that our sins were imputed to Him. Death could not have had dominion over Him at all if it were not for the imputation of our sin to His account on the cross, because He was without sin and death is the wages of sin.

Has everybody grasped this? And having our sins declared to His account, and Christ having fully discharged the debt of our sin by the sacrifice of Himself once for all time, death no longer has dominion over him or us. He fulfilled the mission for which he came into the world. He paid the penalty for our sins. He defeated death in the grave.

He rose from the dead. Death no longer has dominion over him, and death no longer has dominion over us. We will not experience the second death. The death Christ died, He died once to sin. That's what the text says.

Look at your Bibles. The death He died, He died once to sin. In what sense? Well, How can Jesus die to sin? Did He die to sin's power to dictate to Him?

No. Did He die to His own sinfulness? Well, no. He never sinned. He doesn't have a sin nature.

In what sense? In the only sense in which the word sin is ever used in Scripture with regards to Jesus. I tried this out, I tested it out, I said, I'm going to put in the word sin and put in the word Jesus. Put in the word sin, put in the word Christ in one of these, you know, Bible gateway or something and whatever comes up. You know what comes up in relation to sin?

Your sin and my sin in relation to Jesus and what He did with regards concerning our sin. The death Christ died on the cross, He died to sins once for all. Once for all those in Him, and once for all time for all those in Him. Jesus defeated sin and He defeated death when He took our sins upon Himself and paid the penalty for our sins once for all time. The work that Christ did on the cross is a one-time work.

It's finished. He said it. When I'm preaching on the streets, I preach it in Spanish. Consumado es. It is finished.

It is consummated. It's over. It's finished. The work he did is that one work. It is a completed work.

It is a one work for all time. And he did it by the sacrifice of himself to obtain eternal redemption for us, for His people, by that one sin offering. His death paid the penalty for sin, and please don't miss this because the apostle is headed here. This is where we're headed. By Jesus' death and resurrection, He paid the penalty for our sins, but that's not all, as if that weren't enough.

He also broke the dominion of sin. He also, in His death on the cross, broke the dominion of sin. He broke the dominion of sin for all those who are in union with Him, so that we who are in Christ by faith are no longer subject not only to sin's condemning power, sin's power to damn us, but we're also no longer subject to sin's power to enslave us, to the dominion of sin, to its dominating power in our lives. We're no longer under the tyranny of sin. We're no longer under compulsion, like a slave, to obey sins dictates without resistance.

By virtue of our union with Christ, we have died with Him and are risen with Him, and we are no longer slaves to sin. We are dead indeed to sin. We have died to sin. By virtue of our union with Jesus Christ in His death and in His resurrection from the dead, we who believe died to both sin's power to condemn us as well as sin's power to enslave us because that's what Jesus did for us in dying for our sins. Paul goes on in verse 11, and this is where he's been going.

Likewise, understanding everything that I've been teaching you, he's saying, everything I've been teaching you on this subject, on this doctrine, likewise, in relationship to all of this, in the same way, every one of you needs to reckon ye also yourselves, reckon you yourselves also to be dead in deed and to sin. Now he's saying something different here. He's saying, this is a reality about you. Now you need to reckon that which is real about you and true about you to be so. Reckon you also yourselves to be dead and dead and descend but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is where the Apostle Paul has been heading. But what does he mean? First that word reckon Dr. Sproul was listening to Sproul on this and he talked about how the word is used in a lot of the old westerns You know you reckon we're gonna get some rain. I reckon But I grew up with that kind of language, you know having lived most of my life in Texas Where I'd hear things, you know from the old ranchers I'd hear the old ranchers say things like Well, you reckon you're gonna get getting much.

Hey this year reckon you're gonna be getting much. Hey this year off your place? I reckon. I reckon so. It means I think so.

I believe so. I believe so. We would say, well, I believe so. To reckon something to be so is to consider or believe it to be so. Paul is saying to the faithful at Rome and to every one of us here in this room today, reckon yourselves to be what you are in reality.

And there's power in that, by the way. There is power in that for Christian living. Reckon yourselves to be what you in reality are as those in union with Jesus Christ. He's already established that we who are in union with Christ have died with Christ and risen with Christ. Now He's saying, reckon it to be as in reality it is.

Does everyone see that? You see that? Reckon yourselves to be both dead and alive, dead unto sin and alive unto God because you are. Because that is the truth concerning you. Paul is saying, by virtue of our union with Christ in His death and in His resurrection, we who believe are in reality, present tense, dead to sin as to its condemning power and dead to sin as to its enslaving power and alive unto God through Christ.

If you're still a slave of sin, it's because you're not truly in Christ. Now there's a difference between sinning, right? Everyone sins. We already went through that earlier. And being a slave to sin.

If you're still in Adam, you're still the old man that you were when you were born, you're not in Christ. If you're a slave to sin, You obey its dictates, it comes along and it says, come on, don't hold your tongue, don't hold your eyes, don't hold your ears, don't stop your mouth, and you just obey willingly on and on and on and on and on. You're living in sin and those who are living in sin are not dead to sin or alive to God. They are dead in trespasses and sins. And it's something that every one of us needs to consider.

But Paul says, let us reckon that to be so concerning us that is so. Again, it's one thing to live and sin, it's another thing to sin. The Bible tells us every one of us is going to sin. And what happens when we sin? God the Father chases us sometimes, but God the Spirit convicts us, convicts us that we have violated His commands, that we've done things that we should not have done.

You're a brother or sister in the household, and you get into a situation with one of your brothers or sisters, and you speak in a way to them, and you treat them in a way that you know is wrong. You know you shouldn't talk to him or her like that. You know you shouldn't treat him like that. In the unregenerate state, you just do it and you just go on. And you do it again and again and again and again and again.

In the regenerate state, when you've been raised with Christ from death to life, now you commit a conviction. You may do the same thing, but then you're just struck and you just say, oh Lord, I've done this again. And you go to your brother or your sister and you say, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please forgive me.

You're in Christ. You died with Christ and you were raised with Christ. We're talking about regeneration. You went under, you came up, you're a new creature in Christ Jesus, you're a different person than you were when you were not regenerate, when you were in the unbelieving state. And Paul is saying, reckon yourselves to be what you actually are in Christ.

This is a big help to the people of God. Let us reckon that to be so concerning us that is so. Reckon yourselves to be what you actually are in Christ. You've been raised from spiritual death to spiritual life. You were regenerated by the Spirit of the Living God.

You died with Christ and were raised with Christ. You've been delivered from the power of sin to condemn you and delivered from the power of sin to tyrannically control you and dictate to you. We all hate a dictator, don't we? We've seen enough of them. Sin is a dictator.

But God overthrew that dictatorship in the life of his people. Consider yourselves to be so because the fact is that it is so. That is the present, ongoing, never-ending reality of every one of us who are in union with Jesus Christ by faith and we need to believe it. We need to believe it concerning us because it is true concerning us. You know, people believe things to be true about themselves that are not true about themselves all the time, don't they?

And it has an effect upon them. People esteem themselves too highly, and they're very proud people, they become very proud people, and it works its way out in their lives and in their actions. Other people, they believe things about themselves to not be true that actually are true. And that also affects them and how they live. Doesn't it make good sense for a person to believe that to be true about his or herself that is actually true about them?

As believers seeking to walk as Christ walked in the world, it is imperative that we recognize the reality of the state in which we exist and that We have been both pardoned and set free. If you're in Christ by His death, by His resurrection, you were both pardoned and set free. Pardoned of sin and set free from the dominion, The tyrannical reign of sin over your life. All our sins have been pardoned who are in Christ. And we've been set free from the bond service of sin.

And not only that, we've been raised with Christ to newness of life and given divine power. Divine power, brothers and sisters, to resist temptation and actually have victories over sin. Complete and total victory? No, not until the day we're glorified. You're going to fight that battle to the end of your life if you're a believer.

There's no battle before you were a believer. There's no battle, you just yield, just give in, whatever. You know, can't wait to get out of church and get back to my sin, do the things I really wanna do. But if you're in Christ, You've been given divine power to resist temptation and actually have victories over sin and victories over temptation as you're being incrementally conformed to the image of the one who died for your sins. We have died to sins condemning and dominating power Because Christ did that and we are alive and we died in him and we're alive to God through Christ Which we're gonna get to next week alive in Christ today.

We're focusing on having died to sin Died with Christ, But there are a number within the number of the truly justified in Christ, please get this, who though this is true of them, they are dead with Christ, they're raised with Christ, they're justified, they're new creatures in Christ Jesus, they don't recognize it. They don't reckon it to be so. I don't reckon. They don't reckon it to be so concerning them, and thus they go about wandering with an O and wandering with an A all the days of their lives. They go about wandering and wandering.

Wondering. They come under a spiritual attack and after failures or falling into some sin, they begin to wonder if they're really a Christian at all. They begin to wonder if they've come back under the condemnation of sin, not believing the truth, the reality that is theirs in Christ Jesus who saved them from their sins, who they died with and were raised with. Or they begin to wonder if maybe they're still enslaved to sin, maybe I'm still a slave to sin, because they've had a time in their life where they're really struggling. So they wander, they wander from time to time into doubting castle, They always find their way into Doubting Castle.

That's the Christian, right? And they come under the influence of the giant of despair, Pilgrim's Progress, and they say to themselves, maybe I'm not even a child of God. Maybe I'm not really a child of God. Does He really love me? Have I really been changed?" And they wonder maybe if they're really slaves of sin, because they keep doing something or saying something or thinking something again and again, that they would give anything to stop doing, saying, or thinking.

Anything. You remember the picture I gave of the Christian as opposed to the non-Christian and the light switch on the wall? All you've got to do, if this were the case, all you've got to do is just go and flip that switch on. If you reach out there and flip that switch on on that light switch, you will never sin against God again in this life. How many would do it?

All the regenerate would do it immediately. They would go, yes! The unregenerate hesitates. I don't know, I want to give it my sin. I kind of like my sin.

I kind of like my sin. They hesitate. The person who's in Christ leaps for the switch. They'll almost push somebody else out of the way to get to the switch. You mean I can be in a situation where I don't sin against God anymore?

Yes. The unbeliever. The same is true if you take a spinning fan blade, a metal fan blade, and put it in front of it, and you say, you're not ever going to sin again if you can flip that switch. And he gets the switch up. Like Jesus said, off with the hands, off with the feet, out with the eyes, right?

Better to lose an arm or a leg or a limb or an eye than for your entire body to be cast into hell. There's a difference between the believer and the unbeliever, but he would give anything to stop doing and saying or thinking what he's doing, saying and thinking. But the Apostle Paul, speaking under inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, is saying, Brothers and sisters, I've told you the truth concerning yourselves as those who are in union with Christ by faith, and seeing that this is true about yourselves, knowing that this is the reality concerning you, you need to believe it. And never forget it. Amen?

And this is the truth. Being in union with Christ, you've died with Christ, you've risen with Christ, you're dead indeed to sin, you're alive to God, you're no longer what you once were, you're a freed man and it is Christ who freed you, you have been delivered from sin's tyrannical grip, sin's power to condemn you to death and enslave you to an irresistible obedience to its dictates has been broken, it has been conquered, Christ died for these. Again, it doesn't mean we never sinned, but we now have divine power to resist sin and fight sin and mortify sin that we did not have in the state in which we were born and went on before Christ. We've got power now, divine power. Sin's power to condemn us and enslave us has been destroyed and we need to recognize it.

And the life we now live, we live in Christ who lives unto God and we in Him and He in us. We died with Christ. We rose with Christ. We've been raised from death to life, spiritual death to spiritual life. We've died to sin and are alive to God and we need to recognize it and we need to believe it.

We need to never let it get out of our minds because it is the truth concerning us. Brothers and sisters, we are not the people we once were. Remember I was talking last week about conversion. It means there's a change. There's an actual change that takes place.

You're given a new heart with new desires. You're not the person you used to be. We who have put our trust in Christ alone were raised from being dead and trespassed in sins and are now in a new state before God, the state of justification, not condemnation, and no longer under the tyranny of our old master. And we need to reckon ourselves to be so, to be what in reality we are in Christ. Justified souls raised from death to life in Christ to walk as He walked in the newness of the new life that we have in Jesus.

Our Old man, remember we talked about the old man? The old man is the old self, Adamic nature. The unregenerate man in which we were born, that we were born. The old man we were in Adam was crucified with Christ. Actually, really, in a spiritual sense, crucified with Christ.

That's who we were, the old self, but it's not who we are now. We who are in Christ are no longer in Adam. We are now a new creation in Christ Jesus. And all things are passed away and all things are become new. And we need to recognize it to be so because it is so.

But we have such a hard time concreting the reality of this in our minds. A friend of mine poured our slab for our house this past week, and there were like 25 trucks of concrete that came in, so concrete's been on my mind. But again, we have such a hard time setting in concrete in our minds the reality of who we are and what we are as those in union with Christ and His death and in His resurrection. It needs to be concreted into our minds. We're new creatures in Christ Jesus.

We're a new creation, And we need to believe it to be so, because it's the truth. And we need to believe the truth about the mighty things God has done to us and for us. Paul is saying, see yourself again as you truly are in Christ, as the person you now are in Christ. Stop living like you're still living in the past. You aren't that man anymore.

You aren't that woman anymore. You're not that child anymore. You're a new creation. Now live like it. You've been freed.

Now live like a freed man, not like the slave you once were. Friends, you can look in the mirror when temptation comes in like a flood upon your life, and sometimes it will. You can look at temptation, you can look in the mirror when temptation comes in like a flood, seeking to drown you in hopelessness and chain you down in the dungeon of despair, and you can respond to that person looking back in the mirror at you and say, haven't you heard? What? No, haven't you heard?

I guess you didn't get the memo. I'm not that man anymore. I'm not that man anymore. That man was crucified with Christ. My old man, my old self, that unregenerated, sin-dominated man was nailed to the cross with Christ.

That man who was dead to sin without moral ability to do anything but sin is gone. The new man is alive in Christ with a new heart, a new heart that wants more than anything to do the will of Him who suffered and died for Him and rose for him. He wants to do the will of him who suffered and died for him, died for the very things you, temptation, sin, are pleading with me to plunge back into. That man whose heart was as dead as stone to God and righteousness and obedience is crucified. Whose heart was as dead as stone to God and righteousness and obedience is crucified.

Haven't you heard? Haven't you heard? Didn't you get the memo? And that formerly bewildered face looking back at you in the mirror says, yeah, yeah, I heard. Thank you for reminding me.

Thank you for reminding me. That's not me anymore. Brothers and sisters, Christ died to save us from the guilt of our sin, but he also died to save us from our sinfulness. He died to pay the penalty due our sins, but he also died to release us from the prison of sin and from the bond service of sin. When you come into situations where sin comes knocking on your door and demanding to be let in, you can respond, Jesus died for my sins and rose again, and I in him.

Because I'm in union with him, I'm dead to your power to condemn me, sin, and I'm dead to your power, sin, to dictate to me anymore, and demand my obedience to you. I have been given power to resist you. I have been raised from death to life, and I'm no longer Your slave. The old man, the old self you once dominated is nailed to the cross with Christ. Now leave me be." Can anyone say amen?

We've been raised from the dead to walk in newness of life. By the power of God, we were raised from death to life. In the life we now live, we live by the faith of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. We are no longer under compulsion like slaves to serve sin. We have been set free.

And we need to see ourselves. See ourselves. That's what Paul keeps going to. You need to see yourself as a freed man and a freed woman. Seeing what is true about us that we've died indeed unto sin and are alive unto God by virtue of our union with Jesus Christ in His death and in His life, in His resurrection, knowing that this is our new reality, we need to believe it.

We need to reckon that which is true about us to be true about us. And never forget it, because it is reality. Whole vast world out there that's not living in reality, right? That's why video games are so popular today. Nobody's living in reality.

Well this is your reality. This is your reality if you're in Christ. You are dead to the damning and enslaving power of sin and alive to righteousness. Now reckon that which is so to be so. We who are in Christ are justified people who have been delivered from the guilt of sin, delivered from the condemnation of sin, and delivered from the bondage of sin.

And we need to believe it and by the power of God, live like it, which is where we're going to be going next week in our study, the Lord willing, as we begin to look at what it means to be alive to God through Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful for Your Word, oh God. We're so grateful, Lord, for the truth of Your Word. We're so grateful, God, for the power of Your Word.

We know that apart from Your Word, oh God, man, is just an ignorant creature. We're so grateful, God, for your word, for your word is truth. And we thank you, Lord, for sending your Spirit to illuminate our hearts and minds, to illuminate the text and to give us understanding. And we ask God that you would bring these things back to us throughout the week that we've heard today in Eric's teaching and in the message now and in the Psalms and the hymns and the spiritual songs, bring these things back to us, O God, and press them upon us, O God, this week as you conform us more to the image of your Son, for we ask you in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.