In his sermon 'Living Under Grace,' Scott Brown explores Romans 6:11-14 to highlight the process of sanctification under God's grace. He outlines five key actions for believers to accelerate their sanctification: reckon, dethrone, withhold, consecrate, and stand in grace. These actions involve recognizing oneself as dead to sin, dethroning sin's rule over one's body, withholding one's members from sinful activities, consecrating one's body to God, and standing in the grace provided by Jesus Christ. Brown emphasizes the transformative power of God's word, the importance of a Christian mindset, and the role of grace in breaking free from sin. He compares the believer's struggle with sin to an embattled castle and stresses the necessity of using one's body as an instrument of righteousness. Through practical examples, he illustrates how believers can maintain self-mastery and align their actions with God's will. Ultimately, Brown underscores that grace offers hope and help in the ongoing battle against sin, encouraging believers to rely on God's provision for sanctification.

Open your Bibles to Romans chapter six and find verse 11, Romans six, 11. There couldn't have been two better songs to sing before we walk through these words of the text. Take my life and I surrender all. Thank you so much for those songs, what a blessing they were. Well, Romans 6, verse 11 through 14, This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, sweeter than honey word of God.

Likewise, you also reckon yourselves be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey 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 law but under grace. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for these words. Come now shepherd your flock, bring us into your truth, help us to walk in all of your ways. Oh God. We thank you for this wonderful Council for all of our lives Amen You know one of that one of the wonderful things about you may be seated.

Thank you very much One of the wonderful things about bringing the Word of God before a congregation is the reality that God leads His people through his word. God shepherds his flock through his word. And I, when we gather, that's my greatest prayer, is that God would use this to shepherd your life. That, you know, his shepherd staff in the Word of God would be the primary leadership factor in your life. And so it's such a great thing to be here.

I wanna bring us out of this passage five things that you must do to accelerate victory and your sanctification and living under the grace of God. And there are five things, I'll state them now in case you don't have an outline in front of you. First of all, reckon, verse 11. Second, dethrone, verse 12. Third, withhold, verse 13.

Four, consecrate, verse 13. And stand in grace, verse 14. Now, I said at the beginning of our series in Romans that you will find that the Apostle Paul is full of encouragement. He can't stop encouraging people with the truth of God. And he's explaining the powerful effects of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And that's why at the beginning of the letter he says, for I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. So the apostle now, as we find ourselves here in 6.11, Paul has just spent five and a half chapters on the miracle of justification by faith. There's not one single command in the first five and a half chapters of this book. It's all the truth of God about salvation and what it means to be justified by faith. We call these the indicatives of the Christian life, the things that are true, the propositions.

You are justified by faith, not by works. Now he turns from the indicatives to the imperatives what you must do what you ought to do and so I've drawn from these verses five ways that you must participate in to accelerate holiness based on the forgiveness that you have, based on the fact that you stand in grace, that you have the the resources of the grace of God to help you to resist sin. So the doctrinal category of these verses is the doctrine of sanctification. This is a declaration of liberation. I really want us to understand this.

This is the assurance that you can break free from sinful patterns. That doesn't mean that you're sinless. But there's hope in the gospel. And so This is an exhortation, the first exhortation in the entire letter. And he's really, he's teaching the Roman church how to have victory over sin.

God has a plan for victory over sin. And it is a real victory and it's an internal victory and it's a visible victory. This is a really a beautiful vision of what God has done to give us power over sin. And so this is about the doctrine of sanctification. And we're given here the Word of God to teach us how to turn away from remaining sin.

And it's the Word of God that teaches you this. I think it's a very important truth because many people they go to therapists to try to escape their patterns of sin. They go they have an accountability group and things like this. But Jesus said, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. It's the truth of God that you need to be sanctified.

It's the truth of God that you need to turn away from sin. And I'm not saying that you should never go to someone for advice or anything like that. But the truth is, it's the word of God that teaches you how to escape the tentacles of sin. And we have it right here in front of us. Well we all we all know that we if we're believers that we still struggle with sin and we struggle with various reasons for our sins.

Some of it has to do with the way that we were brought up. Some of it just has to do with the things that we cultivate, the sinful emotions that we cultivate, and the wrong thinking that we We learned from other people and we baptized it. We kept thinking it and it's not that helpful. But let's don't forget who the Apostle Paul is speaking to. He's speaking to a church in Rome.

He's speaking to people who grew up in one of the most pagan cultures. Many people say it's very much like our our culture. Immorality, homosexuality, infanticide. You know fathers were given the authority to kill their children if they wanted to okay I mean this was a very wicked society 30% of the population of Rome were slaves so you have this morass of evil to that it just captured this culture and now you have people who are saved by grace and what are they going to do to escape their old patterns that they learned from a child and in this part this passage really helps us because we we too live in a in a darkening culture and we too are people that have indulged in the deeds of the flesh and it's affected us. So God has something for us.

And so, and I just give us a very quick review. In this whole matter of the doctrine of justification, which has taken us from the very first chapter all the way to verse 11 or verse 10 in this chapter you've got to know what you believe and like for example in verse 2 of Romans 6 you died to sin verse 3 you were baptized in other words in verse 4 you were buried with him. You were raised from the dead. You were united with him. This is what God has done.

Paul is saying you've got to know what's happened to you. That these things have already happened. The power of sin has been broken and and then he tells us how to continue to break three of those sinful patterns And so I'm giving you five ways to accelerate your holiness, five ways to accelerate your sanctification. And the first one is in verse 11. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So the first thing is to reckon. In other words, it starts with how you think. It's an accounting term. This is not the power of positive thinking. It's to actually believe something, to think.

And to think that, to think that you are dead to sin, because God has broken the power of sin. In other words, to think, sin, I'm done with you. Old man, I'm dead to you. Lust, you don't own me. I'm here to kill every inland of lust in my life.

You say to fear, get off my back. This is to reckon. This is to account yourself. No, I'm dead to you. You're nothing to me anymore.

When sin raises its ugly head, you say, I'm done with you. You reckon. It's the way that you think. And it's because you have died, you have been buried, you have been rescued, you have been redeemed, You have been justified by faith. That's Paul's logic It's like saying I don't have time for that anymore.

I I'm done with that that that wrecked my life I'm reckoning myself dead to you. And so the first thing that you need to know to accelerate your sanctification is to know that you have a choice to know that you can look away know that you are not a victim you're not a victim of of any sin pattern that you have in your past. Because you have reckoned yourselves as dead to sin. It begins in your mind. The most powerful influential thing in your life is the way you think, not how you feel.

The problem often is that our feelings run our thinking, when actually God designed us so that our thinking would run our feeling. And so the first thing is, the first thing you must do is to reckon. Reckon yourselves as dead to sin. The second is to dethrone, verse 12. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lust.

The operative words there are reign, that has to do with rulership, and mortal body, this has to do with your physical body, every part of it, and the word obey. So do not let sin reign in your mortal body. There is something to dethrone. There's a taskmaster to get away from. This is, there's a ruler that wants to rule you.

Sin is like a commander. Sin wants to run your life. It wants to tell you what to eat. It wants to tell you when to sleep. It wants to tell you what to watch.

It wants to tell you what to say. It wants to tell you what to listen to the sin is like a commander and it wants to rule and reign over you Something very interesting one of the commentaries Tater's John Murray said that if you want to mock a slave you tell him that he's free but if you want to encourage a freed slave then you tell him that he's free and that's what the Apostle Paul is doing he's saying you are you are a freed slave so go be free from Sin but the battle then this just implies that the battle for sin is not over us over with us that our bodily desires Seek to rule over us Our bodily desires seek to steer us. And the Christian says, I do not want to be steered by you anymore. They call you into obedience because sin wants to reign. This is very much like the language that we read in Genesis when Cain killed Abel and and God says to him sins desire is for you but you must master it.

His countenance had fallen and he was being mastered by his sin. And you know, there's a ruler that wants to reign over you. You know I had the joy to talk to some of the young children in our church this week and I told them I was I was going through this passage they've already heard this sermon. I said your body is like a castle and somebody wants to take it over. Somebody wants to take over your castle and you need to throw that tyrant out.

Someone wants to be king and you want to unseat him. You want to displace the king that wants to rule your castle. You want to uncrown him. It's true. We are an embattled people.

Even believers are embattled. And what the apostle is saying here is dethrone. Dethrone that tyrant that wants you to obey him. But what's so encouraging about this, is this makes it very plain that you don't have to obey the sin you don't have to you can say no that's why it says do not let sin reign you can you don't have to let it rain you can change your position God has given you the power to renounce the force of it. You can turn, you can run.

You're not forced to use any part of your body. Sin must ask permission. And you can either say yes or no. And the apostle is saying, do not let sin reign in your mortal body. You know, I was recently complaining to my wife that I need to eat less.

She said, well Scott, as far as I can see, no one is shoving food in your mouth. You're the only one that does it. I think that's the idea here. You can say yes or no to your bodily desires. That's what he's saying.

But our bodies are battlegrounds. There are so many inlets of sin. Hurt feelings is one of the most common inlets of sin. An unmet desire, a lust, a dissatisfaction, an idol, a weakness in someone else, a greed, all these things are inlets of sin and you are there at the door of your castle and you say, leave. No.

I'm done with you. No, I'm done with you And you know I was thinking about this in terms of the whole drama, you know of raising children In raising children parents have a responsibility to help their children reckon themselves dead to selfishness, reckon themselves dead to outbursts of anger, reckon themselves dead to lying and unkindness and all the things. You're always shepherding children away from disobedience. You're shepherding children away from dishonor. Children need help to be shepherded in that direction.

And in doing so, you're helping them create patterns of living. Even though they're not converted, even though the power of sin is not broken in their life, you're teaching the goodness of the Lord. Because there is goodness, even in obedience in the unbeliever. And you're always helping your children govern their sinful passions You're you're actually teaching your children self mastery So they don't yell whenever they want to yell they don't complain whenever they want to complain they don't run away from you they they don't roll their eyes I mean you're always you're always helping your children to constrain these these matters where someone is trying to rule their castle and you're teaching them not to lie you're teaching them not to steal you know on the contrary you know you're teaching them how to sing You're teaching them how to walk among brothers and sisters. You're teaching them how to honor their father and mother.

And you're teaching them how to honor the old people. What you're doing is you're helping your children not being taken over by their impulses. And it's right that parents teach their children to constrain their impulses, to have self-mastery. That's what honor and obedience really is all about. And of course you know and then we bring these children into the worship service and when they're very little it's even more difficult you know to teach them how to not talk.

But it's a process that has to take place. Well, the Apostle Paul talks about this in different ways. In Colossians 3, 5 he says, Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth. And then he lists a whole number of things. In which you yourselves once walked, put them off, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language out of your mouth.

Do not lie to one another since you have put off the old man with his deeds and put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him. So dethrone. First reckon, reckon yourselves dead, and then dethrone. The third is to, I'm just gonna call it withhold. Now verse 13.

In other words, withhold the members of your body to sin. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin. So he's talking here about holding back the members of your body. And of course there are many members of the body, you know, the mind, the eyes, the ears, the tongue, all these things. Hold them back.

You know, do not present your members. Do not yield your members to be used for sinful purposes. Because you don't have to yield. You have authority to rule over your members. The members of your body belong to you, not Satan.

The members of your body, your tongue, does not belong to the devil, it belongs to God. And I think this is sort of another way of saying, I refuse to use my body for anything but goodness. I refuse to use my body for anything else than the goodness and the glory of God. And why would you do that? Well, you do that because you think God is superior.

You think his ways are wonderful. You don't choose the best thing because you think it's the worst thing. You choose the best thing because it is the best thing. Because you desire what is good. You desire what's life giving.

That's why you choose what's good. And sin doesn't look good anymore. And to the believer, sin doesn't really look very good anymore. And that's what happens to you when the power of sin is broken. It doesn't look good to you like it used to.

Your affections have changed. God has changed what you want. Your wantor has changed and so you have new affections and you you want what is good. And so he's saying here, withhold your members. You know, don't, in other words, do not present your members.

In other words, don't touch the snake, okay? The snake will bite you. And you have authority over it you know in in in a few verses next time next Sunday In Romans 6 16 I'm going to talk about that verse, do you not know that whom you present yourselves, slaves to obey, you are that one slaves whom you obey, whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. And so it has to do with what you present your members to do. What are your hands and your eyes and your ears and your tongue submitted to do?

And he is saying, do not present your members as instruments of righteousness. Hang on that word instruments for a minute. Every other time that word is translated in the New Testament, it's translated as weapons. Do not present your members as weapons of unrighteousness. God views your body as a weapon.

It's either a weapon of righteousness or it's a weapon of unrighteousness. Isn't that interesting that God would actually name the members of your body as weapons? And they are weapons of warfare. I think that's why when you get to Ephesians chapter 6 and we learn about our weapons of warfare we put on the whole armor of God and that armor covers all of our members and some of them are offensive and some are defensive weapons. But our members are weapons and he's talking about your members, He's talking about your body parts, every part of you as an instrument, as a weapon of righteousness.

And if you read the people who comment or preach on this They always they all seems like they almost always do the same thing They go through and they itemize the various members of your body And they always start with the mind because the mind is the commander of your life. It's the operating system of everything that you do. And the mind always informs the tongue and the hands and the eyes and the feet. So the mind is so critical. People today are spending enormous amounts of time filling their minds with junk, filling their minds with unprofitable things, silliness, profane things, spending their mind share.

Actually filling the greatest gift that you have your mind with junk and it really has to do with how you're spending your time so many people when they have what they would call discretionary time they fill their minds with junk you know it ought not it ought not to be so for a believer. Because what you feed on is always what you'll be filled with. And if you feed on silliness, you will be silly. If you feed on unprofitable things, you will become an unprofitable servant. Because everything really begins in the mind.

And that's why I think one of the most important passages of scripture to help us to understand, to discern what to do with our mind and what we to do if you want to call it discretionary time is Philippians 4a. Finally brethren whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, and if there is any virtue, and if there is anything praiseworthy, meditate on these things. God gave you a mind, it's the most precious thing you have, be careful what you put in it because what you put in it is who you're gonna become. You know I'm here just to urge you as a pastor to be relentless about this. I'm shepherding this church through these words.

It's so important because it's the mind that leads everything. Develop a Christian mind. The second part of the body is the tongue. The tongue is the most unruly part of the body. We have the greatest problems with our tongues.

And your tongue needs a bridle, James says. It's like a fire that's set on fire by hell. And Life and death is in the power of the tongue. James says no man can tame the tongue. Isn't that discouraging?

But the tongue that is under the influence of grace by the Holy Spirit can be tamed. And certainly not perfectly. But the tongue can be tamed to a degree. And then you have the eyes. You know, covenant eyes says that 80% of young people from 18 to 28 are looking at pornography every week or every month.

This has to do with the eyes. Proverbs 7 is that even strong men are slain by the immoral woman. And it's so important that we protect our eyes. We make a covenant with our eyes, like Job said. Eve can coveted because of what he saw.

Eve saw in the garden and it was a delight to the eyes. So our eyes can either be a blessing or a danger. You know, I don't know if you were able to see the recent eclipse and then the aurora borealis recently or at least pictures of it for people who could see it really clear. It was so beautiful. People were feasting their eyes on something beautiful.

That's what we should do. David said, I will set no unclean thing before my eyes in Psalm 101 verse 3. I read this I can't remember where I read this. Wherever my eyes fall may they search for remnants of your worth. Oh God turn me quickly away from the worthless you can look away you can look away somebody said you know David defeated Goliath but he lost to Bathsheba And he said the real giants are the desires that we haven't killed yet.

And then you have the ears. What do you submit your ears to? Your ears are members of your body. What you listen to will always have an effect on you you know I've had so many conversations with people who say you know really the songs don't really affect me I'm just going to say that's a lie every song affects you some way. Everything you listen to either accelerates your sanctification or it slows it down.

Everything you listen to either accelerates your sanctification or it slows you down. You can turn your ears away from the things that make you weak. And then you have the hands. You have the your mind, you have your tongue, you have your ears, you have your hands. David says, I will spread out my hands to you.

James says wash your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded. Solomon said that diligent hands will rule. You know David cried out he said Lord establish the work of our hands. In other words dedicate the your hands to God And then you have the feet where you go. When we were with the kids, when I was with the kids this last week, we sang that great song, be careful little feet where you go.

There's a father up above who is looking down in love be careful little feet where you go that was sort of the problem of the young man in Proverbs who was destroyed His feet went to the wrong place. But on the other hand, how beautiful on the mountains are the feet of them who bring good news. Solomon in Proverbs 1.16 talks about people whose feet run swiftly to evil, but Paul in 2 Timothy 4-7 says, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. So your feet, your whole life, your whole body was made to bring glory to him. Your whole body was made to progressively be sanctified and purified.

And you submit the members of your body one way or another. And so, so withhold, withhold the members of your body from sin. And then, and then fourth, consecrate, Consecrate. But present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead. So to dethrone is not enough.

You must enthrone. To enthrone is to turn yourself over before a master. It's to put yourself at someone's disposal. This is characterized by the word consecration. A person who is a consecrated person.

They have laid everything before God and have said, you are my king, I consecrate, I give my life to you. I present my life as a living sacrifice. This same word, the same word present is also in Romans 12. We're gonna encounter it later on. I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.

And do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God we present our bodies This is the language of the Old Testament sacrificial system where the offering was presented before God and the Christian presents his life and he says take my life and let it be consecrated Lord to thee. Take my hands and let them move at the impulse of thy love it's to say I surrender all all to Jesus I surrender all to him I freely give I freely give because I know he's good I freely give because I know He's good. I freely give because I know He loves me. His commands do not deprive us of anything good. They always open the door to what's good.

That's why obedience is such a blessing. So, dedicate your members as weapons of righteousness. Endow your members for one purpose. Deploy them. And yet there's one final thing.

Grace. Grace. You're not under law, but you're under grace. Verse 14. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace.

What does it mean to be under grace to be under grace is to be under Jesus Christ To be under grace is to stand in the grace of God. We're at the beginning of this chapter we talked about standing in grace. It's like you're standing in this waterfall of the goodness of the grace of God. We are under grace and that means that we are under Christ and all of his graces. To be under grace is to have help from heaven.

To be under grace is to be filled with the Spirit. To be under grace is to have the light of the world and the bread of life. To be under grace is to have God and his working in your heart. Paul told the Paul told the Ephesian church that each one has been given a measure of grace. In Romans 5.1 We learn that we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand.

So we are under grace. What does it mean to be under the law? We're going to encounter this phrase later on in Romans, but it's used, under the law, it's used seven times in the New Testament. And all of them mean being without Christ. Most of them are in Galatians.

But to be under grace is to be justified. To be under grace is to have a righteousness not your own. To be under grace is to be under a shower of God's benefits. In other words, you have access to Him. You are standing before the throne of grace.

So you always have help. So the Apostle, he's working through these various ways to accelerate your sanctification. And then he says, but don't forget, you have access to grace. The filling of the Holy Spirit, The fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We have these things, you know, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, we have these things.

We have access to grace, the grace of God that's communicated in the Word of God which is why Jesus said sanctify them in your truth the word is truth You have access to grace through the Word. And it's a sanctifying grace of God. So grace reminds us that it's not all hopeless. I know, I'm confident. You know, some have come in here just struggling and discouraged about your sin.

But because there's grace, there's hope. And it's not over yet. His mercies are new every morning. He's faithful to his children whom he knows are susceptible to sin. But he tells them exactly what to do.

And the first is to reckon yourselves dead. And the second is to dethrone that ruler who wants to take over your castle. And the third is to withhold your members for unrighteousness. And the fourth is to consecrate your whole body every single member of your body your mind your tongue your eyes your ears your feet everything that you are lay it before God And then finally standing grace. I pray that the Lord has shepherded our souls in our sanctification.

Praise the Lord for such good direction, such life-giving direction. Would you pray with me? Lord, we are so grateful for the wisdom and the truth of your word. We thank you that you teach us the path of life that no one else seems to have in the world. But you teach us the ways in which we should go.

You show us how to escape the bondages of sin and the old patterns that we have. And you've provided abundant grace, grace, grace, marvelous grace, grace abounding to the chief of centers. Oh Lord, shepherd our souls all day long through these words and into the week. Amen.