Freed, Part II

Last week we began to take a look at something that Paul was teaching in his letter to the saints in Rome: we Christians have been freed from sin. I spent most of last week’s sermon explaining what that does and doesn’t mean. This week I want to spend our time looking at how we are to apply it. To do that we’re going to explore one particular sentence from Paul’s teaching.

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Romans 6:11

I chose this sentence because it’s where Paul begins to apply what he has been teaching. I want to take this apart so that you will understand what Jesus expects of you.

Let’s start by translating what Paul wrote. I usually translate things from church words into more common language. This time I’m going to do the opposite. So, what is this ‘consider yourselves’ about? What is the Spirit calling you to do here? He’s calling you to believe the Gospel. He’s calling you to believe the part of the Gospel that Paul has just explained. He wants you to believe that you have been freed from sin so that you can live to God.

As I explained last week, this command isn’t a call to live as if you were dead to sin, though you actually aren’t. No, this is a call to embrace reality. The Gospel is clear. You have been freed from sin. You are now able to live as God intends. Believe it. It is only as you believe it that you will live it.

Now, translating Paul’s sentence in this way clarifies what his command to ‘consider yourselves’ is actually about. The Spirit is calling you to an act of faith. Understanding this command in this way can explain a Christian’s failure to live in this way, to live as someone who has been freed from sin. It is a failure of faith. It is a failure to believe the Gospel. Seeing the command in this way can be so very helpful. It’s only when you see the real problem that you are able to arrive at a good solution. And the real problem here is unbelief.

Now, what I could do here is call for repentance. After all, unbelief is sin. And of course, repentance would be good. But without digging further, it would be a superficial repentance. I don’t mean that it would be an insincere repentance. Not at all. But it would be repenting of only a surface issue. That wouldn’t deal with the deeper problems, the deeper sin. And one result of a superficial repentance is that the sin in question will come back. It might show differently, but it will be the same sin. To repent wisely and effectively will require repenting more deeply.

So, we need to ask a question. What lies behind this failure to believe this part of the Gospel? What would cause someone to do this? Why the unbelief?

Here are three obstacles to a lively faith.

The first is ignorance. You can’t believe that you have been freed from sin if you don’t know that you have been freed from sin. There are many, many honest to goodness Christians who don’t know about their freedom. They are completely unaware of what Paul is actually teaching here. And so, how can they believe it?

This underscores something that is too often neglected. There are truths in the Scriptures, truths about the Gospel, that we don’t know. And we will never benefit from them unless we come to know them. Knowing the truths of the Bible is very important. Or to say that differently, knowing the doctrines of the Bible is very important. You cannot believe what you don’t know. And if you don’t believe it, then you can’t put it into practice so that you would live well. Teaching the doctrines of the Bible with a view to living them is a key aspect of the ministry of a church.

Here’s a second obstacle to a lively faith that obeys Paul’s command, that obeys the Gospel. Christians sometimes redefine their sin. There are many ways to do this. Here are a couple of examples of what a Christian might say to himself and, in this way, redefine his sin.

‘Yes, I just yelled at him. But I tend to be pretty intense about things. That’s just my personality.’ What’s that? It’s an excuse for the sin of anger.

Another example. ‘Yes, I’m feeling down again. But I’m not so carefree as some folk. I see all too clearly the dark side of life that many ignore.’ That’s to cover up the sin of giving in to despair.

One more. ‘Yes, I interrupted him. But I just couldn’t wait to point out what he was missing. It was just too important.’ Beyond being rude, this is the sin of pride.

You get the idea. You don’t need to consider yourself dead to some abiding sin in your life if you define it as something other than sin. And as a result, you remain very alive to that sin and dead to God, at least when it comes to that area of your life.

Here’s another obstacle.  It’s redefining sin in another way. ‘This sin is just too deeply entrenched in me. It’s too strong. I’ll never be able to get rid of it. I’ve tried.’ The problem here is a weak faith.

Let’s explore this a bit. First, I think it’s helpful to see that faith can be strong or weak. So, Paul writes elsewhere,

As for the one who is weak in faith, welcome him… Romans 14.1

Being weak in faith means that there are aspects of the Gospel that you are unable to believe. And that will cause problems. One of those problems just might be telling yourself that you are unable to consider yourself dead to some particular sin. After all, you’ve tried to get rid of it, but nothing’s worked. That can lead to other problems like, doubting the Gospel, or parts of it, or even doubting yourself, telling yourself maybe you’re not really a Christian.

A better response would be to strengthen your faith.

And it’s not as if you need to become some super Christian with a faith that wows everyone. Actually, even a small but lively faith can accomplish much. Listen to what Jesus said.

Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, “Why could we not cast it out?” He said to them, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17.19-20

Jesus wasn’t discussing how we might move Mt. Everest a mile or two south. He was talking about overcoming the seemingly impossible issues of life. All it takes is a small faith, something the size of a mustard seed. The disciples’ faith was smaller than that. It was a weak faith. Jesus upbraided them for that. And He expected them to fix that problem. He expected them to grow their faith.

So, how do you do that? How do you grow your faith so that you can believe more and more of the Gospel, including this command about being freed from sin? Paul again:

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ. Romans 10.17

A faith that is growing stronger is a faith that is growing in its understanding of the Scriptures, the word of Christ.

But let’s be careful here. I remember reading somewhere that there is annual Bible memorization contest held somewhere in Israel. And as I recall, there was a time when the persistent winner was a Jehovah’s Witness. He may have known his Bible well, but he didn’t understand it.

The obvious question now is this: How can we grow in our understanding of the Bible? And the answer is actually also obvious: meditation.

Reading your Bible regularly is a really good thing to do, even though the Bible never commands it, something I find so very interesting. But here is something that the Bible does command and offers lots of examples of. It’s meditating on the Scriptures.

This will sound familiar:

but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. Psalms 1:2

The person who pleases God is the person who meditates on the Scriptures. And that’s because meditation leads to understanding which leads to living well.

Meditating on the Word is not complicated. It’s just a matter of answering this question about whatever you’ve just read or heard. What is God saying here? To answer that question, you look at the words and make sure that you know what they mean. And that includes things like translating church words. And once you get a handle on what the text is actually saying, you follow that up with the same question slightly amended. What is God saying here to me? That’s the application question. And it’s something that you discuss with the Father. ‘What are You telling me here, Father? What do You want me to do with this?’

And as you come to understand better what God is saying in the Bible and applying that as the Spirit guides, your faith will grow. You will be better able to believe the Gospel.

And that gets us back to

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Your growing faith believes that this being dead to sin and alive to God is true of you even when it comes to some deeply entrenched sin. You can get rid of that sin, even though it’s been a part of your life for so very long. You’re dead to sins like that and alive to God because of Jesus.

Now, in light of all of this, I think that I can say that, you should always be working on getting rid of sin. After all, it is something you can do. And it is something you should be doing since you have been called to holiness.

This ‘working on getting rid of sin’ describes a process. And it can be quite the process. Once the Spirit identifies some sin, you will need to work to understand it. What is the nature of this sin? Why do I like doing it? How does it seem to make life work for me? And what are its deeper roots in my heart? Labelling it accurately can be so very helpful. So, eating too much just might be the sin of idolatry. Being concerned about some troubling aspect of your life just might be the sin of fear. Part of the process is labelling things correctly.

Another part of this process is figuring out what should replace this sin. What needs to replace the idolatry of food or the sin of fear? What expression of being a whole person is to fit in this part of my life? Repenting of some sin includes replacing it.

All of this is the process of dealing with sin. And it just might take some time to accomplish. So, be patient. But still, I think that I can say that ordinarily, you should always be working on getting rid of some sin.

Now, last question. Why bother with all of this? I could say, ‘We’re commanded to do it. Paul says so right there in verse 11’. That would be true. But it would be incomplete and possibly misleading. God isn’t ‘The Great Rule Maker in the Sky’. There are reasons He tells us to do this and not do that. In this case, you should bother with all of this - you should believe this part of the Gospel and thus work to get rid of sin - because it will result in your becoming a whole person. And quite beyond how that will be good for you and good, evangelistically, for others, it will be pleasing to God. And that is to be our greatest motivation for whatever we do.