Our gracious God and our Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have not left us to ourselves, not left us to what we deserve, not left us to the bondage that we were in. Lord, there is still so much that remains of our sinfulness. when this compounds the weakness of our creatureliness, particularly this side of the fall. And so we look to you for forgiveness. We look to you for help. We look to you for the working of your spirit, for preaching and for hearing. We ask that you would not only help us in the word, but that you do so in a way that prepares us also for prayer. Granted all we ask in Jesus name. Amen. Romans six verses eight through 10. These are God's words. Now, if we died 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 sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God. So for the reading of God's inspired and inerrant word, we took a break for a week, which means it's been a couple of weeks now since we were in verses one through seven. And so it's good for us to remember that this newness of life in which we are to be walking, this newness of life in which we are not to use the sort of reasoning that says, Well, if where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, well, I'll just sin more so that grace will really then abound. Because this is not the logic that grace uses. This is the logic that sin uses. And so if we find ourselves starting to think like that or thoughts like that come into our heads, we give the same answer to our own thoughts that are coming from our remaining fleshliness. We give the same answer that the apostle gives to that sort of thinking in verse two, certainly not. And then he says something or he does something theologically that we might not immediately do. It's similar to when the people in Ephesus that he has come upon in the book of Acts, and he asks them if they've received the Holy Spirit when they believed, because they're identifying themselves as believers, and they say, we didn't even know that there was a Holy Spirit. You remember what he says, he says, into what then were you baptized? A Christian can only be a Christian by the Holy Spirit's giving him faith, by Christ pouring. the Holy Spirit onto that Christian. And the Lord Jesus has given us water baptism on earth as administered by his apostles and by the elders whom he has called to the continuation of that ministry as the way in which he authoritatively declares on earth what it is that he does by his authority in heaven. And we remember that from Matthew 28, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given unto me. And so when someone says he has not heard of the Holy Spirit, he says, until what then were you baptized? And then when someone wants to think or respond to things the way he did in his flesh as opposed to the way that he should think and response to things not in his flesh, not as he was in the first Adam, but in Christ in the last Adam. The mind of Jesus doesn't say, oh, well, since grace increases so much, let's sin more. The mind that is from Jesus says, since I have received such abounding grace, shall I not love him who has loved me? Shall I not be done with sin all the more? And so that kind of thinking he responds to with baptism, reminding them of the Trinitarian work that has produced in them this new life, this new faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that God the Father has given God the Son to be our Redeemer, and that from the Father and the Son proceeds the Spirit who unites us to the Son by faith. And with this triune, almighty, eternal work of redemption having brought us into union with the Lord Jesus Christ, how would we, who are united to Christ and know God as Father and have the fellowship of God the Holy Spirit, and we have all of this, how can we continue in sin? And so he says, do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus? Were baptized into his death. And now in verses 8 through 10, the focus is on Christ. Knowing that we have been united to Christ, knowing that we have died with him, what is it that we know about the Lord Jesus Christ and his death and his resurrection? And how does that inform how we walk in newness of life? And that's this transition. We were united with Christ in his death and resurrection, verses 5 through 7. Now, what do we know about Christ's death and resurrection and what does it tell us about our freedom from sin? That's the immediate transition into tonight's portion. For he who has died has been freed from sin. Now, if we died with Christ and following. And what we find is that our union with Christ or our dying to sin in union with Christ means that our freedom from sin comes by faith. That it is a faith freedom, not only from sin's guilt, but also from sin's power. So it is a freedom that comes by faith. And it is a forever freedom. If we are freed from sin by union with Christ in his death and resurrection, then the Christ who can never die again is the one in whom we have this life. And we can never again return to being under the power of sin. which is a wonderful weapon for the one who feels the constant presence of sin, as the apostle will be talking about in chapter 7. Because he says that sin is always present with him when he wants to do good. And so with sin's presence always with us, We can very easily slip into thinking that it has power over us. The response to that, of course, is to cling to the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps sin does have power over you, but if that's the case, then you're not a Christian. Now, if you are a Christian, you may stumble in many things, as the scripture says that we all do in the book of James. But if you are a Christian, if you're clinging to Christ, you're clinging to a Christ who can never die again, who is resurrected forever. And he has delivered you by that resurrection from the power of sin. And that gives you the foundation on which to give sin that strong, initial, necessary no. which is the first part of resisting temptation to always give it that no, it's a forever freedom. And then again, we use the word father from from verse four. that Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and that our walking in newness of life is also by and for the glory of the Father in the Son as applied by the Spirit. And so it is the glory of the Father, but of course it's the glory of the triune God. You can never separate the persons. And so when we see in verse 10 that the life that Jesus lives, this resurrection life that Jesus lives, Jesus lives to God. And so our newness of life, which we live in union with a resurrected Christ, is unto God. And so in our outline, we've called it the fatherly freedom. that our freedom from sin is unto the glory of the Father who has redeemed us by his Son and is applying that redemption to us by his Spirit in the Son. So first then, our freedom from sin's power comes by faith. We can see that quite plainly in verse eight. We knew already that we come into union with Christ by believing in him, that we are justified only through faith in Jesus Christ and not at all by works. The apostles spent much of, well, the first three chapters setting that up and chapter four driving that home. that we are made right with God. We are forgiven of our sin and given a righteous standing before God, reconciled to God only through faith. Well, that faith has repercussions even after we are justified. If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. It's a fact that we will live with him, but it's also functional. the knowledge that we will live with him, the trusting in him, that trusting in him to have his life in us is a great part of his freeing us from sin's power. And so this is something that we can do. Not only just not only say I am united to Christ and therefore sin does not have power over me, but I am united to a Christ in whom I trust. that his life and his power will be that by which I resist sin and put it to death. Because we don't have power in us and many stumble and backslide and they backslide into the same thing over and over and over again. And we may take our eyes off of Christ at that point. We may become dejected and give in to sin. As if it did have power over us. But we must turn in repentance from our sin. We must, of course, turn our eyes away from our sin, but even away from ourselves. There is no hope to be found in how sorry we feel this time. There's an ungodly sorrow that does not lead to repentance. And there is a godly sorrow that does lead to repentance. But that sorrow will turn from the sin and turn from the self to the Lord Jesus. And so we believe that we will also live with him. Faith is the key. Because our salvation is not a work of man, but a work of the triune God. Justification is a work entirely and only of the triune God. But as we resist sin, as we hate it, as we flee temptation, as we beat our bodies and make them our slaves, as we put sin to death, as we wrestle and fight, those are all action words, aren't they? But how can we? engage in such a battle, not in our own power, not in our own strength. And so he says, if we died with Christ, we didn't even have power to die. We needed the Lord Jesus to apply his death to us by his spirit. How do we think that we would be the ones who had the power then to live? And so we didn't come into the Christian life by our own power, and we aren't able to continue it by our own power. but we are able to continue it in His. If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him. Faith into union with Christ, this work that His Spirit has done, whom He poured out, whom Jesus poured out upon us, that's the baptism here, you remember. There's no mere man who can apply any sort of water at any age or stage of your life that can join you to Jesus Christ. There's nothing about water baptism here. What's being described here is the work of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus has poured out. That work that John, the baptizer, had promised. He said, I'm just pouring water and I'm calling you to repentance. But John, nor his water, nor the sincere repentant wishes of those whom he baptized at the Jordan, none of those could give them freedom from sin. It was Jesus who did the baptizing, and it was the Spirit whom he applied, and his will accomplishes delivering us from sin. We believe that we shall also live with him. You see, we still believe him for all of our salvation. We have gotten into the habit in our culture, in the church culture, of abbreviating the idea of salvation just to the point at which we come to faith. and are forgiven, but the salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ includes the entirety all the way until the work that He has begun in us, He has completed, and we are perfectly happy and perfectly holy. in him and with him forever. Later in this letter in chapter 13, he's going to say, and do this knowing the time that now it is high time to awake out of sleep. for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand, therefore let us cast off the works of darkness. In other words, yes, our salvation is something that Christ accomplished on the cross. Yes, our salvation is something that he has brought us into in union with him when by his spirit he gave us faith so that we would be joined to him and we would have him. But our salvation is also still something future because sin is still present with us and misery is still present with us. And so there is this faith, not only for what Christ is doing in the present, but for what Christ will have finished in the future. And the one who knows that he will one day be free of sin's presence can be much helped by that knowledge. in his battle against remaining sin. If you know that you will one day have no sin at all present with you, present in you. then you may be helped and strengthened to remember that even now you are not under sin's power. It is not your master. Like we heard last time, it has lost its slave. Its slave is dead and buried. The version of you, if you're a Christian, that was a slave to sin is as lost to sin as those who have gone to Sheol are lost to the living. We can't have them anymore. And that is a sore pain for us that makes the resurrection a sweet doctrine for believers. But sin can't have us anymore. Because this freedom comes by union with Christ, His death that frees us from sin's guilt and even sin's power will certainly free us from its presence. And so just as there is more to Christ than His death, everlastingly and gloriously more, He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven. He took his seat on the throne. He always lives to intercede for us now, and he is returning in glory, just as there is much more to Christ's glory than his death. There is much more to the application of this glorious Christ to us than merely freedom from sin's guilt. We are already freed from its power. We will be freed from its presence. The believer's freedom from sin is as sure as Christ's resurrection. In the second place, the freedom that we have is not just a faith freedom in union with him. It is a forever freedom of forever freedom. We move into verse 9. The Apostle moves from believing to knowing there is a intellectual theological content component, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. We know that Christ has won his victory even by his death, even over death. He has come into his kingdom. He is all glorious, all powerful. His humiliation is over. Yes, he continues to have a true human nature forever and ever, but it is a glorified human nature. The knowledge component, the theological component here is something that the thief on the cross knew when Jesus was dying. You remember, both thieves had begun by mocking the Lord Jesus. But at some point, the Spirit works in the heart of one of the thieves, even while he's on the cross, and he realizes that this man who has been crucified next to him, and is gasping more and more as his lungs fill with fluid that this one is winning a victory that he is a king and he's not losing he's coming into his kingdom and so he not only rebukes the other thief he turns to the lord jesus and says remember me when you come into your kingdom now if this thief when Christ was dying on a cross next to him, knew that Jesus is a king with an everlasting and almighty kingdom. How much more should we? For Jesus didn't just die, he has died and risen again. And so the apostle comes to us in verse nine, and he says, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more, death no longer has dominion over him. The tables have been turned. He has dominion over death. He has dominion over all, and that which that which that thief confessed even before he was dead, and that which Jesus declared when he was giving the sacrament of water baptism, we know to be true. All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to him, and it belongs to him forever. knowing having been raised from the dead, he dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him. If spirit-given faith convinced that thief that there was a king with an everlasting kingdom while Jesus was dying next to him, then what may spirit-given faith do for you, dear Christian? as he convinces you that your king sits on the throne, that your lot is cast in with his. Does the Lord Jesus not come to us in Romans 6 verse 9 by his Holy Spirit and say to us, one day and for all days, for all eternity, you will be with me in paradise. This is something we know. This is a theological fact. And he uses the knowledge of that to arm us, to arm us in the battle against sin. Because it's one thing to have been released from its power, but it's another thing while we are still fleshly, while we are only partially sanctified, to live as those who are united to the all-powerful one. And so we must stop living as if we're united to our sin. Its constant presence is not our current, does not define our current condition. No, we are in union with Jesus and death no longer has dominion over him. So sin no longer has dominion over us. The death that he died, he died to sin once for all. His resurrection must be forever. Because even though Jesus is in union with us, as sinful we are, as we are, as much guilt as our sin has heaped up, there is none of that guilt left for someone who is in Christ Jesus. And if there is therefore now no condemnation for the one who is in Christ Jesus, there is therefore now no dying for Christ Jesus. He united himself to us. This is what his baptism was about. When John said, I need to be baptized by you. But the Lord Jesus identified himself with those who needed repentance because there was coming a day when he who knew no sin, 2 Corinthians 5.21, would be made sin. And even though he was made sin with our sin, He finished it off. On the cross, he said it has been finished. All of the wrath had been poured out. When he came up out of the grave on that third day and death no longer had power over him, he was demonstrating that there is no claim of death upon him because there was no claim of our sin upon him. And if we are united to Christ and there's no claim of our sin upon him, then our sin has no claim upon us either. Here in verse nine, in the first half of verse 10, The theme is that there has been a clean break between Christ's humiliation, which was for the sake of our sin, and his exaltation, which declares that that sin is gone. There's a clean break, once for all. This word that is translated, the single word that is translated in our English by once for all also appears in Hebrews 7, 23 through 28, when it's taking the same thing, the once for allness of Christ's sacrifice, distinguishing him, of course, from all other priests that came before him. And there are no priests after him. distinguishing him from them, but being the basis on which he saves us all the way, and not just all the way to the end of time, all the way to the fullness of salvation. So Hebrews 7, it says, also there were many priests because they were prevented by death from continuing. But he, because he continues forever, he wasn't prevented by death, was he? He died once for all, rose again from the dead. The resurrection is forever. But he, because he continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore, he is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. For such a high priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens. does not need daily as those high priests to offer up sacrifices for his own sins and then for the people's for this he did once for all, and there's that word that ties Hebrews 7 with verse 10 of our text. This he did once for all when he offered up himself. For the law appoints as high priests men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, that is the gospel, which has come after the law and before the law, if you remember from chapter four of Romans, In chapter five, the word of the oath which came after the law appoints the son who has been perfected forever. And the spirit takes our knowledge of the permanence of Jesus's resurrection. And he says, if your freedom from sin is by faith in Jesus, and it's a faith freedom, then your freedom from sin is in a permanently resurrected Jesus, and it is a forever freedom. Finally, it is that fatherly freedom. He concludes v. 10, not just that the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives. He lives to God. that it was for the joy set before him, the joy of bringing glory to the father, the joy of bringing glory to the father by redeeming those whom the father had given him. You remember that wonderful prayer in John 17, as we get this glimpse into the interaction between the father and the son that stretches all the way back into eternity. and how the father had those whom he was determined to save and he had planned them for the son. As Ephesians 1 describes, he chose us in him that he has predestined us to adoption. Why? Because the one in whom we were chosen is a begotten son, the only begotten son. And so, those who are part of this exchange of love between the Father and the Son, they are redeemed by the Son, and it is applied by the Spirit, all unto the glory of God, the glory of the triune God. And yes, there is the appropriation of that glory to the Father that we've already seen in verse four. 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 should walk in newness of life. He was raised from the dead by the glory of the father. And now in verse 10, he concludes by saying the life that he lives, he lives to God. In other words, every moment of Christ's continuing to be resurrected brings God glory in his son. This is what the resurrection did. It declared him to be the son of God with power of according to the spirit of holiness. That's what chapter one and verse four said that he was declared to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead. And so every moment. Of Christ's eternal resurrection life. As the God man as the mediator. Brings glory to the Father. Says, behold the glory of the Son. Is he not the radiance of the glory of the Father? And is it not the glory of the Spirit that continues to be displayed in his glorified humanity? It's all glory. The life that he lives, he lives to God. God has been glorified in his son's atoning for our sin in his death. God has been glorified in his son's vindication from our sin in his resurrection. God has been glorified in his son's power over death and over the grave. God has been glorified in his son's destruction of our sin's guilt His Son's destruction of our sins' power. And He will soon be glorified by His Son's destruction of our sins' presence. The life that Jesus lives, He lives to God. Well, what is He doing with that life? We just heard from Hebrews 7. He is saving us to the uttermost as He intercedes for us by the power of His indestructible life. That means in every moment that you and I are tempted to sin, every moment that we are aware of our remaining sin, we have an opportunity in giving it that strong no. In offering our every aspect of who we are, we'll get to what members means in two weeks time, Lord willing, but in offering every aspect of who we are unto God as slaves for righteousness. Saying, sin is not my master. God is my master. God is my father. Jesus is my brother. I'm not indwelt by a different spirit. I'm indwelt by the same spirit who indwells the Son in His humanity. Do you realize that, dear Christian? That the only way you could have been brought to faith was by the work Not of a spirit of God, but of Jesus's own spirit. And if we died, we believe. If we believe, we have been baptized into him. And as he lives always unto God, we have continual opportunity to bring glory to the God who has loved us. and saved us. It is as impossible that a believer would actually be under the power of sin, would actually be under the power of sin, as it is impossible that Christ would return to the grave to be under the power of death. No, he is living unto the glory of God, and so you and I must resist sin and serve God. Love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love our neighbor as ourselves. Love our brother as Christ has loved us. Every moment that we do, every movement of our heart to do so, every moment to follow through is bringing glory to the triune God who has saved us. And that's a very different cycle, isn't it, than many get caught up in. There may be among us tonight some who are stuck in a cycle of sin. Feeling like you are continuously repeating that which you have come out of. But if you believe in Jesus Christ, you are resurrected against sin in Him. And instead of the repeated cycle of what you have come out of, sin is ever present with you. but one day it won't be, and you have continual opportunity instead to repeat more and more of that holiness and righteousness into which you are coming so that the life that you live, you live unto God, not as you wish you would, not as you will one day, but you live unto God and more and more so until the presence of sin is gone. If you are a believer, what do you believe? Isn't it that you will live with Christ in union with him by his spirit forever unto the glory of the triune God? This is what believers believe. And if we believe this, and if we know this, then let us walk by that faith and that knowledge in union with Christ and newness of life. Amen.