Sunday Jan 28
What’s the closest you’ve ever come to dying?
How did that change your outlook on living?
The truth in today’s lesson is that you cannot truly live unless you die.
Say it in a sentence – I can never be different unless I berlieve with all my hneart that the power of sin has been broken in my life – that I am dead to the power of siin because of my relationship with Christ.
In Romans 1-5 Paul covered the problem of sin, the law, and sin’s solution. He declared that rules don’t help us change; they just want to make us sin moore.
Read Paul’s statement on rules and grace in Romans 5.20
Romans 5:20 (NASB95)
20 The Law came in so that the transgression would increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,
How might some people us that truth as an excuse to keep on sinning?
Paul cautioned against such false thinking in Romans 6.
Read
Romans 6:1-7 (NASB95)
1 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin.
What did Paul want us to grasp from these verses?
How dead to sin do you feel? Why?
Galatians 5:17 (NASB95)
17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
1 John 1:8 (NASB95)
8 If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
Does dead to sin mean that we are sinless and perfect?
Dead to the power of sin.
We escape the penalty of sin as Christians.
Before Christ we are slaves to sin. After Christ we are dead to the power of sin, we are no longer slaves. But that old master doesn’t want to admit that he is not in charge anymore.
We can choose to still act like slaves, but the reality is that we are not.
Picture it this way. You committed a crime, served your time in prison, and have beeen released. You are living in a house right outside the prison walls. Every day you hear the prison warden yelling commands to the prisoners inside those walls. Why might you be tempted to follow those commands?
Do you have to? Why?
Sin is our old prison warden, but because Christ has set us free, sin no longer has any power over us.
We can still hear sin’s commands, but we can choose whether or not we’re going to do what it tells us to do.
Can you think of a time when you grasped the enormity of God’s grace for you?
How can even a brief momentary glimpse of God’s amazing grace help us realize His grace demands that we change?
It should lead us to realize God’s grace cannot be abused or ignored.
Read
2 Corinthians 6:1 (NASB95)
1 And working together with Him, we also urge you not to receive the grace of God in vain—
Read the different translations of this verse:
2 Corinthians 6:1 (NIV)
1 As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain.
2 Corinthians 6:1 (ESV)
1 Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
2 Corinthians 6:1 (KJV)
1 We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.
2 Corinthians 6:1 (The Message)
1 Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us.
2 Corinthians 6:1 (NCV)
1 We are workers together with God, so we beg you: Do not let the grace that you received from God be for nothing.
What do you think it means to receive God’s grace in vain?
So, how do we as believers receive and employ God’s grace properly?
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17 (NASB95)
16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace, 17 comfort and strengthen your hearts in every good work and word.
How does God’s grace give you encouragement, hope and strength in your efforts to change?
God’s grace demands that we change. God loves us right where we are. But He loves us too much to leave us there.
Read
Romans 6:5 (NASB95b)
5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection,
What does that mean for us in our desire to change?
Second paragraph of Day 3 says:
Don’t just claim the forgiveness of Christ based on His death for your sin; also claim the resurrection of Christ as your promise for life and victory and personal transformation. God doesn’t just want to forgive us; He wants to transform us. God doesn’t want us to be identified only with Christ’s death for our cleansing but also with His resurrection for our victory.
Look at
Romans 6:4 (NASB95)
4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
How does God want us to walk?
Newness of life.
New things God promises to us:
Psalm 40:3 (NASB95)
3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God; Many will see and fear And will trust in the Lord.
Ezekiel 36:26 (NASB95)
26 “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
2 Corinthians 5:17 (NASB95)
17 Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.
Revelation 2:17 (NASB95)
17 ‘He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who receives it.’
What is wrong with our old self?
Romans 6.6 says that it is a body of sin and that we were slaves.
We can still sin. We know that. But we are unplugged from the source of sin.
We can choose to plug in to it if we want. Or we can choose to plug into Jesus Christ.
Read
Romans 6:10-11 (NASB95)
10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Macdonald, the author says that this is the centerpiece of Christian victory in the New Testament.
How often do we have to choose to live for God?
How would our attitudes and actions be different if every time we were tempted in a specific area we declared, “I’m dead to that and I live to God.”?
Romans 6:12-13 (NASB95)
12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
2 Corinthians 6:1 (NIV)
1 As God’s fellow workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain.
2 Corinthians 6:1 (ESV)
1 Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.
2 Corinthians 6:1 (KJV)
1 We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.
2 Corinthians 6:1 (The Message)
1 Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us.
2 Corinthians 6:1 (NCV)
1 We are workers together with God, so we beg you: Do not let the grace that you received from God be for nothing.