A Lawless Salvation (Part 2)

Take your Bibles tonight and open them to Romans chapter 6.

! Romans chapter 6 and go ahead and find verse 6 and we'll read that here in just a moment. We're going to look at a couple of verses here, two or three, about as far as we're going to get tonight.

And I think we'll probably get done earlier than normal. I should never say that. But I had planned to go all the way through verse 11, but I don't think we're going to make that tonight.

And there's a reason why I don't want to try to cram it all into this time tonight. Romans chapter 6 and verse 6. Well, I'll go ahead and read the text.

I was going to wait, but I'll go ahead and do that. Knowing this, that our old man, our old man, our old self, was crucified with him.

Of course, the him is Jesus. That, or in order that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

For he who has died has been freed from sin. 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. That's God the Father. Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead in deed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Okay? And we're not going to get that far tonight. There's a lot there. And it'll take us at least a couple of Sunday nights to cover all of that, maybe even three. Because this is a tremendous passage here in this portion of chapter 6.

Now, to help remind us of where we are here, chapter 6, and what the subject is. Because it's been a couple of weeks since I've been in Romans chapter 6.

Well, we started Romans chapter 6 a couple weeks, three weeks ago. And got through to verse 5. And if you will remember, and or if you were here, that particular Sunday night when I started this.

You might remember that I said that chapter 6 deals with the subject of antinomianism. Antinomianism. And just to refresh our memory about what that means, that big long $50 word.

Antinomianism. Antinomianism. To refresh our memory, anti, we understand what the word anti means. It's against. Against. And namas, which is the other part of the word, is the word for law.

And so you put those two together and, you know, just the bare meaning of the word. Or the bare understanding of each part of the word. Means against law.

Means against law. All right. Against law. Just basically that. But it now signifies a certain philosophy. Or maybe better, the better termed theology.

Of seeing, somehow seeing grace as a license to sin. And that's the basic meaning or understanding of the word antinomianism.

To have a license to sin. And it's false, of course. It is the false notion that since I'm under grace, I'm saved. I've been saved by the grace of God.

And I'm under His grace. And I'm free. I've been liberated. And, you know, the law somehow has been done away with in my life. So I'm now free. And so since I'm under grace, I can then do whatever I want to do.

That's a silly notion, isn't it? Isn't it? Okay. I mean, not any of us in this room here tonight would believe that at all.

Would we? No. That was a little more tentative. No, we wouldn't believe that. Surely not. To have this idea that I am now free in Jesus.

And so now I can go out and sin. I can sin all I want to. And I labeled this kind of, because I'm putting chapters 6 and 7, not together, but making a distinction between the themes of these two chapters.

That in chapter 6, we have here the notion of a lawless salvation. That we can somehow be saved and not have to obey any of God's laws.

That's antinomianism. And then, of course, we'll get to chapter 7, which is a workless salvation. It's kind of the opposite end or side of that whole notion.

I'm saved and so I don't have to do any of the law. And then the other notion is I'm saved. And since I'm free, I don't have to work. That is, I don't have to work for the Lord.

It's not required of me. I mean, it's grace. It's all grace and not of works. Right? And so there are the two false notions kind of side by side. Chapter 6 and chapter 7.

And chapter 6 is a lawless salvation. Now, I would suggest to you that though none of us in this room, I would hope, I would trust, none of us in this room, have bought into the philosophy or theology of antinomianism.

That we have this kind of thinking that since we're saved, we can sin all we want to. Surely, there's no one in this room that believes that, feels that way.

And yet there is within the body of Christ. And I've thought about what we might call it, I think I'm going to call it a functional antinomianism.

Or maybe we could use the word practical. Kind of a practical antinomianism. Not a full-blown theology that somehow because I'm saved, I can sin all I want to.

No, we would never, ever embrace that thought. And yet we do, and often, and certainly can, have such a low view or soft view of sin.

That we could allow sin to be in our lives throughout the week and not be torn up about it.

Because we are, quote, under grace. Can we sin? Can you sin and it not bother you?

Really? Or maybe what once bothered you, maybe just really, really slew you.

Now you don't feel quite as strongly about it. Because, you know, I'll take it to the Lord and repent. And, you know, which you can and should do.

You understand what I'm saying? There's kind of a functional kind of antinomianism. Where we just don't feel as strongly about the severity, the seriousness of sin in our lives.

And it manifests itself in a million, maybe a thousand different ways in our lives. Through the things that we do throughout the week. The things we say.

The way we think. The places we go. Things we do. Things we watch. Activities we involve ourselves in. The gossip we listen to.

Or whatever point of sin we engage in. There may be little things. And that's another symptom of this functional antinomianism. That we tend to classify.

You know, certain of God's laws or the breaking of God's laws. Not as serious and not as severe as others. And so I want you to think in those terms.

Because I don't believe that if I were to approach what Paul has to say here. Purely on the level of a full-blown antinomianism. That would just, you know, it just wouldn't apply to me.

We would think. And then I suggest that it does. To a degree. We ought to consider what Paul says here to the people. The Christians here in Rome.

About this issue. Now, verse 1. We're not going to go back and go through all the verses. But I do want for us to go back far enough. So that we can set this up and understand.

The direction that Paul is going. Verse 1 is where Paul anticipates a question. About grace and the law. And so he asks the question.

He says, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? That's the antinomianism. The antinomian thought.

Can we continue in sin? I'm saved. Under grace. And now can I continue as before? Or maybe even revert back to the way I lived before?

And it'd be okay because now I'm under grace? That's basically the question that Paul anticipates. And his answer there is in verse 2. And he says, don't be ridiculous.

Well, it doesn't say that in my translation. It's not beyond belief that it couldn't appear that way in some translations. And that does kind of capture the spirit of it.

But he says here, at least in the New King James Version, certainly not. Certainly not. That's his quick answer. But then he gives a fuller, a more full answer there in verse 2.

How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? I mean, how could we do that? That's what he's saying. What do you mean?

It's kind of his response. What do you mean by asking if you can go back and live the way you used to live? What do you mean by a question like that? What are you talking about?

I even mentioned, I think, last week the stupidity of such a thing. I think that's part of it. And Paul is saying, don't you understand? Don't you understand anything about your salvation?

You turned away from all of that. That was involved in your repentance that God required, demanded of you. You renounced the old life, the direction your old life was going.

You renounced that, you're dead now, and you've died to sin. That's basically his answer.

And he is going to expand on that really in a host of different ways as we go throughout the chapter. And so this was what we considered last time.

The absurdity of it, certainly not. The stupidity of it, don't you know anything? And now we're ready to get into chapter 6 and he's going to go even deeper.

Another thought that we ought to consider before we get into chapter 6. You know, in our zeal to win people to Christ, I hope we have a zeal for that.

We've been called to that. You know, we often try to get people saved before they realize they're lost. In fact, I've heard it put in a kind of a different way.

You know, to get a person saved, you've got to get them lost. You've heard that old adage. And in a sense, that's true. But to think of it in these terms, that we have such a desire to lead people to Christ and bring them to salvation, that we try to do that before we proclaim to them the truth of Scripture about their lostness.

And so, you see, we try to get people into heaven while they're still in Adam. When they must be in Christ in order to go to heaven, to have eternal life.

And listen, salvation is not just getting us into heaven. In a very real way, it's getting heaven into us. And that's what takes place in our salvation.

True salvation changes us, dramatically changes us from within. Now, I'm kind of introducing where Paul is going to go because he is going to say to us, don't you know that something has changed now?

I mean, when you were saved, something changed. Something dramatically changed. Not just on the outside, in the sense that now you're coming to church, and maybe you're getting involved in a Sunday school class, or maybe you're tithing and maybe giving to missions, and maybe you are doing some other, involving yourself in other points of ministry within the church, and mission in the church.

It's not the outside, it's the inside. That has changed. And one major thing that has changed is your relationship to sin. Your relationship to the old life.

Salvation happens on the inside. True salvation changes us from within. And so, when you turn to Christ, and you put your faith in Christ, you're never again related to sin like you used to be.

That's the point that Paul is going to make here, has been making. Now, as we go forward, we need to keep clearly in our minds that question that Paul asks in verse 1.

In order to understand all that he says in this chapter, we need to keep tying it to that question, because it's all springing from that question. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

That, again, is the antinomian theology, and Paul is responding to that, and verse 6 is going to take us a little deeper into that. Now, what does he say there in verse 6?

First of all, knowing this. And we're just going to kind of take this step by step, phrase by phrase.

Paul first says, knowing this. Now, what does that mean? Well, the word knowing, and the way that it appears in the text, refers to a gradually coming to know something.

It's not, you know this. He's already mentioned that. There's some things that we know, that we know not only experientially, and a little bit later he's going to use the word know again, in the sense of an intuitive kind of knowledge.

But this is really not either of those things, in the sense that the form of the word suggests that we are gradually growing in a knowledge of something.

And it's a knowledge of something that we don't have yet, not fully. And it's, we're getting more and more of it. And we don't know it all yet, but we're learning.

And that's true of us as well. And what is it that we're learning? And this is the wonderful thing about it. We're learning that the old man, our old man was crucified with Christ.

That's why it's important that we understand that he's not talking about a knowledge that you have the fullness of yet. He's talking about a knowledge that we are learning, and experiencing, and acknowledging, and becoming more aware of, each day of our lives as believers.

And what is it that we're becoming more aware of each day? We're becoming aware that that old life, that unredeemed me, that pre-Christ me, it's crucified with Christ.

Been crucified. Now, you might remember a few weeks ago, I explained that when he says crucified with Christ, he's talking about a past event. I mean, he's going all the way back to the cross.

That in a very real way, more real than anything on this planet. When Jesus died on that cross, 2,000 years ago, I was there.

I was crucified with him. And so, now, you know, some, I don't know how many years now, since I was eight years old, that became a reality to me.

But it was, it was, it was something that took place back there at the cross. And I was crucified. That old man, that old me, was crucified with Christ.

And I am learning that. And every day, God gives me opportunities to learn more about that. And every day, I am confronted with issues in my life, and things that take place.

I'm becoming more and more aware. In my walk with Christ, and in my maturity, in Christ, spiritually, I'm becoming more and more aware that the old, that old man, that old Don, was crucified with Christ.

Now, what about this old man? I don't know, some of the translations might have old self. The word is man, in the text, the old man.

What is that? Is it the flesh? Some think that that's what Paul's talking about, the flesh. But technically, no, though the flesh is certainly involved.

The old man is my, who I was, prior to my conversion. Who you were, prior to Christ. Not the flesh specifically.

It is everything you were, in Adam. That's the old man. It's what I used to be. Now the term, so the term old here, is not the Greek word that means, archaic.

So, you know, Paul's not being disrespectful, and calling you men, a bunch of old guys. It's, it's, it's another word. It's the word that, that means to be worn out.

Now that's pretty descriptive, most of us as well. Kind of worn out. But the idea is, useless. Now, that's more serious.

Maybe even more offensive. Useless. Now, the word is used in relation to God. And, what he's saying that, when I was in Adam, prior to being in Christ, when, when I was, a lost sinner, prior to, my faith in Christ, and conversion, to Christ, my regeneration, my salvation, prior to that, I was, utterly useless to God.

of no worth, really. That's the old man. That's the word that he used. It means to be worn out, to be useless. It's everything that you were, and I was, in Adam.

The person, we were, BC, before Christ. Now, Paul talks about the old man, in a couple of places, other places, in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 22.

In fact, if you could, very quickly, turn to that. Ephesians chapter 4, verse 22. Paul says, that you, put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man.

There it is. The old man, which grows, corrupt, according to the deceitful lusts, and be, renewed, in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on.

So, put off, put on, put on, the new man, which was created, according to God, in true righteousness, and holiness. There's a whole lot, there in those verses, that we could delve into.

But, but, here, here, here's what he's saying. The old man, has to do with, the way we, once lived, before Christ, the way we conducted our lives, prior to Christ.

We were driven by, sin, motivated by, self, and self-interest, and, and we were sinners.

And, though we may not have realized it, and especially, those of us who were, very young, when we were saved, we know now, and, this is, again, the idea, we're knowing, we're becoming, we're growing in our knowledge, that we were enemies of God.

That's who we were. And, and that's what he says about, uh, our former conduct. And so, in a sense, he's saying there, as well as in our text here in Romans, he's saying, quit living, as if the old man, is alive.

And that's what a lot of Christians are doing. Living as though that old man's still alive. He's dead. He's dead. He died with Christ, when Christ died.

That old man. Paul deals with the same subject, in the letter to Colossians, to the Colossians, in Colossians chapter 3, in verse 8. But now you, yourselves, are to put off, all these.

And he named some of them, 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 have put on, the new man, who is renewed in knowledge, according to the image, of him, who created him, when there is neither Greek, where there is neither Greek, nor Jew, circumcised, nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, nor free, but Christ, is all, and in all.

Tremendous passage. And so, do you understand? At salvation, you laid aside, the old self. That's what was involved, in your repentance.

You turned away, or whatever other expression, we might use. You put aside, you put behind you, you turned away, you forsook, abandoned, the old self, with its evil desires, and with its practices, that are contrary, to God's word.

And what did you do? Instead, you put, you put on, the new self, the new man. And what about, 2 Corinthians 5, 17? That one ought to be familiar.

Well, all these really ought to be. Where Paul says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a, new, new, new creature, a new creation.

Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Now, let me ask you, where were you, before salvation?

I don't mean, I don't mean the place. Some of you can't remember that. I can remember, a kind of a location, but that's not what I'm talking about. about. Where were you, before salvation? You must know, you must understand, you were in Adam.

In Adam. Sons and daughters of Adam. Therefore, corrupt. Sinful. Governed by, ruled by, the principle of sin.

You were in Adam. Now, where are you now? In Christ. Something has changed. In Christ. In Christ. In Christ.

Something has changed. how then, can you continue, in sin? In sin? How can you, then, revert back, in any area, revert back, to, the way, of your old sinful life?

God forbid. God forbid. God forbid. Now, the only way, by the way, the only way to get out of Adam is to die.

Christ. And, I don't mean physically, spiritually. The only way to get into Christ is to, be born again. To be spiritually birthed into Christ.

Now, see, that is what Paul is talking about in Romans 6, 6. Our old man, was crucified, died, died, with him, with Christ, there on the cross.

That's what made the cross of Christ so unique from all the other crosses that, that we can read about and have been recorded in Roman history and the histories of other, other countries, other nations.

What made it unique, among many other things, what was unique was, I was there, in Christ. He, taking the penalty for my sin.

And so, our old man was crucified with him, with Christ, in order that, then he goes on to say, in order that the body of sin might be done away with.

Now, that's the way the New King James translates it. I believe the King James translates it that way. I'm talking about that phrase, done away with. The body of sin is done away with.

I think the New American Standard, if you have that version here tonight, also uses that same phrase, done away with. The King James, I take it back, says destroyed.

If you have a King James. It says it destroyed. That the body of sin is destroyed. Now, this is a difficult and confusing translation.

Not that it's wrong. I'm not calling into question what we find in the text there. The problem is our misunderstanding of what it means.

That English translation, especially the one that I just read, the one that appears in the New King James, that translation might suggest something to us that is not true. It does not mean that to be done away with or that the body of sin is done away with in the sense that it no longer exists.

And we know that, don't we? Because it does exist. it doesn't mean done away with in that sense or destroyed in that sense.

It does not mean that now the believer can't sin any longer. And we know that, that it can't mean that. That's why I say it's not a big deal, but it has led some to a point of confusion or even misinterpretation just based upon the English translation.

The ESV, English Standard Version, I think comes closer. A lot closer and there may be a couple of you out there that have the ESV.

And this is how it is translated there. We know that our old self was crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.

Brought to nothing. So that, he says, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. Now that's a lot closer. You see, it means not destroyed or done away with in that sense.

It means literally to render it powerless in our lives. That's what we now enjoy as believers.

that's what we need to gradually and very methodically know is true.

And every day maybe we could grow in that knowledge that the sin, the body of sin is still in me. I know it's there. It's in my flesh. My life is, my body is polluted with with this sin.

But something has changed with my relationship to it. That is, it is, has now been rendered powerless.

And I don't think we believe that. And the reason why I think we don't believe that is because we very often blame our sin on something in us that we just can't help.

You know? We kind of opt out on the responsibility because after all you know the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. We misapply that.

But in reality and this is what Paul is saying because the old man was crucified with Christ that body of sin that's there still there but it has been rendered powerless in our lives.

I tell you there is tremendous victory when we come to know that truth. And so that is what happened to you when you were saved and that's what happened to me when I was saved when I was born again.

But now listen to me and this is important we still have some choices to make don't we in regard to sin I mean every day and we do make choices every day in regard to the sin the body of sin that's in us we make choices every day and multiple times throughout the day and as a matter of fact did you know that because the old man has been crucified there at the cross with Christ did you know now that you have a capacity to choose a certain capacity to choose in your life that you did not have before as a believer you can now choose not to sin you can choose and if you choose to live under the power of sin now that power of sin that sin has been rendered powerless because of the cross because that body of sin has been put to death there though God allows it to stay in the flesh and we'll not be rid of that until we die and are resurrected or until we're raptured and changed then until we get to heaven when the body of sin is totally gone and so not only are we now rid of the power of sin but even the very presence of it is gone but until then it's still there and we have some choices and we can choose every single day we can choose to live under the power of sin it's your choice whereas prior to your salvation you had no choice whatsoever

I don't mean you couldn't choose a lost person can't choose to do immoral things I'm not talking about that I'm talking about in relation to a holy God everything you do apart from Christ before you met Christ before you were saved everything you did was sin to him everything you had no choice even those good things you did were not done for him they were done for self and that's sin and you were completely and utterly captivated held prisoner by the principle of sin in your life that's before Christ but in Christ that old man is put to death dead and now you have a choice to live for Christ or you can choose to act according to that old flesh you can do that for a time

I don't think you can for very long all right so we have that capacity and then when you were saved you were crucified with Christ he says so that the body the soma of sin might be done away with not done away with but that it might be rendered powerless and that's why when I sin and when you sin we are to confess it to him we're to bring it to him not in the sense of informing him anything God doesn't know but bring it to him in the sense of agreeing with him and laying it before him and it wasn't something that just happened that is in the sense of it just happened I just couldn't help myself nothing made you do it you chose to do it you chose to sin someone has said that you don't sweep sin under the rug as a

Christian you have to put it under the blood by confession and repentance because you're responsible before a holy God for committing that sin we're responsible to the point of losing our salvation no to the point of breaking a fellowship with God and also bringing upon ourselves the chastisement of God yes for whom he loves he chastens now verse 7 kind of restates that truth in another way and we'll just kind of maybe get through that and not get into verse 8 verse 7 says for he who has died has been freed from sin now that word freed can also be misunderstood and can even add fuel to the notion of antinomianism but the word freed and I find it in every translation but it is the word from which we get the word righteousness only it's a verb here and it means to be declared righteous righteous to be rendered righteous or made righteous dikai a'o is the word declared righteous much more than just freed okay and it's even much more than just being declared righteous or rendered righteous the idea here is to be revealed as to be shown to everyone that you are rendered righteous that something is changing your life and it's an observable thing in your life it's part of the fruit of the believer it's visible that something dramatic has changed in your life that people can observe you've been rendered righteous they begin to see

Christ in you even unbelievers I heard a story about some men who were at the barbershop and it's been a long time since I've been in a barbershop my wife is my barber but I do remember years ago going to the barbershop and of course it's all men in there at least it used to be now it's a little different and you know men get in the barbershop and they talk about all kinds of things don't they you know they talk about sport sports talk about politics sometimes talk about religion and as the story goes one of the men got the conversation going about religion and he said you know that story about Jesus in the Bible that story about him turning water into wine he said I just can't I have a hard time believing that and so they were talking about that and one of the men there in the barbershop a man who in the past recent past had been an alcoholic and his addiction to alcohol was so severe that it caused not only him to suffer but his family to suffer and you know the devastation of alcoholism and yet this man had been gloriously saved and delivered from his alcoholism and he chimed in and he said to these men in the barbershop he said you have a hard time believing that

Jesus could turn water into wine come over to my house and I'll show you how Jesus turned alcohol into furniture and food on the table and clothes for my children you see that's the idea here listen this this false notion that we can just sin because now we're under grace this false notion that God somehow even tolerates our sin today it's ridiculous for a believer to entertain such a thing it has nothing to do with God's grace God's grace doesn't give us license to sin in any degree and believe me God takes all of our sin very seriously

I mean don't you know that one sin caused the fall of the human race just one and it cost Jesus his life on the cross God hates sin God hates it and therefore our relationship to sin must change now it has effectually changed literally changed because we're now in Christ but we can still choose and so we need to change that something see has happened within us that's different now so don't ever think that you can live immorally during the week and then come to church on Sunday and claim to know Jesus you're a new creature brand new creature whether you know that fully or not and we are knowing that as believers growing our knowledge of that something happened to you when you put your faith in Christ and you've never been the same because you renounced sin and you turned to Christ now that doesn't mean that somehow you can't sin some have redefined sin you know so that now because I love Jesus when I do mess up or I do it out of ignorance and so it's not really sin

I'm under his grace and I love the Lord no no no we can still sin we still do and that doesn't mean that you can't struggle as a believer with a time of habitual sin you can struggle with that not for very long but it does mean that you are now liberated freed to live righteously before Christ before God just like he wants you to live don't ever think that because you're just a sinful person that you're just going to mess up and you just kind of give in to that don't ever think that you can live righteously Thank you.