September 8, 2024

Walking Through the Cemetery into Newness of Life!

Pastor: Allen Snapp Series: The Summit Of Our Salvation Topic: Freedom

The Summit of Our Salvation

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Sept. 8, 2024

 

Walking Through the Cemetery into Newness of Life!

This morning we’re returning to the book of Romans, so let’s turn together to chapter 6. In her book Paris Underground, Etta Shuber writes about being trapped inside Paris when Hitler's storm troopers entered in the spring of 1940. The Nazi’s quickly closed the borders, not allowing anyone to leave France.

However, there was one small border town in France that saw its population mysteriously decrease. They had a cemetery that straddled the border and the locals opened up an ancient gate in the rear of the graveyard wall. Mourners would enter the cemetery for a funeral and keep right on walking out the back gate into freedom and life.

In Romans 6 we find ourselves going to a funeral – our own! We died with Christ. But we don’t stop at the funeral, we keep right on walking because when Jesus rose from the dead he blew open the gate that leads to freedom and newness of life. We have to enter the cemetery but God doesn’t want us parking in the cemetery – He says keep walking into the freedom and life that Jesus opened up for us. Let’s pray.

By way of review, in chapters 1-5 Paul lays out all that God has done for us through Christ to save us from our sin and His wrath. Jesus is the second Adam who obeyed God where the first Adam disobeyed, and then willingly stood in our place taking the wrath our sin deserved so that we might receive the righteousness of God by faith in Christ.

Paul then ends chapter 5 with this declaration:

19 For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Rom. 5:19-21

This is an amazing declaration about God and His abundant grace: where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. Our sin can’t outdo God’s grace – the bigger the sin the greater the grace.

But Paul can hear the question the believers in Rome will ask and he opens chapter 6 with that question: What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? Rom. 6:1

If more sin means more grace, why not sin as much as we can so we can get that much more grace? Paul says that’s not the way grace works:

By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism

into death…

There’s the funeral, our funeral. God has united us spiritually with Christ in his death so that when Jesus died on the cross, we died with him. That’s what water baptism represents: we died with Christ (as we go under) to sin. Our Christian walk begins at a funeral –we died with Christ. But we aren’t meant to settle down in the cemetery, God has so much more for us!

in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. 10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Rom 6:2-11

We are to keep right on walking through the gate Jesus blew wide open for us when he rose from the dead. Just as Jesus was raised from the dead, we too can walk in newness of life. We have been united with Christ in his death AND his resurrection.

Our “old self” or old nature – who we were before we came to Christ – was and is dead in sin. Our old self cannot love God and cannot be reformed. Before we come to Christ, we think that sin is the fun way to live. But everything sin touches it kills. Sin brings death. The wages of sin is death. Sin isn’t the party, sin is the cemetery.

The gospel gives us a new way to live – in the newness of life. Dead to sin and alive to God. The reason why Paul says the idea of increasing sin to get more grace is unthinkable is because sin brings death and grace leads us into newness of life. It’s not that we have to leave the cemetery, it’s that we don’t want to live in the cemetery anymore. We don’t want sin anymore, sin is repulsive to us and the more grace we get the more repulsive sin is to us.

Let me share an illustration I’ve used before. The other day I drove past the dead carcass of a deer that had been hit by a car. Its belly was starting to bloat from the rot of heat and gases. Now God in His wisdom has created creatures who smell that rotting carcass and think, “dinner’s ready!” Rotting, putrid meat somehow must smell and taste good to them. God created them to clean up dead bodies. But as I drive by, I am not tempted to pull over, grab a fork and dig in. It’s not that I have tremendous will-power, I have no appetite for rotting death-flesh. I am repulsed by the idea.

The newness of life Jesus offers us is better than the rotting carcass of sin. Serving Jesus feels better than serving sin. Living holy feels better than living guilty. Loving others feels better than living selfishly. As we walk out of the cemetery of sin through the gate Jesus blew wide open and experience newness of life, sin’s attraction fades until finally it’s repulsive to us.

But while the dominion of sin has been broken in our lives, sin still has a beachhead in our lives from which it tries to take over our lives, tries to run and ruin our lives. How do we experience the freedom and newness of life that is ours in Christ?

Paul shares three things we must do:

  1. Know that we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection

In verses 3, 6, and 9 Paul asserts what we know: we know were baptized into Christ’s death (vs. 3). We know that our old self was crucified with Christ so we aren’t slaves to sin anymore (vs 6). And we know that Christ has risen from the dead and will never die again. Death has no power over him and because we are in him, it has no power over us (vs. 9).

  1. We must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ

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

That word “consider” – sometimes translated reckon or count means not only to know it’s true but to act on that truth! Believe it! We are dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus!

That’s true, but Paul is saying live like it’s true. In verse 10 it says Jesus died to sin once for all. In chapters 1-5 we are told Jesus died for our sins, in chapter 6 it says Jesus died to sin. The difference is that in 1-5 the emphasis is on Jesus dying to pay the penalty for our sin, in 6 Jesus dies to break the power of sin over us.

What’s the one thing that breaks the hold of sin over the worst of sinners every time? Death. When an alcoholic dies, alcohol has no grip on him any longer. The dead drug addict won’t shoot up even if you put the needle in her hand. No matter how bad the sin or how hooked the sinner, once they die, that sin has no hold on them.

Count ourselves dead to sin…but remember, don’t park at the funeral, don’t set up camp in the cemetery, keep walking into the newness of life Christ has given us. Dead to sin, alive to God!

Consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God. In a sense it’s simply being who we are. It’s believing what God says is true about us. Sometimes we park our lives in the cemetery of what sin says about us:

  • You will always be an angry person
  • You are too hurt to forgive that person
  • You will always be a worrier, that’s what you are
  • You will never break that addiction
  • You are a selfish person and you will always be a selfish person
  • You’re a loser…a quitter…a failure…

Whatever beachhead sin tries to hold in our lives, we say, “I’m dead to that sin. I don’t have live selfishly…I don’t have to be bitter…I don’t have to try to find my life in a bottle…I don’t have to look at pornography…I am not a loser or a failure. I’m gonna keep on walking through that cemetery of dead bones and rotting beliefs into the freedom Jesus purchased for me!”

So we know what is true about us in Christ. We count those things as true – we speak truth to ourselves rather than live in the deception that sin wants to speak over our lives to keep its hold on us and…

  1. We present our lives to God (obedience)

15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 

We might expect Paul to say we are slaves either of sin which leads to death or of obedience which leads to life (opposite of death), but he says obedience leads to righteousness. Righteousness is real life. It’s life the way God meant it to be lived. We’re either slaves to sin or slaves to righteousness. Verse 20 says: when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regards to righteousness. When the prodigal son took his inheritance and left home, he was free from his father’s rules. He was free to spend money on wine, women, and song. But soon he was a slave to poverty, spooning out slop to the pigs and he longed for the love and stability and health of his father’s home. Finally the prodigal son became sick of the life he was living and presented himself to his father, where he was welcomed and honored and celebrated.

Sin starts out by saying “do what you want! Live like you want to live! That’s true freedom!” and then little by little it enslaves us with the very thing we wanted. Our freedom to do what we want becomes slavery.

Paul asks an important question in verse 21.

21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If we sow sin, we get death. We earn death and sin always pays up. Paul says, look back over the years when you lived for sin. What benefit did you get? What benefit did your life do for anyone else? It didn’t produce joy or freedom or life, it produced death in the end.

So God invites us to a funeral. Our own. We walk through a cemetery and we see headstones: unforgiveness. Immorality. Lying. Stealing. Anxiety. Hatred. Division. Gossip. That was once us. But we died in Christ to all that and have been raised up in newness of life. We don’t stop in the cemetery, we keep walking in all the life God has for us in Christ.

That newness of life is for now and that life just gets better on the other side. The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. When our bodies eventually give out and die, we’re not making our home in the cemetery, we will keep on walking into the newness of eternal life which is ours as a gift through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Be who God says you are!