Consider Yourselves to be Dead to Sin

I want to start not by reading the text I'm going to be preaching from, but by reading a different text. And that text is Isaiah chapter 1, verse 18. And this verse, it sort of sets the stage for the sermon today. It creates the backdrop. And so Isaiah chapter 1, verse 18, says this. Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool. Now there are a couple of reasons that I read this text as we begin our study of God's word this morning. The first is that here in this passage, we see the Lord setting us down to tell us something. He says, come, let us reason together. And in his reasoning with us, he presents a problem. And really that problem is our problem. It's the problem of sin.

He says, our sins are as scarlet. Now, at the time, they would have understood that to mean that scarlet was bright red. Scarlet is bright red. Crimson is bright red. And he says, your sins are as scarlet. Now, what's he saying to them? He's saying that your sins are bold. They're vivid. They're alive. We can't ignore them. We can't miss them. You can't help but see it. This is what our sins are compared to. And this is our problem. Come, let us reason together, says the Lord. Your sins are as scarlet. And so God presents this problem to us. And then he goes on to promise to fix this problem. He doesn't just say, your sins are as scarlet and you're therefore going to be destroyed. He acknowledges the truth of our sinfulness. And he says, your sins are as scarlet. But at the beginning he says, though your sins are as scarlet. So he's saying, while we have this circumstance, while your sins are as scarlet,

Unmistakable and unmissable. Though they are like as scarlet, they will be as white as snow. And so you have in this verse snow and scarlet being set in contrast with one another. And if our sin is represented by the scarlet, he says that they are going to become as snow. What do we know about the snow? We know that the snow is pure. that it's undefiled, that it's untouched, that it's without any corruption or blemish. In this verse, God promises to take what is by nature as scarlet, your sin and my sin, and to make it as white as snow. And then the question comes, how is God going to do that? How is he going to make our sin, which is bold and vivid and alive, pure and undefiled, how's he going to do that?

That's the question that we are going to be seeking to answer this morning. And the answer to this question, how is God going to take our sins like scarlet and make them white like snow? The answer is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So how did he do that? What does that look like? That's what we're going to be studying this morning. If I were to ask you, what did Jesus' resurrection accomplish for us? There's lots of answers to that question, lots of good answers. And a lot of the answers would amount to saying, Jesus' resurrection secured or accomplished for me life in Jesus Christ. It secures a place for all of God's people in heaven. It has an eternal benefit that every one of his people will receive. When Jesus was raised from the dead, he conquered death. Remember that death are the wages of sin. The wages of sin is death.

deserve death. And when Jesus rose from the grave, because death could not contain him anymore, he blazed a trail, a path, that all of his people, all of his brethren, through all of the ages, would walk, would follow on in behind him. They, like him, could not, cannot, will not be held by the cords of death. They will follow him without fail. God won't lose even one of them. everyone who is called by God and who has put their faith and their hope in Jesus Christ, every one of them will not suffer decay, will not suffer rot, but will dwell with God in heaven for all eternity. That's what his resurrection accomplished for us, and that's a true and good answer. But what I want us to see this morning is, in addition to that, that's a very attractive and appealing answer. If I were to come to you and say, You know, you're an unbeliever. Here's the struggle of your life. You're telling me about these problems, whether it's in your work or your marriage or it's purity or it's your kids or what is it? And I come and say to you, God can make all of that better. You can go to heaven where there's not going to be any of that trouble if you put your faith in Jesus Christ. That's an attractive thing and it's a true thing. But it's not the whole story. And I would be doing a disservice.

to this person if that's all I told them? Because that's not all that Jesus' resurrection accomplished. And so this morning, we're going to look and see what else did Jesus' resurrection accomplish. We're going to be studying Romans chapter 6, verses 5 through 13. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word? This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. 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, 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. For he who has died is free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again.

Death no longer is master 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. Even so, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. 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. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Our text, verses 5 through 13, can be broken up basically into three sections. Verses 5 through 7, verses 8 through 10, and then verses 11 through 13. And then we're going to have, when we look at these sections, we're going to see that the first two, verses 5 through 7 and verses 8 through 10, rehearse.

The connection between Jesus' death and his resurrection. And then verses 11 through 13 tell us, so what? So what does that mean for us? What are the implications in our lives because Jesus was raised from the dead? And so we're going to take this text and I'm going to divide it up into three sections. The first head is going to be our union with Jesus in his death. What's that mean? The second will be our union with Jesus in his resurrection. What's that mean? What's that look like? What's that about? And then third, what are the implications of this, of our union with Christ in both his death and his resurrection? Now, I started off, you remember, with Isaiah this morning, at the very beginning, saying that the Lord came and said, let us reason together. And so what he's doing is presenting problems and solutions. This is what it means to reason. When you have a problem, you go, okay, well, let's figure out how we can solve this problem. Does this solution work? Yes, it does. No, it doesn't.

Does this solution work? Yes, it does. No, it doesn't. Well, if this is the problem and if I do this, what are the implications of this? And you sort of reason through until you find an outcome at the other end that's appealing to you, that's attractive to you. Oh, and then it works. I remember hearing someone talk about HIV, and this is just the example that comes to mind. It's not a very good one, I don't think, but bear with me. Do we have a cure for HIV? Is there a cure for HIV? Generally speaking, the answer is no. There's no cure for HIV. Does that mean that there's nothing that will destroy that virus? No, we have plenty of things that will destroy the virus. What's wrong with those things though? They also kill us. And so you reason and you go, okay, here's a problem. Here's a potential solution. What are the causes of that solution? Oh, well, the person will die not from HIV, but from this poison.

Okay, that's not the solution we want. We don't want that outcome. And yet we reason through our lives, we reason through problems until we find two things, something that works and that way it works is agreeable to us. That's what it means to reason. That's what it means to process through. And that's what Paul's doing in our text this morning. He's reasoning with these Roman Christians. And he's reasoning from Jesus' death. through to what that means for them. And he says, if this is true of you, Jesus died. He says in verse 5, if you have become united with him in the likeness of his death, then what? Then certainly you will also be in the likeness of his resurrection. And so we find at the very beginning of our text that Jesus' death, and I said this at Good Friday, you cannot separate Jesus' death from his resurrection. If you take these things apart from one another, they lose their significance. If Jesus doesn't die, you and I are still in our sins because there has to be shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sins. And so Jesus has to die. Blood has to be shed for you and I to be forgiven. And so if Jesus doesn't die, we're still in our sins. And yet if Jesus dies and he's not raised from the dead, then you and I still live under a curse.

Because death is still the master. Later on, we'll come down in our text, it says death was no longer master over him. It could not hold him. If you were to think of death in terms of being bound and shackled, and then you think of the strong man having the power to break his bonds and to free himself, like Samson did, you begin to understand what it means for death not to be able to hold him, to contain him, to remain master over him. He broke the bonds of death. And Paul says, if we've become united with him in the likeness of his death, how do we become united with Jesus Christ in the likeness of his death? The first, and if you were to read ahead of our text this morning in the first four verses of this chapter, you'd find the answer is very clear. It's through baptism. That's how you join yourself to Jesus Christ, in the likeness of his death.

Yes, there will be suffering and tribulations and trials and things like that that come on in our lives as Christians. But the mark, the thing that joins you to Jesus Christ in the likeness of his death is baptism. The act of baptism shows, it demonstrates, it proclaims the cleansing, our cleansing from the stain of sin. Through baptism, through... When God looks at us and he sees his people, he sees they've been washed, they've been cleaned, they've been made righteous. I see righteousness when I look at them. Now, he doesn't see righteousness because we in ourselves are righteous. He doesn't see perfection because when we're baptized, we become, poof, perfect and don't sin anymore. The reason that God sees perfect righteousness and obedience when he looks to you or to me is because he sees his son Jesus Christ, who was perfect and who did obey. And so if the wages of sin are death, and Jesus never sinned and never disobeyed, should he have died? The answer is no, he should not have died. And yet when he dies, he didn't die for himself. He didn't die because he was a sinner. He died because you were a sinner, because I'm a sinner. And so through baptism, we unite ourselves to Jesus Christ.

We proclaim his death for our sins. That's what it means to be united with him in the likeness of his death. It means bearing the mark that God has designated to demonstrate our union with him. The sins still exist in our own lives, but they've been severed from their root. You know, I used to work for a tree company, so I climbed trees. And one of the things that grows on trees that's very unfortunate is poison ivy. And so I spent a lot of time with poison ivy, a lot of time with poison ivy. And so one of the things we would do is there would be a lot of woods, and people would want to build their house in the middle of this lot of woods. And so we would have to come in and clear the lot. And so that means cutting down a lot of trees, trimming a lot of other trees, and turning the forest into a habitable space. And so there's lots of poison ivy growing in there. And so one of the things we would do, after we removed all the trees, the people still have all these woods.

And it was very common for us to see these big vines just growing up. They grow way up into the top of the trees. And what are those big giant vines? Those vines are poison ivy. And so what would we do? Well, we would come and we would cut the vines off of the ground because a lot of times they would just grow along the ground and eventually up a tree. But we would cut as much as we could away. And we would spend our time always with chainsaws in our hands reaching up as high as we could to cut that vine. Now, why would we do that?

The answer is obvious. We don't want the people who are buying this house, they don't want to get poison ivy, right? And so here's the thing about poison ivy. You cut those vines, and they're completely severed from their root, and you can still get poison ivy from them for at least, I'd say, a year afterwards. Just a dead vine hanging there out of children's reach, but we come and climb these trees later. There's the vine, and you want to see how dry is it? How dead is it? Is that oil still in it? And in that circumstance, it took about a year. After about a year, finally, you could just grab the vine and pull it down and not get poison ivy just from touching it still. So was the vine dead? Oh yeah, the vine was dead. It was severed from its root. Was it still potent? Oh yeah, it was. And you had to be aware of it.

Amos, honey, would you stop that? Thank you. And so the same is true with our relationship to our own sin. When Jesus died, the root, our connection to our sin was severed. It was killed. And yet there's still sin in us. There's still poison oil, if you will, that's having to be worked out. And yet when I look at that vine, I go, that vine is dead. Now I better be careful how I handle it. The same is true with our sin. Those who are joined with Jesus Christ, who've been united with him in the likeness of his death, are severed from sin. There is not still a connection. And yet there is still a residual that has to be dealt with. He says, When Jesus died on the cross, there's this reference then that our old self was crucified with him. Well, we know that Jesus Christ was crucified on a cross, hung on a tree, nails driven through his hands and through his feet, a spear used to lance his side to see if he was dead. And it says here that our old self was crucified with him, that you and I, that this old self was with him being dealt with on the cross. What is our old self?

Our old self refers to our lusts, to our desires, to our sins, to anything that we have in us that is opposed to God and to his perfect law. That is the old self. That's the oil, if you will, in the vine. It's what defines the vine. If I were to show you plants, if I had three of them, in little pots, and I said, one of these is poison ivy. And they all look kind of similar. One of them is poison ivy, and one of them is Virginia creeper, and one of them is box elder, who all have very similar leaves, all grow kind of similar, look kind of the same. And I said to you, what do you want to know? What do you want to know about these three plants? Because I'm going to tell you you have to touch one of them. I'm going to take one of them and just rub it all over your face. What do you want to know about the plant?

That's all you want to know is which one, because that danger that's presented is the defining characteristic of the plant. Is there anything more to be known about poison ivy? Yeah, there's lots of things to be known about poison ivy. It's a really interesting plant. I can tell you where it grows. I can tell you how it grows. It can grow as a little plant. It can grow as a vine. It can grow as a bush. I can tell you what the leaves look like. I can tell you what the flowers look like. I can tell you all kinds of stuff, but do you care about any of that? No, because you only care about the part of that plant that's potent. You say, I don't want poison ivy. Which one is it? And the same is true of our old selves. Apart from union with Jesus Christ, you are defined by your sin. That's it. Are there other things that are true about you? Are there other things that we could be known about you? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. But you are defined by your sin.

It's what you live for. It's what you breathe for. It's what you pursue. This is the old self. And Paul says that this old self was crucified with Jesus Christ there on the cross. And then we get the reason. In order that. That means because. If we become united with him in the likeness of his death, meaning that our old self was crucified with him, why? This is why. So that our body of sin might be done away with. This is why I cut the poison ivy vines. And I don't just grab them and pull them. You cut them. And you use rakes or pitchforks to get rid of them. You try to avoid getting it. We're joined with him in the likeness of his death so that, in order that our body of sin might be done away with. That's not hard to understand, is it? What's supposed to happen to your old self? It's supposed to die, right? We're joining with Jesus in his death. He died.

What has to die? We have to die. What about us has to die? Our very definition. Our sinful nature has to die. It must die. And through Jesus Christ, it's been severed. And yet it still has to be put to death. It still has to be eradicated. And so our body of sin has to be done away with. It has to be killed so that we will no longer be slaves to sin. Slaves do not have a choice in what they do. They don't have a choice in what they do. They must do, under penalty of death or torture or starvation or you name it, they must obey their master. That's the life of a slave. It's not an attractive life. And Jesus, we're told that we are to be united with Jesus Christ in the likeness of his death, that our old self is to be crucified with him so that our body of sin might be killed.

so that we would no longer be a slave to sin. The problem, your problem and my problem, the world's problem is that we're slaves to sin. We obey its lusts. We obey our desires. You do something foolish, or you do something questionable or objectionable, and someone says, why did you do that? And you go, I don't know. I don't know why I did that. Or you start trying to make the excuse, well, I did that because of this, or there was this other reason, or there was this stuff. But all of it amounts to us justifying what we've done. It's not so bad. But Jesus died so that that thing you just did could be put to death. So that you would not be a slave to it and obey its commands anymore. So Christian sins must die. They must die. If someone's sins are not dying, they are not a Christian. This is what Jesus' death accomplished. He died.

So that our sins would be wiped away. And if those sins are not wiped away, then his death is not true and been applied to us. And so if we're to be united with Jesus Christ in his death, we have to be united through baptism. We have to bear his mark of his death for the cleansing of our sins. And then it has to produce that cleansing in our lives. This is what union with Jesus in his death looks like. What about union with him in his resurrection? You read on and it says, now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. And so we see this cause and effect relationship. If this is true, then this must be true. You cannot have being joined with him in death without being joined with him in resurrection.

And if I were to ask you, do you want to be joined with him in his death? By faith, you say yes. And I say, is it going to be easy? And you say no. And I say, do you always want to be joined with him in his death? And every one of us would say, no, not always. Sadly, not even often. And what we mean is we don't want our sins to die. And I say, as Paul writes, if you've died with Christ, if there has been a fatal blow dealt, to your sinful nature. If that's true of you, then not only is the house being cleaned out of all of its filth, but it's being renewed, it's being remodeled, it's being restored, it's having life put into it. It's being made habitable. That's what Jesus' resurrection does. It makes us habitable beings for his Holy Spirit.

I want to draw your attention in this verse. It says, if we have died with him, we believe that we shall also be raised with, live with him. This little phrase, we believe, it could have just said, if we have died with him, we shall also live with him. But there's this element of faith, of trust, of hope that's put into it. We believe that we will. Now, why is it significant that we believe be put in there? Well, because you're not inclined to believe that you will live with him. You look at your sin, you look at the sin around you, and you go, death, I see death. I see destruction. I see broken. I see a mess. And here the apostle calls us to when we see that mess, he calls us to believe that in the midst of that mess, we're to believe that we will live with him. We will reign with him. That that mess of sin is no longer the definition of who we are.

Only faith can look at this mess of sin and see that mess of sin nailed to Jesus' cross and believe that because he died there, for them, they will join with him in conquering death, getting out of the grave, not being damned to eternity with sin. Only faith can perceive that. The world can't perceive that. The world can't make any sense of it. The world has to say, that sin, that's not really sin. Or if it's sin, it's not that bad. Or you can't blame them for it, or you can't hold them to it, or you can't expect anything else from them. And all of those things are lies because God never said any of that. God's people were created in his wisdom for good works that he prepared beforehand. This is what Ephesians 2 tells us. So that we would walk in those good works, so that we would do those things. This is what life...

believing in the resurrection looks like, we're going to get to that. The resurrection means that you do, Jesus having been raised from the dead, having conquered death, means that you do not have to sin. You do not have to sin. If you're not in Christ, you can't do anything but sin. And it'll be perfectly in line with your desires because it's all you'll want to do. But if you're joined with Jesus in his death and you believe that you'll be joined with him in his resurrection, the fruit of that in your minds and we'll get to how it works out in our lives, is that you believe you have a place in your mind now that says, I do not have to do that because Jesus was raised from the dead. I don't have to be defined by my sins. I don't have to present myself with sin as an instrument of unrighteousness. Jesus died to free me from that slavery. We all know that we shouldn't sin. We all know you shouldn't sin.

Even the world knows they shouldn't do bad stuff. They've got some moral standard from somewhere, whether it's from someone else or from their own hearts and minds or what have you. They all would say, no, you shouldn't sin. It's not okay to murder people. No, you shouldn't be allowed to murder people with no consequence. They're going to say, you shouldn't do that because it's wrong. We all know we shouldn't sin. But Jesus' resurrection goes further than telling you you shouldn't sin. It gives you the ability to actually not do it. To actually have opportunity to sin that you see and that you perceive and that you're aware of. And it gives you strength and power not to do it. And that only makes sense to Christians. An unbeliever does not have that power. Nor do they want it. We believe that we shall also live with him. Because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again.

Death is no longer master over him for the death that he did, he died, he died to sin once for all. What that means is that there's no, if you were to think of this in terms of the poison ivy vine, you killed it once and it will not, it cannot connect to the root again. It cannot because he killed it. And if in the recesses of your heart, Satan's whispering to you, But you really are sinful and you really are bad and you really are going to do it again. You may not process that struggle and that failure because there is still poison oil in the severed vine. You may not process that failure as it having not been killed. If you've been joined with him in his death, you will be joined with him in his resurrection. Jesus has authority over death. He will not die again.

His people will not die again. He didn't come and just cut the vine but leave it laying on the ground to send out roots again so that it could come to life again. The death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God. And here we begin to see what the fruit of his death and his resurrection is. from all eternity. And he will have life in him for all eternity. But the life that he lives after his resurrection, he lives it how? He lives it to God. He lives it unto God. He lives it to please his Father. And that is the example that's been laid down for you and for me. Those who've died to sin, those who've had their sins, nailed to the cross, those who have joined with Jesus Christ in his death shall join with him in his resurrection and they shall live as he lives. He lives the life that he has unto God. And that's the same thing that's true of Christians. The life that you have in Jesus Christ is to be lived unto God. It's to be lived to glorify him, to honor him, in worship and praise of him. Everything that you do.

And you say, but the vine, it's all, I mean, like, but the vine's just a bad, bad thing. It's just corrupt. And then when it dies, it's just gone. And I say, okay, so is there nothing, does nothing come in and replace it? Does nothing come in and grow it again? Grow in its place? What happens when you kill something invasive, something awful, is that other things grow in its place. Once you've killed it, it can't grow back because it's dead. So what happens? Is the land just barren then? No. Good things grow in its place. It takes time, but good things grow in its place. One of the things I'm interested in or that I pay attention to is, you all know I like deer hunting, right? And so I like to watch this one particular guy out in Missouri who's a wildlife biologist. And he's got this, I don't know how many acres of land in the Ozark Mountains.

big gravel heaps, basically. There's just no dirt there. And so the vegetation for the animals is very poor. Well, this guy's all about hunting, and he's all about healthy deer, lots of deer, big antlers. This is what he thinks is cool. I think it's cool. That's why I watch the videos. And so he spends a lot. Now, hunting season's only, at most, four months long. But he puts a video out every single week, 20-minute video, talking about, here's what we're doing. Here's what's going on. And one of the things that he does is he uses prescribed fire. And he says, you know, nothing grows on the sides of these mountains except for these awful nasty cedar trees. And they're just useless because they're so big and they're so thick and they're so dense. They just shade out the ground and nothing grows there except for cedar trees. Now, if you like cedar trees, that's fine. But if you want a healthy deer herd, they're really, really bad because they just shade out and destroy all the rest of life.

That could live there. And really what they're killing is the food that the deer could eat. Now in that ground, under those cedar trees, there's all kinds of native seeds and grasses and all kinds of stuff that is laying there dormant that could grow if it were to get some sun. So what does he do? Well, if you were to watch his videos, he comes in and they use prescribed fire quite a bit. And so what they do is they come in with their chainsaws and they cut down all the cedar trees and then they just leave them lay there for a year so that they dry out.

And then they come in and they set fire to all of it. They burn it all up. And then what happens? Then lush, fruitful habitat grows. The bad things are killed. They take time to die. And as they die, the good things grow. And the same is true of our relationship with Jesus in his death and in his resurrection. When we are severed by his grace from our sinful nature, We have the work of it dying going on and the work of cultivating the good stuff. And that good stuff is represented in his resurrection. The goal is not to have barren land with no sin in it. The goal is not to have a garden that has no weeds in it. Is it? You want a big plot of dirt in your backyard and you can say, there's no weeds in my garden plot. And I say, well, what's the point of it? Why don't you grow some tomatoes or some cucumbers or some squash or something good?

Why spend all of your time just trying to pluck the weeds out of everything? Don't you expect your garden to be fruitful? Don't you want it to bear good fruit for you? The life that Jesus lives, he lives unto God. He lives praising and glorifying, bearing fruit for his Father. And that's the example that's laid down for you and I. If we're joined with him in his death, we will be joined with him in his resurrection. You'll find that your desires will be changing. The things that you used to just long for and go after and pursue lose their shine. They lose their appeal. Do you believe that? Do you believe that the things that you were defined by before you knew Jesus Christ will fade away? What if you're not a Christian? You're sitting here listening to me. Do you believe? I want you to believe. I want you to know. Not because I said it.

But because God said it, your desires will change because he will give you a new heart. And the things that you loved and went after and were defined by will fade away. They will be done away with. This is the work that God does in his people. And he promises to do it. He guarantees to do it. So have you seen your desires change? Would you like to see your desires change? Then trust in Jesus Christ. So now we're on to the third point, the final point. The implications of our union with Jesus Christ. Paul tells them to consider themselves, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. The first thing that we find in this text is a command about how to think about ourselves. Consider yourselves dead to sin. Why would you be told to consider yourselves? Why would you be told to think, to process yourself? Who am I?

Why are you being told to process yourself as dead to sin? Consider yourselves dead to sin. Well, because there's still poison oil in the vine. You still are sinning. And it's one of Satan's most common tactics to say to you that if Jesus comes into your heart and you love him and you get baptized and you do all this stuff, that somehow something magic is going to flip in you and you're not going to be a sinner anymore. And that doesn't happen all at once. It does happen. But it does not happen all at once. And Satan will take that reality and twist it and tell you that you see the sin? God won't have you. If God won't have sinners, then he won't have anyone. He can't have anyone. But Satan will take those things and he'll twist them and he'll say, you see what you did? You see what you do? You see who you are? You see what you're like? Christians don't do that. And that's what happens when you process your life in little 10-second snapshots. You get a very, very skewed picture of what...

Christian faith looks like. Christian faith, it does not look like, oh, all these wicked, awful, sinful people, but then they get baptized, or then they say, I love Jesus, and all of a sudden, they don't sin anymore at all right then. All of a sudden, their marriage, it was so bad, or their kids, it was so out of control. All of a sudden, they trust Jesus, and it's all better. It doesn't work like that. It does not often work like that. It takes time, just like it takes time for that oil to be bled out of that vine. It takes time for your sin to be worked out of you, for your desires to change. I can tell you from my own life that when I became a Christian, the things that had defined me previous to that, when it dawned on me, you don't have to do that. The question came to me, well, what am I supposed to do instead? I don't know what to do instead. And I sort of felt kind of, you know, I have all this time on my hands because I'm not out doing all this awful stuff.

I'm like, well, what am I supposed to do with myself? Where's my definition? What defines me now? And God was merciful to me and joined me to, and gave me a church and gave me people to love and good work to do, people to care for and care about and serve. And the definition of who I was changed. Was I still a sinner? Oh, yeah. My son's over here shaking his head and saying, uh-huh, threw a yawn. Yep, daddy was still a sinner. Daddy still is a sinner. But my desires changed. We're being changed. And so we're told to consider ourselves dead to sin. What you feel, listen to me, what you feel cannot subvert God's word. It does not matter what you feel like if what you feel is contrary to what God says. Your feeling is wrong. That's not to say that feelings are wrong.

You can have appropriate, godly, honoring to Jesus Christ feelings. That's one of the things he gives you. But Satan will take your feelings and go, well, I don't feel like that's true of me. And you go, I don't feel like that's true of me. And I go, well, you can feel like whatever you want to feel like, but that doesn't change what Jesus did on the cross or what he did when he came out of the grave or what he does up in heaven at his father's right hand. Your feelings don't change that. And you need to consider yourselves dead to that stuff and submit yourself by faith to what God has said he has done. Because that's what happened. That's what is true. Your feelings will change. Have you noticed that? Sometimes you feel awful and you feel so bad and you feel like you can't even look up and look somebody in the eye because you're such an awful person. But don't you also feel like you're better than everyone else in the world sometimes? You ever have that feeling? You ever have those feelings in the same day? Same week?

Look down on them, despise them, I can't stand them. Look at somebody else and go, oh, I'm undone, I'm so bad, I can't. To hell with your feelings. Let them be informed by the word of God. His son was hung on a tree to pay the penalty for your sins. And he was raised from the dead so that you would have life in him. And when you don't feel like it, you're being lied to. And you may not believe that lie. Its end is death and destruction. It's as if you would run up to the vine that's been cut and pull it down and try to stick it back in the ground. What foolishness. Romans 12, too, just a couple of chapters later, after our text this morning, Paul writes, Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. The way you think must change. Christians do not think like non-Christians. They don't value what non-Christians value. They don't pursue.

what non-Christians pursue. And that's a change that must take place. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is. That which is good and acceptable and perfect. I'll put it to you like this. The things that you give sun to, the things that you give water to, the things that you give attention to, those are the things that will grow. It's just that simple. If you turn over in your heads and think about all of this stuff that you are and that you've done and how it's bad and how God owes you this because this other bad thing happened, if that's the stuff that you feed in your head, that's the stuff that's going to grow. You think you're better than everyone else? You know what? You're going to get more and more proud and farther and farther away from the gospel of Jesus Christ. But if you fill your mind and your heart with the knowledge of Jesus Christ,

his death and his resurrection, that will grow in you and it will produce fruit in you. What's the point of planting a garden with a bunch of vegetable plants that are sterile, that never produce seed? There's no point in it. At least flowers are pretty. You can't eat them, but at least they're pretty. They bear their fruit. They testify to God's goodness with their beauty. What good is a sterile tomato plant? Consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Now this thought, considering myself dead to sin, I do not have to do it. You men, you do not have to be impure. You do not have to be nasty to your wives. You do not have to be impatient with your children. You do not have to be lazy at work. You do not have to forget to read your Bible. You do not have to waste money. You do not have to look at women with lust in your hearts. You women, you do not have to be fearful. You do not have to be stubborn.

You do not have to protect yourselves. You do not have to have your voice heard. You do not have to have your children do exactly what you say to honor Jesus Christ. You do not have to do that stuff. What you have to do is consider yourselves for your part where you are right now dead to sin because Jesus was raised from the grave. That's what you have to do. And then, based upon that, you are to live a life Unto God. Now what's that mean? Paul goes on and he gets practical. Here we are to the end. These thoughts must lead to action. It's not enough to think right thoughts. They must lead to right actions. Is it sufficient to think, God has been merciful to me and he's given me his son and I'm struggling and I just need to think and remember and dwell on his kindness. You must do that. That is the first step. If we were baking a cake, you've got to turn the oven on.

You've got to turn it on. You can't put dough in a cold oven and expect it to bake. It won't work. But you also can't turn an oven on and then not put a cake in there and expect cake. You've got to turn the oven on and you've got to mix the dough and put it in the pan and put it in the oven. And so these right thoughts must lead to right action. So Paul says, therefore, because of all of this, therefore, because Jesus died, because you're joined with him through baptism, because your sinful nature has been nailed to his cross and was killed, And because all of that happened on the cross and then he rose from the grave and all that stuff that happened on the cross is done now. And that reality is past. Death happened and now there's life. And now that there's life because he died because you're joined with him in his death. Because he was raised and you're joined with him in that. Remember that. Consider yourselves dead to sin. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body.

so that you may obey its lusts. This is the action that we come to. Do not go on presenting your members, the members of your body, as sin, to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. Because of what Jesus did, your response, what is good and acceptable and perfect, what is right, is that you would not continue to sin. That's the fruit of the resurrection. Jesus didn't simply die so that you could go to heaven. He didn't plant a seed in you that's going to sprout when you die and lays dormant until then. No. The seed of his death and resurrection that's planted in you by faith begins to grow now. And that growth looks like putting your sin to death. That growth looks like hacking away at that vine some more. It looks like setting fire to it. It looks like putting poison on the stump. It looks like digging up the roots.

It looks like getting rid of it entirely. It's active. Do not continue to let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts. Those who have been freed from sin are no longer slaves to sin. Do not continue to obey its lusts. When a man comes to faith in Jesus Christ, he dies and then he's made alive. And Nicodemus couldn't understand that. He came to Jesus by night and says, how's that work? How can a man be born again? And all Jesus says to him, a man must be born again. And that new life produces new fruit. The thistles have been torn out of the garden. The tomatoes have been planted. We do not expect thorns. We expect tomatoes. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lust. And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness. Do not continue to live as you formerly lived. You are no longer defined by your sin.

This piece of property that's got poison ivy all over it. The tree company came in. They cut it all down. They cut the trees down. Sun's going to get to the ground. And you know what? Poison ivy's not going to grow back. Flowers are going to grow back. Ground cover's going to grow back. Trees are going to grow back. Fruitful things are going to grow in the place of wickedness. When we would come in and do that work, we would do everything we could to prevent that poison ivy from growing back. We'd cut it. We'd treat the stumps with herbicide to kill the roots. You'd go up in the trees and you'd cut it out. This was our work. This is your work. Do not let sin reign in your mortal body. You do not have to anymore. But present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. Jesus Christ must reign in your heart.

You will only serve one master. You will only have one Lord. You will only obey one thing. It will either be your lusts or it will be Jesus Christ. And if you're a Christian, you have no choice in the matter. You say, well, I don't want to. And I say, then you need to repent of not wanting to because Jesus was raised from the dead so that you wouldn't have to. Jesus Christ must reign in your hearts. We are to constantly be presenting ourselves to God as instruments of righteousness. This is active. This isn't passive. Well, I'm just going to wait until I grow in holiness. I'm just going to wait for the volunteer tomato plants to grow up in my garden this year. You know what's growing in my garden already? It's not tomato plants, it's weeds. Tomatoes don't come up first. Were there tomatoes that fell that are going to grow? Yeah, I'll see those about July if I take care of the weeds now. We are constantly to be presenting ourselves as instruments of righteousness to our God. This is active. Paul says, do not actively pursue sin anymore.

But instead, present yourself to God because Jesus died and was raised. That's why. That's why. You're supposed to live a life of holiness because Jesus isn't still dead. If he was still dead, you should continue to live a life of wickedness. Do you know that? That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. He goes, if Jesus isn't raised from the dead, go do whatever in the world you want. Because there's no hope. You have no hope. Go do whatever you want. If you like it, do it. Because you're going to die. And there's nothing that can be done about it. 1 Corinthians 15.32 says, eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If Jesus isn't raised from the dead, you should do whatever your wicked heart wants. But Jesus has been raised from the dead, and therefore, you may not, you shall not do whatever your wicked heart wants. When you sin, as a Christian, one way to process that, another way to think about that, is to say, you live as though Jesus is not raised.

When you say, I have to have it, I want to do it, this is the most appealing thing, this is the most attractive thing, I don't know how I could live without that. You're thinking and acting as though Jesus is still in the tomb. And you're believing and acting upon a lie. Because he's not in a tomb anymore. He's in heaven. And he's going to come back. And when you sin, you believe a fatal lie, saying that, well, he's still dead. There's nothing that can be done. That's not true. Jesus is alive and he is in heaven with his father reigning and he will come back to this earth and he will reconcile and do away with all of the remnants of sin in our own hearts and the wicked rebellion that exists in the hearts of those who hate him. He'll set it right. Jesus Christ is more beautiful, more attractive, more beneficial than anything this world has to offer.

I promise you. And you will find no greater joy in your life. You will find no better thing to devote your life to than serving Jesus Christ. Will it be difficult? Yeah, it will be difficult. But God will make it beautiful to you and valuable to you and wonderful and desirable. But I'll have to stop. You mean I've got to stop this? You don't want to stop that when you've got Jesus Christ and joy and peace and... perfection offered to you? You want this filth? This is what you choose when we choose sin. Jesus has been raised from the dead. Don't choose that. Don't choose that. Seek God. Seek also to live a godly life. Put your sins to death because Jesus was raised from the dead. His resurrection is the nucleus of Christian faith. It's right at the center. Without it, there's no Christian faith. There's no Christianity. His resurrection is right at the center.

Every one of you came here this morning. Every one of you knows it's Easter, and you know that we talk about Jesus' resurrection. And so you're here professing with your bodies that you believe that Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. Because if you didn't, why would you be here? And if he wasn't raised from the dead, you shouldn't be here. Because I'm lying to you, and I'm doing you harm. I'm telling you not to have fun if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead. And so the fact that you're here... whether you're a Christian or whether you're not or whether you've ever thought this thought when you got up in the morning, I'm telling you, you're here because Jesus was raised from the dead. You wouldn't be here if he wasn't. And so if you're here testifying with your bodies that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, I say when you go forth from this place, continue to live that way. Live as though he's still raised from the dead once you walk through those doors and once you go to work tomorrow. Death could not contain Jesus Christ. The bonds of death could not hold him. He is raised and he is in heaven.

And he's reconciling the world to himself. And it's a glorious thing to be a part of. And I call you to be a part of it. And to rejoice in it. It's good work. It's desirable work. And it's only available to us because of God's kind mercy toward us. So be about that work. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we love you and we praise you. And we testify by our presence here this morning that you have been good to us. And that your son is at your right hand, ruling and reigning. bringing this world and all of his enemies into subjection under his feet. And we pray, Father, that you would strengthen us to do your will. I pray, Father, that you would burn into every heart and mind here the reality of your son's death and his resurrection. I pray that you would make union with him attractive to them, that you would open the eyes that are blind, soften the hearts that are hard, and pour out your Holy Spirit and grant us faith and repentance unto life eternal.

Father, we ask that you would glorify yourself in our hearts and in our minds, that you would help us to see as you see, bring our lives into conformity to your word and to your will, so that you would receive the glory of everything that we say and think and do. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.