He Who Has Died Is Freed From Sin

So this morning, we're going to be taking a week away from the book of Deuteronomy. We've been working our way as a church through the book of Deuteronomy. But this morning, we have a number of church children that are going to be baptized this morning, as well as a couple others who are going to be received into membership, having been baptized as an infant. This is a new thing. If you've been here for a while, it's a new thing for our church. I don't mean that it's new in the sense that we've never had children baptized. brought into membership before. But what I mean is that our church is full of little kids, full of full of little kids and young families. And as we've anticipated this day, we prayed for it for our own children and for one another's children. God's been merciful to hear our prayers and to answer them. And so we get to celebrate that today. And so this is a day that's, that is a celebration. It's a, it's an opportunity to

revel in God's goodness to us as a congregation and to be reminded of our obligations to the Lord, not just our children's obligations and not just the ones who are being baptized or brought into membership, but our obligations. And so we're going to be studying the issue of baptism this morning. Baptism is something that we do as an act of obedience to the Lord. It's not something we do because we feel like it or because it's convenient. We do it because God commands us that his people ought to be baptized, that they ought to bear on their bodies. his mark. And so this morning, we're going to do two things. First, I'm going to work to define what baptism is. And second, I'm going to work out some of the obligations that come along with baptism so that you and I, we have a better understanding of what's going on today. To those of us who are baptized, this is meant to be a refresher, a reminder, a call to remembrance for you.

If you're not baptized, if you're not a Christian, if you're unsure about what this all is, if you think it's just a sweet thing that Christians do for the pictures and the memories, then I hope to help you realize it's much more than that. I hope you're strengthened by what we discuss and what we see in the Word of God this morning. Baptism is a joyous occasion. And so our text this morning is Romans chapter 6, verses 1 through 7. Would you all please stand with me as we read the Word of the Lord? This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? 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. 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 freed from sin. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. What is baptism? That's what we're going to start with this morning. What is baptism? Well, it's a command. It's something that God calls us to do. We see that probably most prominently in the Great Commission. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe or to obey all that I've commanded you. And, lo, I'm with you always.

even to the end of the age. And so baptism is a command. It's something that Jesus calls his people to do. So what is baptism? It's a ceremony. It's a rite of passage. It's a testimony of a few things. First, for the recipient, the one being baptized is declaring something about themselves to everyone, okay? Therefore, baptism is not a private thing. It's not something you do at home in your bathtub. It's not something you do with your friends in the creek or at the pool. It's an initiation right into the visible church, okay? It is connected to and is a prerequisite to coming to the Lord's table. The Christian life has become a thing today that has really blurry edges. We don't quite know what a Christian is. We figure if someone says they're a Christian, then that's good enough.

and we don't consider or feel that it's appropriate to define what they mean by that, though we recognize that there is a great breadth of understanding of what it means to be a Christian. We're unsure, unable to define what is a Christian. Where is the edge? Where is the boundary? What is in and what is out? And so when you come to something like baptism, something that's commanded, some clear edge, some defining feature, We tend to want to minimize it and say, no, it's not as big of a deal. It's something that we do as a matter of will or desire. But I mean to tell you from the very beginning, that is not how Scripture speaks about baptism. That is not how God views the sign that he's given to his people. He doesn't say, do it if you want. Do you think of your children that way as they relate to your family, as they live in your house, as they come to your dinner table? Do you say...

There's food if you want it, but if you don't want it, that's fine. Just go kind of do your own thing. I realize a lot of dinner tables in America function that way, but that's not how Christian dinner tables ought to function, right? We ought to come together and say, it's now dinner time. Stop your homework. Stop your practicing. Stop your playing. Come to the table. We're doing a thing as a family now. And because you're a part of the family, you're expected to participate in it. And so baptism is an initiation rite. a ceremony that's prescribed to us in Scripture to testify to our inclusion into God's family, and that's all the church is. It's described in other ways in Scripture, but at a very fundamental level, the church is the family of God, and the boundaries of that family are demonstrated through the waters of baptism. There's something fundamental about being baptized.

versus not being baptized. It really is the gate through which you enter formally into God's family. And I realize some may want to say, well, that's too wooden or that's too rigid or that's too formulaic, that's too oppressive. And I would just ask you, well, then where is your boundary? How do you decide who's in and who's out? And how's that work? And where do you find that boundary in scripture? Baptism is the boundary. It's the gate through which we come into the family of God. It's something that is actually expected of and required of us by the Lord. If God's kingdom is to be built and we're to know who belongs in it, how do we tell where we are or where someone is? Well, the waters of baptism are a good place to start.

I don't mean to say that there's nothing more than the waters of baptism that indicate or determine your participation in God's family or not, but I do mean to say it's not less than that. It's not less than that. This is something that we ought to be trained in and expect so that when God in his mercy works in the lives of our friends and neighbors and our children and grandchildren, that we have a context to rejoice in the work that he's doing. When children come to the waters of baptism, when members profess their faith and come to the waters of baptism, they're testifying to and demonstrating that God has worked in their life and in their families. And that's not something that we ought to just pass over because it's a data point. It's a testimony to God's faithfulness, to his promises to us as parents and to us as his people.

Does baptism guarantee that the recipients of it are going to heaven? No, actually it doesn't. And you're like, well, but I thought you just made this really strong case, my shoulders kind of sore from you twisting my arm behind my back, about how important it is and how defining it is. And now you're telling me that it's not that clear. And I said, yep, you're right. I'm telling you it's not a guarantee of salvation. It's not a guarantee of salvation. Scripture teaches us not just that if you're baptized, then you're saved and everything is well with your soul. Scripture teaches us that those who persevere to the end will be saved. And so baptism is not the only defining feature of the Christian life. It's just the initiation right into the Christian life.

After the baptism, we now have the whole rest of our lives to live and demonstrate whether or not we are one of God's children or not. And scripture defines the one who is saved as the one who perseveres to the end. Having begun and having entered through the waters of baptism, they have remained and stayed in God's family until they die. And so while baptism is a joyful thing and a happy thing, and it ought to be that to us, It is not the end of the Christian life. It's not the final command to be obeyed, but one of the very first. And so in our church we have children who are being baptized now upon profession of faith. We also have children in our church who are coming into the, being admitted to the Lord's table, being allowed to participate, but they're baptized as infants. So what do those two groups of kids have in common? What they have in common is that They have professed their faith in Jesus Christ before the elders of the church and said, these are the things that we believe about ourselves and our own sins, about God and his holiness, about Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection. They've demonstrated that they know they're a sinner and that they can't save themselves. They've demonstrated that Jesus Christ is perfect and righteous and holy and that his death,

is a payment that was accepted by the Father for their sins and that they are no longer guilty of them. And they've also testified that they believe that his resurrection is the basis of their hope of eternal life. And they've been exhorted and encouraged and will continue to be exhorted and encouraged throughout the rest of their life, just like all the rest of us, to continue to bear out those commitments daily. And so both the children who are being baptized and those who are being welcomed into the Lord's table, having been baptized as an infant, are making, are testifying to their faith in Jesus Christ. What else is baptism? It's also a sign, not just of what we intend and what we believe, it's also a sign given to us by God of what he's intended and obligated to do for those who are baptized. What does baptism mean?

obligate God to do? Well, it testifies to that he will receive us as his children, that he will forgive us for our sins, that he will become a father to us and care for us as long as we live. It's so much more than a photo op or an occasion for a family get-together. In baptism, God doesn't just say, these are the things that you must do. He says through baptism, Those who are baptized, these are the things I will do for them. He obligates himself to us. Baptism, as I mentioned earlier, is a ceremony. It's a rite of passage. We use water not because the water is special. We use water in part because we're to image in our minds dirtiness. And baptism is, Christian baptism is a ceremonial washing.

There were ceremonial washings in the Old Testament. There are ceremonial washings in other religions and in other cultures. It's not exclusive, this idea of being cleansed. But that is one of the things baptism signifies to us, is that we are dirty and that we need to be cleaned. And so we use water for that in our daily lives, and so we use water for that in baptism. It's also a testimony of our death. of death and us being brought from death to life, okay? When someone goes into the water, they're dirty with their sins and they're dead in their relationship to God. That's what is true about those who aren't Christians. And as they're baptized, we have this image and this picture of them both being cleaned and raised, brought from death to life. So who does that work?

Do we do that work? Do you parents do that work? Does the recipient do that work? No. God does that work. God does that work in each of our hearts. If we are dirty, we can't cleanse ourselves. If we are dead in our sins, we can't breathe life into us. That belongs to God alone. In Titus chapter 3, verses 4 to 7, it says this. When the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, he saved us. not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. And so our cleansing and our quickening, quickening is an old word that means brought back to life, Our cleansing and our quickening are singular works of God. We receive it, but we don't contribute to it. I can't remember who said, maybe it was R.C. Sproul said, the only thing that we contribute to our salvation is the need of it. I don't know if that was Sproul. Some of you probably can correct me and tell me who said that. But we don't contribute to our cleansing, to our regeneration.

That's something that God does in our hearts by his grace. And so in baptism, we receive God's sign of his promise to do that work in us. Not because of our parentage, not because of where we came from, not because we've done well, but simply because of his grace. Now, all of this that I've said has been an answer to the question, what is baptism? There's a lot more I could say. We could spend two or three sermons on what is baptism. But I'm going to leave it there, and I'm going to move on to the second question, which is, what are the obligations of baptism? And now we come to our text, Romans 6, to find the answer. Paul argues and he reasons with us about living in sin and how our baptism and how being tied to Jesus Christ and his death and his resurrection should inform our daily life. If we were to summarize this passage and say, what are the obligations of baptism?

What obligations does Romans 6 teach us with regard to our baptism? It's simply this, that those who are baptized ought to live a holy life. It is that simple if we distill it down. God defines for us what a holy life is. And we understand that it is not the sort of life that we naturally lead. We don't wake up in the morning and go, I'm going to do holy things today. My heart is inclined toward them. That's where my mind is at, and I'm willing to sacrifice all of the corrupt and easy things that are right next to me for righteousness' sake. How many of us go to bed at night thinking, I'm going to exercise, I'm going to be healthy, I'm going to get up early on time, I'm going to drink enough water? Whatever the silly thing you want to do for your body is, what do you do when you get up in the morning? You get up late.

So I don't have time. You really do settle back into whatever the habit is, whatever the natural thing is, right? And that's instructive to us about how we work. When it comes to living a holy life, we may have all of the good thoughts and intentions enough to fill a truck. But when we wake up in the morning, that is not what comes naturally to us. It's what Scripture repeatedly, repeatedly argues to us and reasons to us as to how we ought to live. Our hearts and our affections are not naturally bent toward God, even in the life of a Christian. They are beginning through the process of sanctification to be changed, but they are not complete. And they're not even most of the way there. And so we have a battle to live a holy life, to do simple things like to get up and to read our Bibles, to pray, to be honest, to avert our eyes.

to fight our fears. Obedience is not natural to us. A holy life does not come without pursuit. And so Romans calls us to a life of obedience. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Isn't that what you think in the morning when you get up late? We don't think about it in terms of sin, but what shall we say? I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it twice as good tomorrow. I didn't read my Bible today. I'll read twice as much tomorrow. I'll read four times as much the next day. I'll read the whole Old Testament in a weekend. No, you won't. No, you don't. Because we don't work like that. Holiness and righteousness, obedience, is not something that our hearts naturally agree with. And there's a funny thing about obedience and living a holy life. We often think that obedience is is a function of our agreement with the thing required. But it's not. You don't have to agree with something to be obedient. It's not required of you at all. It's good if you agree, but it's not required. Much of what you see in parent, as an example, much of what you see with parents interacting with their children today is built on this fallacy, this lie, that the kid has to agree with what they're being told to do to do it. And the parents believe that. They teach their children that.

Well, honey, I want you to do this because it's good for you. Well, what if the kid doesn't agree it's good for them? Then they don't have to do it. Largely, yeah, that's about how it works. We don't think we can require our kids to do things they don't agree with, whether that's going to bed or eating or taking a shower or stopping screaming or hitting or whatever it is they're doing. We want to reason with them and explain it all to them so that they will agree and therefore obey. But Scripture doesn't address obedience that way. Paul doesn't say, here, you ought to agree.

The main trajectory or arc of this passage is one of, I would say, one of shame. He's pointing out the way we think and he's going, isn't that pretty shameful? That you would think that your baptism and you being united with Jesus Christ in his death wouldn't affect the way you live? It ought to affect the way you live. It ought to govern the way you live. The problem is that we often don't agree or we think that obedience is not expedience. It's not practical. But obedience does not require your agreement. Obedience does not have to make sense or be practical in your way of thinking. Obedience, in turn, is actually an act of faith. It's something you do because it's required of you. So think of it this way. In your own life, When you read scripture or when you sit under the preaching of God's word and you're convicted, you have a choice to make. Will you let the time pass where you're convicted? And by conviction, I mean simply that something has gotten through your defenses and into your heart and you're like, oh no, I didn't do it. I did something wrong. I didn't honor the Lord in this, whatever it was.

You now have a choice. That conviction can either subside, and often that's what we wait for it to do, is we just wait for that sense of conviction to just kind of fade, and we settle back into our former way of life with no change. Or that conviction is meant to be a catalyst to change us. So what do you often do when you're convicted? Maybe it's during sermons. Maybe it's during Bible reading. Maybe it's when your spouse points out your sins, or your parents do, or your children do. Or your employers do? Or your employees do? What do you do when someone rightly identifies a failure in you? Oftentimes we minimize it, we ignore it. We just kind of sit there and wait for the storm to pass. What's unnatural to us is to repent and to in turn obey. To do things that God requires of us that are scary to us, costly to us, distasteful to us.

What do you do and what things in your life are marked not by your agreement with Scripture's command, but by your submission to Scripture's command? What do you do because God says so, even though you don't agree with it? Your flesh, when I say that, I mean your flesh, your heart. You're not sitting here going, yes, I think that's good and I want to do that. Is there an area of our lives where we do what God requires of us because he requires it of us? That's holy living. It's being disciplined to do what God requires, even when we don't want to. Take baptism as an example. Do you get baptized because you want to? For some of us, the answer was, yeah. I thought it was awesome. It was so exciting. It was great. Do you know that there are people who don't get baptized because they're afraid of getting up in front of people?

They just put it off. And their church tells them to put it off or doesn't tell them that it's inappropriate to put it off. They just say, this is just something between you and God and you do it when you're ready and when you feel like it. Do you know that that's disobedience? That's actual disobedience. And everyone's like, well, that's, you don't like me saying that. But if I've said to you, baptism is an initiation, right, where you testify to your faith in Jesus Christ and you take hold of his promises to you and own them. Well, I don't like being up in front of people. So I'm not going to do it. That's disobedience. Baptism's not a thing where it's presented to you as, do you want to do it? What if you live in a culture or in a nation or in a family where if you got baptized, it would mean financial ruin for you? Or if it meant that your life would be threatened? What would you do then? If you converted from Islam to Christianity?

where it's actually costly to get baptized. Like your life may well be in danger. Do we just say, well, then baptisms? You don't have to worry about that. Don't, we'll just, don't worry about that. No, I don't think that's what scripture teaches us to do. See, but they're going to die and they're going to lose all this stuff. And I go, yes, if that is what happens, does not scripture teach us that he who wants to save his life must lose it. But when it comes down to our own lives and the personal cost to us, we go, obedience is completely negotiable. It's completely dependent on my agreement with what the outcome of it will be. What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may increase? May it never be. How shall we who died to sin still live in it? And you might think, I haven't died to sin. The pastor's trying to convince me I haven't died to sin. And there's a sense in which you haven't died to sin. And Paul's arguing somewhat rhetorically here where he's saying, you have died to sin because Jesus paid for your sins.

And he's regenerated you by the power of the Holy Spirit, and he's given you life, his life. And so in that regard, you are dead to sin. Why then, how then, shall we who died to sin still live in it? And then he argues about baptism. He uses our baptisms as a lever to compel us to live a holy life. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? Do you think baptism at Paul's time was a costly thing for Christians to do? If you don't know with regard to church history, it's a very costly thing to do, especially if you were a Jew, because they understood something that we've sort of...

covered over, which is that through baptism, you are allying yourself with Jesus Christ in a way and setting his authority as supreme in your life and your allegiance to him above all else. And that is seen as offensive to everyone else, especially to the Pharisees. That would have been very offensive to them. He's coming, and they'd say things like, he's coming to upset our whole way of life. Well, we'll just baptize later when it's not costly. No. John said things like, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee the wrath of come? There was cost associated with baptism. And so when Paul argues here, do you not know that all of us who've been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into his death? He's not saying that there was no cost to their baptisms. And yet they submitted themselves to it as an act of faith. We've been buried with him, says Paul. Those who are baptized are buried with Jesus Christ through baptism.

Into death. What does it mean to have been buried with him through baptism into death? It means this. Jesus' death was a payment that our sins required. There is no other way for you to have peace with God than to have your sins forgiven through Jesus Christ. Jesus says of himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And to come to the Father through him means to go with him down into death and out to resurrection. There is no other way. There's no other way. And so Paul says, we've been baptized into his, we've been buried with him through baptism into death. He is saying to us, that death that he offered, his life that he...

gave as a sacrifice you're united with him in that he paid for your sins what now are your obligations having been joined to him in his death your obligations are not to continue to sin his death was acceptable to his father the one to whom you and i were indebted to and because god the father accepted the sacrifice of his son as payment for yours and my sins why then should we carry on incurring more debt. This is how Paul argues. He says, if Jesus died to pay for your sins, why do you go back? Why do you continue in it? Consider yourselves dead to sin. And you're like, well, I don't want that. Our debts were cleared through the death of Jesus Christ. We have been bound to him in that work if we are Christians. And we testified to that reality through the waters of baptism. Therefore, we are no longer to be slaves to sin. We are free from guilt, from sin's guilt, but also from its power.

And I fear that too many Christians don't believe that second part. They believe they're freed from the guilt of sin, but then they come right back to the beginning and say, well, we can live how we want because all of our sins are paid for. And yet they don't value the preciousness of the payment. It doesn't move them. It doesn't constrain them. It doesn't compel them. They just carry on living how they've always lived. How can you who've been buried with him through baptism into death continue to sin? That's what it means to be baptized into his death, to be joined with him in putting to death sin and its effects. Paul goes on and he says, we've 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. This is the holiness that his death and his resurrection were meant to accomplish in our lives.

And so to be baptized into his death is not to be baptized into misery and left there, but to be raised up out of that into a newness of life, to walk in newness of life. And so as I said earlier, baptism doesn't just depict a dirty, dead sinner, but having gone through it, it now testifies to and represents a clean and living Christian who having been cleansed and made alive now ought to live According to God's law. Not because that obedience saves them, it doesn't. But because that's what being freed from sin frees you to do. I'll tell you this. There are times when obeying God's word is scary because of the consequences of it. But there are never times where obeying God's word leads to you feeling guilty afterwards. And you should choose fear over guilt 100 times out of 100.

I'd rather be scared at the consequences than guilty for the disobedience. That's how Christians ought to reason and think in their minds. Some people have said that courage is not the absence of fear. It's the continuing to do what is right in the face of fear. Walking in newness of life is not an outworking of your agreement with what's required of you. It's not an outworking of the temporal benefits of doing what God says. It is you and I working out on a daily basis what it means to live by faith. And God's the only one who's calling you to do that. And we, to the extent that we are students of God's word and love one another, we do that for each other. But we're to live by faith, doing what God requires of us, even if we can't work out the calculus as to how that's going to be of any benefit to us. But to those of you who've lived and practiced what I've just described in your life,

Can you not testify to God having been merciful to you when you acted by faith? Giving you peace, giving you comfort, giving you the desires of your heart, partly through changing the desires of your heart, but mostly through conforming you to his will. So baptism depicts not just a death, but a rebirth, a new creation. Our union with Christ is not limited to his death, but also to his resurrection. We have hope. And baptism testifies to this reality that when we come up out of the water, clean and alive, so to speak, we testify to Jesus' victory over the grave and our hope of the same. And so baptism doesn't just signify something about the past, the payment for our sins. It signifies something about the future, our hope of eternal life. And so we walk in holiness, in newness of life. Scripture tells us old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come.

That's what we're testifying to and acknowledging and claiming for ourselves when we come to the waters of baptism, when we witness others coming to the waters of baptism. We're testifying to the truthfulness and the vitality of what we've just observed. And it ought to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It ought to make you excited. It ought to be sort of intimidating and exciting at the same time. Paul concludes his argument, 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 no longer be slaves to sin. So all of these phrases are having to do with the past. He ends with this, for he who has died, he's freed from sin. It's not baptism that frees us from sins, from our sins. It's Jesus' death as a payment for our sins that satisfies the wrath of God against us and his victory over the grave through his resurrection.

But in baptism, we testify to his death and resurrection and our hope in those things being true of us. And that is our hope, that his death has satisfied God's wrath against us and that his resurrection will carry us to glory. And so it's very sweet when we have baptisms because we get to remember these things. It's sort of like coming to a wedding. You come to a wedding and you're reminded of your own vows and your own commitments and the spring of your love with your spouse. It's a sweet time, but there's also some friction in there where you're like, well, it's not quite how it's supposed to be just yet, but I want it to be. You come to a funeral and you're reminded of your mortality, that we don't live here forever. And some people don't live here for long.

And it's meant to be a reminder and a goad to consider your own mortality and to make your peace with God. And so when you come to baptism, you're reminded of something, like at a marriage or at a funeral, that Jesus died for the sins of his people and that it was acceptable to his father and that those who are dirty and dead are now clean and alive by the work of God in their life. And that ought to encourage you and strengthen you and stir you up. to live a holy life, that's what Paul's arguing for here. That's what we're about to witness and participate in. So I'll say one final thing to us, knowing that most of us are reformed and kind of stuffy. It's a happy time, okay? It's serious. It's serious in the sense that I've just preached about. But this is a happy time. You are free to be happy. You are free to smile. You are free to hoot and holler. You are free to clap, okay?

God is not pleased by your suppression of your emotions. Okay? It's all right. The only caution I'll add to you is this. This is a worship service, and we are testifying to and rejoicing in and celebrating the work that God has done. And so your praise and your celebration and your gratitude ought to be directed at God. All right? Let's pray.