Sermon Transcript
From Romans 6.
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, 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. For 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.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. 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? But thanks be to God that you, who were once slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness, 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.
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. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.
Easter is, of course, the day that Christians all over the world celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, that he came back to life after being crucified on a Roman cross. You know, we repeat to each other, like Nate led us earlier, that he is risen, and people respond, he is risen indeed. And sometimes that back and forth echo is accompanied with like shouts of praise. Christians act like this is a big deal. But if you’re outside of Christianity, you may wonder, why is it so significant that a man who lived so long ago came back to life?
I mean, let’s just assume that it’s true, that it really happened. What’s all the fuss about? Other than the resurrection being, you know, an unprecedented anomaly in world history— people don’t normally come back to life after being crucified— so it, I mean, it would be a spectacle to see, if nothing else. But, but other than that, what is the big deal? Why do people get so worked up about it 2,000 years later?
And if you wonder that, you’re not alone. Some people even ask a similar question in the first century, right after Jesus’ life, death, resurrection, and ascension. One of Jesus’ earliest followers named Paul— Paul went all over the Mediterranean starting churches. He wrote many of the books that are in the New Testament. But at one point Actually, a couple of points.
Paul was arrested because he was telling people about Jesus. And this one time when he was arrested, it was because as he was preaching, it caused a riot. Some people didn’t want to hear it. So then the authorities show up and they try to calm everything down. They get Paul away from the crowds to figure out what’s going on, and they start an investigation.
Paul must have done something like really serious because people don’t riot for no reason. There had to have been something that Paul did, like leading a gang that was looting the city or killed a beloved citizen. I mean, it had to be something. But as they start questioning the people involved and gather evidence, they find out— this is recorded in Acts 25— it’s because people was— or Paul was telling people about Jesus, that Jesus was dead but alive again. And then the authorities didn’t know what to do with that.
One of them says, he has Paul in custody, he’s going to send Paul to a higher-level judge because he can’t sort it out himself, and he’s writing a letter to try to explain to this judge why it is that Paul’s arrested, why am I sending Paul to you? And he says in that letter, I’m at a loss how to investigate this. The crowds say someone’s dead, Paul says he’s alive, like what am I supposed to do? Find the guy who Paul says is alive and then take that guy to the crowds and say, is this the guy you say is dead? Dead?
And even if I do find that guy and the crowd say, yeah, that’s the guy, what? Like, what does it matter? Why do they care? What’s the big deal? That may be our question.
Why do so many millions of Christians gather today to celebrate that Jesus is alive? What difference does it make other than being a uniquely singular event in all of the history of the world? The answer, which we’ll explore today, is when Jesus rose from the dead, it’s not just that he came back to life, it’s that he opened up a whole new way to live. If you haven’t been with us the last few weeks, we’ve been studying the book of Romans. Romans is a very early Christian document detailing what Christians believe.
It’s written by Paul. It’s the same guy who was arrested. And in Romans, Paul explains what Jesus did for us. Why it is significant, why we need it. And in past weeks we’ve said in Jesus we have a forever future, a future that can’t even be ruined by death.
We also have an immense worth. We have an elevated status that does not depend on our religious performance. We have a status we can’t lose. We are always blessed and highly favored in God’s sight in Christ. Which is partly why the crowds were so mad at Paul.
They believed their status with God depended on their rule keeping, on their morality, and they believed they were more moral than others, so they felt superior to other people. And then here comes Paul who says our status with God doesn’t depend on what we do, it depends on what Jesus has done. So this message of Jesus took away their superiority, and they didn’t like that. But at the same time, Other people loved that message. Specifically, the people who loved it were those who felt less than because they knew they hadn’t measured up to the standards.
For them, hearing that they could be bestowed with a status and a righteousness from God, with God, based on sheer grace, not on what we do, well, that lifted them out of their guilt and shame. They were suddenly free from the pressure to prove themselves. They had worth and favor with God that they didn’t earn but was theirs. That’s what we’ve been studying as a church for the past 5 weeks, and today we come to Romans 6 where Paul talks about Jesus’ resurrection and the new way to live that it provides. So as we study this chapter today, we will see the old way to live, the new way to live, and then how to live that way.
The old way to live, the new way to live, and how to live it. So first, the old way to live. Enslavement. Before we discuss how Jesus is a bigger, better, brighter way to live, we need to discuss the alternative. And Paul describes life apart from Christ as a type of tyrannical oppression.
He even uses the word slavery, which we might want to say, hey Paul, that’s an overstatement. It’s not slavery. I mean, life isn’t great, but you don’t have to call it, you know, enslavery, oppression. It’s not quite like that. So to give us, you know, maybe a picture of what Paul is referring to, there are people who would immediately agree that life is slavery.
And the people who would do that, that life apart from Christ is a type of enslavement, are addicts. Addicts understand that what started for them as something fun or joyful like an escape, it eventually ensnared them. They thought they had a handle on whatever substance they were using until they didn’t. It switched from them having a handle on it to it having a handle on them, and then all of life became about, I need to get another fix. They’ll do anything to have it.
They’re kind of enslaved to it. It’s their master. It controls what they do. They would probably say it feels like oppression. Like they’re serving a tyrant.
And we can understand that for them. We say, of course addiction is slavery, but we also say, that’s not us. I’ve never been trapped by something like that. I mean, I make my own choices. I’m not ensnared to anything.
I’m— at least I’m not ensnared to anything that I don’t want to be ensnared by. But Paul would challenge us here. He says apart from Christ all of us are in a type of spiritual oppression. It’s verse 12, he says, therefore, he says, do not therefore let sin reign in your mortal body to make you obey, make you obey its passions. By using the word reign he’s already implying some kind of mastery or rule over us but then he adds that this reign makes us obey it as if it’s in charge and we are subjects, you know, like an addiction.
And again, we may push back and we say, nothing is making me do anything. Nothing reigns over me. I’m free. I’m the captain of my own ship. This is America, for crying out loud.
I create my own future. And this is where we need to dig a little deeper into the text. Because while our English translations, they are accurate and true and they are good, but we may imply from them a limited scope where we then don’t see the bigger picture of what Paul is talking about. So, the word that the ESV translates here as passions, that we have passions that rule over us and make us obey them, the word for passions in the original language is actually closer to the phrase over-desire. The idea is when we over-desire something, it becomes our master.
And normally, most of the time, we don’t over-desire bad things. We don’t over-desire immoral things. I mean, sometimes we do, right? Like addictions, that’s an over-desire. But more often, what we over-desire is for something good.
The Christian way to say that is we take a good thing and we make it an ultimate thing. We take a good thing and elevate it to the status of, we must have this. If I don’t have it, then I’m ruined. And if we value something that much, that’s when it rules over us. That’s when it controls us.
So, for instance, it’s a good thing to want a career. It’s a good thing to want relationships. It’s a good thing to want our children to be successful. These are good things, but if they become ultimate things, If we over-desire them, the biblical word for that is idolatry. If we idolize them, then it means we must have them in order to feel safe, secure, whole, and that’s when they become our master.
You can easily identify these trends in our lives, right? I mean, if we idolize career, we have to have it, we will wear ourselves out. We’ll work way too much, we will cut any corner, we will step on anyone we need to step on in order to get ahead. We may neglect our family, we may neglect our health, we’ll lie to get further in our career, or we’ll lie to protect ourselves from anything that may damage our status in the company. We do things that we know we shouldn’t do, but we do them because it serves our ultimate thing of advancing our career.
It’s our master, we obey it. Same as if we idolize relationships, romance. That’s a great thing. But if we have to have it, if we feel like we’re nobody when we’re single, then of course we can make all kinds of destructive decisions. It tells us what to do to make us feel whole and we obey.
It’s our idol in that sense. Same as if we idolize the success of our kids. We feel they must be successful or I will be ruined. I won’t be able to face my colleagues whose kids are successful. I’ll be too embarrassed.
I’ll feel like a failure around people whose kids are doing better than my kids. If we idolize our kids’ success like that, I mean, first we’ll put a weight on them that they can’t carry. We become their oppressor. But it’s also an oppression for us because we’re going to be jealous for others. We’ll feel less than, and we’ll push and push and push.
We’ll do whatever is necessary to try to make our kids what we think they They ought to be. It’s their success has become our master. We’ve given ourselves over to it. We obey it. We serve it.
Paul’s point is that we always serve something because our lives must be about something. We must look to something to give us meaning, something to give us a sense of worth and identity, security and significance. Must look to something, and whatever that is, that’s the thing that we serve. If you want to know what you serve, if it doesn’t immediately come to mind, just pay attention to whenever you are inordinately angry, afraid, distraught. Not just a little upset, not just a little worried, but those times when you are beside yourself with anger, fear, and anguish, like the world is going to end.
Whatever triggers that in your heart, that’s your idol. It’s your ultimate thing. And if that becomes in jeopardy, that’s when you become unhinged and you will do anything to secure it again. It has you. You are its slave.
Paul says we will serve something like that. It’ll either be God or it’ll be a substitute for God— money, career, relationships, fame, power, something. We will do anything to get it. We’ll do anything to keep it. And his further point is, if it’s not God, if it’s something else, it will not lead to a fuller life.
It will lead to a type of death. Verse 21, he says, what fruit are you getting from all of that? What fruit are you getting from over-desiring something? It ruins you. It wears you out.
It’s a type of death. And we already know this, right? It’s not really new information. Why do we have anxiety, fear of failure, worry about what might happen? The sense that we don’t measure up or we haven’t done enough, the pressure to prove ourselves, to prove that we matter, over and over and over again prove that we matter, but we never quite get the validation that says that we do matter, at least not for long.
Our ongoing sense of inadequacy, feeling behind in life. Why do we have fear for being exposed for who we really are or found out? Why are we jealous of others? What’s behind our drive for approval, our terror of rejection? Our fear that no one loves us?
What causes our shame, the regrets that haunt us? Do you know why we have all of that? Because we’re enslaved. We over-desire something. Career success, success for our kids, money, fame, relationships, approval, power, something.
We’ve made it our master, and it’s tyrannical. It demands more and more and more from us, but the more we give to it, the more we serve it, the emptier that we become. Then in the end, our final reward after a lifetime of serving it is actual physical death. It’s after decades of stress and worry and feeling like we need to prove ourselves, like we need to achieve, desperate for someone’s love, never quite sure if we’ve done enough to have it. Always feeling a little uneasy if we’ve made it.
At the end of all of that, what we have to show for our efforts is just death.
Everything we’ve worked and stressed to build falls apart. Even if we did have the career, even if we did have the relationship, at the end, it goes away. So what was the point of serving it for all those years? What did we actually accomplish?
And before you go there, we can’t really comfort ourselves by saying, well, sure, I won’t get to enjoy everything I’ve accomplished for very long, but I’m leaving it for my loved ones, for those who come after me. I’ve built a life for my kids and grandkids. I built this company. This helps the world. Can’t comfort yourself like that, at least not if you think about it.
It doesn’t work because if you do think about it, whatever you leave for someone else, it will end for them too. We leave them what we built and now they have a life of stress and worry about trying to keep it and eventually it’ll be over for them just like it was over for us. In the end, it all ends. Death is the final ultimate tyrant. It takes everything.
It leaves us with nothing. Even if we do pretty well, whatever that means, we and everyone we love will still lose everything. Eventually the whole world crumbles. The universe isn’t forever, the scientists tell us. Like nothing lasts, which means this is the final conclusion of the matter.
Everything will come to the exact same end as it would have come to if we had done nothing at all.
If we do a lot, it ends in death. If we do nothing, it ends in death. It’s the same outcome either way, no matter what we accomplish for, for us or for our loved ones. It’s the same final ultimate end. We don’t like thinking about that, but it is an inescapable truth.
Do you see how this is slavery?
Work, stress, worry, fear, battle against jealousy and inferiority for our whole lives to get nowhere, really.
That is slavery. That is the old way to live. The good news, it’s not meant to be that way. It’s not God’s intention for us, which is why he provided a different way to live and brings us to the new way to live is united with Christ. Instead of finding our sense of worth, our hope for the future, our identity, instead of finding that in career, fame, approval, relationships, etc., and burning out ultimately in death.
The alternative is finding it in Christ, looking to him for our self-worth, our hope for the future, identifying with him. And we identify with him or unite with him in 2 ways: with his death and with his resurrection. Verse 5, Paul says we are united with him— if we are united with him in his death, we will be united with him in a resurrection like his. We’ll take those one at a time, death and resurrection. First, death.
I’ll tell you what uniting with his death gives us, and then I’ll say how it makes it possible. So uniting with Christ’s death releases us from our guilt, our shame, and our regret. It takes that burden off of our shoulders. It forgives us. It’s a relief.
It’s like, you know, when you’ve really wronged someone who means a lot to you. You know you’ve damaged the relationship. You fear if it’ll ever go back to the way it was before. But then that person says to you, I forgive you. I love you.
I accept you just as I did before. We’re okay. We’re gonna be okay. You know what a relief that is? That’s what Christ’s death does for us in a cosmic sense, because the cosmic debt we owe is paid.
If you haven’t been with us the past few weeks, we’ve said on the cross Jesus took our place. He’s our substitute. He bears the condemnation that we deserve. He was judged in our place. He absorbs our guilt, our shame.
He pays for it. He covers the debt that we’ve created, which is— it is utterly unique among religious systems. Every religious system has an idea of judgment for sin. Every major religious system says in some way payment is required for wrongdoing. I mean, it might be that we need to make up for our bad karma with good karma, but that’s a payment.
Or it might be because of the regrettable life we’ve lived, we are reincarnated as a lesser creature. Okay, that’s a payment. Every system has a payment for wrongdoing. That is not unique to Christianity. But what is unique to Christianity is who pays.
In Christianity, Jesus pays for our sin. He clears the debt. Our debt through his death. It completely removes our guilt and shame. We don’t pay anything.
There is no condemnation for us. The burden of owing is gone because Jesus has served the full sentence. So I, I don’t know what shame you’re carrying.
I don’t know what regret lingers in your heart. I don’t know what ghosts haunt you from your past.
But tell yourself as often as you need to hear it until you believe it. Tell yourself when those regrets creep up, you say, that has been paid for.
My debt is clear. I don’t owe anything. Jesus died for me.
Picture him with whatever your biggest ghost is from the past. Picture him taking that weight off of you and him saying, I forgive you. I’ve already carried that. I’ve already paid for it on the cross. So your guilt is gone.
Your shame is gone. Your regret is gone. That’s united with him and his death. But we’re not only united to his death, we’re united to his resurrection. It’s not only that Jesus absorbed all of our sin, guilt, shame, he also rose to new life.
Incorruptible, imperishable, never to die again, new life. He burst out of the darkness of sin, guilt, shame, worry, anxiety, failure. He burst out of that into the glory of eternal light. He’s— he started a new type of creation that isn’t subject to the corrosion of this world, that won’t decay. And he reigns supreme over all the universe.
He is the High King of Heaven, immortal, immovable, unrivaled. And we are united to that.
That’s why Christians get so excited about the resurrection. Being united with his resurrection means, one, death is not the end for us. 2, we share Jesus’ elevated status and worth. And 3, we have a forever future in a perfect world. We’ll take those one at a time, but pretty quickly.
First and most obviously, death is not the end for us. As Jesus rose, we will rise. Jesus conquered death. He defeated the final and ultimate tyrant that hangs over everything that we do, the enemy that will take everything from us and everyone we love and leave us with nothing, the enemy that’ll ruin us, ruin everything we’ve built. No matter how hard we try to fight against it, death always wins in the end, but it didn’t against Jesus.
Jesus won where we have always lost, and as he rose, we will rise. Death is not the end for us. We are united with his resurrection. 2, we have Jesus’ status and worth. When Jesus substituted himself for us, it was an exchange in both directions.
He didn’t only take our shame, blame, guilt, He gave us his status, worth, glory, majesty. In John 17, Jesus explains the glory he had. He had glory with the Father before the creation of the world. That’s verse 5 of John 17. But then he gives that to us, verse 22 of John 17.
He gives us the glory that he has always shared with the Father. As he is high and exalted, so are we. Ephesians 2, we are seated in the heavenly realms with him. 2 Timothy 2, we will reign with him. Romans 8, we have his inheritance.
Everything that Jesus deserves is ours. The gospel is Christ’s success exchanged for our failure, his strength exchanged for our weakness, his righteousness exchanged for our sin, his faithfulness exchanged for our unfaithfulness, his acceptance exchanged for our rejection, his approval exchanged exchanged for our condemnation, His fullness exchanged for our emptiness, His riches for our poverty, His light for our darkness, His beauty for our brokenness, His honor for our disgrace, His victory for our defeat. We have His success, strength, righteousness, faithfulness, acceptance, approval, fullness, riches, light, beauty, honor, and victory. It’s ours. Tell yourself that when you feel less than.
Tell yourself that when you feel you haven’t measured up. Tell yourself that when you feel rejected. Tell yourself that when you feel angry or afraid or jealous of what someone else has. In Christ, you have the highest status, worth, glory, validation as could possibly be had. You have His.
You are united with his resurrection.
Third, being united with his resurrection means we have a forever future in a perfect world. The Bible describes a forever that it— again, it is unique among world religions. Instead of the typical, oh, we escape this world into some kind of ethereal realm where we just exist as spirits, Okay, instead of that common story, the Bible describes a resurrection or renewal of the physical. As Jesus rose back to life with a physical body of incorruptible flesh, so will we. And in a sense, so will the world.
The entire world will be remade in a way that is no longer subject to decay. Jesus says in Matthew 19, at the renewal of all things, At the renewal of all things, when all things are renewed, Jesus says, at that time everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for his sake will receive back 100 times as much. It’s an image that everything lost will be returned. Everything will be renewed, and everything will be renewed in a way that far exceeds what was there before. It is a hundredfold increase of abundance.
It is the resurrection of the world. You know, it is what Samwise Gamgee asked Gandalf at the end of Lord of the Rings, is everything sad coming untrue?
It is the resurrection of the world. Everything sad will come untrue, which means our efforts here in this world are not in vain. Instead of working and striving and building only to see it all crumble in the end when death takes it away from us, instead of that, everything good and true and beautiful that we labor to create, it will be made even better at the renewal of all things and will never decay.
So, rather than our efforts being pointless because death will ruin it, The fruit of our efforts will be magnified for eternity. That’s united with his resurrection. This is why Christians are so crazy about it. It’s not just that someone came back to life, it’s that we’re united with that life. Death is not the end for us.
We have the highest and most glorious status and worth imaginable. We have a forever future in a perfect world. That’s the new way to live.
Now lastly, how to live it, how to walk in it, how to lean into it. How to live it is to surrender to Christ. Paul says a couple different ways in this passage, instead of offering ourselves to anything else in this world, offer ourselves to Christ. And we already know how to offer ourselves to career, fame, money, approval, advancement. We already know how to do that.
And Paul says instead of that, offer yourself to Christ, surrender to him. But those are the only 2 options because we will live for something, we will obey something, we will have a master no matter what. If it’s one of our idols, well then we’ll just wear ourselves out serving them, we’ll be emptier, not fuller. But if we serve Christ, Surrender to him, we have life abundant. If you’re not drawn to him already, think about this.
Jesus is the only master we can serve who first served us. He’s the only master we can serve who, no matter what we give him, he has already given us far more. He’s the only master who gave up everything for us. So if you’ve never handed your life over to him before, If you’ve never bowed to him, if you’ve never believed in him, do that today.
Admit your way of living is fruitless and wrong, and then trust that he provided a way for you to live that is free from guilt, shame, and regret, that gives you an unshakable worth and significance. Provides you with a future in a remade world that cannot be ruined by death, where all sad things come untrue. Trust him. Give your life to him. Receive his abundance.
Let’s pray.
Father, we are so grateful for the resurrection. We love it. We love that there’s a new way to live. That takes the burden off our shoulders and elevates us, provides us a future. I pray, Lord, that we would receive it, that we’d receive Christ, that we’d live for him and nothing else, that he would become our hope, that he would become our worth, our significance, the biggest desire of our hearts.
Lord, may he reign in us that we may have life and have it to the full. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
